“Transitions” – 30th Conference of the Polish Association for the Study of English.
Institute of English Studies, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland; 1-3 July 2022
Deadline for proposals: 31st March 2022
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For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
As PASE prepares to hold its anniversary conference, we would like to invite the participants to reflect upon the theme of transitions.
Like all anniversaries, our thirtieth annual gathering is an opportunity to look both back and to the future, to reflect on what has been and what is likely to come, and also to think about the function of English Studies at the present time. The fact that PASE 2020 had to be postponed and so the thirtieth conference is going to take place in the organisation’s thirty-first year is just one of the numerous symptoms of the peculiar time we live in. It is certainly a time of transitions, in many senses of the word, and in many walks of life, with our academic institutions having undergone particularly profound changes. However, the end of the first three decades of the Polish Association for the Study of English may also mark the beginning of something new. Taking our cue from Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead – we can “look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.”
We welcome papers on literature, language, and culture that address questions broadly related to the theme of transitions. Topics may include but are not limited to:
- beginnings and endings
- changes, alterations, and transformations
- thresholds, turning points, and critical junctures
- transitoriness and the state of in-betweenness
- critical engagement with the past, reform and revolution
- redefinitions of concepts and theories, paradigm shifts
- the search for new ideas, approaches, and methodologies
Information about the conference will be posted on a dedicated website:
https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/en_GB/the-institute/research-and-conferences/conferences/pase-2022
Proposals for twenty-minute papers (150–200 words), with short biographical notes (up to 100 words), should be uploaded to the conference website by 31st March 2022. A link to the registration platform will be available on the website from 1st March 2022. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 20th April 2022.
The following panels have been proposed:
- The Robinsonade: Transits and Transitions
- Beyond the Anthropocene: Post-Anthropocentric Approaches in/ to Literature, Visual Culture and Theory
- Brexit: Transitions to New Literary and Cultural Perspectives
- The Myths of Modernism / Modernism and Myths: Then and Now
- Littoral Modernisms: From the Centre To Peripheries
- Adaptation as Transition/Transition as Adaptation
If you wish to take part in one of the panels, please contact the panel coordinators before registering for the conference (more information on the conference website).
To contact the Organising Committee, please write to pase2022@uj.edu.pl
Conference fees:
- PASE members: 400 PLN
- non-PASE members: 500 PLN
- PhD students, PASE members: 300 PLN
- PhD students, non-PASE members: 400 PLN
Venue:
Institute of English Studies, al. Mickiewicza 9, 31-120 Kraków. This conference is planned as an on-site event. Participants will be welcome to attend the conference reception, which will be sponsored by PASE, to celebrate its anniversary.
Conference Advisory Board:
- Dr hab. Monika Kusiak-Pisowacka, prof. UJ
- Prof. dr hab. Elżbieta Mańczak-Wohlfeld
- Prof. dr hab. Zygmunt Mazur
- Dr hab. Andrzej Pawelec, prof. UJ
- Dr hab. Magdalena Szczyrbak
- prof. UJ Dr hab. Władysław Witalisz, prof. UJ
Organising Committee:
- Dr hab. Katarzyna Bazarnik, prof. UJ
- Dr Izabela Curyłło-Klag
- Mgr Aleksandra Kamińska
- Dr hab. Bożena Kucała, prof. UJ
- Mgr Krystian Piotrowski
(Posted 19 January 2022)
“Cultural Studies and the Nonhuman Turn” – Workshop, Technische Universitaet Dresden, Germany. 01-02 July 2022
Registration: 15 May 2022
Cultural Studies and the Nonhuman Turn
Workshop, TU Dresden, 01-02 July 2022
In recent years, there has been a pronounced (re-)turn to questions of ontology, matter and realism in the humanities and social sciences. While theoretical formations such as actor-network theory, object-oriented ontology, the various manifestations of speculative realism or varieties of new materialism should by no means be conflated, what they have in common – and what they share with other, sometimes related, intellectual developments like affect theory, animal and plant studies or digital media theory – is their profound challenge to human exceptionalism. Taken together, these approaches have productively been described as constituting a ‘nonhuman turn’ which “is engaged in decentering the human in favor of a turn toward and concern for the nonhuman, understood variously in terms of animals, affectivity, bodies, organic and geophysical systems, materiality, or technologies” (Richard Grusin). How do these important theoretical developments affect cultural studies as an intellectual and political practice? And how does cultural studies relate to them in turn? More specifically, where are possible points of interconnection or cross-fertilization, and what does the necessary work of articulation entail? What novel questions or fields of investigation and intervention can be opened up for cultural studies? Which new concepts, ideas and arguments promise to be fruitful? How do the respective genealogies of cultural studies and the approaches associated with the nonhuman turn relate to one another; what parallels, affinities or entanglements can be identified? What are sources of friction, contradiction or antagonism?
It is questions such as these that we want to address with our workshop. Our goal will be to create and explore encounters, dialogues, and contact zones between cultural studies on the one hand and the more recent intellectual trends and movements on the other, and to investigate the (theoretical, methodological, political) potentials and opportunities as well as tensions and conflicts connected with this. We thus invite contributions that focus on theoretical and methodological issues rather than, say, readings of cultural artifacts (or if the latter are featured, they should mainly be used for the purpose of tackling the former). We envision a gathering of a rather informal, productive and creative atmosphere (more ‘workshop’ than ‘conference’) and hence welcome papers that need not necessarily be fully ‘rounded’ and ‘finished’ scientific pieces, but can very well be of a fragmentary, ‘work/thought-in-progress’ type. If desired, other formats besides the traditional 20-minute slots will be possible as well (shorter ‘impulse talks’, thematic discussion forums, …).
We heartily welcome anyone interested in participating in the debate! To register, please send an email to the organizer (florian.cord@tu-dresden.de) by 15 May (there will be no fee). If you want to share your thoughts in a talk or another form of contribution, please send a few lines indicating what you will be talking about to the same email-address by 9 May.
CfP – Cultural Studies and the Nonhuman Turn
(Posted 12 February 2022)
The Uses of Form: Theory – Methodology – Pedagogy
A Digital Workshop, 1 & 2 July 2022
Initial proposal deadline: 18 March 2022. Extended deadline: 8 April 2022
Timeline:
- Initial proposal deadline: 18 March (extended to 8 April)
- Acceptance Rejection: 1 April (extended to 11 April)
- Prerecorded papers / texts deadline: 3 June
- Papers will be made available to participants two weeks before the workshop.
Workshop schedule (CET, Berlin/Paris/Amsterdam):
- Friday, 1 July: 9.30 – 15.30h
- Saturday, 2 July: 9.30 – 13h
Call for Papers
What is form and what does it do? Why does it matter to ask these questions and what is the role of form in literary studies? Questions like these continue to preoccupy literary scholars and in more recent years, following an increasing concern with cultural studies methodologies and interdisciplinary approaches, new formalisms have emerged. They have broadened their definitions to incorporate forms outside of literature, and are concerned with the material, political, social dimensions of form alongside its aesthetic affordances. Building on Caroline Levine’s new formalist conception of form, we understand form broadly as “an arrangement of elements—an ordering, patterning, or shaping”. By drawing on Caroline Levine’s definition we hope to understand the various uses of form(s) and how they interact with one another in order to produce (often unexpected) political effects.
Workshop Format: For this interactive, collaborative workshop we invite participants to consider what it means for us to pay renewed attention to a broad definition of form in literary studies. We are hoping for presentations that focus on the theoretical, methodological and pedagogical elements of new formalism(s) and, rather than focusing on individual readings of literary or cultural works, use them as case studies to illustrate or exemplify these broader considerations. Instead of expecting fully rounded contributions, we are looking for work-in-progress papers that allow us to think through and discuss the challenges and opportunities of new formalist approaches in an informal and productive workshop space (rather than a more rigid conference-style event). For this purpose, papers will be pre-recorded and made available to participants two weeks before the workshop, so that we can use the workshop time for discussions.
We invite proposals for 10-minute workshop papers within the following three sections:
- Theorising New Formalism
- For this section, we invite papers that consider form and formalist approaches from a theoretical perspective. This includes diachronic perspectives that take into account the long tradition of formalist reading practices and suggest ways of mobilising them to develop new formalism(s), as well as synchronic approaches that look at the diversity of formalist approaches such as strategic formalism, speculative formalism, historical formalism or activist formalism.
- Equally, we are interested in critical forays into the connection between new formalism(s) and reading practices such as postcritial reading, distant or surface reading, and reparative reading. Other possible topics include looking at the future of formalism(s) in and beyond literary studies and the innovative theoretical perspectives that develop new formalism(s) further.
- Applying New Formalism
- The methodological uses of new formalism(s) are still underexplored despite the breadth of theorisations. What are the opportunities, challenges, and limitations of new formalist methodologies in our research?
- For this section we are looking for papers that discuss how participants apply new formalist methodologies in innovative and constructive ways in their research projects, including PhD dissertations. In particular, we are interested in the reading practices it engenders or transforms, the value of close reading and the portability of form. How do new formalist approaches that highlight forms’ portability transform our methodologies and foster new ways of reading literature, for example in the development of transhistorical, transnational or transmedial projects?
- Teaching New Formalism
- In literary and cultural studies, the distinction between theory and methodology is often blurry. Classroom discussions often allow only a limited amount of intense close reading in favour of broader political discussions which can result in a disconnect for students between theory and method, and between literary studies and politics.
- For this section we invite papers on how we can teach new formalism(s) and incorporate formalist pedagogies into literary studies curricula. What is the “pedagogical potential” of new formalism(s)? How can new formalist methodologies help us integrate literary analysis and politics as vital elements of literary scholarship more productively and fully? How do we teach attention to form that considers the interaction between political and aesthetic forms?
Possible topics for all sections include but are not limited to:
- new genre studies, genre theory & an attention to forms and their portability
- different reading strategies: close reading, distant reading, surface reading, deep reading
- formalism(s) and suspicious or post-critical reading
- digital humanities methodologies and form
- potential for transhistorical projects – portability across time, vs historicist approaches
- comparative analyses, transnational approaches – portability across space (e.g. Friedman)
- intersectionality and form, e.g. queer of colour formalism // the affordances of form for queer studies/analyses
- decolonising approaches to form
- differences in approaches to form generated in different geographic cultures // geographies
- ‘close reading’ new media forms and new formalist methodologies
- pedagogical reflections on methodology from a diachronic and synchronic perspective
- best practice examples of teaching new formalist theories and methods
Please submit a 300-word proposal and short author bio (3-5 sentences) to Julia Ditter (julia.ditter@northumbria.ac.uk) and Anne Korfmacher (a.korfmacher@uni-koeln.de) by 18 March 2022. Please indicate the section in which you would like to present when sending in your proposal. We particularly encourage submissions from PGR and ECR colleagues, and from people who identify with groups that are currently underrepresented in literary studies.
The short 10-minute papers must be submitted as text or presentation (with subtitles or transcript) before the workshop by 3 June 2022 and will be made available in a password-protected space to all participants two weeks prior to the online workshop.
To get the most out of the online workshop and to generate a productive discussion, we hope that attendants will participate in the full workshop where possible. We will plan a number of comfort breaks and children and companion animals are very welcome! If you have any accessibility needs, please let us know.
For more information about the workshop visit our website at www.theusesofform.wordpress.com.
CfP The Uses of Form – extended
(Posted 24 February 2022)
Common Threads: Black and Asian British Women’s Writing
University of Brighton, UK, 21st-23rd July 2022
Deadline for Submission: 31st January 2022
Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Bernardine Evaristo
Following the inaugural conference of the Black British Women’s Writing Network (BBWWN) at the University of Brighton in 2014, we are pleased to announce the second international conference on Black and Asian British Women’s Writing. This conference celebrates the fact that so many Black and Asian women writers have emerged in the last two decades and acknowledges the significant impact their writing has made on publishing and the media since 2015. Black and Asian women’s writing has transformed Britain’s cultural landscape and provoked urgent conversations about nation and identity, home and belonging. Their work challenges the control white, British canonical writers have asserted over what qualifies as literary, where meaning is located in literary culture, and whose voices are privileged. The last couple of years have been particularly exciting for Black and Asian British women writers with Bernardine Evaristo winning the Booker Prize in 2019, the first Black British woman to do so, and several debut authors such as Reni Eddo-Lodge topping the UK’s fiction and nonfiction paperback charts in 2020-21, and receiving substantial attention and recognition. The recent publication of The Cambridge Companion to Black British and Asian Writing (edited by Deirdre Osborne), and The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing (edited by Susheila Nasta and Mark Stein) bring together over 400 years of Black and Asian British writing. 2022 also marks the 21st anniversary of the landmark ‘Write Black, Write British’ conference at the Barbican (organised by Kadija George), and of the publication of the anthology Bittersweet: Contemporary Black Women’s Poetry. Common Threads aims to celebrate this rich cultural heritage while at the same time exploring how Black and Asian British Women’s Writing enables us to re-imagine the nation otherwise in the context of the unsettling, hostile environment of post-Brexit Britain.
The organisers welcome submissions from academics, postgraduate and early career researchers, teachers, publishers and literary activists. We welcome individual papers and panel proposals on any genre and topic related to writing by Black and Asian British women and queer people of colour. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Intersections and Common Threads: Black and Asian British Women’s Writing in the era of Black Lives Matter and post-Brexit Britain
• Teaching Transformation: Black and Asian British Women’s Writing and Decolonising the Curriculum
• Black and Asian British Women’s Life Writing, Screenwriting, Journalism, Popular fiction, Radio drama, Short fiction/flash fiction, Non-fiction
• Black and Asian British Women’s Poetry and Spoken Word Performances
• Speculative Fiction
• Drama and Performance
• Critically neglected writers/new writers
• Black and Asian Women’s Writing and the School Curriculum
• Black and Asian British Children’s Literature and storytelling
• Black and Asian British Queer Writing
• The 2018 Windrush Scandal
• The matter of bodies, politics, place and diaspora
• Making Space/Reconfiguring space: real and imaginary spaces, online, publishing and other spaces, worlds turned upside down
• Regional and rural writing
Please send an abstract of 300 words maximum and brief bio by 31st January 2022 to commonthreads2022@gmail.com. The notification of acceptance will be sent by March 1, 2022. Online presentations/panels welcome. More details will be provided once notifications have been sent. Common Threads is an in-person event, but a limited number of online presentations can be accommodated.
The conference organizers will be working toward the publication of presented papers in a journal Special Issue in 2023.
Organisers: Professor Suzanne Scafe (Brighton), Dr. Sarah Lawson-Welsh (York St. John), Kadija George Sesay (Brighton), Dr Vedrana Velickovic (Brighton) and Amanda Holiday (Brighton).
Supported by The Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics (SECP) and Humanities and Social Science Research and Knowledge Exchange Funding.
(posted 12 November 2021)