Deadline for submissions: January 26, 2018
Full name/name of organization: Edited Collection with Palgrave Macmillan
Contact email: antoniamackay@brookes.ac.uk

Call for Papers

Reading Westworld – Edited Collection

Coined in the early twentieth century, the term ‘robot’ conjures up images of man-made machines, artificial bodies, A.I.s and more recently, cyborgs. From Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968) to Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), every narrative of artificial life shares common themes – they are stories of identity, desire, rebellion and protest. Far from being confined to the realm of science fiction, advances in modern technology suggest machines which can think and act like us are an imminent reality. We are already in an era of companion robots, animated sex dolls, machines that feel pain, and AI that passes the Turing Test. Combined with a tumultuous twenty-first century, it seems timely to question our own humanity in the wake of an era which threatens to dehumanise, control and exert power over our individuality. The dynamics of HBO’s recent series Westworld engage with multidisciplinary debates within humanities research, from American self-mythologies to the role of technology in academic pedagogy, and it thus offers a timely site for investigating contemporary questions that cross disciplinary divides. This collection (currently under expression of interest from Palgrave) seeks to investigate Westworld’s key themes such as those linked to history and environment, technology and the posthuman, and the influences and intertexts of the series. We are interested in papers from a range of disciplines which engage with aspects of these themes, and those which consider any of the following:

-Space and location – the role of scenery and landscapes
-Racial identity and slavery, transgressive and othered characters (Hispanic Americans, African Americans, Native Americans)
-Theme parks and mazes
-Cyborgs and AI
-Bodies and somatechnics
-Technology and consciousness
-Memory and visual technologies
-American histories and the West
-Civil War and unrest
-Hyperreal spaces and heterotopia
–Westworld and theory (Lacan, Žižek, Haraway, Baudrillard, Jameson)
-Gender, sexuality and queer identity
-Intertextuality: Shakespeare, Dick, Vonnegut, Borges, Dante, The Matrix, Bladerunner, Westworld (1973), The Truman Show, etc.
-Diegetic levels and narrative theory
-Video gaming and programming
-Hypertext and interactivity
-Surveillance and power
–Westworld and pedagogy –teaching Westward
-The role of music within the series – its function and influence
-Authenticity and revolution – the quest for freedom

Researchers at all stages are welcomed. Abstracts of 300 words and a short biography should be submitted to Antonia Mackay (antoniamackay@brookes.ac.uk); Alex Goody (agoody@brookes.ac.uk)

by January 26th 2018.

A Workshop Jointly Sponsored and Organized by the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies and the Society of Early Americanists.

October 4-6, 2018

Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany

The discipline of early American studies seems full of gaps: from Eric Slauter’s perceived trade gap between historians and literary scholars (Early American Literature, 2008) to the theory gap between early American literature and later disciplines identified by Ed White and Michael Drexler (American Literary History, 2010). Given the boon of transatlantic scholarship in the past few decades, however, the relationship between European and North American scholars working on early Americanist topics appears to grow closer than ever before. A small but stalwart group of European—especially French, German, Austrian, Swiss, and British—early Americanists regularly attends North American conferences, such as the SEA biennials and the annual ASA convention. In turn, however, too few North American scholars are reading scholarship published and attending scholarly gatherings in Europe.

This joint Obama Institute-SEA workshop will bring together early Americanist scholars from North America and Europe in a 2 ½-day intensive conversation and collaboration about transatlantic perspectives on new developments in the field of early American studies. The workshop seeks to engage several critical fields around which specific collaborations during the conference will center:

Digital humanities and archival studies
Intersections between book history, print, and material culture
Transpacific and archipelagic studies
Indigenous studies
African American studies
Periodical studies
Ethnic, multilingual, and comparative literary studies
Environmental and medical humanities; history of science
Religious networks
Post-critique
Aesthetics and new formalism
Seminal critical interventions—such as Elizabeth Anker and Rita Felski’s Critique and Post-Critique (Duke, 2017) or Ed Cahill and Ed Larkin’s focus on aesthetics in their jointly edited issue of Early American Literature (2016)—frequently catalyze new work in early American studies on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet scholars in Europe and North America often apply theoretical questions in different ways and proceed from different assumptions about the aims, methods, and rhetorical articulations of scholarly and critical innovation. Even more basically, varying practices of reading and teaching, or uses of text, context, and critique often make conversations at standard conferences non-starters or inconclusive. This workshop provides early American literature scholars the opportunity to

Discuss their work with scholars across the Atlantic.
Debate applications of key critical texts in their field to early American studies.
Plan collaborative publications, grants, or workshops.
The Workshop will be limited to 30 participants grouped together in small, critically and thematically focused teams. Each team works together over 2 days and shares results in poster presentations at the end of the workshop. Preceding the Workshop, each pre-arranged team agrees upon, circulates, and reads a) one article-length work in progress written by each participant, and b) a limited number of critical/theoretical works informing each sub-field to anchor the conversation and collaboration.

Submissions

Please email the following materials to the Workshop Chair, Prof. Oliver Scheiding (scheiding@uni-mainz.de) as PDF attachments by February 15, 2018:

A 2-page CV.
A circa 400-500 word proposal, including the applicant’s critical and theoretical focus, current work(s)-in-progress, past and future work in primary text archives, and a statement detailing specific objectives and ideas for scholarly collaboration. The proposal should address how and why the applicant’s work would profit from collaboration with colleagues across the Atlantic. Although the main Workshop language will be English, all applicants should detail their level of competency in languages other than English (such skill will not be required but may help in grouping applicants in specific teams).
Workshop acceptances will be sent out by March 15, 2018.

Deadline for submissions: March 30, 2017
Full name/name of organization: Modernist Studies Association
Contact email: alyssa.duck@emory.edu

“The natural object,” Pound writes, “is always the adequate symbol.” Nevertheless, Modernist literature is plotted along bodily representations that often seem far from the realities of their correlative “natural object.” This panel will consider the tension between Modernism’s representative strategies and the gendered objects that Modernist writers “graph,” focusing particularly on Modernist representations of female, queer, non-white, disabled, and otherwise marginalized bodies. How do the literary strategies of Modernist writers complicate, limit, or make space for bodies, or bodily functions, that might have been given a “Graphic Content Warning”? What is the relationship between Modernism’s innovative representational strategies and the “explicit”?

Please email a short personal bio and an abstract of no more than 350 words by March 30, 2017 to Alyssa Duck at alyssa.duck@emory.edu.

Deadline for submissions: January 19, 2018
Full name/name of organization: West Virginia University English Graduate Student Union
Contact email: egsuconference@gmail.com

In her essay “Posthumanist Performativity” Karen Barad writes that she wants to understand “how matter comes to matter.” . New materialist scholars like Barad use “matter” as an anchor, closing in on the physical and metaphysical “matter” of politics, economy, ecology, technology, nature, and art. These scholars are shifting away from a framework of human representation to a framework of phenomena; eliding the anthropological and instead focusing on how they themselves are a part of an interconnected whole. From a literary perspective that “matter” is broadly defined and nebulous in its construction. It’s the coal that is buried in the southern hills of West Virginia in the works of Denise Giardina; the ocean water that surrounded Ahab; and the soundscapes that made up the world of Emily Dickinson. “Matter” provides the context of new materialist research and, more broadly, frames their attempts to navigate the perceivable (and often unperceivable, or strange) forces of the world.

The students of the English Graduate Student Union (EGSU) at the West Virginia University want to understand this “matter” as well. We invite you to join us in investigating this fascinating field of research and in exploring the material world we inhabit. The conference this year will be held March 10 th at the West Virginia University downtown campus in Colson Hall. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to look further at the multifaceted ways that we can think of and identify intersections between “matter” and “strangeness,” whether on a local, global, or individual scale. Guiding questions might include: What is strange about “matter”? What are the properties of materiality within a digital landscape? How does the Anthropocene affect our perceptions and evaluation of the material world? Beyond these, we urge you to broadly explore all questions of, or pertaining to, strangeness, “matter,” and material. You may consider one or many of the following categories, but should not feel limited to them.

● Ecocriticism and Environmental Studies
● American, British, and World Literatures
● Women and Gender Studies
● Critical Race Theory
● Popular Culture
● Liminality and Marginality
● Posthumanism
● The Gothic
● Disability Studies
● Hemispheric Studies
● Canonicity
● Adaptation and Representation
● Postcolonial Theory and Literature
● War and/or Trauma and Literature
● Film Studies and Film Theory
● Queer Theory
● Material Culture
● Architecture and Urban Planning
● Digital Humanities
● Sense Studies

Creative writing panels are also encouraged. Possible panel topics for creative writers might include how writers recognize their position as a part of the phenomenal world, the position or recognition of “matter” within their work, or the influences of outside genres on their work.
Proposal abstracts of 250 words should be submitted electronically to egsuconference@gmail.com by January 19th , 2018. All proposals should include the title of the work, presenter’s name, institutional and departmental affiliation (if available), any technology requests, and a brief bio. The subject line of your email should also indicate if your abstract is proposing critical or creative work.

For further details, updates, and contact information, contributors can visit the conference website at https://wvuegsuconference.wordpress.com/.

Notification of proposal status will be within two weeks of the submission deadline.

Deadline for submissions: January 31, 2018
Full name/name of organization: Northern Illinois University
Contact email: mcllm@niu.edu

CALL FOR PAPERS: MCLLM

Conference Date: April 13th-14th, 2018

Deadline for Proposals: January 31, 2018

Theme: “Borders and Transitions”

The 26th annual Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language and Media (MCLLM) at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL, is currently accepting proposals for 15-minute presentations from individuals and panels. This year’s conference theme is Borders and Transitions. This theme encourages argument-driven papers that explore the relationship between ever-changing geographical, cultural, and technological boundaries and the humanities. How do language, literature, and media both reinforce and challenge these boundaries? How do these changing boundaries impact approaches to scholarship within the humanities?

We encourage a variety of approaches to these questions, including (but not limited to) the following topics:

-Changing Concepts of Nationality, Race, Class, Disability, Gender, and Sexuality
-Transnationalism and Hybridity
-Interdisciplinary Humanities (ex. Science and Literature)
-Political and Historical Change
-Public vs. Private Identity
-Society and Technology
-Art as Activism
-Pop Culture and Academia

MCLLM welcomes proposals from a wide range of research in the humanities. Possible research areas include: literature and poetry, creative writing, linguistics, written and visual rhetoric, journalism, narrative and documentary film, music, games/video games, anime, television, radio, new and social media, history, and pedagogy in these fields.

This year’s distinguished keynote speaker is Peter J. Capuano, associate professor of English and the director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Examples of his work include his 2015 book Changing Hands: Industry, Evolution, and the Reconfiguration of the Victorian Body, along with essays such as “Digital Dombey” and “Computational Contexts and Dickensian Depths.” Dr. Capuano’s research demonstrates a variety of exciting new approaches to discussing literature, particularly in terms of reconsidering traditional boundaries between the humanities and the sciences.

If you are interested in presenting at the conference, please submit 200-500 word proposals by January 31, 2018, to mcllm@niu.edu. Include a cover page with your name, institutional affiliation, graduate student or faculty status, email, and phone number. Panel proposals should include a brief overview of the panel’s theme and purpose, along with an abstract and cover page for each paper.

Founders Award

The Founders Award carries a $500 prize, given to one graduate student attending the conference and presenting a paper. The award honors Chuck Bowie and John Carlberg, the co-founders of the MCLLM conference. All graduate students presenting at the conference are eligible. This award is given based on the strength of the proposal, particularly in terms of how it relates to the conference theme and the quality of the argument presented.

Deadline for submissions: December 31, 2017
Full name/name of organization: Timothy Shary and Frances Smith
Contact email: refocusjohnhughes@gmail.com

UPDATE:

CFP: The Films of John Hughes (Refocus Series)

Series Editors: Gary D Rhodes, Robert Singer

Editors: Timothy Shary, Frances Smith

The films of writer, director, and producer, John Hughes, have enjoyed popular and critical success. With Sixteen Candles (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), Weird Science (1985), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), and Pretty in Pink (1986), Hughes portrayed mercurial suburban adolescence in America. In doing so, he was responsible for bringing to the fore a whole new troupe of actors, dubbed The Brat Pack, which included Molly Ringwald, Matthew Broderick, Emilio Estevez, and Andrew McCarthy. Despite the lasting success of Hughes’ teen output, it was his move into mainstream comedy that secured his greatest commercial successes with hits like Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), Uncle Buck (1989), Home Alone (Chris Columbus, 1990), and 101 Dalmatians (Stephen Herek, 1996).

Since Hughes’ death in 2009, there has been a growing appreciation of his work, and particularly of his teen output. Contemporary nostalgia for the 1980s has played a role, in works such as Easy A (Will Gluck, 2010), Pitch Perfect (Jason Moore, 2012), The Edge of Seventeen (Kelly Fremon Craig, 2016), and Permanent (Collette Burson, 2017). Yet Hughes also deserves to be considered as an independent filmmaker, who eschewed the calls of Hollywood to film in his native Midwest (particularly Chicago). To be sure, Hughes’ films remain relevant and are well remembered. However, despite his popular appreciation and the sporadic commentary about his movies, there has to date been no scholarly volume dedicated to the discussion of his work as a whole.

This anthology seeks to address this gap in scholarship, and will be published by Edinburgh University Press in 2019 as part of the Refocus series, which has included books on Amy Heckerling, Delmer Daves, and Preston Sturges. Edited by Dr. Gary D Rhodes and Dr. Robert Singer, this series is dedicated to examining the work of overlooked filmmakers. We are seeking proposals of 500 words, plus a biography of 100 words, for essays to be included in the book. Completed essays should be between 6500 and 8000 words and follow the Chicago endnote referencing style. We are open to proposals on all aspects of John Hughes’ work. Essays may focus on individual works, or on recurrent themes throughout his oeuvre.

Contributions are particularly welcome, but by no means limited to, the following areas:

• Hughes and teen cinema

• The American family in Hughes’ films

• His early work for National Lampoon movies and TV shows (1979-1985)

• Analysis of individual films (1980-2008)

• Gender and teen comedy

• Topics of class, race, sexuality, or gender across Hughes’ films

• Analyses of individual star performances in his films, e.g.: John Candy, Macaulay Culkin, Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall

• Hughes’ eight films as director (1984-1991)

• The aesthetic style of Hughes’ work, as writer and/or director

• Hughes as Hollywood producer of family comedies, e.g.: She’s Having a Baby (1988), Dutch (1991), Dennis the Menace (1993), Flubber (1997)

• Midwest geography and culture in his stories

• Use of music in his films, particularly pop hits

• His writing as alter ego Edmond Dantés, including Beethoven (1992), Maid in Manhattan (2002), and Drillbit Taylor (2008)

• Anything connecting his essentially secluded personal life to his work

Proposals should be sent to refocusjohnhughes@gmail.com by December 31, 2017. Both editors will review all proposals and respond by January 31, 2018. If successful, essays will need to be completed by September 30, 2018. Please send any enquiries to refocusjohnhughes@gmail.com.