Calls for papers – Conferences taking place in November 2017

Manifestations of Love and Hate in American Culture and Literature: 38th Conference of the American Studies Association of Turkey
Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey, 1-3 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 3 March 2017

35th Anniversary Conference

“It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object. Philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions seem essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in a celestial radiance and the other in a dusky and lurid glow.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

asat-jastTwo of the most perennial topics in art and literature throughout human history, love and hate, in their multifarious forms and contexts, have always appealed to a large number of readers and audiences. Not only inspiring thousands of works of art and literature, but also giving birth to genres and sub-genres, love and hate have been essential elements of all popular cultural forms, including music and cinema. American literature and culture are no exception in terms of its keen interest in this binary. Some cultural critics have even pointed out the uniquely American way of dealing with matters of the heart. For instance, both Henry Adams in the well-known “The Dynamo and the Virgin” chapter of The Education of Henry Adams, and Leslie Fiedler in Love and Death in the American Novel, have pondered, with a critical tone, why American society has always been uneasy with the topic of love. Whether it is an uneasiness, as Adams and Fiedler claim, or another distinctive characteristic that distinguishes love in the United States, this conference hopes to stimulate discussion about representations of love, and its antitheses, in the American context.

We invite the submission of individual abstracts, panels, and proposals by
graduate students from any branch of American Studies. Possible areas may
include, but are not limited to:

  • Literature/literary criticism
  • Gender and queer studies
  • Cinema, (social) media, communication
  • Music, art, theater, and performance
  • Cultural studies
  • Life writing (travel writing, journals, diaries, and memoirs)
  • History of emotions
  • Sociology
  • Psychology and psychoanalysis
  • Visual culture
  • Environmental studies/urban studies

Proposals should be sent to the American Studies Association of Turkey (info@asat-jast.org) and should consist of a 250–300 word abstract, three to five keywords, as well as a short (one paragraph) biography for each participant. The time allowance for presentations is 20 minutes. An additional 10 minutes will be provided for discussion.
While the conference language is English, we will accept a limited number of abstracts in Turkish for a Turkish-language panel at the end of the conference.
Deadline for proposal submission: March 3, 2017
All presenters residing in Turkey must be/become ASAT members.
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: http://www.asat-jast.org

(posted 12 October 2016)


Evidently Set Forth: God and the Human Stage
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, UK, Saturday 4 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 31 May 2017

Offers of papers are invited on aspects of the history and theory of drama, tragedy, drama in Biblical narrative, mystery plays, Biblical dramas, Puritanism and the theatres, and modern drama, including poetic drama, closet drama and studio drama. Performance is within this remit, as also is theo-drama. Papers may adopt a historical or thematic approach, or may discuss individual plays or books, or draw comparisons e.g. as between King Lear and the Book of Job. The CLSG interest is in Exploring Christian and Biblical themes in Literature.
The deadline for proposals, which should be emailed to Dr Roger Kojecký (secretary@clsg.org), is 31 May. Your proposal should give a provisional title, should state in a few words how you will tackle your topic, and give brief information about your background.

The full form of the Call for Papers can be found on the website of the Christian Literary Studies Group, http://www.clsg.org/html/conference.html

(posted 20 February 2017)


Creative Writing and Creative Reading: The Challenges of Cosmopolitanism: International Conference and Workshops
London, UK, 4-5 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 31 August 2017

Organised by London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research
Conference website: http://cosmopolitanism.lcir.co.uk

The notion of cosmopolitanism can be readily articulated through the acts of writing and reading. After all, as William Nicholson stated, “we read to know that we are not alone.” Therefore, writing and reading are the precious acts of sharing, of breaking through the surface of remoteness, estrangement and indifference towards those situated in the present and those buried in the past. Both creative writing and reading open up new paths towards (re)-discovery of the past as well as towards the understanding of our current placement in the global, cosmopolitan context. Therefore, this conference and workshops, embracing both the past and the present, encourages one to participate in the acts of sharing, reading and writing in order to approach the notion of cosmopolitanism in its multifaceted forms.

The event will be an inspiring combination of traditional paper presentations and original workshops on creative writing and creative reading in the challenging era of cosmopolitanism. We invite scholars and writers to participate and share their academic and/or creative work during these two days in London!

(posted 23 August 2017)


Poetry in Expanded Translation: Intersemiotic Translation between Text & Image
Université de Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse, France, 8-10 November 2017
Deadline for proposals:: 25 August 2017

The conference will investigate the role of the visual in poetry as intercultural dialogue. It will consider the relationship between poetry and visual texts (including hybrid and hypertext works) as a form of translation, and will also explore the place of language within visual works as poetic discourse and investigate its role in mediating reception of poetry and visual art across linguistic boundaries. Transposition will therefore be examined alongside translation as a means of exploring interlingual and intersemiotic crossovers. Sound poetry into written score, concrete or visual poetry across languages, literary work transformed into visual art works (as in Marcel Broodthaers’ Mallarmé-based works or the literature-based practices of Mexican visual artist Jorge Menendez Blake, who showed Octavio Paz, Emily Dickinson and Kafka-based work in Europe at the Biennale of Venice and in June 2016 at the Kunsthalle-Mulhouse). We hope also to provide tools for those seeking methods for applying techniques of translation to authors and visual artists exploring this liminal zone between literary language and visual image.

Potential topics include: the issues of translating polysemic elements in verbo-visual texts; the translation of visual protocols (typographic plays, scribbling, collages, importation of images, etc.) in ultra-contemporary literature; the multimediality of the page; untranslatability; the modality of an image-rhetoric in the context of emerging screen cultures for video-poems, hypertext works or on-screen translations of poetry; created languages of signs and how they are translated using verbo-visual cues—or what Pierre Joris calls “inter-languish” translations.

Paper proposals (250-300 words) in French or English should be emailed before 25 August 2017 to both Jennifer K. Dick at poextrans@gmail.com and to Maxime Leroy at maxime.leroy@uha.fr. Please include: “Expanded Translation” in the subject line.

(posted 12 July 2017)


Illustrating Identity/ies
Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France, 9-10 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 15 May 2017

Confirmed keynote speaker: Professor Alan Male
https://www.falmouth.ac.uk/content/professor-alan-male

An international conference organised by IDEA, Illustr4tio and Illustration Research Network

This conference invites participants to explore the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural means through which illustration, in all of its forms, contributes, and has contributed historically, to the shaping of ‘identity/ies’.
The study of illustration provides powerful insights into not only the representation, but also the construction of identity – including gender identities, national and political identities, subcultures, hybrid identities and performative identities. Illustrators as cultural agents have the power to both reinforce and problematise ‘the visual vocabulary of politics’ (Steven Heller, Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State, 2008; rep. 2010) through their use and manipulation of cultural narratives and stereotypes.
Illustrators often navigate several personas when creating artwork – for example the desires of the client, the reception of the audience, and the voices within the text. They may also produce highly personal and subjective work documenting emergent or performed identities in relation to historical, geographical, social, cultural and phenomenological matrices.
We are keen to encourage critical and theoretical frameworks which foster understanding of the cultural relevance of illustration, and to examine the links between book history, print and digital culture and identity. Both practice-led and theoretical papers are welcome. Papers may cover any form (book illustrations, extra illustrations, press cartoons, digital art, etc.) or type (decorative, narrative, scientific, technical, historical, educational, satirical, etc.) of illustration from the Early Modern period or Renaissance to the present day.
Subjects for discussion may address (though are not limited to) the following themes and questions:

  • The political agenda of illustration/illustrators: illustration as critique and social or political protest
  • The illustrator as agitator, mediator, witness and/or opinion former
  • The performance and performative aspects of illustration
  • Illustrating identity/ies and changing technologies
  • The participation of illustration in the construction and definition of individual identity
  • The participation of illustration in the construction and definition of collective / cultural / social / political / ethnic identity/ies
  • The illustration of historical and ‘grand narratives’ relating to national identity/ies

Please submit 300 word proposals for a 20 minute presentation to Nathalie Collé (IDEA & Illustr4tio) at nathalie.colle@univ-lorraine.fr and Desdemona McCannon (Illustration Research) at d.mccannon@mmu.ac.uk.
Proposals for workshops and poster presentations are also welcome.
Deadline: Monday 15th May 2017.

Links:
IDEA, Université de Lorraine https://idea-udl.org/home-english/
Illustr4tio https://illustrationetwork.wordpress.com/
Illustration Research http://www.illustrationresearch.co.uk/

Co-organisers:
EA 2338 IDEA, Interdisciplinarité Dans les Études Anglophones, Université de Lorraine
EA 4182 TIL, Texte Image Langage, Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté
EA 4343 CALHISTE, Cultures, Arts, Littératures, Histoire, Imaginaires, Sociétés, Territoires,
Environnement, Université de Valenciennes et du Hainaut-Cambrésis
EA 4363 ILLE, Institut de recherche en Langues et Littératures Européennes, Université de Haute
Alsace

(posted 15 February 2017)


International Conference ICT for Language Learning, 10th edition
Florence, Italy, 9-10 November 2017
New extended deadline for proposals: 30 July 2017

Lecturers, teachers, researchers and experts in the field of language learning are invited to submit papers for the tenth edition of the International Conference ICT for Language Learners which will take place in Florence, Italy, on  9 – 10 November 2017.
New extended deadline for submitting abstracts:  30 July 2017
The objective of the ICT for Language Learning conference is to promote the sharing of good practice and transnational cooperation in the field of the application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to Language Learning and Teaching. The ICT for Language Learning conference will also be an excellent opportunity for the presentation of previous and current language learning projects and innovative initiatives.
All accepted papers will be included in the Conference Proceedings published by LibreriaUniversitaria with ISBN and ISSN codes. This publication will be sent to be reviewed for inclusion in  SCOPUS (https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus). .Papers will also be included in the sharing platform ACADEMIA.EDU (https://www.academia.edu/)
Oral, poster and virtual presentations will be available.

For further information, please see: http://conference.pixel-online.net/ICT4LL/

(posted 12 April 2017, updated 16 June 2017, updated 8 July 2017)


Languages for Specific Purposes in Higher Education: Current Trends, Approaches and Issues
Brno, Czech Republic, 10-11 November 2017
Deadine for proposals: 30 June 2017

It is a great pleasure to invite you to the international conference organized by the Institute of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology. The conference aims at exploring current concerns of LSP in order to find out in which direction the field is moving and is a great opportunity for networking.

Topics of interest include:

  • Teaching writing skills
  • Teaching languages to students with special needs
  • Teaching LSP a communication skills
  • Technologies and Media

Guide for authors, abstracts, registration: www.uj.fme.vutbr.cz/lspct

Important dates

  • registration and sending abstracts  30 June 2017
  • notification of acceptance 31 July 2017
  • payment of conference fee 20 September 2017
  • sending full contributions 1 October 2017

For all general enquiries, please contact: cervenkova@fme.vutbr.cz

For any enquiries regarding the programme, please contact: vranova@fme.vutbr.cz

We look forward to seeing you in Brno!

(posted 2 May 2017)


The Fantastic versus Realism and their relevance as literary conventions
Bialystok, Poland, 16-17 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 22 October 2017

The conference is co-organized by Książnica Podlaska im. Łukasza Górnickiego w Białymstoku
15 – 420 Białystok, Plac Uniwersytecki 1 telefon: 85/745-74-46, fax: 85/745-74-78

This year, we welcome contributions on one of the following topics:

  1. Classic definitions of the fantastic (Todorov, Caillos, Lem, Attebery and Mendlesohn) and their applicability in contemporary literary studies.
  2. Various approaches to defining fantastic literature (structuralism, genre studies, intertextuality, pragmatism).
  3. Taxonomy of fantastic literature: genres (fantasy, science fiction, horror) and subgenres (science fantasy, urban fantasy etc.) in the context of recent theoretical approaches.
  4. Poetics of fantastic literature in comparison with realism and modernism.
  5. Fantastic literature of the 20th and 21st century in the context of mainstream literature.
  6. Fantastic literature and the transformations of the novel (realism – modernism – postmodernism)
  7. Social and cultural functions of the fantastic (escapism, rebellion, mitopoesis, Bildungsroman, futurology, “games of imagination”).
  8. Borders of the fantastic – classic literary texts employing elements of the uncanny (eg. Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, Nikolai Gogol, Franz Kafka, Arthur Conan Doyle, etc.) and contemporary definitions of fantastic literature.
  9. Postmodernist games with realism (Thomas Pynchon, Vladimir Nobokov, William S. Burroughs, Chuck Palahniuk, Wiktor Pielewin, Władimir Sorokin, Wiktor Jerofiejew) and their links with fantastic literature.
  10. Figurative reference to non-fictional reality, the extension of mimesis (allegory, hyperbole, grotesque, absurd).
  11. Fantastic literature as pararealism: the tropes of realist convention exploited by fantastic fiction, the fiction of alternative worlds (allotopia) as “redirected” realism.
  12. “Twilight zone” or magic realism? – between realistic and fantastic fiction (J. G. Ballard, Kurt Vonnegut, Jonathan Carroll).
  13. Historical fantasy– links between historical realism, historical novel and fantastic fiction (Celtic fantasy, medievalist fantasy, Arthurian fantasy, steampunk, alternative history, etc.).
  14. Social, cultural and political dimensions of RPG, MMORPG, etc.
  15. Fantastic fiction and global changes (eco-fantasy, climate fiction, dystopian fiction, post-apocalyptic visions, issues of gender and ethnic identity, gender construction in fantastic literature).

We are proud to announce that our keynote speaker is going to be Professor Paweł Frelik, Associate Professor in the Department of American Literature and Culture and Director of the Video Game Research Center at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland.

The conference will be followed by the publication of a monograph in 2018.

The conference fee, which will cover the costs of coffee breaks, official dinner and publication, is PLN 400 / EUR 110 (PLN 300 / EUR 70 for doctoral students). Participants are invited to submit their proposals in the form of 150-word abstracts abstracts to fantastyka@uwb.edu.pl by October 22nd 2017 (new unpdated deadline). Notices of acceptance will be sent by October 30th 2017. The languages of the conference will be Polish, English and Russian.

Scientific and Organizing Committee:
Members of the Research Team on Fantastic Literature
Dr Mariusz Leś (Institute of Polish Philology) – Head of the Research Team on Fantastic Literature
Dr Weronika Łaszkiewicz (Institute of Modern Languages) – Head of the Organizing Committee
Dr Weronika Biegluk-Leś (Institute of Eastern-Slavic Philology)
Dr Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun (Institute of Modern Languages)
Dr Piotr Stasiewicz (Institute of Polish Philology)
Dr Karolina Wierel (Culture and Media Studies Center)
Mgr Ewelina Feldman-Kołodziejuk (Institute of Modern Languages) – Conference Secretary
Mgr Rafał Modzelewski (Institute of Modern Languages)

For more information visit our website: http://fantastyka.uwb.edu.pl/

(Posted 1 July 2017, updated 2 October 2017)


Hacks, Quacks and Impostors: Affected and Assumed Identities in Fiction
University of Freiburg, Germany, 17 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 4 August 2017

An interdisciplinary graduate conference

The impostor is a familiar figure in fiction: from a layman masquerading as a doctor in Menander’s The Shield (4th cen. BCE) to Flaubert’s incompetent Dr. Bovary in 18th-century France. From Homer’s Odysseus, a king disguised as a lowly beggar, to Nabokov’s Charles Kinbote, a king disguised as a lowly scholar —or so it seems. At this conference we will explore the ways in which literary characters feign authority, expertise or social status. We will address in particular the role of the impostor figure and the significance of his or her deception in a literary context. Such a portrayal often tends to delegitimize the office or profession that “impostors” present themselves as occupying or practicing. At other times, it serves the opposite purpose ––to reinforce the status and value of an office or profession by dissociating it from incompetence and/or immorality. Moreover, a dissembler can also be represented in a positive light, as in the case of Odysseus, engaging in a deceit whose end justifies the means. What characterizes these various portrayals and why?

Furthermore, we are interested in understanding this theme within a text’s generic, as well as historical, context. Dissembling and/or incompetent characters are very commonly found in satire and comedy, but also in “serious” fiction such as epic and tragedy. This conference will examine the elements common to both serious and comic depictions of frauds, as well as the respects in which they differ. There is also much to be gleaned from contextualizing cases of quackery like Menander’s counterfeit doctor and Flaubert’s Dr. Bovary in these writers’ cultural milieux. What political or social implications does the impostor figure entail when we consider a text’s historical background? Do these representations, for example, respond to an anxiety or distrust of an office/status/profession because it is new or in a transitional phase? We aim to shed light on these and other aspects of such characterizations.

Possible topics include, but are in no way limited to:

  • Impostors of royalty, politicians, scientists, academics, doctors, artists, but also beggars, foreigners, people of lower social status, etc.
  • Incompetent figures of all varieties: snake-oil salesmen, quacks, poetasters, scholarly windbags, empty suits, etc.
  • Accusations of fraud and incompetence
  • The work of incompetent or masquerading characters

We welcome 20-minute papers in English or German from all disciplines concerned with the study of literature.

Please submit abstracts of no more than 400 words by August 4, 2017 to hacksquacks2017@gmail.com.

For updates, visit https://hacksquacks.wordpress.com/.

Organizers:
Nikolina Hatton (Ph.D. candidate, English)
Sara Hobe (Ph.D. candidate, Ancient Greek)
Virginia Mastellari (Ph.D. candidate, Ancient Greek)

(posted 12 June 2017)


Linguistic correction/correctness: GReG P.L.S. 5
Université Paris Nanterre, France, 17-18 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 30 April 2017

An international conference organised by Group GReG. EA CREA 370 and UMR 7114 MoDyCo
The GReG P.L.S. 5 Linguistics Conference aims to continue investigating the mapping of linguistic parameters involved in the (re-)elaboration of meaning, building on the work accomplished in the four previous GReG linguistic conferences and their subsequent publications (Corela 2011 http://corela.revues.org/2368; Mapping parameters of Meaning 2012 ; Linx 2015 https://linx.revues.org/1432; Canadian Journal of Linguistics 2016 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-linguistics-revue-canadienne-de-ling, and Marqueurs et Structures and Marqueurs et Structures, éditions Lambert-Lucas, in press, expected publication date: 2017). For its fifth conference, the GReG Linguistics Research Group wishes to gather researchers from various theoretical frameworks in linguistics to focus on the notion of correction in language. As a polysemous term in French, correction may refer to the state of being correct (correctness in English) or the process by which something is made correct.
In its stative meaning the concept refers to a form of acceptability, grammaticality, linguistic propriety or observance of convention, in other words, conformity with a norm.
In its dynamic meaning it calls to mind processes of rectification or remediation engaged in by the speaker, addressee or a third party. Correcting means adjusting a linguistic production in order to minimize what is perceived as a gap with respect to a target norm.
In both its meanings, “correction” invites us to think about the nature of the standard norm from which it is inseparable. This research topic raises the issue of semantic, syntactic, pragmatic, prosodic, etc. gaps with respect to the norm. What is the often implicit norm according to which we correct ourselves and others? Who or what is responsible for defining the norm? Should it be understood as a statistical pattern defined in terms of frequency of use or as an evaluative standard imposed onto others by a subgroup of speakers?
The notion of correction calls into play the concept of linguistic variation, both in a synchronic perspective (since various systems, and therefore various norms, co-exist within a single language) and in a diachronic perspective (linguistic change resulting from originally deviant productions gradually integrated into language).

We encourage researchers working on authentic linguistic data to submit proposals focused on, but not limited to, the following subtopics:

  • Given that any norm is embedded in a specific (hence variable) context and situation, correction/correctness involves processes of accommodation, which may be discussed from a pragmatic perspective or in terms of discourse analysis (relevance, genre and the evaluation of discourse efficiency are some potentially useful theoretical concepts);
  • From a sociolinguistic viewpoint, phenomena pertaining to ‘political correctness’ and hypercorrection may be examined. Being ‘politically correct’, for instance, may result in being linguistically incorrect, as PC expressions are often deviant with respect to normal linguistic usage (i.e. porte-manteau words; feminization of terms of professions, titles, etc.);
  • In second language learning the status of ‘errors’ may be discussed, together with remediation strategies and the relationship between correction and remediation;
  • In first language acquisition, self- and other-correction raise questions about their nature, scope, modalities and impact in the acquisition process.

Phenomena related to correction in language(s) are thus relevant to all dimensions of linguistic activity (i.e. syntactic, phonological, semantic, pragmatic, multimodal/gesture-related) as well as a wide range of linguistic subfields.
In this conference we would like to bring together researchers of every theoretical persuasion to consider the notion of correction in language(s) from a holistic perspective.

Guest speakers :

  • Jeff Tennant (Western University, Ontario, Canada)
  • Julien Longhi (Université de Cergy Pontoise)

The languages of the conference are French and English.
Venue : Université Paris Nanterre (France)

Submission deadline: April 30, 2017.
Abstracts, which can be in English or French, should be no longer than one page (3,000 signs), including examples and references, and be followed with 4 keywords, one of them specifying the linguistic domain under study.
Each proposal will be examined anonymously by two members of the scientific committee. Names of author(s) should not be given in the abstract.
Abstracts should be sent as electronic files (Word .doc or PDF format) to both of these adresses: sekali@u-paris10.fr and sraineri@u-paris10.fr:
Subject of the message: “GReG.PLS.5 Conference”
Please specify in the body of the message:
– name of author(s);
– title of paper
– institution
– email
– telephone number(s)

Calendar:
* New deadline for submission of proposals: 30 April 2017.
* Notification of acceptance: end of May 2017
* Conference: November 17-18, 2017
CONTACTS: sekali@u-paris10.fr , sraineri@u-paris10.fr
For more information please visit our webpage.

(posted 8 April 2017)


Dennis Kelly International Symposium
Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, University of Lincoln, UK, 18 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 3 April 2017

Keynote Speaker: Dr Clare Finburgh, University of Kent

Following the success of its previous International Playwriting Symposia (Churchill, 2011; Kane, 2012; Ravenhill, 2013; Greig, 2014; tucker green, 2015), the Lincoln School of Fine and Performing Arts is delighted to announce its 2017 Playwright’s Symposium, dedicated this year to the works of Dennis Kelly. On 18 November 2017, there will be a one-day symposium bringing together scholars, theatre practitioners and students to discuss one of the most distinctive and compelling voices to emerge in the first decade of 21st century theatre.

Kelly’s imaginatively daring and often politically acerbic plays have been performed worldwide and translated into nearly forty languages. In a relatively brief but wide-ranging career that spans stage, television, radio and film, award-winning plays include Osama the Hero (2006), Taking Care of Baby (2007), for which he won the John Whiting Award and Best Foreign Playwright from Theater Heute, Orphans (2009) and Matilda the Musical (2010), which won both a Tony and an Olivier for Best Book of a Musical. Plays for young audiences include Our Teacher’s A Troll (2009) and DNA, which in 2010 became a set text on the English Literature GCSE syllabus. Kelly co-wrote the award-winning BBC 3 comedy Pulling (2006-2009) and his Channel 4 television drama, Utopia (2013-14) won the International Emmy for Best Drama Series.

We invite 20 minute papers on all aspects of Dennis Kelly’s plays for stage and screen. Papers may, for example, address specific works dramaturgically and/or thematically, consider Kelly’s position within contemporary cultures and traditions of British (and European) theatre-making, focus analysis on a particular medium, or critically reflect upon the material challenges of staging Kelly’s plays.

Possible topics or themes might include (but are not limited to):

  • New writing and formal experimentation
  • Lineages of aesthetic influence (theatrical, literary, filmic, televisual)
  • Narrative/generic conventions and their subversion
  • Theatrical adaptation (parody, pastiche, bricolage)
  • Story-telling as mise-en-abyme
  • The contemporary ‘grotesque’
  • The mediatization of public (political) spaces
  • Class and consumerism
  • Disaster capitalism’ and its aesthetics
  • ‘State of the Nation’ theatre in an age of globalisation
  • Ecology and economics
  • International (geo)politics on the British stage
  • Representation and ontological (in)stabilities of truth, authenticity and belief
  • Representation and metaphor
  • Ethics and spectatorship
  • Language and its rhetorical operations
  • Media exploitation and hypertheatricalization
  • Utopias and dystopias
  • The playwright as ‘portfolio’ writer – writing for stage, film and television
  • Writing for Young Audiences
  • Directorial approaches and staging challenges
  • Critical receptions of Kelly’s works overseas

Deadline for abstracts of 200 words: Monday 3rd April

Please send abstracts and a brief biographical note to: jbolton@lincoln.ac.uk and niholden@lincoln.ac.uk

(posted 2 February 2017)


Victorian Animals: Study Day & Workshop
Liverpool John Moores University, UK, 18 November 2017
Deadline: 15 September 2017

Also: Spring 2018: Conference at Portsmouth University
Two forthcoming study day events on animals in Victorian popular fiction and culture

We are now inviting submissions for papers to be presented at the LJMU study day in November 2017. This study day will examine popular representations of animals with a special focus on archives, the visual and the ephemeral. It will include a workshop session on archive and digitised materials from the LJMU 19th-Century Special Collections.

We welcome paper proposals of up to 250 words on popular representations of Victorian animals in fiction, print culture and popular culture. If you (also/alternatively) wish to express an interest in submitting a proposal for the Portsmouth conference in Spring 2018, please let us know.

Email proposals for the November 2017 and a short biography to j.knowles@ljmu.ac.uk and christopher.pittard@port.ac.uk by 15th September 2017.

(posted 25 July 2017)


Memories, Marks and Imprints
Université Jean Monnet, Saint-Etienne, France, 20-21 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 31 May 2017

An international and interdisciplinary conference organized by Elisabeth Bouzonviller, Floriane Reviron-Piégay and Emmanuelle Souvignet

Memory as the faculty to keep and recall past states of consciousness and what is associated with them cannot be distinguished from the numerous forms adopted by its expression. If, at first, “marks” and “imprints” can be perceived as synonymous, their interconnections are more subtle and complex. Marks and imprints seem to involve the body rather than the intellect, on the other hand, memories seem more intangible and pertain to a more intellectual sphere. Nevertheless, they rely on the individual’s capacity to register impressions related to the body, in a manner which is more or less perfect or flawed. Despite the enmity between memory and writing pointed out by Plato’s Phaedrus, memory cannot be dissociated from the writing process with its deletions, erasures, drafting and re-writing, which are so many marks of it. Marks are far less formal than prints since marks are almost always linked to some sort of injury, abduction, aggression, which is not the case for imprints which rely on the input of material (Jacques Clauzel). This material aspect of things requires that we should consider the very nature of marks and prints: is the memory act accidental (outbreak memory) or is it the result of a remembering effort (reconstructing memory)? In both cases, we shall consider the relationship between the three terms from the standpoint of omission, oblivion or, on the contrary, comprehensiveness. If, in both cases (marks and imprints), the body is involved, memory and its relationship with injury and pain shall be considered: is the created work a remedy, a suture, or, on the contrary, a simple scar, a stigma of the painful past? In other words, what is the role of this mark or imprint? Imprints, which are related to impression, also lead us to think of the links between perception and sensation as memory –whether individual or collective, whether the result of an outbreak or a reconstruction– is a form of impressionistic perception: it works, like impressionism, by association of ideas and selection. Memory mixes sensations and images linked by similarities and closeness, thus a memory calls forth another one, like a dot, in an impressionist painting, which cannot be read independently.

One of the goals of this conference will be to reconsider the link between memory and its various ways of being expressed: memory particularly expresses itself in introspective and intimate works like memoirs, an in-between literary genre at the crossroads of annals, diary, autobiography, which will need to be redefined. But fiction can also convey memory when it tries to evoke significant historical events. The writer’s task is then to pay tribute, to make a memorial, to leave marks for those unable to do it or to leave traces of previous texts or works. In this respect, presentations on the contemporary use of canonical works, the way some texts recall other texts, and any other forms of intertextuality, will be welcome.

Lastly, another aspect could be considered; the link between memory and space, since collective memory necessarily involves a spatial frame (Halbwachs). Thus, the artistic monument, whether literary or real, might be studied, together with the links between architecture and text. No matter what its nature is, the memorial work is supposed to build and perpetuate a memory –maybe one’s own first– if we assume that famous works by great writers are more enduring monuments than marble ones. In that respect, marks and monuments are different since the formers are the result of a distortion, a rupture, a deposit that can always be erased, whereas the latter assert their presence massively and materially; marks pertain to unintended residues Jean-Luc Martine says, which is not the case of monuments as they freeze presence in a sort of eternity. It will then be necessary to go beyond the monuments/marks dichotomy to see how memory is embodied in certain specific places (like mausoleums, epitaphs, funerary monuments, historical conservation sites, any type of monument designed to pay tribute to certain events, social groups or memorable figures).

The various literary, sociological, philosophical or artistic forms of expression of memory in Anglo-Saxon and Hispanic cultures will be the object of interest of this conference, whether they are collective, familial or individual.

Presentations will be in English, Spanish or French.
Abstract (about 300 words) and short autobiographical notices should be sent by May 31st 2017 to:
Elisabeth Bouzonviller elisabeth.bouzonviller@univ-st-etienne.fr
Floriane Reviron-Piégay floriane.reviron.piegay@univ-st-etienne.fr
Emmanuelle Souvignet emmanuelle.souvignet@univ-st-etienne.fr

(posted 27 March 2017


Space, Place and Hybridity in National Imagination (Colonial and Postcolonial English-speaking World, 18th – 21st century)
Grenoble-Alpes University, France, 23-24 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 6 January 2017

The research group ILCEA4 is pleased to announce the organisation of an international conference on “Space, Place and Hybridity in National Imagination” to be held at Grenoble Alpes University. It proposes to examine the notion of hybridity or cross-fertilization in the highly controversial field of national identity–namely the spaces, figures and historical events that best symbolize it, as exemplified in the cultural productions originating from a nation or an ethnic or community group. The concept of “third space” as developed by Homi Bhabha in his seminal book The Location of Culture, is particularly productive in that it suggests a vision of space based not on confrontation, binary oppositions or antagonistic relationships of lordship and bondage, but on interactions involving exchange, transfer and mediation.

The conference shall examine the foundations of any “imagined community” (Benedict Anderson) and the ways in which artistic productions cause this set of images, values and references to evolve. These both reflect a history and a heritage but also expose their inherent limitations and underlying ideology, thus paving the way for the progressive transformation of such national figures, values and spatial representations.

All the elements pertaining to culture in a general sense and commonly considered as representative of national identity are within the scope of the symposium:

  • Iconography: flags, posters (nationalistic or otherwise), emblematic figures (specimens from the local flora and fauna for example), the representation of the national landscape in painting or photography, allegorical figures of the nation.
  • The short form as a medium for the national sentiment: national anthems, songs, poems.
  • Literature in a general sense: fiction, children’s and young adult literature, textbooks, political speeches, philosophical essays, history books.
  • Places, types of geographical spaces but also historical events crystallizing what the nation is supposed to represent (map making, memorial ceremonies, official events).
  • Cultural productions: film, dance, street art.

Every nation perceives itself as articulated around the concept of origin: a choice then emerges between a founding myth specific to it (a sort of self-generation devoid of any hybridity), and an impure, problematic genesis, born out of the contact with another cultural, historical and geographical sphere. Thus, within the British world itself, Scotland for example can be said to have been defined, both historically and culturally, in close relation to its rival and double, England. Similar considerations are relevant for Ireland and Wales.

More generally, former colonies of the British Crown have founded themselves in an ambiguous relationship to the “motherland” while trying to free themselves from its influence. After the colonial period, the goal was for the settler colonies (the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) to found their identity antagonistically to that of the motherland, especially by focusing on their new land and the type of relationship they had with it so as to invest both with distinctive national characteristics.

An interesting and contentious point of study is the undeniably hybrid character of such early identity formations devoid of any cultural heritage or history except for those bequeathed by the motherland. Another essential and no less challenging issue is that of the relationship to the Indigenous populations of the colony whose culture and values, whose very existence sometimes, were voluntarily erased. The question of a possible hybridization between the culture of the colonizer and that of the colonized could be seen as a form of defilement, corruption or degeneration. Conversely, the appropriation and even the instrumentalization of symbols, places and values specific to Indigenous peoples in national mythologies is a highly controversial issue deserving careful scrutiny.

In what is commonly referred to as the “postcolonial” period, the discussion often centres on the denunciation or re-definition of national figures, symbols and places as well as the great texts and events constitutive of the core of a nation’s identity. Examining those shows how much they have evolved, across generations, through an underlying hybridization allowing greater representativeness, not only of the first inhabitants but also of new migrant communities or minority groups.

Space and place are not to be apprehended as exclusively geographical or referential but also as textual, thus enabling new hybrid subject positions within national mythologies. The rewriting or new adaptation of famous works into other forms (with generic, gender or modal variations) characteristic of the postmodern approach also allow the reevaluation of what constitutes the core of a nation’s identity, changing it into a field of experimentation and cross-fertilization. The contribution of historians, geographers, sociologists and semiologists will also enable the conference to examine the complexity and variety of the forms and functions of hybridity in national representations.

The deadline for proposals is 6 January 2017. Please send an abstract (max. 300 words) either in French or in English, and a short biographical note (max. 150 words) to both Christine Vandamme (christine.vandamme@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr) and Cyril Besson (cyril.besson@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr) by January 6, 2017. The notification of acceptance will be sent by February 10, 2017, at the latest. Selected papers will be considered for publication (in English).

(posted 24 June 2016)


Thinking the Sea in the Global World: Discourses and Practices
Brest, France, 23-24 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 15 March 2017

The international conference “Thinking the sea in a global world: discourses and practices” aims at examining the convergences and the tensions between the representation of the sea in global discourses, whether from the media or from the political, advertising or environmental spheres, and the sea as a space shaped by the everyday practices and the arts of the local populations. Three major areas of research can be identified:

1. How sea discourses are built
Even though the sea may be indifferent to mankind, human beings have always sought to project upon its surface or on its shores their desires and anxieties. Marine debris materialize, to a certain extent, those human projections. As Pierre Cassou-Noguès in Métaphysique d’un bord de mer argues, “the sea has been humanized […] we leave oil spills and all kinds of waste, bottles, cans, beach balls, etc”. Pollution, like global warming, is a worldwide phenomenon, which may obscure the question of its exact provenance. Contributions are invited to examine how sea imaginaries in various cultures seize those global phenomena and voice or construct their own sea discourses.
• How do aesthetic theories influence the way we look at and conceptualize the sea?
• What concepts, ideas, values shape our aesthetic consumption of the sea?
• How can we analyse cross-cultural phenomena in relation to the sea?
• How is the sea taught in school curriculums and innovative projects? How are the seas and oceans represented in children’s literature or TV series?
• How can “sound practices” in relation to the sea be defined? What is their final objective, and how are they spread? (one may here think about leisure fishing, the protection of coastal systems, sailing, maritime transport, marine protected areas,…)

2. The sea in practice: a consumer resource?
We invite contributions that question the definition of the sea as a source of minerals, fossil fuels, vegetable matter, food, but also of landscapes, services, leisure, tourism, culture and identities. Do all human practices in relation to the sea amount to a form of consumption?
• Can the sea envisaged as a resource accommodate the idea of the sea as a living entity?
• How do advertising, environmental and health discourses influence our consumption of sea products?
• Can we identify normalized and normalizing discourses on the sea? How different are they from one culture to the next?
• Does maritime tourism take the risk of turning sea cultures into commodified simulacra?

3. Conflicts, resistance, creativity
As the space of various forms of both exchanges and conflicts, the sea generates original patterns of social organisation or artistic creation that may lead in turn to new uses and practices. Contributions may identify and analyse these original social and cultural uses of the sea, as well as the instances of one-sided, partisan representations. Contributions may also examine how discourses and representations affect cultural forms related to the sea, whether in the field of sociality or art.
• What discourses, what forms of action are deployed against dominant economies and ideologies?
• How is conflict between users of the sea played out? What are the discourses used by the different parties involved?
• To what extent have the concepts of ‘environment’ and ‘ecosystem’ been recycled, and their meaning altered, by political discourses?
• How is the sea expressed in popular art forms, from sea shanties to leisure painting?
• Are certain practices or users linked to the sea changed into myths, or on the contrary made invisible, in keeping with current dominant visions of the sea?
• How are the practices linked to the sea represented in literature?
• Can the practice of writing or other forms of art reshape a globalized perception of seas and oceans?
• How can the sea help us rethink our understanding of the artistic practice?

Abstracts of no more than 1,500 signs for 20-minute papers in English or in French must contain the following:
• First and last names, contact e-mail.
• Academic affiliation
• Research interests and recent publications
• A provisional title for your paper
Proposals should be sent no later than 15 March 2017 to: pagejones@univ-brest.fr, yvanne.bouvet@univ-brest.fr. Notification of acceptance will be given around 15 April 2017.
A selection of papers will be published in a collective work.

(posted 7 January 2017)


Accommodation in Linguistics – 2nd edition
Université Bordeaux Montaigne, France, 23-24 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 30 June 2017

This conference seeks to investigate the linguistic manifestations of accommodation – a concept which was developed in cognitive psychology (J. Piaget), as well as in sociolinguistics (more particularly as cultural linguistic accommodation). In linguistics, it was used in presupposition theories, semantics and pragmatics (Beaver 1992, Lewis 1979, Thomason 1990, among others) and is central to Communication Accommodation Theory (Giles 2016). The aim of the conference is to bring together specialists of different branches of English and French linguistics.

The focus will be placed on accommodation in discourse, and participants are invited to review this concept from a variety of viewpoints (grammatical, morphological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, discursive, logical, cognitive, phonetic, stylistic, sociolinguistic or psycholinguistic). Papers can more specifically address the issue of negotiation processes in interpersonal relations, as well as adjustments and variations necessarily present in exchanges and interactions, and more generally in communication. Papers investigating the extent to which accommodation and negotiation motivate both encoding / reading processes and interpersonal exchanges will be particularly welcome, in particular in the fields of discourse analysis, stylistics and pragmatics.

Proposals of around 300 words, together with a short bio, should be sent to both Jean Albrespit (Jean.Albrespit@u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr) and Christelle Lacassain-Lagoin (christelle.lacassain-lagoin@univ-pau.fr), in French or in English. Selected papers will be considered for publication.

Dates and deadlines:

  • Conference: 23rd-24th November 2017
  • Deadline for submissions: 30th June 2017

Conference supported by CLIMAS – EA 4196 Université Bordeaux Montaigne, CRPHLL – EA 3003 & LLCAA – EA 1925, Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour

(posted 6 May 2017)


Beyond the Ruin: Investigating the Fragment in English Studies: 10th International Conference of the Hellenic Association for the Study of English (HASE)
Department of English Language and Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, 23-25 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 31 March 2017

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

  • Apostolos Lampropoulos,  Université Bordeaux-Montaigne
  • Carl Lavery, University of Glasgow
  • Jyotsna Singh, Michigan State University
  • Julian Wolfreys, University of Portsmouth 

HASE-logoThe ruin and the fragment have enduring, interconnected, yet also distinct legacies, as historical realities, material and/or aesthetic objects, and as categories of thought. The ruin predominantly recalls a classical or distant past, and is valued as a silent yet privileged ground for the reconstruction of the past. On the other hand, the fragment is primarily a conceptual category and a stylistic form, a metonymy of nostalgic wholeness, and a metaphor of and for a modernity that contemplates wholeness as irreversibly lost. In response to historical vicissitudes, the literary and the artistic imagination turned to the fragment in all its forms, as an expression of dislocation, fragmentation, and fragmentariness in modernity. In the wake of the ruin of representation in postmodernism, ruins and fragments may operate as tropes of relatedness and separation, discontinuity and destruction, uniqueness and multiplicity, open-endedness and incompleteness. Whether literal or metaphorical, ruins and fragments bear dualities that are continually recuperated and revisited as they speak of creation and destruction, recovery and silence, memory and forgetting, war and catastrophe, classicism and avant-gardism.

As divisions and conflicting notions about our past and our present are now tokens of our own despair; as quests to restore an illusory wholeness persist; as the tension between the timeless and the crumbling is becoming all the more manifest; as violence and uncertainty are all around us; as ruins make invisible vulnerability visible, this conference invites reflection on the histories, theorisations, and representations of fragments and ruins in Anglophone literatures and cultures.

Possible topics include, but are not restricted to, the following:

  • Reception, representations, and the significance of ruins through the ages
  • The dialectic between the ruin and the monument
  • Fragments and ruins in travel writing
  • The ruin as metaphor/metonymy
  • Fragments, ruins and incompleteness
  • The (un)timeliness of the ruin: silence, erasure, and memory
  • Ruins and melancholia
  • Fragmented states of consciousness
  • Colonial and postcolonial ruins and fragments
  • Cultural appropriation, recovery, and/or destruction of ruins
  • Narratives of destruction and catastrophe
  • Fragments, ruins as palimpsests
  • The ruin and/or fragment as spectacle
  • Morality, ethics, responsibility, solidarity vis-à-vis the ruin
  • The (un)ethics and the politics of material and cultural devastation
  • Terrorism as/and the creation of ruins
  • Textual fragmentation and contemporary literature
  • The fragment in new technologies and the media

The conference will be held at the Main Building of the University of Athens (http://en.uoa.gr/)

The deadline for the submission of proposals for individual 20-minute papers (200-250 words) and of proposals for panel sessions (no longer than 500 words) is March 31st, 2017. Please send a short biographical note (circa 150 words) together with your proposal. Prospective panel organisers should also send the panelists’ names, paper titles, and short bio notes for each panelist and their contact details.

Confirmation of acceptance: 30 April 2017

Proposals should be sent to haseconference2017@gmail.com.

Conference Organisers:

Emmanouil Aretoulakis (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), emmareto@enl.uoa.gr
Anna Despotopoulou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), adespoto@enl.uoa.gr
Stamatina Dimakopoulou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), sdimakop@enl.uoa.gr
Efterpi Mitsi (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), emitsi@enl.uoa.gr

Conference Website: http://www.beyondtheruin.net

(posted 16 January 2017)


Self-portraits in costumes: multiple identities at play
Nantes, France, 24 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 31 May 2017

Venue: Campus de l’Ecole des Beaux Arts de Nantes Métropole, Nantes, France

Self-portraits admittedly waver between earnest confession (as stressed by Philippe Le Jeune in Le Pacte autobiographique, Seuil, coll. “Poétique”, 1975) and concealment. It is often a representation of the self that goes beyond the idea of the artist as subject in order to tackle wider notions. In a similar way, the self-portrait in costume or disguise (in painting, photo or video) may either protect the artist from self-disclosure or put his own self at risk. It is a multi-faceted genre or mode that this conference purports to explore. In painting, clothing has recently received a long-deserved interest: in  Fabric of Vision : Dress and Drapery in Painting (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), Anne Holander underscore that clothing does matter as much as any other component of the composition in the eyes of the painter. This applies even more forcefully to self-portraits in costume.

Some classical painters have playfully included an image of themselves in period costumes in their compositions or painted self-portraits in costume. Veronese features dressed in white in The Wedding Feast at Cana (1562) while Rembrandt portrayed himself in oriental costume in The artist in an Oriental Costume (1631). The act of self-portrayal –as a creative process—may be viewed as an intimate act and private performance or as a staging of the self for public display, questioning the social and political status of the artist, the individual or his community. The costume inevitably introduces a twist or trick that may be playful or more intriguing: this strategy has not been fully explored and deserves more attention.

Given that self-portraiture is an experimental and mediated exploration of the self (and a nearly unavoidable step for many artists in the intimacy of the creative process), it is an invitation to explore lighting, stances, and costume either humorously or more introspectively. Costuming or masquerading, that is seemingly assuming someone else’s identity, may partake of a documentary or fictitious project and rely on various autobiographical modes. The artist may metamorphose him/herself exploring different time-periods, geographical areas, or identities; the dress may be normative or conversely singular. The manipulation of the self in the visual arts may be liberating, as is the case in the tradition of the masquerade or fantasy photographic portraits: through costuming the artists free themselves from the constraints of society and its prevalent dress-codes. Handicrafts, intermediality and bricolage may be used to costume the self in a process-oriented approach sometimes close to artistic performance. The body may disappear entirely and the artist be buried in the costume, faceless; conversely the artist may be reduced to a shadow or use synecdoche to escape exposure.

The costume (attire, dress, props, or make-up) being more than a sign of belonging entails performative embodiments and blurs the identification process thereby disrupting the conventions of self-portraiture. As a matter of fact, the self-portrait in costume often entails narrativity and fictitious self-representations in which the artist may drift towards fantasy and virtuality to explore complex forms of otherness.

Portraying oneself in exotic attire is a means of drawing the spectator’s attention to the artificiality of portrait-painting and the theatricality of social roles. The self-portrait in costume, relying as it does on shared sartorial norms and social codes, articulates culture and counterculture and may debunk myths, stereotypes and normative discourse centered on the body. The self-portrait in costume thereby constitutes a puzzle for the viewer who finds himself trapped into the contrivances of the staging. When costuming also means revisiting previous images and relies on intericonicity, the viewer may be complicit and laugh or mislaugh at the quote or distortion. Contemporary photographers and video-artists conceive fictional or fictitious autobiographies inducing generic and referential instability. Artists related to postmodern and postcolonial art portray themselves in costume to critically explore identity construction and the notions of authenticity and nostalgia. In a postcolonial perspective, self-portraits in costume tends to question the politics of representation, power relationships in the modern society, representation of minorities and a multiplicity of possible identifications torn between cultural and social contradictions. Other self-portraits are haunted by a nightmarish vision of the artist as Other, referring to the divided self from a psychoanalytic perspective. The advent of the post-human has made these imaginary explorations more tangible.

There is, we suggest, more than imaginary playfulness in these self-staged performances: the self-portrait in disguise may verge on parody or satire and entail carnivalesque reversals; it may conceal, even camouflage, the true personality of an artist for various reasons; it may also challenge the notion of physical integrity, singularity and authenticity especially when produced in series. By changing his/her sexual, ethnic, social identity, the artist may convey a strong message and situate his/her practice within society. This conference is an invitation to consider the complexity of the self-portrait in costume particularly in the contemporary period. Indeed, both postmodern reflexivity and self-referentiality, and the extended possibilities offered by image manipulation have revived this genre, with the success of selfies or avatars for instance raising new questions.

Contemporary creation puts the relationships between animality/humanity, body/machine under scrutiny, and is inspired by ontological theories (E. Kosofsky Sedgwick, Donna Haraway, Mel Y. Chen). The otherization of the self or the incorporation of the other –and the other-self in works concerned with the motif of the doppleganger—are processes of self-investigation that are worth analysing.

Proposals of approximately 300 words may be submitted to valeriemorisson@gmail.com, julie.morere@univ-nantes.fr and emmanuelle.cherel@gmail.com, along with a short biographical note before May 30, 2017.

(posted 29 March 2017)


The Poetics and Politics of Identity
Hammamet, Tunisia, 24-25 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 30 April 2017

The Tunisian Association for English Language Studies (TAELS) organises its 3rd International Conference on: “The Poetics and Politics of Identity” 
Venue: Vincci-Marillia Hotel **** Hammamet – Tunisia

Recent scholarship in Identity Studies has engaged in a passionate debate that captures the proliferation of the concept among various academic traditions, seeking to formulate a balance between the aesthetic representations of identity and its political potential. In sociology, literature, anthropology, arts, linguistics and other related disciplines, the question of identity represents a core investigation area, lending itself to an impressive array of political and aesthetic approaches. Reflecting on the versatility of identity, different research paradigms have sought to elucidate the intricate links between social experiences, cultural practices, political standpoints and literary forms, taking into account the collapse of geographic and cultural boundaries in a world dominated by unlimited and multiplying connectivity.

Equally integral to the study of identity is language with its different cultural manifestations. From sociolinguistics to discourse studies, language represents an important venue to examine the relationships of power and to reconceptualize identity within one’s social, political, and cultural contexts. In language teaching and learning, identity has proven to be a central concept in the study of teaching-learning styles, educational policies, and teaching methods and approaches.

In the arena of sociopolitical discourses, the overwhelming waves of immigrants and displaced people have led to a pressing urgency of rethinking the chasm between the Global North and the Global South. Election discourses – and results – have been influenced by a popular glorification of nationalist voices weary of the potential threat posed by immigrants and asylum seekers. Studies on the discourses of recent election campaigns have been attentive to the politics of ‘race’, ‘class’ and ‘national identity’ in the light of the unprecedented surge of ‘racism’, ‘sexism’, ‘bigotry’, and ‘xenophobia’ and the mass manipulation of people to vote for the advocates of nationalist supremacy and ‘protectionist’ policies.

In culture and literary studies, interest in identity has spurred critical debate among theorists, critics and writers, negotiating the intricate crossovers between the literary and cultural domains, on the one hand, and identity construction, on the other. Novelists, for instance, have been attentive to the representation of identity and have sought to engage creatively in dismantling preset models of racial, ethnic and gender straight-jackets to celebrate constructionist approaches to identity. Diasporic literature, for instance, bears witness to the growing interest in negotiating identity formation, adopting a transcultural vision that refocuses attention from scripting essentialist norms to more fluid dynamic attitudes to identity.

The steering committee welcomes proposals related, but not limited, to the following topics:

  • The sociolinguistics of identity
  • Identity in discourse studies
  • Individual/collective identity(-ies)
  • Depictions of identity in the media
  • Identity politics
  • Cultural identity
  • Diasporic identities
  • Gender identity
  • Identity and ethnicity
  • Nationalism and identity
  • Identity and memory
  • Identity and engaged arts
  • TEFL and learner identity(-ies)

Submission Guidelines
Participants are invited to send their abstracts through the following link no later than April 30th, 2017. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by May 15th, 2017.
We accept abstracts and papers written in English, Arabic and French.
TAELS editorial board will select a number of papers that will be published after peer-reviewing in a collective volume on the proceedings of the conference.

Participation fees
Presenters of accepted papers will be required to deposit a participation fee of 200 TND (200 Euros for international participants) to TAELS bank account no later than August 31, 2017.
IBAN TN 59 1070 5007 0481 8407 8872
Swift code: STBKTNTT

The amount will cover:

For Tunisian participants

  • One full accommodation night at Vincci-Marillia Hotel in Hammamet, Tunisia
  • An annual membership in TAELS
  • Conference materials
  • Two copies of the conference proceedings after publication

For International participants

  • Two full accommodation nights at Vincci-Marillia Hotel in Hammamet, Tunisia
  • An annual membership in TAELS
  • Conference materials
  • Two copies of the conference proceedings after publication

For partners accompanying participants, an additional fee of 100 TND (100 Euros for International participants) will be required to cover the one/two-day stay at the hotel.

For Tunisian M.A and PH.D students, participation fees have been reduced to 150 TND to cover all benefits listed above.

For advice and more details about transportation and accommodation, please send your requests to contact@taels.org. TAELS team will be happy to assist in making your stay most comfortable.

(posted 1 February 2017)


Words and Images
Split, Croatia, 24-25 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 1 October 2017

Conference web-page: http://hdas.ffzg.unizg.hr/?page_id=651

Keynote speakers:

Prof. Liliane Louvel (University of Poitiers, France), chair of ESSE
Prof. Cian Duffy (University of Lund, Sweden)
Prof. Giovanni Iamartino (University of Milan, Italy)
Prof. Smiljana Komar (University of Ljubljana)

Ours is a crowded symbolic universe. Daily we are bombarded with words and images on billboards and screens that try to convince us to buy something, or vote for someone, or give our attention to a certain message. How do different types of signs affect us in different ways? And how do literary texts help us negotiate and understand this symbolic overload? In Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics, the Symbolic signifier, such as the word, has only an arbitrary social relation to its signified meaning. The Iconic signifier, such as an image or painting, on the other hand, has a more universal quality, in that its form has a physical relation to the meaning that it signifies. Yet literary texts complicate this semiotics. In literary texts the relation of the word and the image is paramount. Literary texts often compose fictional or poetic representations – verbal images of characters, narrative events, or representations of places and material objects from the coherent semantic chaining of the arbitrary symbolic word sign. This interrelation means there is often a tension within these representations, foregrounding the friction between word and image, which highlights the mechanisms of narration. What is the value of recognizing this image mechanism?

How do literary texts help us make sense of the words and images that shape our contemporary world? The power of words to evoke images – and of images to evoke or provoke words is undeniable. Current generations of learners in many parts of the world can be described as “multiple stimuli” generations meaning that the teacher, the board and the course book are not enough to satisfy their linguistic, psychological and motivational needs.

The conference aims to provide a discussion platform for research in literature, linguistics,
language teaching, and translation. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • speculative realism
  • speculative fiction
  • eco-criticism
  • digital humanities
  • capitalist realism
  • ekphrasis
  • literature and media
  • literary adaptation
  • children’s literature
  • comics
  • semantics
  • discourse analysis
  • pragmatics
  • syntax
  • morphology
  • historical linguistics and language change
  • cognitive studies of language
  • sociolinguistics
  • social cognition
  • language and identity
  • language in the media
  • contact linguistics: language variation and change, bi/multilingualism, bi/multiculturalism,
  • minority/heritage language maintenance
  • translation studies
  • translation and culture
  • translation and ethics
  • translation and technology
  • Creativity and innovation in the English L2 classroom
  • The use of IT in English instruction
  • Teaching language skills
  • -roject-based learning
  • CLIL
  • Literature and English teaching
  • Materials development

Please send abstracts of 250 words together with a short biography to Jelena Novaković (jnovak@ffst.hr) by October 1st 2017.

(posted 21 September 2017)


Writing Romantic Lives: A One Day Postgraduate Symposium
Romanticism @ Edge Hill University & Keele University, UK, 25 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 18 September 2017

‘The best part of human language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself.’ – S. T. Coleridge

This postgraduate conference is held in celebration of the 200th anniversary of S. T. Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria (1817), an experimental combination of life writing, philosophy, and literary criticism. Coleridge’s interest in the self, creativity, imagination, and the relationship between poetry and cultural life forms part of the wider Romantic exploration of individuality and collectivity.

This one-day symposium, co-organised by Edge Hill and Keele Universities, asks: what kind of value is placed on auto/biographical writings of the Romantic period? How does life writing in the Romantic period engage with philosophical, theological and literary critical theories? What would Romantic writers have to say now, if given the chance?

Postgraduate (MA/MRes/PhD) students are invited to submit proposals for individual papers, panels of 3 speakers and a chair, or innovative presentation formats, on the following topics (although they are certainly not limited to them):

  • Coleridge and the bicentenary of Biographia Literaria (1817)
  • The historical/cultural/literary significance of life writing (auto/biographical)
  • Poetry, prose and essays by and about key and marginal Romantic figures
  • Adaptations and re-imaginings of Romantic lives
  • Female biography and gender
  • Explorations of the link between creativity and the primary/secondary imagination
  • Health, illness and disability
  • Literary and memoir musings on 18th/19th century life
  • Romantic ecologies
  • Romantic life sciences and medicine
  • The evaluation and interpretation of literature
  • Memorial and elegiac writing
  • ‘Spirit(s) of the age’
  • The ‘vitality’ debate
  • Romantic afterlives and legacies

Please submit:

  • Abstracts of 250 words for individual papers / creative responses
  • or panel proposals / innovative presentation formats of 500 words (including a brief introduction and details of each paper), along with a short biography of presenters

to krystan.best@go.edgehill.ac.uk by 18th September 2017.

Keynote Speaker: Felicity James, Leicester University

‘Writing Romantic Lives’ will be a further opportunity for postgraduate research students of MA, MRes and PhD levels to present works, gain professional conference experience, and develop their research through feedback and discussion with peers and with professional academics. The conference also presents the opportunity for selected papers to be re-submitted for journal publication after the event.

Both organising institutions, Edge Hill University and Keele University, have excellent reputations for research and scholarship in Romantic Studies. ‘Writing Romantic Lives’ will build on the success of previous activities at the two participating universities, e.g. the Romanticism at Edge Hill research seminar series (EHU 2010-17); the Student Byron Conference (EHU 2011-13); ‘Romanticism on Edge’ (EHU 2016); ‘Byron and the Romantic World’ (Keele 2016); ‘Romanticism takes to the Hills’ (EHU April 2017).

 (posted 29 May 2017)


Myths, Tales and Urban Legends: International Conference on London Studies
London, UK, 25 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 31 August 2017

organised by London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research and Interdisciplinary Research Foundation
Conference website: http://londonstudies.lcir.co.uk

London exerts the charm of the vast setting that concentrates most, if not all, human experiences and nurtures a multitude of self-images, as a site of permanent metamorphosis and progress where individual histories melt into a collective syntagmatic narrative of autonomy, regeneration and assimilation. From ancient Londinium to the 21st-century metropolis, the exceptional metropolis has forged a particular code of conduct governed by imagination, originality and vision that generate almost endless significations of the self.

The conference will explore the particular spirit of the English capital, one of the most influential cities in the world, aiming to identify some of the features that make up its inimitable personality. It will promote an interdisciplinary perspective on the various issues related to the process of making London into a powerful centre of economic and cultural authority. The conference will also focus on the distinctive symbolism of the city and the particular states of mind generated by the interaction with the global hub, and the way in which people – Londoners either by birth or adoption, as well as temporary residents and transient visitors – translate geographically recognisable sites into culturally constructed places.

The main objective of the event is to bring together all those interested in examining the intersections between their professions and/or interests and some distinct aspects of metropolitan life, providing an integrated approach for the understanding of London’s complex nature.

(posted 23 August 2017)


Short (and sweet?): The short form in television
Université de Bourgogne, France, 27 November 2017
Deadline for proposals: 1 September 2017

As critics, creators and academics alike herald the new “Golden Ag Time in Television Narrative: Exploring Temporality in Twenty-First-Century Programming, 2012) reminds us however that time is at the very center of the television narrative, and that television differs from its cinematic equivalent notably by its incremental approach to storytelling. Thus, for this symposium, we will be examining television as a short form, insisting on the structure implicit in the television episode, or the increasing popularity of webseries that feature microepisodes (of 2-10 minutes), like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Frankenstein, MD, Carmilla, or Kings of Con and Con Man. We will attempt to examine this balance between short episodes and long duration, as well as the association of episode length with genre – traditionally, hour-long series have been dramatic, and half-hour series comic. It is worth mentioning that all the webseries with microepisodes mentioned here are comedies, as are French “shortcoms” like Bref or Connasse. However, other short webisodes are dramatic, notably those like The Walking Dead’s transmedia webseries, intended to complete the larger narrative. Finally, the tendency towards summary in the televised short form will also be broached, whether it is in the authorized content of the series (the credits or the “previously on” sequences) or the fan-made videos on line (like “5 seasons of LOST in 8 minutes”; “Best of” videos showcasing the viewers’ preferred jokes, insults, love scenes, etc.; alternate credits, or indeed vidding). The symposium thus hopes to emphasize television’s brevity, in all its forms (and all its platforms).

Proposals on case studies are also welcome.

Please send all proposals to Sylvaine Bataille sylvaine.bataille@wanadoo.fr, Florence Cabaret florence.cabaret@gmail.com and Shannon Wells-Lassagne Shannon.Wells-Lassagne@u-bourgogne.fr by September 1st 2017.

(posted 12 June 2017)


Swift Today: His Legacy from the Enlightenment to Modern-Day Poltics
St Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia, Bulgaria, 30 November – 1 December 2017
New extended deadline for proposals: 31 August 2017

“Swift Today: His Legacy from the Enlightenment to Modern-Day Politics” is a conference commemorating the 350th anniversary of the birth of Jonathan Swift: the acclaimed Irish author of Gulliver’s Travels, poet, national hero, and master satirist. Such an event is a cause for great celebration. However, in these challenging political times, Swift’s oeuvre is (for better or for worse) more relevant than ever. On occasion, commentators have expressed (tongue-in-cheek) a longing that he could be reincarnated and assist the world in a manner which he did throughout his own life: for instance, bringing about the withdrawal of Wood’s “half-pence” in Ireland (Drapier’s Letters), exposing economic corruption at the highest levels in Westminster, and delivering devastating satirical blows in horrifying pamphlets such as A Modest Proposal – startling apathetic politicians into taking notice of Ireland’s unacknowledged famine woes. The contemporary Irish author Colm Toibin has mused upon how a “contemporary” Swift would publish his political pamphlets via a “blog”, and Noah Charney has imagined him acting as a “grumpy pundit on CNN, slinging pithy wisecracks and moonlighting as a writer on “Saturday Night Live”, as well as ripping people up on Twitter.

History has co-incidentally brought us full circle back, face to face, with many of the issues which Swift fought against in his own time. Some identical, worryingly, and others being variations on themes concerning human folly which he encountered on a regular basis. Turbulent political events during 2016/2017, including Brexit and the swearing in of Donald Trump as US President, the elections in Turkey concerning Erdogan’s increased presidential powers, the world-wide rise of support for far-right groups (amongst countless others), have arguably, collectively brought instability and unease to the world in a manner unheard of for more than a generation.

Swift’s literary legacy, which will be the analytical focus of our conference, is put into new perspective bearing in mind that today we live in a “post-truth” society, comprising “fake news”, “alternative facts” and a distrust of the media on a global scale. Our collective aim is to create a forum whereupon the reading of his works, with their timeless and universal satirical vision, can serve as a means of cutting through said cynicism so as to elevate once more his beloved concept of “truth” (today embodied in the form of “fact-checking”). Swift’s satirical censures open up a wide range of moral, philosophical and religious questions. Disconcerting at their core, they address the cultural legacy of humanity, whilst the twenty-first century finds its problems germane to unanswered ethical questions from the eighteenth century through to modern-day politics. Intolerance, xenophobia, and extermination are themes that resonate in analogous ways in the news media today which project political anxieties about the imperfect social system.

Suggested topics for presentations include (but are not restricted to) discussions of the following:

  • Brexit (Topics include):

– The fragmentation of the United Kingdom
– Anglo-Irish relations post-Brexit
– Trade and economic matters
– Immigration (relations with the “Other”)
– Modern day British conservatism and liberalismModern day British conservatism and liberalism

  • The “Post-Truth” era (Topics include):

–  “Fake News” and “Alternative Facts”
– Swift’s legacy within modern political satire (for instance, in: The Onion, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report)
– Terrorism, insurrection and rebellion
– Political censorship and state sanctioned media
– Religious and Political fanaticism

  • Migration, refugees and immigration
  • Post-colonialism, ethnicity and national identity
  • Literary critical receptions and influence on posterity
  • Translations and receptions
  • Film adaptations of Gulliver’s Travels

Please send abstracts (300 words) to the conference website: swifttodaysofia@gmail.com by the 31st August, 2017 (new extended deadline)
The conference shall be conducted in English.

Plenary speakers:
Prof. Marc Martinez (University of Rouen)
Dr James Ward (University of Ulster)

Conference organisers:
Alexandra Glavanakova: a_glavanakova@hotmail.com
Jonathan McCreedy: jonathan.mccreedy84@gmail.com
Vesselin Budakov: vescobudakov@yahoo.com

(posted 22 May 2017, updated 12 August 2017)