This panel addresses the American romance in light of recent developments in early American studies. While many Britishists accepted the ascendancy of the anglophone novel, others challenged this teleology, and the transatlantic turn has invited us to consider whether the romance genre survived the New World. The existence of a colonial romance would challenge the “birth” of the American genre in the wake of Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819), and revising that literary history could in turn broaden American romance beyond a hoary pro-slavery ideology. Post-WWII critics arguing for an American romance tradition often cite Hawthorne’s own christening of his novels as “romances” as a key piece of evidence. Nina Baym, on the other hand, has argued that the novel/romance distinction was one that mid-twentieth century critics invented retroactively to privilege certain (white, male) authors and reproduce the ideology of American exceptionalism. These trends and controversies (with the exception of Gretchen Woertendyke) ignore the hemispheric turn in American studies and the potential to locate an American romance formation borne of cross-lingual literary exchanges. They also ignore publications by David Quint, David Heller-Roazen, Victora Kahn, and others that redefine romance in formal, not thematic, terms. Finally, American romance scholarship has an opportunity to address emergent theoretical paradigms: posthumanism, the anthropocene, and object-oriented ontology, just to name a few . The time is ripe to revisit the American romance, and I welcome papers that offer a theory of genre, case study, or critique of methodology. Please submit a 250-word abstract and CV to express interest. For the sake of simplicity, I am requesting traditionally formatted papers without audiovisual elements.

Full name /name of organization: Society of Early Americanists (SEA)

Deadline for submissions: August 30, 2016

Contact email: amanda.l.johnson@rice.edu

Critical topics and methods have changed in countless ways from the heyday of the formalist critics of the 1940s and 50s. Writers such as Wellek, Brooks, Wimsatt, Frye and Matthiessen were continuously challenged by later generations who questioned the ideological, gendered, and ethnocentric assumptions guiding the critical preoccupations and methods of the Formalist school. This panel seeks papers focused on the possibility for questioning, intervention, or reversal implicitly or explicitly expressed in the interpretive models and rhetorical form of one or more standard texts from this era of American literary criticism, such as The Well-Wrought Urn, American Renaissance, The Verbal Icon, Theory of Literature or Anatomy of Criticism. Depending on one’s current methods and materials, is this text now a classic or a dinosaur? How do the poetics, aesthetics and theoretical principles of these works compare to the key texts and methods of the last twenty years? Papers may consider one or more of the major critical texts of the era (1940-1960), or provide an exposition regarding a lesser known, though significant work.

Location: Baltimore, Maryland (Marriot Waterfront)
Organization: Northeast Modern Language Association

Contact Email: inksaudible@gmail.com

Registration now open for a symposium at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.

Dates: Friday 23rd & Saturday 24th September 2016.

Keynote speakers: Michelle Martin, University of Washington, and Gabrielle Cliff-Hodges, University of Cambridge.

Published in 1976, Mildred Taylor’s best-known work Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry continues to be highly celebrated and challenged. A Newbury Award Winner, appearing in school curricula in both the US and UK, Roll of Thunder also appears on the infamous ‘banned books’ lists. Taylor’s work has been discussed by a range of academics in education and literary research, and this symposium will explore multiple strands of thought and dialogue on this landmark text and related themes and issues in children’s literature.

Day Two of the symposium will focus on educational issues, bringing together researchers with teachers, trainees and other practitioners to share ideas about Roll of Thunder and children’s literature more generally.

Deadline for submissions: September 23, 2016

Organisation: Cambridge/Homerton Research & Teaching Centre for Children’s Literature, Cambridge University (UK)

Contact Sarah Hardstaff at sflh2@cam.ac.uk or Dawn Sardella-Ayres at ds632@cam.ac.uk.

See the symposium webpage here for further details and booking: https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/events/conferences/rollofthunder40/

I invite proposals for a collection of essays that examines the theme of revenge in American fiction, film, and television. Vengeance – that quest for violent reciprocity – is one of storytelling’s oldest and most enduring plots. But in the modern American imaginary the familiar shape of retribution assumes a new form. Over and over, avengers on page and screen desire not only blood but also symbolic victories. In Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer (1996) a troubled protagonist named John Smith yearns to kill the one “white man [who] was responsible for everything that had gone wrong” for Native Americans. In Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis (2003), an outraged financial analyst assassinates a billionaire who upset the “balance” of global capitalism. For these characters, personal grievance turns into political statement, and payback evolves from a selfish drive into a systemic reckoning. From bloodthirsty class warriors in The Iron Heel (1908) and Absalom, Absalom! (1936) to anti-patriarchal furies of Beloved (1987) and Foxfire (1993) to contemporary assailants in The Wire (2002-2008) and Django Unchained (2012), avengers haunt American narratives.

Despite vengeance’s popularity across 20th- and 21st-century fiction, television, and film, little research on the topic exists. While scholars have thoroughly examined the classical, dramatic traditions of revenge tragedies – especially those from Attic and Elizabethan/Jacobean periods – they have left modern American iterations of the genre largely unconsidered. In fact, no book-length study dedicated to American revenge narratives exists in recent criticism.

Reckonings fixes this scholarly blind spot by historicizing the revenge genre’s unique transformations in American culture over the long century. For this anthology, I welcome essays that theorize the complex visions of retributive justice found in the nation’s stories. The volume will occupy a unique place in literary and American studies, offering critics and cultural historians a revenge genre study of unprecedented depth.

Some topics of interest are (but not limited to):

Revenge in American modernism
Revenge in graphic novels
Philosophies of retribution in contemporary fiction
Feminism, vengeance, and film
Lesser-known or avant garde treatments of the revenge genre
Avengers and environmentalism
Revenge in serial television
Depictions of vengeance and the American justice system
Science fiction and revenge
Psychology, narrative, and the science of payback
Vengeance and morality
21st century re-imaginings of the revenge tragedy
Please send a 500-700 word chapter abstract and CV to Kyle Wiggins (kwiggins@bu.edu) by September 6, 2016. I expect to include approximately 10 essays of 8,000 words each. Accepted authors must submit completed chapters by January 17, 2017.

Publication discussions with an intererested press have begun.

Deadline for submissions: September 6, 2016
Full name / name of organization: Kyle Wiggins, Boston University
Contact email: kwiggins@bu.edu

Louis Owens (1948-2002) was one of the major voices of contemporary Native American literature and scholarship. His work includes five acclaimed novels, scholarly studies, and some one hundred essays. The extensive oeuvre Owens produced includes writing on themes of mixed-blood identities, working-class life, travel, the western American landscape, the environment, survivance, tricksters, story-telling, and memory. Owens was a scholar of international stature on John Steinbeck, a figure who strongly influenced his own realist fiction.
This edited collection of critical essays will provide an opportunity for new understandings of the contributions of Louis Owens as a story-teller and scholar. We are soliciting essays dealing with such topics as his gothic and noir modes of fiction; re-workings of Euro-American and indigenous cultures; misunderstanding and non-communication between two worlds; tribal beliefs and Choctaw culture; post-Indianism; dispossession, alienation, and exilic existence; historiographic imaginings; violence and evil; environmental despoliation; representations of place and space; and colonial ghosts.

While most of the volume will concern Owens’ fictions, the editors will be interested especially in essays addressing the scholarship of Louis Owens, theoretical contributions, and treatments of his work in comparative global contexts. We welcome and encourage theoretical discussion, but essays should employ clear and accessible language.

Please send 250-word abstracts, or full draft manuscripts of previously unpublished material, to the co-editors no later than January 31, 2017 for consideration. Include a 100-150 word bio. Authors will be notified by February 15, 2017. Final drafts of selected abstracts or manuscripts will be due on June 30, 2017. Essays should not exceed 10,000 words; bibliography in Chicago style; and 11 pt. Courier font with one inch margin. Anticipated date of manuscript completion to be submitted to the publisher for peer review is planned for December 1, 2017. Revisions will be required in early fall of 2017. Publication of individual manuscripts cannot be guaranteed.

Send proposals and submissions as Word file attachments via email to both Joe Lockard (Joe.Lockard@asu.edu), Department of English, Arizona State University, and Irene Vernon (Irene.Vernon@colostate.edu), Chair, Ethnic Studies Department, Colorado State University. Queries are welcomed.

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.