Calls for papers – Conferences taking place in November 2022

(Brave) New Worlds, Graduate Symposium
CETAPS (Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies) – American Intersections Research Strand, 04 November 2022.
Deadline for abstracts: 15 September 2022

Venue: NOVA FCSH (NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities) 
Colégio Almada Negreiros (CAN), Lisbon, Portugal 

As we celebrate the 90th anniversary of the publication of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, it  becomes inevitable to reflect on its impact in the context of American imaginaries. Thinking about what is going on in the world, including wars, pandemics, and climate change, the (Brave) New  Worlds Symposium aims to bring together an intersection of plural perspectives and representations  of the worlds and spaces we are creating across multiple areas of literary and cultural studies. 

We invite proposals responding to, but not limited to, the following topics: 

  • Mapping identities (age/race/gender) 
  • New worlds in speculative fiction 
  • (Auto)mobility spaces 
  • Migration and new worlds 
  • Mapping space through visual and digital culture 
  • Embodiment and ethics of reproduction 
  • Representations of space in climate fiction 
  • Representations of space and climate change 
  • Redefining space in the post-pandemic period 
  • Finding new spaces/worlds in the context of war 
  • Spaces of industrialization and technology 
  • Technological spaces and landscapes 
  • The worlds of virtual reality 
  • Subaltern identities and politics of difference
  • Representations of wastelands 

The organizers will welcome proposals for 15-20-minute papers in English or Portuguese. We also  encourage early career PhD/Masters researchers to participate. 

Keynote Speaker:  

José Duarte (CEAUL – Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa) 

Deadlines: 

Please send an abstract of up to 300 words, as well as a short biographical note (100 words), by September 15, to: bnewworlds22@gmail.com 

Notification of acceptance will be sent by September 30

Fee: 10€ 

Organizing Committee 

  • Alice Carletto (CETAPS/NOVA FCSH) 
  • Mariana Cruz (CETAPS/NOVA FCSH) 
  • Rui Mateus (CETAPS/NOVA FCSH) 
  • Sheila Brannigan (CETAPS/NOVA FCSH)

CFP

(Posted 30 June 2022)


Writing Contemporary Wars and Contemporary Militaries: Film and Literature of Military Interventions from the Persian Gulf War to the Present
University of Lausanne, Switzerland, 11-12 November 2022
Deadline for abstracts: 30 June 2022

Writing Contemporary Wars and Contemporary Militaries: Film and Literature of Military Interventions from the Persian Gulf War to the Present 
Conference venue: University of Lausanne, Switzerland 
Date: 11-12 November 

Keynote speakers:  
Prof. Helen Benedict (Columbia University) and
Prof. Anna Froula (East  Carolina University) 

This 2-day conference will focus on the way that war has been represented in the  United States (and UK) since the First Persian Gulf War in 1990 to the present.  Recent events, such as the end of a so-called Forever War with the removal of  American troops from Afghanistan, will serve as a focal point from which to  explore topics related to war and the military.  

This conference welcomes papers that interrogate the recent American wars, with  particular interest for the exploration of representations of the military, especially as  it relates to gender. Cross-cultural and interdisciplinary contributions are also  encouraged, and we therefore welcome papers that explore similar themes related  to gender and the military across other countries, cultures, or periods.  

Some of the suggested questions include:  

  • How does the military, a historically masculine institution, reconcile its  discriminatory practices with its need for female troops?  
  • More generally, how does the instrumentalization of women—both at home,  within American troops, but also in the invaded countries—serve the  country’s imperialistic interests and revitalize the war rationale?  
  • How has the influx of women into combat positions in all the services  changed the way war is perceived, experienced, and narrated?  
  • How has drone warfare and the increasing reliance on other technologies of  the virtual and remote soldier impacted military masculinity?  
  • Along the same lines, how have the new technologies of surveillance and  remote assassination changed the meaning and visualization of war more  generally?  
  • How have representations of the psychological cost of war entered film and  literature in a time where trauma and PTSD are far more accepted than  during the Vietnam War?  
  • Do these seemingly endless wars result in overexposure and fatigue—and if  so, how does this affect anti-war activism? 
  • After the hyper-mediatized failure of the Afghanistan War, what  perspectives for Afghanistan, but also for future American wars? Is the rhetoric of liberation still a viable justification for further American  interventionism and imperialism? 
  • How might the current war in Ukraine impact the representation and  cultural memory of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? 
  • Lastly, fictional writing about war has increasingly included elements relating  to climate change and the Anthropocene. What are the implications and  results of this?  

Abstracts (250-300 words) should be sent, along with a short bio-note, to both  Prof. Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet (agnieszka.soltysikmonnet@unil.ch) and Ana  Gomes Correia (ana.gomescorreia@unil.ch) by 30 June.

(Posted 20 May 2022)


Time of Monsters
Institute of Modern Languages, University of Bielsko-Biała (Poland), 16-17 November 2022.
Extended deadline for the submission of abstracts: 23 October 2022

Time of Monsters 
Institute of Modern Languages, University of Bielsko-Biała 
16-17 November 2022 

It matters which stories tell stories, which concepts think concepts. Mathematically, visually, and narratively, it  matters which figures figure figures, which systems systematize systems. 1 

(Donna Haraway) 

In the Western perception of things, which still preserves the Platonic, or rather  Parmenidean image of a stable order in which they exist, the potentiality of monstrousness,  emerging from fractures in this world – or, to reach even deeper, from the dark matter of the  chōra, the sombre Nurse of all becoming – appears as absurd, and yet at the same time as  ecstatic, epiphanic.  

Klaus Nürnberger, an expert in the evolution of ideas, sees the recurring  manifestations of the monstrous in different cultures as units of meaning travelling forward in  time, and in his seminal seven theses on monster culture, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen makes a  complementary claim, succinctly reminding us that monsters are inevitably manifestations of  the historical circumstances that spawn them: “The monstrous body is pure culture.”2 After  all, the very etymology of the word monster (“that which reveals”, “that which warns”)  encourages treating the monstrous as a text of culture par excellence. This is why our  conference invites scholars from various fields to explore the possibilities of reading the terror  of our monstrous times as symptoms of what has been hiding beneath the shiny surfaces of  our culture. 

The third decade of the twenty-first century is indeed a time of monsters, in which  threats that we have been apparently aware of for decades, but able to neutralise in our  discourses, are beginning to blow up in our faces. The economic, environmental, military  costs of the West’s standard of living, which have been relegated to other parts of the world, 

are now coming back to haunt the global metropole. For a long time the disparity between the  parts of the world that contribute most seriously to the climate catastrophe and those that are  most immediately affected by its symptoms has been as striking as it is depressingly  predictable. Now we begin to realise that it is likely to become somewhat reversed in the near  future. We are experiencing a return of the repressed, an eruption of the Real on a global  scale: everything we refused to face, everything we swept under rugs, is now becoming  impossible to deny and threatens the coherence of the symbolic frameworks, giving us a sense  of mastery over our reality. The monsters are already here; we can no longer pretend they will  go away if we close our eyes. The question that we urgently need to ask ourselves is how to  tame them, live with them, learn from them. The future has become radically different,  unpredictable, and overwhelmingly threatening, and we are in dire need of reimagining our  ways of interacting with the world. 

Scholars of the monstrous remind us that it tends to facilitate a rethinking of our ways  of being in the world. To quote Cohen again: “A mixed category, the monster resists any  classification built on hierarchy or a merely binary opposition, demanding instead a ‘system’ allowing polyphony, mixed response […] The horizon where the monsters dwell might well  be imagined as the visible edge of the hermeneutic circle itself: the monstrous offers an  escape from its hermetic path, an invitation to explore new spirals, new and interconnected  methods of perceiving the world.”3In this sense, monsters are not only a manifestation of a  crisis (and as such require a new approach to reality), but actually enable new approaches by  questioning earlier categories through their very presence. The monstrous challenges our  ways of making sense and at the same time opens them up to the possibility of new  reconfigurations. Our conference invites you to use this opportunity.  

Topics might include but are not limited to the following: 

  • Genesis of monsters 
  • Monstrosity and reproduction 
  • Forms of monstrosity in literature and culture 
  • Manifestations of monsters across the centuries 
  • Monster with(in) us 
  • Monsters as others/ as the abject/ as metaphors for social anxieties 
  • The concepts of ‘monsters’ or ‘monstrosity’ in contemporary research – The concepts of unwar, unpeace 
  • Narratives/counter-narratives 
  • Liminal spaces 
  • Postnormal times 
  • Polycrisis 
  • – Anthropocene, capitalocene 

Confirmed keynote speakers:  

  • dr Caterina Nirta, Royal Holloway, University of London 
  • dr Jaroslav Švelch, Assistant professor, Charles University in Prague 

We welcome proposals from across theoretical and disciplinary fields that engage the  conference topic. Please send an abstract of about 300 words and a short biographical note to  the conference organisers at: timeofmonsters22@gmail.com.  

The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 15 October 2022. The selection of papers is on  an ongoing basis, so you should hear from us within a week from your submission.  

The conference fee is 450 PLN (100 euro) for on-site participation (lunch and coffee breaks  included) and 350 PLN (70 euro) for online participation. Please state whether you are  interested in participating online or on-site.  

Organising committee 

  • Maria Korusiewicz 
  • Anita Jarczok 
  • Sławomir Konkol 

1 Donna Haraway, Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene,Chthulucene: Making Kin, “Environmental  Humanities”, vol. 6, 2015, p. 160.  
2 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Monster Culture (Seven Theses), “Monster Theory: Reading Cuture”, ed. Jeffrey Jerome  Cohen, University of Minnesota Press, 1996, p. 3.
3 Ibid., p. 7

CFP

(Posted 6 October 2022)


Trans*America: American Studies Association of Turkey (ASAT) 41st International Conference
Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey, 16-18 November 2022
Deadline for submissions: 30 April 2022

In Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability (2018), Jack Halberstam provides a broad conceptualization of trans*, defining it as an open term that resists and interrupts “certainty through the act of naming.” The asterisk, Halberstam notes, “modifies the meaning of transitivity by refusing to situate transition in relation to a destination, a final form, a specific shape, or an established configuration of desire and identity.”

As such, trans* is a dynamic space of agency, self-definition and hybridity. Also embedded in trans* is transformation and a sense of flexibility and change that defies categorization and constructed binaries. As Halberstam expresses, trans* is thus a powerfully liberating epistemology, one that challenges, decenters and “stands at odds with…concise definitions, sure medical pronouncements, and fierce exclusions.” Always “under construction” or in the process of becoming, it defies and subverts domination by regulatory regimes while exposing the interstices and lacunae of being.

The American Studies Association of Turkey invites the submission of individual abstracts, panels, workshop and roundtable proposals that explore all aspects of trans* with respect to the United States. Possible subthemes include, but are not limited to:

  • Trans* geographies and spaces
  • Transnational; transcontinental; transatlantic; transpacific; transoceanic
  • Transgender/LGBTQIA+ issues; trans* phobia
  • Trans* bodies, identities, genders and sexualities
  • Transing; transitioning; transitivity; trans* lives
  • Trans* embodiment; trans* theory; trans* visibility
  • Trans* action and activism; trans* politics; trans* networks
  • Trans* performance and performers; trans* fandom
  • Transhumanism; trans* as a site of futurity
  • Transecology; trans* histories
  • Information and technology transfer; transparency
  • Change and transformation
  • Translation; transcription; transliteration
  • Transcendence, transcendentalism
  • Transience; transmigration; transborder
  • Transportation, movement and mobility
  • Cultural transfer; transculturation
  • Trans* in American culture, literature, film, sports and media
  • Transdisciplinary studies of the United States

Proposals should be sent to the American Studies Association of Turkey (info@asat-jast.org) and should consist of a 250–300 word abstract, five keywords, and a short (200 word) biography for each participant. The time allowance for presentations is 20 minutes. An additional 10 minutes will be provided for discussion.
We expect all participants to attend the entire conference out of professional courtesy. Please keep this in mind while submitting an abstract.
Submission deadline: April 30, 2022
Selected papers will be included in a special issue of the Journal of American Studies of Turkey (JAST) based on the conference theme.

More information will be posted on our website as it becomes available: www.asat-jast.org

***

American Studies Association of Turkey

www.asat-jast.org
info@asat-jast.org 
https://www.facebook.com/AsatJast/
https://twitter.com/ASATJAST

(Posted 19 October 2021)


British Identities Medialised: Annual Conference of the Society for the Study of British Cultures
University of Salzburg, Austria, 17-19 November 2022
Extended deadline for proposals: 1 April 2022

With publications like Jeremy Paxman’s The English (2000), Kate Fox’s Watching the English (2004), or Mark Easton’s Britain, etc. (2012), the last decades have seen a conspicuous number of texts attempting to define and re-define Britishness in a changing world. This trend has been seen as indicative of a contemporary crisis of Britishness, of the need to re-define it in view of its changing status in the world brought about by the end of Empire. The process of devolution and the potential end of the United Kingdom in particular through Scottish independence or a potential Irish unification; continued economic difficulties which became particularly apparent with the 2008 financial crisis; new forms of immigration, which once more have changed the makeup of those living in the British Isles, all these developments have challenged ideas of national identities in the British Isles.

The Brexit referendum, which has been seen by many as being just as much about Britishness as about Europe (see e.g. Geoffrey Wheatcroft 21 June 2016, The Guardian), is another sign that identities in the British Isles continue to be a controversial topic. Thus, it is unsurprising that the years of the Brexit negotiations have seen another wave of books on Britishness including Robert Ford’s and Maria Sobolewska’s Brexitland (2020); or Peter Mitchell’s Imperial Nostalgia (2021). While Brexit was certainly of particular significance for renegotiating Britishness of late, other significant trends that challenge and redefine Britishness within an international and national context include the ‘Black Lives Matter’-movement, and the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’-initiative, revealing yet again the importance of individuals and their (hi-)stories for the definition of cultures (see Bingham 2010).

In this conference, then, we will examine how media shape the nation and construct different versions of national identities in the British Isles. While there will be a focus on present-day examples, we also welcome historic examples from a variety of media, such as statues, museums, history books, or memorial plaques.

Topics may include, but are not limited to a discussion of:

  • portrayals of British personalities and Britishness in film, television, stand-up comedy shows and on streaming platforms, etc.
  • Youtube clips that reflect on or intend to teach and inform about how to be British / Scottish / Welsh / Northern Irish or English
  • social media posts and broadcasts by and about famous Brits or about cultural icons
  • museum spaces that focus on individual lives to portray historical periods or movements
  • statues, ceremonies and monuments (past and present)
  • recent attempts by politicians to redefine Britishness (for instance in the Museum of Brexit or the One Britain One Nation-Initiative)
  • music, national songs and radio broadcasts
  • schoolbooks and children’s books propagating versions of Britishness (historic and contemporary)
  • websites and advertising campaigns fostering alternative national or regional identities

Our Keynote Speakers

  • Professor Corinne Fowler (Professor of Postcolonial Literature, University of Leicester)
  • Professor Maria Pramaggiore (Professor of Media Studies and Dean of Graduate Studies at Maynooth University)

We are looking forward to receiving proposals for 20-minute papers by 1st March 2022. Proposals should consist of a title and short abstract (no more than 300 words) and a short bio (no more than 150 words, please). Please email these to Britcult2022@plus.ac.at.

We are hoping for a face-to-face conference, which will take place in Unipark Nonntal, an easy-access building right on the edge of Salzburg’s Old Town.

For more information on the Society for the Study of British Cultures (Britcult) please visit www.britcult.de/.

Conference Organisers

  • Dorothea Flothow, Sarah Herbe, Markus Oppolzer and Elisabeth Schober
  • Department of English and American Studies, University of Salzburg, Erzabt-Klotz-Str. 1, A-5020 Salzburg, Britcult2022@plus.ac.at

Britcult 2022 Salzburg Call.docx

(Reposted 1 March 2022)


Taking the Mic: Black British Spoken Word Poetry Since 1965. Aesthetics, Activisms, Auralities
Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, UK. Friday 18th November 2022
Extended deadline for Abstracts: 15th August 2022

Taking the Mic:
Black British Spoken Word Poetry Since 1965
Aesthetics, Activisms, Auralities

Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, UK.
Friday 18th November 2022

Extended Deadline for Abstracts: 15th August 2022

Keynote Speakers: Carolyn Cooper, Professor Emerita, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica and Jay Bernard, Writer and Artist, Berlin and London

Conference Convenors: Dr Deirdre Osborne FRSA, Goldsmiths, University of London; Dr Emily Kate Timms, University of Vienna; Josette Bushell-Mingo OBE, Principal, Central School of Speech and Drama.

Conference Assistant: Shannon Navarro, Central School of Speech and Drama.

Black British* poets have long pushed the aesthetic and sonic boundaries of performance in spoken word poetry, creating a compelling public voice for poetry. The legacy of this work both on and off the page follows diasporic routes in and out of Britain from Una Marson to James Berry, from the Caribbean Artists Movement to Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, John Agard, and Roger Robinson through to the twenty-first century poets Patience Agbabi, Jay Bernard, Anthony Joseph, Raymond Antrobus, Warsan Shire, and Caleb Femi to name a few. While fashioning electrifying performance personae, Black British spoken word poets have equally claimed, redefined, or rejected the term ‘performance’. In his classic essay, Kwame Dawes (2005) argued that ‘the position of the black poet in Britain has become inextricably linked to notions of “performance poetry”’ and that this association inhibits recognition of the fact that many poets were writing for print publication. In response Corinne Fowler (2016) reflects, ‘The lack of parity between so-called “page” and “stage” poets points to a long-running, unresolved argument in Britain about what poetry is, and who it is for, an argument that reaches back to the British poetry revival of the 1960s.’

To what degree does Black British spoken word poetry offer an ongoing ‘avant-garde’? From the Black People’s Day of Action to #BLM, to decolonising the curriculum, spoken word poetry plays significant roles in Black activism; bears witness to contested and forgotten histories; and imagines new futures, communities, and belongings to numerous cultural lineages. To rhyme, rap, or speak of poetry performance, its lyrical forms, beats, and bars is also to invoke the voices of Black British poets and collectives across Britain’s geographical breadth. From Grace Nichols’s meditations on the English countryside, to the Mancunian Blackscribe Black feminist poetry collective; Khadijah Ibrahiim’s poetic histories of Chapeltown and Harehills, and Benjamin Zephaniah’s accounts of Brummagem; to Eric Ngalle Charles’s negotiations with his adopted ‘home’ in Wales to Jackie Kay as Scotland’s Makar; or Caleb Femi’s testimony to North Peckham— these locales, regions, and their nations reveal the multiple genealogies of Black British spoken word poetry’s performance communities.

Thus, it is timely for poets, academics, and critics alike to ‘take the mic’ and embark on a sustained examination of Black British spoken word poetry and the relationships that might be traced between its aesthetics, activisms, and auralities. This one-day conference combines critical and creative perspectives and invites 20-minute papers, presentations, panels and/or performances exploring any aspect of Black British spoken word poetry in performance since 1965. Such presentations may include, but are not delimited to, explorations of Black British performance aesthetics, audience interactions, performance reception, education, and engagement with creative industries.

The conference will form the basis for a special issue with a scholarly journal. This conference is a free event with options for remote attendance.

* Black British indicates a scope, for ease of reference, to the work by poets of African or Caribbean descent who live(d) and/or published/performed a significant body of work in Britain, in a context of literary history.

Please email abstracts of no more than 250 words and a short biographical note (80 words)* to: takingthemic2022@univie.ac.at, follow us on twitter @PoetryOff_Page. You can also find out more information at  www.TakingTheMic.net.

Taking the Mic Conference Team

  • Dr Deirdre Osborne FRSA
  • Dr Emily Kate Timms
  • Josette Bushell-Mingo OBE
  • Shannon Navarro

Follow us at @PoetryOff_Page.
For more information see www.TakingtheMic.net

CFPs

(Reposted 30 June 2022)


International Conference on Anglo-Portuguese Studies III
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Lisbon, Portugal, 24-26 November 2022
Deadline for submission of proposals: 15 October 2022

Name

International Conference on Anglo-Portuguese Studies III

Topic of the current edition

Anglo-Portuguese historical, literary and cultural relations; Luso-American exchanges; Anglo-Iberian relations; comparisons and connections between Portuguese-speaking and Anglophone countries.

Organiser(s)

CETAPS (Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies)

Venue

Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Campus de Campolide 
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Lisbon, Portugal

Dates

24-26 November 2022

Deadlines

  • Deadline for submission of proposals: 15 October 2022
  • Notification of acceptance: 20 October 2022
  • Deadline for registration: 30 October 2022 (after this date proposals will no longer be considered)

Keynote speakers

  • Lara Bule (Independent Scholar) confirmed
  • Other keynote speakers soon to be announced

Website

https://angloportuguese.wordpress.com/

Contact details

CFP

(Posted 24 August 2022)