Migration, Diaspora, Circulation and Translation 

October 5-7, 2017

University College Dublin, Clinton Institute for American Studies

Dublin, Ireland

A conference sponsored by the Charles Brockden Brown Society

(www.brockdenbrownsociety.ucf.edu)

Our conference site in Dublin calls to mind issues of migration, immigration, emigration, colonization, revolution, and other changes that result from the movement of people, ideas, and things from one place to another. Such issues were significant in colonial and early national American writing and thought in the long eighteenth century. The current global migration crisis and the recent “Brexit” vote makes these topics timely for reappraisal: as millions of migrants and asylum seekers cross into Europe, the world confronts questions about borders, resources, community, poverty, wealth, understanding of cultural differences, and human rights. The Eleventh Biennial Conference of the Charles Brockden Brown Society invites papers on all aspects of diaspora, migration, circulation, and translation in the long eighteenth century. The following list offers some examples of suggested topics:

• Texts (letters, periodicals, books, treatises) that migrate from one place to another
• Migration of species, and theories of natural history that involve migration or hibernation
• Spread of genetic material in plants or other living beings; ecological biology, biodiversity, monoculture or related concepts
• Movement of food, drink and other cultural practices related to agriculture, food preparation and/or eating
• Loss inherent in places from which migration takes place on a large scale
• Changing boundaries of nations, places, concepts (gender, childhood, etc.) during the long eighteenth century
• Colonial and/or imperial repercussions of migration
• Representations of Irishness as an unstable category in the long eighteenth century
• Maria Edgeworth’s influence on American texts
• Literary hoaxes and their reliance on dissemination
• Ways that “contagion” works differently than “diaspora” as a trope
• Adaptations, literary influences, allusions, plagiarism, copyright issues
• Charles Brockden Brown’s depiction of migration, circulation, translation
• Migratory labor, including prisoners, apprentices, and chattel slaves
• The effects of borders and border crossing in domestic (national and private) spaces

Although we are an author society, we solicit proposals from a broad range of texts and practices beyond those associated with Brown and his writings alone. We also encourage interdisciplinary scholarship and work emphasizing non-U.S. literatures. Our conference culture aims to create a space of egalitarian consideration free from career-oriented and competitive attitudes, a place for new work to blossom. In this light, we have no concurrent sessions, so that all may be heard by all. Because of time/space constraints, we may ask you to reframe your proposed talk as a brief (5-10 minute) presentation for inclusion within a roundtable format.

Travel Support for Graduate Students:

Two travel awards of $500 each for graduate student participation will be awarded, funded by the Brown Society. Criteria for these travel subventions will favor students at the dissertation stage (over those in earlier stages of degree work) and those who have not previously presented at a CBBS meeting. Graduate students applying for a subvention should indicate their interest in a cover letter and provide information about whether or not they are ABD.

250-word proposal deadline: February 15, 2017  Please send a proposal in .docx format to hewitt.33@osu.edu.

aspeers: emerging voices in american studies is currently seeking submissions for its upcoming issue

aspeers is the first and currently only peer-reviewed print journal for MA-level American studies scholars in Europe. It is a platform for the best work done by American studies graduate students below the PhD level. It aims to foster academic exchange among young Americanists across Europe, and to thereby advance the field as well as its genuine European perspective on ‘America’ and its presences and effects around the world.

Submission deadline: 23 October 2016

In its tenth issue, aspeers will feature a general section and a topical focus. While the general section accepts submissions on any American studies topic (e.g. revised versions of term papers or chapters from BA theses), the topical section will focus on the theme of “American Monsters,” calling for submissions that reflect on the diverse roles and meanings of ‘monstrosity’ in American culture. Please see the following Calls for Papers for details.

1) General Call for Papers

For the general section of its tenth issue, aspeers seeks outstanding academic writing demonstrating the excellence of graduate scholarship, the range of concerns scrutinized in the field, and the diversity of perspectives employed. We thus explicitly invite revised versions of term papers or chapters from theses written by students of European Master (and equivalent) programs. For this section, there are no topical limitations. Contributions should be up to 10,000 words (including abstract and list of works cited). The submission deadline is 23 October 2016.

2) Topical Call for Papers on “American Monsters”

“The monster notoriously appears at times of crisis,” Jeffrey Jerome Cohen states in his Monster Theory. At first glance, Cohen’s assertion conveniently seems to fit the headlines by various venues—liberal and conservative—that all express a presumed crisis of the US Republican Party by referring to their 2016 presidential nominee as a “monster.” However, Cohen has a different kind of crisis, and different kinds of monsters, in mind, and a broader analytical trajectory to follow: For him, American culture as such can be read “from the monsters [it] engenders.”

Understood as a spectacular anomaly, a cultural shorthand that points at deeper turmoils, American culture has its fair share of monsters indeed. Whether we think of race, a social problem declared ‘dead’ by the post-race discourse, as a zombie roaming the land as deadly as ever, or whether we think of Barbara Creed’s seminal work on the perception and portrayal of femininity as ‘monstrous,’ categories of difference tend to express themselves with recourse to the figure of the monster and the logic of monstrosity. In fact, as Michael Rogin points out, monsters are “a continuing feature of American politics” (xiii). As such they are worthy of critical attention.

For its tenth issue, aspeers thus dedicates its topical section to “American Monsters” and invites European graduate students to critically and analytically explore American literature, (popular) culture, society, history, and politics through the monsters they beget. With a host of disciplines—ranging from economy and political science to history, media studies, literary and cultural studies, and beyond—engaging such monstrosity in various forms, we welcome papers from all the fields, methodologies, and approaches that comprise American studies as well as inter- and transdisciplinary submissions. Potential paper topics could cover (but are not limited to):

• The literary figure of the fantastic monster, the zombie, the vampire, the alien, the cyborg, or the ghost, as tropes that do cultural work.
• The forms of (racialized, gendered, etc.) othering involved in portraying social or cultural outsiders as monstrous.
• Political rhetoric demonizing and dehumanizing the opponent.
• The trope of the monster in various nonfictional discourses, such as law enforcement, medicine and psychology, and many others.
• The pleasures and anxieties negotiated through representations of monsters, in genres such as horror, fantasy, science fiction, dystopia, (post)apocalypse, etc., and in media like novels, films, TV, graphic novels, or video games.

Submissions should be directed to submit@aspeers.com. Further information, including submission guidelines, FAQ section and style guide can be found at www.aspeers.com/2017.