The European Network for Short Fiction Research will hold its annual conference in Dublin, April 17-18, 2015. This year’s theme is “Reading Short Fiction in Transnational Contexts”, and abstracts are now being accepted at ensfrdublin@gmail.com. 

Much scholarly work has been done in recent years on the idea of transnationalism in 
literary studies, but the extent to which the term relates to works of short fiction has 
not yet received sustained scrutiny. This conference aims to address this scholarly 
lacuna with a series of lectures and panel discussions on a range of issues including 
(but not limited to) the following:
• The transnational origins of short fiction 
• Short fiction between nations 
• Short fiction and nation-building
• Short fiction and the idea of the nation
• Short fiction as transnational form
• Short fiction between national cultures
• Reading short fiction across nations
• Short fiction authors between states
• Short fiction and its international audiences
• Short fiction and issues in translation
• Short fiction and the nation state
• Short fiction and the transatlantic world
• Short fiction in Europe
• Short fiction and empire
• Short fiction and the gendering of nation
In addition to papers on these and other topics, the conference will include a panel 
discussion on the first five years of Best European Fiction, an annual anthology of 
short fiction in English (and translation into English) published by the Dalkey Archive
Press. The conference will also include some readings by contemporary Irish short 
fiction writers.
300-word abstracts for 20-minute papers should be sent to ensfrdublin@gmail.com no 
later than midnight on the 1st of December 2014. Contributors should also send a 
short biographical note indicating institutional affiliation. A provisional conference 
programme will be announced in early January 2015.
It is envisaged that conference proceedings will be published as a special issue of the 
peer-reviewed journal Short Fiction in Theory and Practice:
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=196/
For further information about the European Network for Short Fiction Research see:
http://ensfr.hypotheses.org/

Download the CFP in PDF here: CfP ENSFR conference April 2015 Dublin

‘Homeward Bound’: Nation, Belonging and the American Home

BAAS and IAAS Postgraduate Conference, 7-8^th December 2013

University of Nottingham

 Keynote speakers:

Professor Bridget Bennett (University of Leeds)

Professor Randall Woods (University of Arkansas)

The home has long served as a powerful signifier of American culture and identity, from the colonial frontier log cabin constructed to resist the rigors of a New World, to the suburban house synonymous with affluence and spiralling consumerism. The home is a space in which the politics of domesticity and sexual difference is made concrete; where gender roles are continually contested; and where a sense of belonging and unbelonging helps to define the roots of a community whether local, national or transnational. The home is a signifier of nation, of class, race and ethnicity and it is a location that inspires musicians, poets, artist and writers.  Notions of a besieged homeland texture the language of international relations, whilst a banking crisis and the foreclosures that followed rearticulated the centrality of the home within American policy. This conference interrogates a symbol that lies at the foundation of America itself.

 ‘Homeward Bound’ is a two-day interdisciplinary conference for postgraduate students with an interest in North America and whose research engages with history, literature, critical theory, visual culture, architecture, media studies and political theory. The conference invites proposals for 20-minute presentations on any aspect of our broad theme. The topics include, but are not limited to:

 –           Urban, suburban, exurban and rural homes/spaces

–           Domesticity, gender, private/public spheres

–           The home as a historical construct

–           The non-familial family and concepts of legitimacy

–           Regions, regionalism and transnationalism

–           Morality, family values, religion

–           Constructions of immigrant, diasporic, transnational identity

–           Architecture, spatiality, sociality and protested spaces

–           Public policy and the politics of urban development

–           Mother tongues and dialects

–           International relations and homeland security

 Please e-mail abstracts of no more than 300 words to homewardbound2013@hotmail.com.Abstracts should include your name, institution, email address, and the title of your proposed paper. The deadline for submissions is: 1st October 2013.

 In association with BAAS and IAAS the committee aims to keep costs low for postgraduate attendees by charging a minimal fee of £10 for one-day attendance and £15 for two-day attendance.  This year the conference will also feature two training sessions tailored towards the professional development of postgraduates researching North America. These training sessions will be run by academics and specialists within publishing and funding organisations.

 For more information on the conference follow our twitter (@homewardbound2013) or consult our official web address: amcannotts.wordpress.com.

 BAAS IAAS CFP

Seat of the International Court of Justice

“The business of America is not business. Neither is it war. The business of America is justice and securing the blessing of liberty.” (20^th-century U.S.-editor, commentator, and columnist George F. Will)

“And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.“ (John F. Kennedy, television address, 11 June 1963)

The paradox inherent in the United States’ commitment to the values of justice, liberty, and democracy on the one hand, and the often unforeseen and problematic results of enforcing and/or imposing these values on the other, has shaped the nation’s history domestically as well as internationally since independence.

At a domestic level, the U.S. was one of the first nations in modern history to establish a democratic and egalitarian form of government based on the Enlightenment principles of equality, political and civil liberties, and freedom of speech. At the same time, many of these principles have had different meanings for different groups within the U.S. throughout its history, and have repeatedly led to violent internal racial, ethnic, gender, and class conflicts.

In the arena of foreign policy Theodore Roosevelt’s “Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” (1904) , for example, officially consolidated the role of the U.S. as an “international police power,” prepared to intervene “in flagrant cases of . . . wrongdoings.” This set the stage for a wide range of interventions, including those in Latin America and, more recently, the Middle East, whose transgressive nature has since met with harsh criticism. Yet the U.S. engagement in Europe during and after WWII has equally thrown into relief the nation’s crucial role as liberator and international promoter of justice and democracy.

The EAAS 2014 conference on “America: Justice, Conflict, War” will be hosted in The Hague (The Netherlands), the “City of Peace and Justice” that is home to the International Criminal Court as well as the International Court of Justice. Bringing Americanists from across Europe and across the globe to this location highlights the fact that many of the challenges facing the U.S. today increasingly tend to be, as Madeleine Albright has remarked in a recent interview, reflections of complexly interrelated problems of global justice and international peace diplomacy that transcend the boundaries of individual nation states and render the importance of international cooperation more crucial than ever.

We invite workshops that address the topics of justice, conflict, war, from the perspective of any of the disciplines within American Studies. Potential workshop themes may include but are not restricted to: questions of justice, domestic conflicts or international wars from the (pre-)colonial times to the present, including relations to Native Americans, slave revolts, race, class, gender and religious conflicts; conflicts between labor and capital, WWI and II, the Cold War, Vietnam, the First Gulf War, Afghanistan, 9/11, Iraq, the war on terror, and the war on drugs; violent responses to immigration and the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border; the past / present role of the U.S. in the international community (UN, International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court, NATO); representations of justice, conflict, war in literature, film, and other media; war as cultural misunderstanding; war trauma, etc.

Registration fees

EAAS member € 140; late € 160; one day € 80

Non-member   €  160; late € 180; one day € 90

Student member € 70; late € 80; one day € 40

Student non-member € 85; late € 100; one day € 50

Gala dinner € 70

Registration fees include: Participation in all workshop sessions and plenary lectures, two receptions, conference packet, coffee/tea

Deadlines:

March 15, 2013: Deadline for online submission of workshop and parallel lecture proposals to include a one-page abstract (no more than 500 words) and a half-page c.v. (250 words) of potential workshop chairs and parallel lecturers. Parallel lecturers should be scholars of established reputation. Workshop chairs from the 2012 Izmir conference cannot be workshop chairs in The Hague. The EAAS Board decided at its Izmir meeting that henceforth all workshops must be chaired by two colleagues belonging to different constituent organisations. Please use EAAS-L to circulate your ideas if in need of a co-chair. Workshop and parallel lecture proposals, whose proposed topic should be presented very clearly within the space of 500 words, will undergo blind review, and be assessed by the Board on the following criteria, each of which will carry the same weight: 1) relation to conference theme; 2) originality and strength of proposal; 3) likelihood of attracting papers and audience; 4) other considerations (general impression of the proposal; scholarship; extent to which the discipline has been represented at EAAS conferences previously; etc.).

Proposers of workshops are required to use the form that can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/8mh4ox2

Proposers of parallel lectures are required to use the form that can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/8mjm57q

Please do not submit proposals for individual workshop papers at this time. Such proposals may be sent to the selected workshop chairs who will be announced in May 2013.

May 1, 2013: announcement of workshops selected for the conference; publication of CFP for individual workshop papers on EAAS website.

October 1, 2013: Workshop paper proposals (with one-page abstract; no more than 500 words) to be sent to Workshop Chairs by those proposing individual papers. 
October 15, 2013: Deadline for workshop chairs to send the tentative list of speakers and titles of workshop papers to the EAAS Secretary-General. 
January 15, 2014: Deadline for submitting FINAL titles of papers and names and addresses of confirmed speakers to the conference organizers. 
February 3, 2014: Deadline for information to be included in the 2014 biennial conference program.

[April 3-6, 2014: EAAS Conference takes place in The Hague]

April 20, 2014 (two weeks after end of conference): Deadline for chair 1 to send titles of two papers proposed for possible inclusion in conference volume (with speaker details) to Secretary-General.

April 20, 2014 (two weeks after end of conference): Deadline for chair 2 to send 500-word workshop report to the EAAS Secretary General, Gert Buelens, at secretary-general@eaas.eu.

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