ESSE-13 (2016) Conference – Paper proposal deadline extended

galway2016-logo The following ESSE-13 (2016) Conference seminars have extended their paper proposal deadlines.


ESSE-13, August 22-26 2016, Galway. Paper proposal deadline extended to March 11 on this seminar. Send a 200 word abstract to the seminar 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, August 22-26, Galway. Paper proposal deadline extended to March 11 on this seminar. Send a 200 word abstract to the seminar co-convenors.

S22 “Anachronism and the Medieval”

Co-convenors

This seminar focuses on anachronism, broadly defined, and its relation to the medieval period. Often understood negatively as a computational fault or disruptive error, anachronism is closely related to archaism, presentism, and para-/pro-chronism, as well as to the notion of the preposterous (in its literal Latin sense of “before-behind”). Contributors to this seminar might reflect on broad issues of temporality or on particular instances of anachronism—intentional or unintentional—in relation to medieval literary exemplars, but equally welcomed are contributions that explore anachronicity in conjunction with later (Renaissance to contemporary) engagements with the medieval past and its textual traditions.


ESSE-13, August 22-26, Galway. Paper proposal deadline extended to March 11 on this seminar. Send a 200 word abstract to the seminar co-convenors.

S28 “Romanticism and the Cultures of Infancy”

Co-convenors

Wordsworth’s assertion that “the child is father of the man” is one of the most familiar statements of the Romantic interest in the relationship between childhood experience and adult identity. Indeed it has become something of a commonplace now to assert that the Romantics invented childhood as we understand it. This seminar will investigate the extent to which the wider concept of infancy became a key trope of European thought across a range of different areas of enquiry during the long eighteenth century (1700-1830), from speculation about the age of the cosmos to discussions of the history of civil society.


ESSE-13, August 22-26, Galway. Paper proposal deadline extended to March 11 on this seminar. Send a 200 word abstract to the seminar co-convenors.

S68 “Representing Diversity in Black British and British Asian Children’s Literature”

Co-convenors

Despite the fact that the study of children’s literature is an ever-increasing, vibrant field, within the lively scene of Black British and British Asian writing literature for children still occupies a marginal space. Even though some authors have managed to gain wider visibility such as John Agard, Grace Nichols, Malorie Blackman, and Benjamin Zephaniah, children’s literature written by authors from an ethnic and racially diverse background is especially underrepresented when it comes to critical attention in academic circles. This seminar invites papers that will look at how literature for children and young adults written by Black British and British Asian writers address the complexities of the cultural situation of contemporary British society in the early 21st century and thus make an important contribution to the call for greater diversity in children’s books.