CFP: Bodies and Boundaries in Irish and American Literature

Posted on March 16, 2023March 16, 2023 by Sarah McCreedy

Bodies and Boundaries in Irish and American Literature, to be held in Dublin City University on September 05-06, 2023, entirely in person.

This conference intends to explore twentieth and twenty-first century literature through the lens of literary geography and theories on space, place and embodiment. Indeed, by using the different approaches of literature and geography to “think beyond taken-for-granted categories, levels, and terms” (Hones, 688), literary geography allows a discussion that redefines not only the genres but also how one experiences a text according to different spatialities and bodies.

Papers addressing the following themes are especially welcomed and encouraged:

Literary geography in relation to Irish literature, American literature, or Irish-American literature (20th-21st centuries)
The body as a boundary
Bodies and boundaries in literature
Fictional accounts on: race; sexuality; gender; disability; social status; the “future body”
Ecocriticism
Political/ non-political bodies
Gendering bodies and boundaries
Keynote speakers: June Caldwell, Nessa Cronin, Sophie White and Emilie Pine.

If you are interested in participating in the conference, whether by giving a presentation or organising a panel, please send an abstract (300 words maximum) and a short biography (100 words) to: laetitia.nebotdeneuville2@mail.dcu.ie. If you want to attend the conference, please send an email to the same email address. Please specify your home institution for both cases.

Deadline for abstract submission and attendance registration: May 22, 2023.

Full details here:

Bodies and Boundaries CFP

The 2023 TTU Comparative Literature Symposium: Pandemic, Environment and Life Writing

Posted on December 6, 2022December 6, 2022 by Sarah McCreedy

IAAS Annual Conference 2023 – CFP announced

Posted on November 30, 2022November 30, 2022 by Sarah McCreedy

Irish Association for American Studies

Annual Conference

“In/Security”

University of Limerick

Hybrid event: virtual and in-person

28-29 April 2023

The Irish Association for American Studies is an all-island scholarly association dedicated to promoting interdisciplinary American Studies in Ireland. It invites paper and panel proposals for its 2023 Annual Conference, which will take place 28-29 April at the University of Limerick. The hybrid event will be the first IAAS Annual Conference since 2019 to include an in-person element.

“There are others out there on whom my life depends, people I do not know and may never know. This fundamental dependency on anonymous others is not a condition that I can will away. No security measure will foreclose this dependency; no violent act of sovereignty will rid the world of this fact” (Judith Butler, Precarious Life xii).

The theme for the 2023 IAAS Annual Conference is “In/Security.” Inderpal Grewal argues that “constructs of security have come to dominate everyday life in the US imperial state” (Saving the Security State 2). Certainly, questions of security have dominated the US news agenda this year, from the inquest into the breach of the Capitol on 6 January 2021; to geopolitical threats of energy shortages, a cost-of-living crisis, cyber-attacks, and nuclear war; to the FBI’s retrieval of documents endangering national security from a former President’s home. Actual and perceived threats to security – personal, institutional, and technological – have increasingly become the norm in US politics, as allegations of voting fraud and campaigns of intimidation continue to reverberate across elections. Meanwhile, the rising risks of wildfires and storms are a reminder that climate change represents an existential threat to human society that requires us to act now to secure a liveable future.

This year, we invite proposals that consider security, safety, defence, and protection, as well as their opposites: insecurity, precarity, vulnerability, and danger. We will think about security at various scales, the various senses and feelings of terms like “security” and “safe,” and the different ways in which notions of security and its absence structure cultural, social, political, and economic discourses in the Americas.

We welcome papers from all disciplines in American Studies, broadly defined. Possible paper and panel topics may include but are not limited to:

Texts and events that dramatize questions of (in)security at various scales: personal, societal, national, global
Levels and forms of security forces, threats, risks, defences, protections, allies, and immunities
Senses (meanings and feelings) of security and insecurity, vulnerability, and precarity
Resource (food, water, energy, housing) security and insecurity, and the geopolitics of resource security
Securing the (environmental, biodiverse, just) future; risking the future
Financial securities and insecurities
Job security, precarity, safety nets, and their absence; welfare and wellbeing
Technologies of security – drones, doorbells, digital systems – and their ownership
Home security, domestic threats, and safe spaces; private security, personal safety, and safekeeping
Questions and definitions of care: carefree (secure, from the Latin securus, meaning without care), careless, and caregiving

The conference organisers welcome individual proposals or panel proposals. Individual participants should submit abstracts of no more than 300 words for a 20-minute paper. Panel proposals will normally consist of an overall proposal of 200 words, plus individual abstracts of no more than 150 words for each of 3 papers for 1½-hour sessions. However, proposals for innovative, alternative panel formats are also encouraged. All proposals should include a short academic biography (50-100 words) for each presenter. Please also indicate if you prefer to attend online or if you are able to attend in person. Priority for online presentations will be reserved for those with accessibility issues or those who are outside of Ireland. Due to limited capacity, we may not be able to meet all requests for online presentations.

Papers from all disciplines in American Studies are welcome, including literary studies, history, politics, economics, geography, science, philosophy, media studies, film studies, photography, art, music and dance, cultural studies, international relations, and others, and from any theoretical or practical perspective. The IAAS and the Annual Conference are dedicated to equality, diversity, and inclusion, and we welcome papers from under-represented groups. The deadline for submissions, to IAAS2023@ul.ie, is 31 January 2023.

All presenters at the Annual Conference must be members of the IAAS. More information is available here: https://iaas.ie/memberships/.

The 2023 IAAS Annual Conference will be hosted by University of Limerick and run by Tim Groenland, David Coughlan, and Clair Sheehan. For more information, contact us at IAAS2023@ul.ie.

Heidelberg Center for American Studies 20th Annual Spring Academy Conference (20–24th March 2023)

Posted on October 18, 2022October 18, 2022 by Jack Heeney

Heidelberg Center for American Studies 20th Annual Spring Academy Conference

Heidelberg, Germany, 20–24 March, 2023

*Call for Papers *

The twentieth HCA Spring Academy on American Culture, Economics, Geography, History, Literature, Politics, and Religion will be held from March 20-24, 2023. The Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) invites applications for this annual one-week conference that provides twenty international Ph.D. students with the opportunity to present and discuss their Ph.D. projects.

The HCA Spring Academy invites participants to work closely with experts in their respective fields of study and offers workshops held by visiting scholars.

We encourage applications that pursue an interdisciplinary approach and range broadly across the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Papers can be presented on any subject relating to the study of the United States of America. Possible topics include American identity, issues of ethnicity, gender, transatlantic relations, U.S. domestic and foreign policy, economics, as well as various aspects of American history, literature, religion, geography, law, musicology, and culture. Proposals should include a preliminary title and run to no more than 300 words.

Participants are requested to prepare a 20-minute presentation of their research project, which will be followed by a 40-minute discussion. The presentations will be arranged into ten panel groups.

In addition to cross-disciplinary and international discussions during the panel sessions, the Spring Academy aims at creating a pleasant collegial atmosphere for further scholarly exchange and contact.

Accommodation will be provided by the Heidelberg Center for American Studies.

Thanks to a small travel fund, the Spring Academy is able to subsidize travel expenses for participants registered and residing in soft-currency countries. Scholarship applicants will need to document the necessity for financial aid and explain how they plan to cover any potentially remaining expenses. In addition, a letter of recommendation from their doctoral advisor is required.

START OF APPLICATION PROCESS: August 15, 2022

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: November 15, 2022

SELECTIONS WILL BE MADE BY: January 2023

PLEASE USE OUR ONLINE APPLICATION SYSTEM: www.hca-springacademy.de

MORE INFORMATION: www.hca.uni-heidelberg.de

FOR FURTHER QUESTIONS: springacademy@hca.uni-heidelberg.de

CFP: Eye/I on Canada: Exclusion and Inclusion, University of Bialystok, Poland, 21st-23rd Sept 2022

Posted on January 20, 2022January 20, 2022 by Sarah McCreedy

Eye/I on Canada: Exclusion and Inclusion Voix/Voie du Canada: Exclusion et Inclusion

The 9th Congress of Polish Canadianists / 9ème Congrès des Canadianistes Polonais

21-23 September 2022 / 21-23 septembre 2022 University of Białystok, Poland / Université de Białystok, Pologne

Call For Papers

In the midst of global Covid-19 pandemic, not only Canada, but all the states, experienced challenges they had never faced before. The crisis forced individuals, communities and countries to rethink and question the way modern societies operate on manifold levels. The strain put on health care, education and welfare systems has significantly reshuffled the workplace and family dynamics, exacerbating existing inequalities related to gender, class and ethnicity and affecting communities of colour, as well as other disadvantaged, marginalized and excluded groups in a disproportionate manner. Confined to their homes, many people have found perpetual isolation overwhelming and experienced long-term psychological impacts. As a response to these feelings of exclusion, on both individual and collective levels, new ways of connecting with others have emerged, giving rise to as varied new phenomena as zoom meetings, online panel discussions, workshops and conferences, virtual support groups, and digital cultural initiatives, including exhibitions, concerts, performances and other live-stream events. The economic discrepancies and social injustice aggravated by the pandemic as well as attempts to foster a sense of belonging make us reflect upon past and present forms of exclusion and inclusion.

The organizers of the 9th Congress of the Polish Association for Canadian Studies (PACS) are pleased to invite scholars working across various disciplines, as well as writers and artists, to submit paper and panel proposals which consider the broadly-understood issues of exclusion and inclusion in the Canadian context. We are interested in bringing together scholars from various fields, especially but not exclusively, politics and public policy, international relations, social studies, history, literature and the arts, cultural and media studies, linguistics, etc. We encourage interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives and welcome abstract submissions from postgraduate students.

Though the following list is not exhaustive, papers and panels may address the following themes:

 representations of inclusion and exclusion in the arts, literature, film, theatre, the media, etc;
 making and revising the literary canon; genre fiction vs. the canon, etc.;

 instances of censorship;
 historical narratives: silencing/recovering the past;
 political, social and communal practices of exclusion and inclusion;
 linguistic practices of exclusion and inclusion;
 relationships between the centre and periphery (in both literal and metaphorical sense);
 conflicting values: individualism vs. communitarianism;
 isolation and alienation;
 solidarity and participation;
 othering and/or belonging (migrants and refugees; racial, ethnic, religious, gender and LGBTidentities);
 Indigenous experiences of exclusion;
 Quebecois separatism / sovereignty;
 representations and discourses of disability;
 race, gender, LGBTQ+, age (in)equality;
 marginalization and discrimination;
 opportunities and challenges of diversity;
 borders and barriers (geographic, political, social, economic, etc);
 Covid-19-related experiences of exclusion and inclusion, pandemic literature, etc;
 digital inclusion/exclusion (new media technologies and platforms, podcasts, blogs, socialmedia, etc.);
Individual proposals, in English or French, should be 300-400 words long. Please attach a short bio (max. 200 words) to your conference paper proposal. For panels, in English or French, please send the title of the panel and a 250-word presentation explaining the overall focus, together with a 300-400- word abstract and 200-word bio for each participant.

Deadline for abstracts: February 28, 2022
Notification of acceptance: March 15, 2022
Proposal submission address: 9ptbkcongress@gmail.com

Regular fee (non-PACS members): 600 PLN / 135 EUR / 200 CAD / 160 USD Reduced fee (PACS members): 450 PLN / 105 EUR / 150 CAD / 120 USD Student fee: 350 PLN / 80 EUR / 120 CAD / 90 USD

Organizers:

Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun (conference secretary for English-speaking section) Ewelina Feldman-Kołodziejuk (head of the organizing committee)
Weronika Łaszkiewicz
Małgorzata Kamecka

Edyta Sacharewicz (conference secretary for French-speaking section)

Credits
The conference organizers would like to thank Justyna Fruzińska for allowing us to include her logo Eye on Canada in the conference materials.

CFP: POETRY AND/AS CRITICISM

Posted on December 6, 2021December 6, 2021 by Catherine Gander

How might we understand the at times fraught, at times generative relationship between poetry and criticism?

What does it take for poetry to be, as Matthew Arnold proclaimed, “a criticism of life”, or as Audre Lorde insisted, “a vital necessity… toward survival and change?” And what steps must we take to, in the words of Adrienne Rich, “enter an old text from a new critical direction”?

How might epigraphs function as critical measures of the poem which follows? Is there a different rhythm for reading reviews in the same magazine as we encounter poems? How does the poet-critic negotiate the demands of both roles in relation? And what work can poetry criticism do to bring about cultural awareness and even change?

One day symposium

Maynooth University, 21^st March 2022.

Our chiasmus takes account of the symbiosis that exists between poetry and criticism, seeking to explore the reciprocity and tensions therein. Poems such as Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism (1711), Anne Carson’s Glass Essay (1994), W.H. Auden’s The Sea and The Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1944), and Vahni Capildeo’s reviews-in-verse in Skin Can Hold (2019) melt the distinctions we usually make between verse and prose, poetry and criticism, into air. Essays such as Sandeep Parmar’s ‘Not a British Subject: Race and Poetry in the UK’ (2015) and ‘Still Not a British Subject: Race and UK Poetry’ point to the work to be done in addressing the structures of whiteness in Anglophone poetry criticism, and “expanding the definition of innovative or avant-garde to account for challenges to the expressive and individual lyric mode posed by poets of colour.”

Whatever the relationship between poetry and criticism, it is one of vital importance, shaping how poems are written and received, canons formed, interrogated, and reformed, and poetic energies unleashed in both verse and prose.

This one-day symposium on March 21^st at Maynooth University, Ireland, seeks to address such questions, and more, bringing together scholars working on poetry, poetics, literary studies, and other relevant areas. We especially welcome work from BAME/BIPOC scholars, poets and writers.

We are honoured to host Professor Sandeep Parmar and Dr Mary-Jean Chan as our joint plenary speakers.

While we hope this symposium will be in person (abiding by the Covid-19 measurements required by the Government of Ireland, which includes mandatory mask-wearing), we reserve the right to pivot online in the interests of public safety.

Please send us an abstract along with a brief biography to Dr Karl O’Hanlon and Dr Catherine Gander at poetryascrit@gmail.com by January 15^th 2022.

Possible topics might include, but are not limited to:

Critical poetic forms (e.g. poetic essays, odes and palinodes, elegies, epistles, parody, burlesque, reviews-in-verse)
Public-facing critical cultures (platforms, media, audience)
Poetry criticism and race
Poetry criticism and gender
Poetry criticism and ‘craft’
Poetry responding to criticism and vice versa
The social function of poetry
Reviewing and rhetoric: critical arguments in the ‘poetry wars’
Canon formation, occlusion and marginalisation
The role of the poet-critic
Lyric subjectivity and new lyric studies
The roles of various reviewing platforms
Literary politics, self-fashioning and critical reputations
Prose criticism and style

Get Started

CFP: Transatlantic Studies Association 20th Annual Conference

Posted on November 30, 2021 by Sarah McCreedy

Transatlantic Studies Association
20th Annual Conference
University of Kent, Canterbury
4-6 July 2022

_________

Call for Papers

Submissions are invited for the 2022 Annual Conference

KEYNOTE LECTURES

Professor Jussi Hanhimäki (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies)

“Pax Transatlantica: America and Europe in the Post-Cold War Era”

AND

Dr Sarah Meer (University of Cambridge)

“American Claimants: Transatlantic Tales of Humility and Grandeur”

AND

Professor Mark Webber (University of Birmingham)

“NATO in a Tripolar World: Does the New Strategic Concept Deliver?”

PLUS

A Roundtable discussion on:

The End of an Era? The Transatlantic Alliance in International Politics from 9/11 to Covid-19
_________

The TSA is a broad network of scholars who use the ‘transatlantic’ as a frame of reference for their work in a variety of disciplines, including (but not limited to): history, politics and international relations, and literary studies. All transatlantic-themed paper and panel proposals from these and related disciplines are welcome.

The conference is organised around a number of subject themes, each of which is convened by members of the conference programme committee. If you would like to discuss your paper or panel proposal prior to submission, please contact the relevant programme committee members. This year’s subject themes are:

Diplomatic and international history
David Ryan, david.ryan@ucc.ie, Chris Jespersen, christopher.jespersen@ung.edu

Political and intellectual history
Joe Renouard, jrenoua1@jhu.edu, Gaynor Johnson, G.L.Johnson@kent.ac.uk

Social, cultural and religious history

Finn Pollard, fpollard@lincoln.ac.uk, Kathryn Gray, kathryn.gray@plymouth.ac.uk

International Relations and Security Studies

Michele Testoni, mtestoni@faculty.ie.edu, Joe Renouard, jrenoua1@jhu.edu

Literature, film, and theatre
Donna Gessell, donna.gessell@ung.edu, Finn Pollard, fpollard@lincoln.ac.uk

Transatlantic memory and heritage

Kristin Cook, kc31@soas.ac.uk, Kathryn Gray, kathryn.gray@plymouth.ac.uk

Latin America in a transatlantic context

Robert Howes, robert.howes@kcl.ac.uk, Thomas Mills, t.c.mills@lancaster.ac.uk

Ethnicity, race and migration

Thomas Mills, t.c.mills@lancaster.ac.uk, Tony McCulloch, tony.mcculloch@ucl.ac.uk

Special subject theme:

The TSA is pleased to join SOAS and the University of York in welcoming proposals that seek to better understand the UK-US nuclear relationship as enshrined in the 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement (MDA). This arrangement formalizes the US support for the UK’s nuclear weapons system, and regulates exchanges of sensitive nuclear materials and know-how between the two countries. The Mutual Defence Agreement has been regularly renewed since its inception, with the next renewal due in 2024.

While the nuclear relationship is commonly thought of as being at the heart of what is referred to as the “special relationship”, there is no academic centre in either the US and UK that has a sustained focus on this topic, and scholarly literature about it is sparse. The TSA thus encourages proposals for papers that elucidate and interrogate the Mutual Defence Agreement and UK-US nuclear relationship, drawing on traditional strategic studies, peace studies and critical perspectives.

For queries, please contact Professor Dan Plesch: dp27@soas.ac.uk

Conference Format

The TSA fully intends to hold its 2022 annual conference as a full in-person meeting. If there are unexpected and significant limitations on gatherings and international travel, the TSA Management Committee will reconsider the format accordingly. While primarily an in-person meeting, we will reserve a limited number of slots for online panels. These panels must be wholly online (i.e. all presenters and the chair will participate online); individual paper submissions will not be considered for online delivery. If you wish your panel to be delivered wholly online, please explain briefly when making your submission why this needs to be the case and/or why the panel would benefit from this format of delivery. Please note that panels and papers accepted for in-person delivery will not subsequently be considered for online delivery.

Other formats

In addition to the subject themes above, we welcome papers and panels on any aspect of transatlantic studies. Interdisciplinary papers and panels are particularly welcome, as are innovative formats, such as roundtables, workshops or multimedia presentations.

Submission Instructions

Panel proposals should constitute three or four presenters and a Chair (as well as a discussant if desired). Panel proposals should be sent by email as one document attachment to tsakent2022@gmail.com, and include:

300-word overview of the panel theme;
300-word abstracts for each of the papers;
100-word author biographies;
2-page CVs for all participants.

The subject line of the email for panel proposals should read: ‘TSA Proposal-[Last name of panel convenor]-[Subject theme]’ (state ‘Other’ if not falling under listed themes) (E.g. ‘TSA Proposal-Smith-Diplomacy and International History’).

Individual paper proposals should be sent by email as one document attachment, and include:

300-word abstract for the paper
100-word author biography;
2-page CV.

The subject line of the email for paper proposals should read: ‘TSA Proposal-[Last name of presenter]-[Subject theme]’ (state ‘Other’ if not falling under listed themes) (E.g. ‘TSA Proposal-Smith-Other).

Please note: all submissions must come to the conference email address to be considered by the programme committee.

Travel Grants

The TSA particularly welcomes proposals from new members and junior scholars. Travel grants of £150 each are available to support early career scholars presenting a paper at the conference. As a result of funding from the Halle Foundation, the TSA is able this year to offer a number of additional travel grants to support early career scholars presenting a paper on any aspect of relations between the United States and Germany.

If wishing to apply for a travel grant, applicants should indicate this in the body of the email when submitting their paper or panel. If papers are believed to qualify for Halle Foundation funding, this should be indicated. In addition to the materials requested above, travel grant applicants should include a brief statement explaining why it is important for them to attend the TSA conference. For further details about TSA travel grants, see the TSA website: www.transatlanticstudies.com.

Deadline for panel and paper proposals: 15 January 2021
All paper and panel proposals, and travel grant applications, should be sent to the conference email:

tsakent2022@gmail.com.

Contact details

Chair of TSA: Thomas Mills: t.c.mills@lancaster.ac.uk

Vice-Chair of TSA: Kristin Cook: kc31@soas.ac.uk

Local Organiser: Gaynor Johnson, G.L.Johnson@kent.ac.uk

TSA Charity Number: SC039378

www.transatlanticstudies.com

Extended Deadline: Emily Dickinson International Society Conference, 2022

Posted on November 4, 2021 by Sarah McCreedy

Extended Deadline

The 2022 Emily Dickinson International Society Conference, “Dickinson and Foreignhood,” and the Dickinson Critical Institute in Seville

The Emily Dickinson International Society is extending its deadline until November 20 for proposal submission to its international conference, “Dickinson and Foreignhood,” and to its Critical Institute, both to take place at the College of Philology, University of Seville, Spain. The conference will go from Tuesday, July 12, to Thursday, July 14. The Critical Institute will be on Monday, July 11.

The Dickinson Critical Institute helps graduate students and early career scholars develop their work in collaboration with established Dickinson specialists. For more information about the Critical Institute in Seville, please see the conference website (https://edisforeignhoodconference.org/). To apply to the Institute, submit a one-page cv and a 500-800-word description of your project to Eliza Richards (ecr@email.unc.edu) and to Karen Sánchez-Eppler (kjsanchezepp@amherst.edu) no later than November 20. Use the subject heading “[Last Name] Dickinson Institute Application,” and attach your application materials as Word or pdf documents. Decisions on acceptance will be made by December 15.

The EDIS International Conference “Dickinson and Foreignhood” takes its cue from “A South Wind – has a pathos” (c.1864), where the poet refers to “much not understood – / The fairer – for the farness – / And for the foreignhood.” These lines represent the unknown as more beautiful when distant and unfamiliar, or foreign. The conference seeks to develop knowledge of how Dickinson understood the foreign, how she has been understood as foreign, and how foreign peoples have understood her.

The Program Committee welcomes all work on configurations of the foreign, broadly understood, in Dickinson’s writing, including:

• Conceptions of the foreign (or what we might call otherness) in Dickinson’s culture and historical moment

• Discussions of race, ethnicity, class, disability, gender, sexuality, and other categories that have historically been associated with alienation and cultural disenfranchisement

• Dickinson, geography, navigation, and foreign travel

• Parts of Dickinson’s environment, culture, or identity that seemed foreign to her

• Immigration, emigration, and exile

• Dickinson’s reception abroad

• Dickinson, foreign languages, and translation

• Lyric alienation and the poetics of estrangement

• Invasion, contagion, and infection as encounters with the foreign

Finally, regardless of theme, all proposals engaging serious scholarship on Dickinson’s work are welcome. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words, along with a brief biography of 100 words maximum, to Jefferey Simons (dickinsoninseville@dfing.uhu.es) and to Cristanne Miller (ccmiller@buffalo.edu) before November 20. Please specify if you plan to present virtually rather than in person. The conference Program Committee will respond by December 15.

For further information, please see the websites of the conference (https://edisforeignhoodconference.org/) and of The Emily Dickinson International Society (http://www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org/).