Prospero XXVII, 2022 – Rivista di Letterature e culture straniere – A Journal of Foreign Literatures and Cultures
Deadline for abstracts: 1 June 2022
Prospero, Rivista di Letterature e culture straniere, University of Trieste, Italy, invites contributions for the forthcoming general issue, volume XXVII (2022). Prospero is a double-blind peer reviewed, printed and entirely open access journal, published annually by EUT, Trieste University Press, Department of Humanities. It publishes articles and essays in the field of literary studies which consider texts and textual analysis from a wide hermeneutic, philological and historical perspective. It specifically focuses on literary studies considered in their interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary relationships with other cultural expressions.
The 2022 issue invites proposals on all literatures in English for the anglophone section. Full articles should be comprised between 6000 and 10000 words, endnotes and bibliography included.
An abstract of maximum 350 words in English and a short bionote should be sent by June 1, 2022 to, Roberta Gefter Wondrich (gefter@units.it) and Marilena Parlati (marilena.parlati@unipd.it).
Contributors will be notified acceptance of their abstracts by July 1, 2022, and full articles will be due by September 20, 2022, in order to ensure publication after the peer-review process early in December 2022.
For queries and further information about the journal, please contact the editor in chief Roberta Gefter Wondrich at gefter@units.it and visit the website at:
https://www.openstarts.units.it/dspace/handle/10077/6091.
(Published 20 May 2022)
Journal of American Studies of Turkey (JAST): Special Issue on Life Narratives.
Deadline for full-text submissions: 15 July 2022
Journal of American Studies of Turkey (JAST): Special Issue on Life Narratives
Guest edited by Bilge Mutluay Çetintaş, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey
Life Narratives: Self-referential Proclamations
American life writing has a long tradition starting with the diaries, journals, and captivity narratives kept by Pilgrims and Puritans such as Mary Rowlandson’s The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682), to more canonized life writings such as Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (1791).
In their seminal book Reading Autobiography (2010), Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson point out that “autobiography” refers to the traditional western mode of life writing that emerged during the Enlightenment in the late eighteenth century. Unfairly discrediting other life narrating forms, autobiography refers to the traditional representative self-writing of sovereign individuals. Thus, Smith and Watson prefer “life writing” or “life narratives” as an all inclusive umbrella term instead of “autobiography,” or the more flexible term “memoir.”
For postmodern and postcolonial critics, the “I” in self-representation is far from the coherent and unified essentialist individual of autobiographies. The Self is a fragmented entity, created through the limitations of language and positioned in multiple discourses. In Autobiography and Postmodernism (1994), Leigh Gilmore observes the relationship between truth telling and agency as the core of all autobiographical narrations, complicated further by ideology, gender, identity, and authority. She views autobiographical acts as rooted in conventions and power relations by evoking Foucault’s conception of power, stating that self-referential narratives create “a cultural and discursive site of truth production in relation to the disciplinary boundary of punishment” (59).
In whatever form they may appear, life narratives are part of our lives in an increasing and overwhelming amount. The recent global (semi)forced pandemic lockdowns have augmented the sharing and observing of daily life. Trying out recipes, body training, playing instruments, singing, or demonstrating various hobbies on web-based platforms have become statements of existence or acts of self-assertion. In response to destabilized and unsafe public spheres, domestic enclosures have transformed into permanent sites of renewed interest in autobiographical acts.
With this renewed “autobiographical turn” in mind, the guest editor of this issue of JAST seeks original, previously unpublished manuscripts on American life narratives, dealing with any period or subject. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Politics and poetics of American life writing
- Critical studies on American life narratives
- The limits, challenges, and possibilities of self-referential portrayals
- The role of memory, agency, and authority in life narratives
- Life writing in American poetry, novels or theater (fictionalized lives)
- Life narratives in performance and the visual arts (autobiographical videos, street performance, photography, exhibitions, etc.)
- Life narratives in TV series, movies, web-based channels, etc.
- Online lives (digital life stories, social media, dating apps, etc.)
- Genres of American life writing (apology, autofiction, autothanatography, biomythography, captivity narrative, diary, eco(auto)biography, gastrography, jockography, journal, letters, memoir, periautography, prison narratives, scriptotheraphy, slave narratives, spiritual narratives, travel narratives, witness narratives etc.)
- Popular culture and life writing
- American women’s life writing
- Immigrant and ethnic life narratives
- Family life-writing or collaborative life writing
- Public figures and celebrity life writing
- Graphic life narratives (autographics)
- Life writing and consciousness raising
- Activism and life writing
- Hybridity, diaspora, and (forced) displacement in life narratives
- Dis/ability and life writing
- The global pandemic and life narratives
- Teaching life narratives
(Posted 16 March 2022)
Futhark. Humanities and Social Sciences Review
Deadline: 30th July 2022
Futhark. Humanities and Social Sciences Review would like to inform about a new call for papers and welcomes the submission of research papers and book reviews for the coming issue of the journal. Deadline ist the 30th July 2022
Futhark, Humanities and Social Sciences Review, founded 2006 and published yearly, is a double-blind peer-reviewed, open access, research journal, published in the University of Seville, Spain. Futhark aims to publish original interdisciplinary research with a primary focus on original research or reviews in various disciplines of humanities and social sciences. Essays in every language spoken in the EU are accepted. Contributions from young and emerging scholars are welcomed.
More information at:
https://revistascientificas.us.es/index.php/futhark/aboutfuthark@us.es
(Published 16 February 2022)
JoE’s fourth issue – Special Issue: Feminist Ecological Citizenship And The Politics Of Care
Deadline for abstracts: 31 August 2022
At the “Women and Environment Conference” at UC Berkeley in 1974, convened by Sandra Marburg and Lisa Watson, the connection between women and environment was officially registered for the first time. The early ecofeminists like Vera Norwood find the association of women with nature and the efforts of the women in preserving the environment. They observe that, promoting its own history, and recognising the contribution of women in nurturing plants and animals, are the only ways in which ecofeminism may exhibit how women’s culture can initiate the base of a better world in the coming days. Carolyn Merchant (1980) questions the mechanistic view of science that undermines femininity and nature in her The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. Mies and Shiva (1993) find the connection between the ‘corporate and military warriors’ aggression against the environment and the aggression against the female body in the Introduction to their book Ecofeminism. So, we can see that the traditional ecofeminists seek recognition of the importance of the activities traditionally associated with women like childbirth, nurturing and the jobs done within the domestic arena. But Rosemary Ruether, in 1975, warned women against the ‘symbolic role’ imposed upon them by the dominant patriarchal culture at the time of any ecological crisis: “Any effort to reconcile such a male with “nature”, which doesn’t restructure the psychology and social patterns which make nature “alien”, will tend to shape women, the patriarchal symbol of “nature”, into romanticized servitude to a male-defined alienation. Women will again be asked to be the “natural wood-nymph and earth mother and to create places of escape from the destructive patterns of the dominant culture”.
And this warning instigates the birth of one of the most recent trends in the sphere of the study of Ecofeminism: the issue of feminist ecological citizenship and the politics of care. Ecofeminists like Sherilyn MacGregor emphasize that in a male-dominated society, women’s capacity to care is an imposed one. Rather than romanticizing this patriarchal trap, the ecofeminists should politicize the whole issue. To her, feminist ecological citizenship is a language which is more radical than the language of care. It identifies care as a form of work as well as moral orientation, and should be dispensed evenly within the members of the society for better serving of gender equality and sustainability. Mary Mellor observes, “Women are not closer to nature because of some elemental physiological or spiritual affinity, but because of the social circumstances in which they find themselves”.
Feminist ecological citizenship possesses the aptitude to function as a positive political identity that empowers women to voice their gender-related thoughts for environmental sustainability without restricting them to the private sphere of care and maternal duties. The uniqueness of this approach is its denial of privatization of feminization of the act of care. Rather, it sees the issue of care and maternity as a matter that needs to be institutionalized by the state for a better democratization of tasks. It identifies the uneasy relationship between private (caring) and public (citizenship) activities. It also shows the deficiency of environmental activism in linking with gender structures of reproduction. It is obvious that one can’t whistle for the damages in the environment in segregation from the issue of social justice and gender inequality.
The ecofeminists identify three reasons for which women feel ‘burnt out’ – unpaid caring, paid job and active environmental citizenship, all of which are greatly time-consuming. In this way they acknowledge the risk of eulogizing women’s acceptance as care-givers which eventually reduces their ethico-political life to care. This function has turned into a double-aged sword for women. Even if women are competent of saving the environment as a consequence of their cultural-historical deportation to a terrain ‘closer to nature’, directing ecofeminist discussions towards women being the ‘moral guardians of both ‘humanity’ and of nature’ should never be encouraged. Karen J. Warren also expresses her doubts about the position of feminized care in environmental ethics. The ecofeminists are attempting to come up with a feminist reinterpretation of the conventional way of politics. They manifest that the daily practices in the private sphere can contribute largely to the social changes, just like in the public domain. And the burning question that emerges from the issue is “Who cares for the carers?”, which is mostly ignored by the narratives celebrating women as carers of the earth. This whole issue of the politics of care involved in the ecofeminist studies deserves a serious academic discussion. If ignored even now, it would help the patriarchal trap to cause more damage to the ‘carers’ of the earth by over-burdening them with the environmental responsibilities.
The issue may include, but not be limited to the themes such as:
- Women and the Ecological Citizenship
- Ecological Citizenship and the Issue of Gender Equality
- Who Cares for the Carers?
- Women’s Role as Carers and the Patriarchal Conspiracy
- Feminist Ecological Citizenship: A Positive Political Identity
- Democratization and Institutionalization of Caring Jobs
- Feminist Reinterpretation of Ecological Politics
Editor
Dr Dipanwita Pal, Assistant Professor and Head, Department of English, Galsi Mahavidyalaya, West Bengal, India
About the Submissions
Potential contributors should (a) send an abstract of 250 words that describes the proposed focus and content of the paper and (b) a short bio. Please send the abstract and bio by August 31, 2022 to the editor (contact info below). Full-length papers of approximately 5000-6000 words will be due in April 2023. The language of submissions is only English. All submissions shall follow the latest guidelines of APA style referencing. More information about the style sheet is found here: [https://journals.tplondon.com/ecohumanism/about/submissions].
The submissions of abstracts and full-length papers, including a short bio, will be sent directly to the Editor’s e-mail as well as any queries that you may have. The Editor’s e-mail is [dipanwitapal@hotmail.com].
Deadlines:
Abstracts’ submissions to be sent to the Editor until the 31st of August 2022 at the latest.
Final papers’ submissions to be sent to the Editor until the 30th of April 2023 at the latest.
CFP
(Posted 24 May 2022)
Women, “Failure” and Academia Post-2020, a Kick Ass Project – Edited collection
Deadline for abstracts: 15 September 2022
We invite chapter contributions to the edited collection Women, “Failure” and Academia Post-2020, a Kick Ass Project:
This collection will explore the situation of women in the post-2020 academy, while taking a counterintuitive lens that privileges failures rather than successes. Instead of celebrating successes or providing habitual lists of academic achievements, we aim to examine the unfinished, the unattained, the unconventional—that which doesn’t fit neatly and tidily into a narrative of modern academia and academic life. Taking Jack Halberstam’s theorisation of failure in The Queer Art of Failure (2011) as our starting point, we are interested in the purposeless, the culturally anarchic, the quirky in post-2020 academia and women’s position in it. The present co-edited collection will, thus, explore the present academic moment: Where are we going? Indeed, are we going anywhere? Do universities have a future? And women in them? And if so, what is such present and such future?
This is a speculative project about the here and now, a celebration and an interrogation of failures, a plea against pressures to succeed and achieve an academic “happy ending” (i.e. a permanent lectureship?) after a reasonable time of struggle. As Halberstam notes, the counterintuitive can itself be a form of resistance: failure is “a way of refusing to acquiesce to dominant logics of power and discipline,” which “can exploit the unpredictability of ideology and its indeterminate qualities” (88). Such forms of resistance and such unpredictability are what the current volume aims to unravel.
Topics might include, but are not limited to, failure (widely defined and variously interpreted) and:
- Early, mid and/or late career academics
- Precarity, zero-hour/temporary contracts, the job market
- Publishing: challenges, pressures, reports, rejections
- Burnout, mental health
- Promotions
- Leavers
- Mothers and/or carers in academia
- Relationships (dating, long-term relationships, marriage, family, etc.) in academia ● Friendships and competition in academia
- Trans, queer, non-binary academics
- Women of colour and intersectionalities in academia
- Disabled women in academia
- Ageing
- Working in academia across geographic boundaries
- The growth of support groups for academic women, such as the Women in Academia Support Network (WIASN); Older, Wise Learners (PhD Owls); and others.
- The rise of freelance coaches and editors for academic-related matters (writing projects, book proposals, job materials, job interviews, motivation, etc.)—e.g. The Professor is In, The Academic Imperfectionist, etc.
- Academic futures?/The future of academia?
Please send us your abstracts (200-300 words) and a short biographical note (100 words) before 15 September 2022 to Dr Marina Cano (marina.cano@hivolda.no) and Dr Rosa García-Periago (rosagperiago@um.es).
Timeline
- Outcome of abstract submissions: November 2022
- First drafts of chapters due (7,000 words, including references): April 2023 ● Chapter feedback and revisions: July 2023
- Final chapters due: September 2023
CFP
(Published 16 July 2022)
Terminology │ International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication – special issue on Terminology, ideology and discourse
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 30 September 2022
SPECIAL ISSUE OF Terminology │ International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication on Terminology, ideology and discourse
Guest editors
- Katia Peruzzo, University of Trieste, Italy
- Paola Catenaccio, University of Milan, Italy
Introduction
Terms have traditionally been considered as the linguistic representation of concepts, which are produced by a community of experts through a conscious human activity and are used for the development of cognitive processes and communication (Sager 1997, 25). Since term formation is a conscious naming activity, “terms are also the reflection of how knowledge is structured in the expert’s mind” (Fernández‐Silva, Freixa, and Cabré 2011, 49).
The last two decades have witnessed a burgeoning interest in the dynamics of terminology from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective (see, for instance, Temmerman and Van Campenhoudt 2014). The ensuing literature shows that the multidimensionality and variation characterizing terminology derive from the complexity of the specialized domains and the multiple variables that interplay in specialized communication. One of these variables is the motivation underlying term choice: the sender of the message may have various reasons for choosing one variant over another, such as the need or wish to highlight a particular vision, dimension or facet of the concept and emphasize “the most salient aspects of the concept in a specific situation” (Fernández‐Silva, Freixa, and Cabré 2011, 70). It follows that the sender may also choose one particular term to support their argumentation, to influence the reception or interpretation of the concept by the addressees or to manipulate their understanding. This means that the specialized language used, which is generally considered referential, neutral, objective, non‐emotive and essentially informative, may acquire persuasive or even ideological overtones.
The purpose of this special issue is to investigate whether and how terminology in discourse can be used as a carrier of persuasive, consensus‐generating or ideological meaning (see, for instance, Mattiello 2019; Nikitina 2020). The special issue also aims at attracting novel research taking into account not only communication at the “intraspecialist level”, i.e. “communication from specialist to specialist within the same disciplinary field” (Garzone 2020, 20, drawing on Cloître and Shinn 1985), but also communication at the interspecialist level, didactic/pedagogical level, and popular level (Garzone 2020, 20).
Topics of the Special Issue
Authors are expected to submit papers discussing the use of terminology with possible connotative or ideological implications, intentional or otherwise, in various domains and in different communicative situations (intra‐ and interspecialist communication, knowledge dissemination for didactic/pedagogical purposes, popularization, etc.). Authors are invited to discuss one or more of the following topics:
- the use of terminology with connotative or ideological implications or intentions in different communicative situations
- the role of non‐experts (e.g., journalists) in fostering connotative and ideological uses of terms resulting in terminology taking on connotative and ideological undertones
- the role of collaborative work (e.g., editorial teams) in the development of connotative and ideological terminology
- the role of metaphors in the creation of connotative and ideological terminology
- the consequences of using connotative and ideological terminology in different communicative situations
- the challenges posed by connotative and ideological terminology to terminology representation and management
- terminology and political correctness in e.g., gender issues, woke culture,
- the role of translation in assigning ideological significance to terminological units
References
Scientific committee
- Isabel Durán Muñoz, Universidad de Córdoba, Spain Jan Engberg, Aarhus University, Denmark
- Sabela Fernández‐Silva, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile Giuliana Garzone, Università IULM, Italy
- Marcel Diki‐Kidiri, African Academy of Languages / Académie Africaine des Langues Michele Mannoni, Università degli Studi di Verona, Italy
- Marella Magris, Università degli Studi di Trieste, Italy
- Maria Teresa Musacchio, Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy
- Aurélie Picton, Université de Genève, Switzerland
- Chiara Preite, Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy Rita Temmerman, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Submissions
The issue consists of an introduction and 5‒6 articles. The articles should be written in English and count between 20 and 30 pages (max. 9,000 words including references). More information on formatting requirements can be found on the John Benjamins website under the heading Guidelines (https://benjamins.com/catalog/term).
Important dates
- Deadline for submission of abstracts (max. 500 words, references excluded): September 30th 2022
- Acceptance/rejection of abstracts: November 20th 2022 Deadline for submission of full papers: April 30th 2023 Acceptance/rejection notice: September 3rd 2023
- Final papers due: December 17th 2023
- Scheduled publication date: mid‐2024
Please send all documents and requests to both kperuzzo@units.it and paola.catenaccio@unimi.it
(Posted 20 March 2022)