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Book Announcement: Women, “Failure” and Academia

Published on 27th May 2026 in Book Announcements

Title: Women, “Failure” and Academia: Activism, Creativity and Critique in the Contemporary University
Editors: Marina Cano & Rosa García-Periago
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Date of publication: 14 May 2026
ISBN: 9781350528666

Presentation

This collection examines failures in modern academia, and especially the intersections between gender and academic failure. It argues that academic failure is political. On the one hand, failure to achieve a “standard” or expected academic career (tenure, funding, publications, etc.) undermines the status quo of academic systems, at the same time that these seemingly personal failures unveil systemic failures. On the other hand, those of us who are able to stop and celebrate such subversive potentials of failure often enjoy a certain degree of privilege. The collection is interdisciplinary, intersectional and international. It includes topics such as Covid-19, precarity and job hunting, ethnic diversity, accounts of incomplete research and disability within the academy. Conceived as scholarly activism, Women, “Failure” and Academia aims to interrogate the future of universities and challenge perceptions of failure, especially with regard to women and women-identifying academics.

More details here:

The book is open access. Read the e-book Open Access here.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/women-failure-and-academia-9781350528666/

RELANZA: Redefining Language Education

Published on 21st April 2026

RELANZA is a pioneering international project aiming to transform the teaching of foreign and second languages through an innovative pedagogical approach aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 4: Quality Education.

RELANZA offers:

  • Bilingual podcast: 6 interview-style episodes featuring experts in language teaching, adult education, and SDG-related education policies, available in Spanish and English.
  • Practical teaching guide: Ready-to-use classroom proposals accompanying each podcast episode.
  • Interactive online materials: Activities via Genially, encouraging reflection and application in diverse educational settings.

RELANZA connects language education to global challenges, offering practical tools for equitable, accessible, and transformative learning. 

Key topics include:

  • Digitalisation in the language curriculum
  • Artificial Intelligence in the language curriculum
  • Multimodal literacy in language curricula.
  • Internationalization in the language curriculum
  • Sustainable development in the language curriculum
  • Social Justice in the Language Curriculum

We invite you to explore RELANZA and integrate these resources into your teaching, research, and curriculum development. Details about the project and resources here https://relanza.net/en/

 

Book Announcement: Crises of Care: Pandemic Culture, Biopolitics, and the Medical Humanities

Published on 3rd April 2026 in Book Announcements

Crises of Care: Pandemic Culture, Biopolitics, and the Medical Humanities
Edited by Eszter Ureczky
HJEAS Books series, open access
Publisher: Sciendo, 2026

Presentation

How and how well are individuals handling the threat of a ubiquitous invisible killer? How are people coping with death and bereavement; are they able to maintain their mental health? How might the politicizing of medical measures be avoided? How well do communities enlist their members in fighting a pandemic? Finally, what type of language is most effective for a pandemic and why, and what other resources in the humanities might society draw upon in this emergency? The World Health Organization estimated the COVID-19 pandemic killed in excess of 3.4 million people worldwide. The crucial, urgent contemporary question the medical and political worlds need to answer is: what must we learn from in order to avoid the worst consequences of the next one? These and many other pertinent questions arise in the essays selected and edited by Eszter Ureczky. Our hope at HJEAS Books is that by raising such questions this volume will contribute to nations and individuals being better prepared to face and overcome the next pandemic.

https://reference-global.com/book/9788368412314?tab=tableOfContents

Book Announcement: Tradition and Experimentation in Irish Literature and Theatre since Modernism

Published on 3rd April 2026 in Book Announcements

Tradition and Experimentation in Irish Literature and Theatre since Modernism
Edited by Katarzyna Ojrzyńska and Wit Pietrzak
HJEAS Books series, open access
Publisher: Sciendo, 2025

Presentation

The book presents Irish literature and theatre as an intricate knotwork of voices, styles, and genres, intertwining tradition and experimentation. Through a compelling selection of texts by recognized and emerging scholars, it explores the histories and herstories of violence and trauma, community and belonging, the rural and the urban, the South and the North, the East and the West, the local and the global, and the interplay between various modernist legacies. Examining Ireland’s rich and dynamic cultural tapestry, the volume reveals its multifaceted dimensions, including a rich, even if at times unsettling, underside, shaped by a troubled past.

https://reference-global.com/book/9788368412062?tab=tableOfContents

Book Announcement: Disability Studies

Published on 17th March 2026 in Book Announcements

Anne-Lyse Chabert, Transforming a Disability Through Everyday Life Experience and Beyond Disability
Lived Places Publishing
Publication date: 3 December 2025
ISBN: 9781917566513

These two works offer compelling analyses, theoretical positions, and methodological approaches. The first, based on the doctoral thesis of Dr. Anne-Lyse Chabert, focuses on redefining the very concept of disability. The second, with the preface by philosopher André Comte-Sponville, addresses disability, vulnerability, adaptation, and inclusion from a more personal and intimate perspective, yet always through the lens of philosophical reflection and the critical distance inherent in scientific rigor. The lived experience of those directly affected remains central to this work, which is still relatively uncommon in the field of disability studies, especially given that the author herself lives with a neurodegenerative disease that severely impairs her motor skills. Through language that is sometimes precise and transparent, sometimes figurative and poetic, she succeeds in making her reflections and the concepts used accessible to everyone, and thus in delivering humanist messages that bring hope to our society. In France, her works have received several distinctions and awards (Littré Prize for essays, prize from the Academy of Medicine, among others) and stand out as unique and inspiring cultural objects. For his part, André Comte-Sponville speaks of the second book as a “book of wisdom,” “a book of citizenship, which gives food for thought, and therefore also food for debate, as much as it inspires admiration.”

More details here:

https://livedplacespublishing.com/book/isbn/9781917566513?srsltid=AfmBOooeCMUblNvusDaNmGFM5fWCFr4pt-2e_5U5fJhAS6wG352klviL
https://livedplacespublishing.com/book/isbn/9781917566544?srsltid=AfmBOoq-9J52f1Yv_1JnHJbmdMgi-gdTRxRrQwjKJ8Lq9-fEZbp7x-s4

Academic Job: Tenure-track professor in Applied Linguistics with a focus on Intercultural Communication

Published on 16th January 2026 in Vacant Academic Positions

Faculty of Arts, KU Leuven Brussels, Belgium

We are looking for a motivated lecturer and internationally oriented researcher in the field of Applied Linguistics who can bridge theories and methods from linguistics with applied linguistic research. Possible research themes include language use and identity in professional settings—particularly in contexts where cultural differences play a role—as well as intercultural pragmatics. The start date for this position is 1 September 2026. Applications are open until 19 February 2026.

Details in the documents inserted below.

https://www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jobsite/jobs/60590181?lang=en

Tenure-track professor in Applied Linguistics with a focus on Intercultural CommunicationDownload

Essay Prize Competition

Published on 17th May 2025

P G Wodehouse Society (UK) Essay Prize 2025

To mark the 50th anniversary of P G Wodehouse’s death in 2025, the P G Wodehouse Society (UK) is excited to launch its second essay prize competition open to everyone, everywhere. P G Wodehouse’s output was prolific, from poetry, to lyrics for stage and screen, short stories, journalism and novels. “The object of all good literature is to purge the soul of its petty troubles”, so Wodehouse once said, and his writings have provided lighthearted relief from the trials and tribulations of the world to millions of readers worldwide. A prize of £750 will be awarded to the winner of the competition.  

The Prize will officially launch on Sunday 1 June and entries will close on Monday 17 November 2025 at 23:59 GMT. All of the information for the prize, including full guidance, judging process and FAQs will be found on the Society’s webpages from the launch date: https://www.pgwodehousesociety.org.uk/essayprize. 

The guidelines for the Prize are as follows:

  • Word count of 3,000 to 6,000 words, excluding footnotes and bibliography. 
  • Essays need to be formatted in the MHRA style. 
  • While the Society does not want to be restrictive in the areas or topics that may be covered (and understand that literary critical essays often draw on illuminating historical and contextual engagement), we are primarily seeking essays that focus on Wodehouse’s novels, stories, lyrics, plays, and journalism, rather than essays of a purely biographical nature. 
  • Comparative essays are acceptable, but the focus of the essay must be on Wodehouse. 
  • Works submitted for publication elsewhere will not be considered, and the Society will run a plagiarism check on potential shortlisted essays to verify. 

If anyone has any questions about the Prize, please email Dr Becky Andrew (Chair of the Essay Prize) at PGWSocietyUKEssay@gmail.com. 

For more regular updates, you can find the Society on social media – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/pgwodehouseuk; Instagram/Threads: @pgwsocietyuk; BlueSky: @pgwsocietyuk.bsky.social. 

Book Announcement: Perceiving-Thinking-Writing

Published on 12th April 2025 in Book Announcements

Title: Perceiving-Thinking-Writing: Merleau-Ponty and Literature
Author: Donald Wesling
Publisher: Sciendo, 2024
Year of publication: 2025
Volume in the series: HJEAS Books
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/9788367405959

Presentation

Donald Wesling’s leading argument, drawn from a crossover theory of the humanities, has philosophy and literature in a relation of constructive interference. What is common to both disciplines is the attempt to understand the necessary but often forgotten act of perceiving within the embodied mind. Wesling asks and answers: How does perceptual content enter thinking and writing?

His topics include a redefinition of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology as a big-hearted rationality; quantum interference as a metaphor for thinking and also for the relation of self to the outer surround of things and persons; nine key terms from Merleau-Ponty as applied to the practical reading of poems and stories; the role of the sentence as an energy that structures thinking and writing; ordinary creativity and co-creativity.

Overall, Wesling emphasizes that the meaning for the humanities, now, may be found in Merleau-Ponty’s belief that future work will be a search for “a secondary, laborious, rediscovered naïveté” and that in this pursuit “our relation to what is true must pass through others.”

This book is open access. Click to download: https://sciendo.com/book/9788367405959?top-tab=description

Book Announcement: Stalwart Peasants, Undesirables, Refugees: Central and Eastern European Immigration to Canada

Published on 27th November 2024 in Book Announcements

Title: Stalwart Peasants, Undesirables, Refugees: Central and Eastern European Immigration to Canada
Edited by: Balázs Venkovits
Publisher: Sciendo
Volume in the series: HJEAS Books
ISBN: 978-83-67405-46-1

The collection of essays in this volume of HJEAS Books explores the history of immigration to Canada from Central and Eastern Europe, spanning a period of approximately one hundred years and adding fresh perspectives and methodological approaches that enrich scholarly discourse in the field. The chapters written by authors from the USA, Canada, Belgium, France, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary highlight differences in the migration trajectories of people from various countries of the region, while also shedding light on the shared experience of immigrants of different time periods. The chapters provide valuable insights for migration studies, as well as the history of the Americas and Europe, and study the topic of immigration to Canada from a broad array of vantage points, among others, exploring the complex migration pathway from the places of emigration to Canada, the impact of race, ethnicity, and religion on migration, inter-American aspects of immigration to Canada, the contributions of immigrants to the evolving image(s) of Canada in Central and Eastern Europe, and the representations of immigration in literature, arts, and music. 

Open-Access link: https://sciendo.com/book/9788367405454

More about the series: https://sciendo.com/series/HJEAS-B

Job Announcement: two full-time tenure-track faculty positions in English language and linguistics

Published on 11th May 2022 in Vacant Academic Positions

Contact person: Cristiano Broccias <c.broccias@unige.it>
Subject: Assistant Professor in English Language and Linguistics, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy


University or Organization: University of Genoa
Department: Modern Languages and Culture
Job Location: Genoa, Italy
Web Address: https://lingue.unige.it/
Job Title: Assistant Professor in English Language and Linguistics
Job Rank: Assistant Professor
Specialty Areas: General Linguistics
Required Language(s): English (eng)
Deadline for applications: 16th May 2022 at noon

Prospective candidates must have:

  • a PhD in English linguistics or a related field:
  • at least 3 years’ experience as a post-doc or at least three years’ experience as an assistant professor;
  • a strong research record and an excellent potential for future research 
  • a basic competence in Italian.

ESSE Statement on the Invasion of Ukraine

Published on 13th March 2022

The Board of the European Society for the Study English expresses its shock and dismay at the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine and the devastating escalation of violence. We fully support the statements published by UNESCO and by FILLM, the Fédération Internationale des Langues et Litératures Modernes, of which ESSE is a member association. We would like to convey our sympathy and solidarity to the people of Ukraine.

New book: Anglo Saxon Women: A Florilegium

Published on 6th July 2017

Anglo-Saxon Women: A Florilegium, ed. by Emily Butler (John Carroll University), Irina Dumitrescu (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) et Hilary E. Fox (Wayne State University).

This book is a collection of short, interpretive pieces (600-800 words) on a range of women in Anglo-Saxon England. These women include not only those long-recognized and studied, but those who occupy the background of texts. This florilegium of women from across the textual and material record reveals the obvious and obscure roles women played in Anglo-Saxon culture and their often overlooked presence in texts and art. The collection will be a resource for teachers to use in the classroom and for students to use while selecting research topics. It is also designed to be a pleasure to read, both for Anglo-Saxonists and for those curious about the field. This survey is intended to provide the editors with more data for placing the book with a suitable press.

In case you might be interested to use or recommend this book, could you please fill in the short questionnaire (only 4 questions) to be found at:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/F2373NM

Book Announcement: Shakespeare on Screen: The Tempest and Late Romances

Published on 23rd May 2017

Sarah Hatchuel and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin (eds.), Shakespeare on Screen: The Tempest and Late Romances

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

The series

The second volume in the re-launched series Shakespeare on Screen is devoted to The Tempest and Shakespeare’s late romances, offering up-to-date coverage of recent screen versions as well as new critical reviews of older, canonical films. An international cast of authors explores not only productions from the USA and the UK, but also translations, adaptations and appropriations from Poland, Italy and France. Spanning a wide chronological range, from the first cinematic interpretation of Cymbeline in 1913 to The Royal Ballet’s live broadcast of The Winter’s Tale in 2014, the volume provides an extensive treatment of the plays’ resonance for contemporary audiences. Supported by a film-bibliography, numerous illustrations and free online resources, the book will be an invaluable resource for students, scholars and teachers of film studies and Shakespeare studies.

The authors

Sarah Hatchuel is Professor of English Literature and Film and Head of the Groupe de Recherche Identités et Cultures (GRIC) at the University of Le Havre, as well as President of the Société Française Shakespeare. She has written extensively on adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, including Shakespeare and the Cleopatra/Caesar Intertext: Sequel, Conflation, Remake (2011), Shakespeare, from Stage to Screen (Cambridge, 2004), and A Companion to the Shakespearean Films of Kenneth Branagh (2000), and has also written on television series, including Lost: Fiction vitale (2013) and Rêves et séries américaines: la fabrique d’autres mondes (2015). She is Co-editor-in-chief of the online journal TV/Series.

Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin is Professor in Shakespeare studies at Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier and Director of the Institut de Recherche sur la Renaissance, l’âge Classique et les Lumières. She is co-editor-in-chief of the international journal Cahiers Élisabéthains and Co-director (with Patricia Dorval) of the Shakespeare on Screen in Francophonia Database (http://shakscreen.org). She has published The Unruly Tongue in Early Modern England, Three Treatises (2012) and is the author of Shakespeare’s Insults: A Pragmatic Dictionary (2016). She is Co-editor of the online journal Arrêt sur Scène/Scene Focus.

Details here: http://www.cambridge.org/fr/academic/subjects/literature/renaissance-and-early-modern-literature/shakespeare-screen-i-tempesti-and-late-romances?format=HB#Solgx3bPQ4zjIxaP.97

14th ESSE Conference, Brno (Czech Republic), 29 August – 2 September 2018

Published on 17th March 2017

Department of English and American Studies, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno
and
Czech Association for the Study of English (CZASE)

look forward to welcoming you to

the 14th ESSE Conference
in Brno, Czech Republic,
Wednesday 29 August – Sunday 2 September 2018

Conference site: www.esse2018brno.org  Continue reading “14th ESSE Conference, Brno (Czech Republic), 29 August – 2 September 2018” →

Conference Report: ESSE 13 Conference, 22-26 August 2016, Galway, Ireland

Published on 14th October 2016 in Conference Reports

The 13th ESSE Conference

22-26 August 2016, NUI Galway, Ireland

Patrick Lonergan and Aoife Leahy

galway2016-logo We were delighted to host the 13th ESSE conference at National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland.  There were 3 plenary lectures, 17 sub-plenary lectures, 80 seminars, 10 round tables, 5 special PhD sessions and a poster session as well as the ESSE General Assembly and book awards ceremony.

esse-13-photoApproximately 800 delegates attended this very busy conference. Special events included the Welcome Reception, a Sean Nós Song and Dance Performance from The Centre of Irish Studies, readings by the novelist Mike McCormack and the poet Mary O’ Malley, the conference dinner in the Radisson Hotel (including Irish music and dancing performances), three plays by the Fishamble theatre company, and a special closing seminar on women and contemporary theatre from the Druid Theatre Academy. Delegates could enjoy a tour of the library and special collections on any day of the conference and the exhibition “Shakespeare Lives through Kenneth Branagh on Stage and Screen” was on display in the library.

Emma Smith, the Cultural Studies plenary speaker, entertained us with “The Biography of a Book: Shakespeare’s First Folio.” Since the theme of this issue of the ESSE Messenger is Shakespeare Lives, Emma Smith has kindly published her lecture. Paul Baker was the Linguistics plenary speaker, delivering a fascinating lecture entitled “Divided by a Common Language? A Comparison of Recent Change in American and British English.” Colm Tóibín, the Literature plenary speaker, captivated the audience with “As Things Fall Apart: The Response to Violence in the Work of W.B. Yeats and James Joyce.”

Liliane Louvel, ESSE’s President, addressed the ESSE membership at the General Assembly. There was applause for Alberto Lazaro and Smiljana Komar, who have been re-elected as ESSE’s Treasurer and ESSE’s Secretary for another three year term. The prestigious ESSE book awards were presented to the prize winners.

Photographs of the General Assembly and book awards can be seen on the ESSE Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/essenglish/?fref=ts  Important decisions made at the ESSE Board meeting can be seen on the ESSE Messenger blog at https://essenglish.org/messenger/all-posts/

We look forward to the next ESSE conference in Brno in 2018!

Conference Report: Borders and Crossings Kielce, Poland, 12-14 September 2016

Published on 7th October 2016 in Conference Reports

Borders and Crossings: An International and Multidisciplinary Conference on Travel Writing,

Jan Kochanowski University, Kielce, Poland, 12-14 September 2016

Eva Oppermann, Kassel

dsc_3038
Picture credit: Pjotr Burda

Held for the second time in former Eastern Europe, this conference, which is the 13th Borders and Crossings Conference since 1998, was hosted by the Department of Modern Languages of the Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce, Poland. Dr. Agnieszka Szwach and associate professor Magdalena Ożarska, as its main organizers, did an excellent, extremely supportive, job. In eighteen sessions, more than fifty speakers from nearly twenty countries and about fifteen disciplines have covered a wide range of topics concerning travel writing of all ages. The two keynote lectures, “Illusion, immediacy, and the “vehicle of description” in travel writing and travel illustration” by Benjamin Colbert (university of Wolverhampton) and Ludmilla Kostova’s (St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria) “Intercultural mediation in travel writing and its (dis)contents: the cases of Mary Wortley Montagu and Rebecca West” introduced various topics of wider interest in the field: Colbert discussed the concepts of both the picturesque and subjectivity in connection with travel writing, especially with description and illustration. Kostova introduced xenophilia, interpretation and mediation as means of understanding the “other” in women’s travel writing. The topics of the sessions included a concentration on various national literatures (e.g. Polish, French, Russian and British), gender (women’s travels), non-human travel (esp. animals; the space travel of science fiction was not represented), or travel in important works of literature. Continue reading “Conference Report: Borders and Crossings Kielce, Poland, 12-14 September 2016” →

PhD Scholarship

Published on 2nd April 2016

Applications are invited for a full-time PhD scholarship at the Department of Literary Studies at KU Leuven (Campus Brussels). The successful applicant will participate in the project on ‘Cultural Transfer and Translation in Scottish Romantic Periodicals, 1817-1829’, funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO, http://www.fwo.be/en/) and supervised by dr. Tom Toremans. The project will involve archival research at the University of Edinburgh/National Library of Scotland and is co-supervised by dr. Tom Mole (Centre for the History of the Book, University of Edinburgh).

More information at https://essenglish.org/doctoral-scholarships

ESSE-13 (2016) Conference – Space on S17

Published on 30th March 2016

galway2016-logoESSE-13 conference, August 22 to August 26 2016, NUI Galway, Galway, Ireland. There is still space on this seminar – please send an immediate expression of interest to the co-convenors.

S17 “Contact, Identity and Morphosyntactic Variation in Diasporic Communities of Practice”

Co-convenors

This seminar aims to look at issues of language maintenance and shift in heritage communities of practice. Specific attention will be paid to discussing their longstanding migration, cultural heritage and identity construction. Mobility, contact and exchanges are increasing, social and communicative networks are becoming more complex, and the sociolinguistics of diaspora is beginning to address new issues. Diasporic communities are constantly increasing in size and number in the urban centres, making them sites of diversity. What happens to single heritage languages as they are relocated into new settings, creating new dialect contact situations? Papers resulting from ethnographic fieldwork and observation with a focus on language use, morphosyntactic variation and heritage identity are of particular interest

ESSE-13 (2016) Conference – Seminar looking for contributions

Published on 22nd March 2016

galway2016-logo The following ESSE 2016 seminar is still looking for contributors. Please send an immediate expression of interest to the co-convenors.

The Neo-Victorian Antipodes

Convenors:

From arguably the earliest example of Neo-Victorian fiction (Patrick White’s Voss, 1957) to recent Man-Booker winner The Luminaries (2013) by way of Peter Carey and Kate Grenville, the antipodes are a favoured setting for Neo-Victorian novels. This seminar explores how Neo-Victorian fiction constructs Australia, New Zealand and the Southern Pacific as, variously, the site of uncanny domesticity, an Other to Britain, a landscape to be colonised or scientifically appropriated, a frontier for the testing of masculinity, an occasion for re-writing of canonical texts. We aim to investigate the intersection of Neo-Victorian preoccupations with nineteenth-century discourses with post-colonial theorising of settler colonialism.

Please send proposals to: Mariadele.Boccardi@uwe.ac.uk therese.meyer@anglistik.uni-halle.de