October 14- 15, 2016 Kutaisi, Georgia

 Organized by:

ATSU Foreign Affairs and Development Office, Prof. Vakhtang  Amaglobeli Center for American Studies & John Dos Passos Association of Georgia.

 Supporters:

US Embassy in Georgia & Akaki Tsereteli State University

We invite a variety of contributions that address any of the following topics:

  • U.S. Literature
  • U.S. Education System
  • U.S. Culture
  • Art
  • Philosophy
  • Mass Media
  • Social and Women’s Issues
  • U.S. History
  • U.S. Politics
  • Religion
  • Law
  • Economics
  • Healthcare
  • Ecology
  • Georgian-American Relations

Working Languages: Georgian and English

 Style guides for papers:

Conference proceedings will be published as a journal. Manuscripts should not ordinarily exceed fifteen standard pages (A4) including the abstract and the contributor’s short bio. All papers must conform to The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition in all matters of form and should be typewritten in MS Word 2003. Use Times New Roman: 12 pts fonts for the main text and all additional parts except endnotes and index (where you should use 10 pts), and chapter headings (where you should use 16 pts). All text should be single-spaced.

Time Limit for Speakers: 15 minutes

Time Limit for Discussion: 5-7 minutes

Registration Fee:

$50 (including taxes).The registration fee will cover participation in the sessions and publication expenses.
Fees should be paid by wire transfer to the conference bank account.

THE SUBMISSION DEADLINE FOR THE REGISTRATION FORMS AND PROPOSALS IS:

September 10, 2016

Contact:          ATSU Foreign Affairs and Development Office

AkakiTsereteli State University

                        59Tamar Mepe St., 4600Kutaisi, Georgia

                        Tel.:    +995 431 245784

                        Fax :    +995 431 243833

E-mail:Malvina.Davituliani@atsu.edu.ge

dmalvina@hotmail.com

 

Contact Person:           Malvina Davituliani

 

IJAS logo

 

The Irish Journal of American Studies is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal that publishes work on all areas related to American Studies.

 

 

The editorial committee now invites submissions for inclusion in a Special Issue of the journal on the work of Marilynne Robinson. To be published in Spring 2017, this Special Issue will explore the literary, historical, political, and religious contexts of Robinson’s writing, both fiction and non-fiction. Considering her role as a cultural figure and public intellectual in American society, this issue welcomes proposals on all aspects of Robinson’s writing.

 

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent to the Editors at irishjournalofamericanstudies@gmail.com by 22 July 2016.

Successful contributors will be notified by 5 August 2016.

Completed drafts of essays will be expected by 1 December 2016.

 

All contributions will be subject to anonymous peer review.

Submissions should follow the 8th edition of the MLA style guide. Writers are asked to maximise the use of parenthetical citations, include a Works Cited list, and footnotes/endnotes should be avoided where practical. Articles should be no more than 6,000 words in length.

 

For more information on the Irish Journal of American Studies, and to read back issues, visit:

www.ijas.iaas.ie

International Symposium

October 19-20, 2017

École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Lyon (France)

Thoreau from across the pond

Organized by Julien Nègre (ENS de Lyon)

François Specq (ENS de Lyon)

and Laura Dassow Walls (University of Notre Dame)

Guest speakers (confirmed):

– Professor Branka Arsić (Columbia University)

– Professor William Rossi (University of Oregon)

In honor of Henry David Thoreau’s 200th birthday in 2017, this conference would like to interrogate the multiplicity of viewpoints from which he is read today. In recent years, Thoreau’s writings have been approached from a variety of perspectives: he has been envisioned as a poet and a philosopher, but also as a political thinker, a scientist of sorts, a surveyor, a lover of nature and an environmentalist. While these different perspectives complement each other to a certain extent, they also reveal how multifaceted his writings are, and how elusive his figure remains. Something resists in his texts, which is probably the surest sign of his ongoing relevance today.

The purpose of this conference is to confront these different readings and explore the issue of how we perceive and understand Thoreau today. The geographical separation between Concord and Lyon invites us to question the distance–temporal, intellectual, theoretical perhaps–between Thoreau and us. What does it mean to read Thoreau from across the pond, that is to say, in this case, from across the Atlantic, but also from the 21st century and from the frame of reference of our own modernity? In a journal entry from June 7, 1851, Thoreau playfully warns: “Keep your distance, do not infringe on the interval between us, and I will pick pick [sic] up lime & lay real terrestrial eggs for you, & let you know by cackling when I have done it.” What is the right “distance” to read Thoreau, then? What sort of theoretical tools, historiographic work of contextualization or biographical sources do we need to find the right “interval”? Thinking about Thoreau from across the pond also invites us to consider his inscription in American culture, both in his own time (through the study of his reception by his contemporaries) and in the way he has been perceived by several different generations of readers.

In 2009, scholars from around the world gathered in Lyon for the “Thoreauvian Modernities” conference, the first Thoreau event ever organized on this side of the Atlantic. That gathering led to important debates on Thoreau’s “modernity,” as evidenced by the multiple and sometimes divergent approaches displayed in the Thoreauvian Modernities volume (University of Georgia Press, 2013). Following up on these debates, the organizers of the present conference are interested in papers that illustrate and confront the variety of theoretical approaches and perspectives on Thoreau’s texts and his life. Participants might consider, but not necessarily limit themselves to the following topics:

– New approaches to Thoreau’s writings

– Thoreau’s texts and their inscription within the fields of philosophy, politics, science, environmental studies, etc.

– Thoreau’s life

– Thoreau’s network: his friends, relatives, correspondents, etc. and their influence on his thinking;

– Thoreau’s sources: the documents he used, read, owned, borrowed, annotated, etc.

– Thoreau’s reception by his contemporaries and until today.

To submit a proposal, please send an abstract (250-300 words) and a short CV to thoreau.lyon2017@ens-lyon.fr by September 15, 2016.

University of Southern Denmark, Odense, May 22-24, 2017
American Colors: Across the Disciplinary Spectrum
Second call for papers. Deadline: August 10, 2016

 

Color defines America. First of all color defines America through ideas of slavery, race, and civil rights. W.E.B. Du Bois’ claim that ‘The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line’ is certainly hard to deny in an American context. Yet American Colors are far from all about race. The respective colors of the Democratic and the Republican Party, since 1976 partitioning the country into demographics of blue and red, are significant reminders of the power of American Colors to divide and contrast. On the other hand, American Colors are not necessarily divisive, even if they stay distinct. Whether it is in the color of the rainbow, as seen on the pride flag of the LGBT community, or in the idea of ethnic and racial diversity, the notion of colors mixed as well as existing in diverse unison is key to the idea of America. To this, we can add shades of black and green too. On the one hand, modern America is constructed on, and by, ‘black gold’ (oil). On the other hand, it is precisely due to the success of motorized industry that the ‘green movement’ in its contemporary iteration had its beginnings in America, just as it is the yardstick of any contemporary debate on the gray matters of waste and pollution. As the largest consumer of energy worldwide and with the world’s largest ecological footprint, America is the extreme against which both local and global perspectives of all ‘green’ discourse must necessarily be measured.

Confirmed keynote speakers
Professor George Lipsitz, University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Black Studies
Professor Scott Slovic, University of Idaho, English Department

Confirmed plenary speakers
ASANOR: Associate Professor Zeljka Svrljuga, University of Bergen, Department of Foreign Languages
DAAS: Professor David Nye, University of Southern Denmark, Center for American Studies,
FASA: Academy Research Fellow Rani-Henrik Andersson, Academy of Finland, University of Helsinki, Department of World Cultures
SAAS: Professor Danuta Fjellestad, Uppsala University, Department of English
The conference calls for—but is not limited to—workshop proposals and papers on American Colors of all kinds, from the color of music (e.g. Blues), to the dark corners of American Gothic and the red gore of American horror, on to the purchasing power of the mighty greenback dollar.

Papers are invited that address, but are not limited to, American Colors in
· American literature and American literary history

· History and historiography

· US politics

· US art, music, and popular culture

· Transnationalism

· Racial studies

· Gender studies

· Environmental Studies

· Sociology and social studies

· Representations of the US in cultural forms from other countries

· The study of Scandinavian-American connections

Please send proposals to brondal@sdu.dk by August 10, 2016. Proposals for individual panel presentations (between 15-20 minutes) should be no longer than 250 words; proposals for panels or workshops should be no longer than 500 words.
The conference is open to scholars and students from all over the world, but we offer lower registration fees to members of NAAS (Nordic Association for American Studies), EAAS (European Association for American Studies), and ASA (American Studies Association in the U.S).

 

For more information, visit the conference website here.

13th International SAAS Conference
Understanding (Human) Nature
University of Extremadura, 5 – 7 April 2017

 

Abstracts are invited for the 13th International Conference of the Spanish Association for American Studies, which will be hosted by the University of Extremadura, in Cáceres. The thematic focus of this conference will focus on the understanding of (human) nature.

How can we define (human) Nature? What is implied in being human? What is a human? What have human beings done to/with/against Nature? These nagging questions have been at the core of philosophy and science since antiquity, never finding a definitive answer. In the American context, the Human / Nature seem to be a work in progress in need of constant redefinition each time a new discovery is made, a new boundary is broken. Likewise, the Western world seems at present haunted by the animal question, a question that goes on a par with the definition of what is like to be a human. Historically, women, slaves, peoples of color, the mentally unbalanced, and the disabled were deprived of their human status. The twentieth century marked by the horrors of two world wars led philosophers to the question of the human with a heightened intensity. Heidegger, Lévinas, Derrida, Agamben have been fundamental in working towards a redefinition of the human, and such was the extent towards which this debate increased that in 1966 Michel Foucault proclaimed the end of Man in The Order of Things: An Archaelogy of the Human Sciences, prompting the beginning of the posthuman turn. Is Nature still in consonance with Emerson’s romantic conception and do America’s classic images of open and wild spaces still exist?

In the midst of all these changes, American literature, art, history and culture have revealed their power to continue studying and evaluating (Human) Nature.

Given the breadth of the topic in question, we welcome papers that approach the question of (human) Nature from multiple theoretical and critical frameworks, within American Studies. Proposals for 20- minute papers can address (but are not limited to) any of the areas and topics listed below:

• Discourse and gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, disability, class and/or species

• Literature and the consequences of the Anthropocene: climate change, species extinction, overpopulation, waste…

• A chronology of the human: from the homo sapiens to the homo ecologicus and the homo digitalis

• Rethinking the human in fantasy, science fiction and/or speculative fiction

• Rethinking the human in film, television, comic books and graphic novels

• The new others: alien, cyborgs, monsters, “freaks,” superheroes, and machines

• From cogito ergo sunt to the embodied mind and the new discourses on matter

• Questioning logocentrism

• (Re)defining and (re)negotiating the humanities after the death of Man

• Rethinking and rewriting Nature/Landscape/Environment in American ethnic literatures and studies

• The (re)presentation and (re)articulation of Nature in American Studies

• Sense of place/Belonging

• The American sublime

• From environmental crisis to devastation

• The greening of American Studies

** The conference languages will be English and Spanish **

Proposals should be submitted for specific panels, the list of which is available here. The deadline for submissions is October 15th, 2016.

For more information, visit the conference website here.

A Celebration of the Life and Legacy of the New York Poet, 50 years on

When: Sunday, July 24th, 2016; 11.00am – 8.00pm

Where: The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH

What: This one-day colloquium will bring together poets, academics and members of the public to celebrate the life, work and artistic connections of Frank O’Hara, the New York poet, art critic, film maker and curator (at MoMA) who died 50 years ago on July 25th, 1966.

The event is being organised by the North American Poetics Network of CHASE (Consortium for the Humanities and Arts South-East England) and will consist of 3 panels which will examine and discuss O’Hara’s legacy with members of the audience.  Keynote speakers include: Geoff Ward (Cambridge University), Daniel Kane (Sussex) and Redell Olsen (Royal Holloway, University of London)

There will be evening performances by contemporary poets whose work has been influenced and inspired by O’Hara: Andrea Brady, Prue Chamberlain, Kayo Chingonyi, Caitlin Docherty, Jeff Hilson, Sophie Robinson. Peter Gizzi and Anne Waldman will also contribute via Skype / Video.

Papers: Abstracts (~200 words) of papers (15 minutes) are now being sought.  We are especially keen for contributions that place and examine O’Hara’s work and legacy in the contexts of his myriad friendships, connections and artistic interests.  O’Hara was so much more than just a New York poet and we want the discussion of his life and work at this event to reflect this. So, although we are looking for informed and informative academic papers for the panel sessions, we would like these contributions to be pitched so as to encourage discussion and engagement with the audience (which will include members of the public as well as academics).  In keeping with O’Hara’s style and poetics, we are hoping for a colloquium that is open and generous, serious and witty, conversational in the best sense.  This will be the best way of celebrating O’Hara’s work and his legacy, 50 years on from the day before he died.

Note: A limited number of bursaries to help graduate students attend and / or contribute are available due to a grant from the British Association for American Studies. These will be distributed on a first come first served basis.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: Friday, May 27th, 2016

Please email abstracts to: oharaconference@gmail.com

(Organising committee: Ben Hickman (Kent); Jordan Savage (Essex); Nick Selby (UEA); Steve Willey (Birkbeck))

2016 NASA Conference: American Studies after the Digital Turn

15-16 September 2016, Roosevelt Study Center, Middelburg, The Netherlands

We live in an era of academic “turns”: cultural, linguistic, transnational. The “digital turn” is something different, and has raised possibilities and predicaments for scholarly work on the United States—especially for Americanists working outside of the United States. The increased availability of digitized material has cut across other turns in American Studies: it makes some work easier, other work more difficult; it outdates some scholarly modes and revives other scholarly modes. Seemingly stale inquiries into American myths and symbols might have a digital revival, while the global reach of the digital might make transnationalism and interdisciplinary research seem less revolutionary or revisionist than it seemed even a decade ago.

The “digital humanities” have already gone through several cycles of celebration and lament. This is a good moment to take stock. European Americanists are particularly well-positioned to discuss the impact of the digital, given their long experience with transnational and comparative inquiries in American Studies. Additionally, Americanists in Europe, in the course of teaching and researching the United States from a distance, might have different uses for digital tools than their peers in the U.S.

Our concerns in this conference are practical, theoretical, and polemical. We are interested in papers addressing Americanists’ use of digitized sources and tools. How do they use digital sources in their work? How do they combine the reading of texts with digital tools? What counts as “interdisciplinary” for a field long associated with interdisciplinarity, for better or worse?

We are equally interested in cautions about digitization’s unintended consequences. How do Americanists view the possibilities of the digital in education? Do they envision significant shifts in the balance of funding and institutional settings caused by digitized sources and tools?

We are interested as well in the yield of digital research for Americanists in Europe, now that several major projects are running their course. What new results did digital research deliver?

Finally, we also invite proposals from scholars outside of “American Studies” proper—for instance, scholars of European history and literature who have backed their way into U.S. social, political, economic, cultural, intellectual, and literary history. What academic narratives of America inform their work? What old or new ideas from American Studies—keywords, clichés, slogans—have been most useful or most distracting? How did digital sources help them achieve their goals?

 

In this conference we hope to learn more about these questions and find inspiration in these keynote lectures:

Antal van den Bosch (Radboud University Nijmegen), Digital Humanities Data: Contradiction or the New Frontier?

John Corrigan (Florida State University), Digital Data and the Methodology of American Studies

Miriam Posner (UCLA), Fostering a Digital Humanities Project within the American Studies Paradigm

 

Examples of relevant panels include, but are not limited to:

  • American Studies research using digital sources and/or tools
  • Should I go digital, or rather not? The perks of a non-digital oasis
  • How to transfer an analog project to a digital one
  • The possibilities of multi- and interdisciplinary research
  • The changing contents of and accessibility to collections
  • Integrating space, image, text, and sound for American Studies research
  • Combining the digital and the analog in research and/or teaching
  • Involving students in digital projects
  • Lessons from the previous computer revolution (historiography)

 

The conference invites proposals (300 words plus CVs) for workshops, presentations, models, that fit either the methodological or the theoretical themes.

Participants who seek advice how to enrich/combine/extend their analog projects with digital applications, are more than welcome to submit a project as well. A forum of experts will offer feedback and recommendations.

Please, mail your submission to nasabestuur@gmail.com before June 1, 2016.

The conference will be held at the Roosevelt Study Center, Abdij 8, Middelburg, the Netherlands. The conference fee is € 50 for two days, including lunches and coffee/tea and a reception.

The organizing committee consists of:

George Blaustein, University of Amsterdam

Hans Krabbendam, Roosevelt Study Center, Middelburg

Frank Mehring, Radboud University Nijmegen

Lisanne Walma, Utrecht University

Polish Association for American Studies Annual Conference

American Studies Center, University of Warsaw,

27-29 October 2016

Transnational American Studies:

Histories, Methodologies, Perspectives

 

Plenary speakers:

  • Rob Kroes, Utrecht University, Netherlands
  • James Kyung-Jin Lee, University of California, Irvine
  • Agnieszka Soltysik-Monnet, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
  • Marta Figlerowicz, Yale University

 

Debate on American Studies in Poland

  • Ewa Łuczak, University of Warsaw;
  • Tadeusz Rachwał,  University of Social Sciences and Humanities (SWPS);
  • Marek Wilczyński, Gdańsk University

 

CALL FOR PAPERS

 

Can American studies benefit from expanding beyond its current intellectual framing by adopting a consciously transnational approach and a more determined interdisciplinary approach? What would such an evolution imply in various locations and cultural/intellectual/political contexts? How would it affect current hierarchies of knowledge production and distribution? Our aim is to provoke critical reflection on what it is we Americanists do and to expand the field of inquiry through methodological innovation.

 

Vernon Louis Parrington wrote in Main Currents in American Thought (1927) that he has “chosen to follow the broad path of our political, economic, and social development, rather than the narrower belletristic” – thereby he prospectively defined American studies as interdisciplinary. The field has since fared particularly well at the crossroads of literature and history, as evidenced in the work of the next generation of scholars, including the literary scholar F.O. Matthiessen and the historian Perry Miller, and in the myth and symbol school, whose founders include Henry Nash Smith and Leo Marx. Revisionary positions adopted by Lionel Trilling, Annette Kolodny and others critiquing American studies for neglecting minority perspectives and for reiterating the notion of American exceptionalism did not significantly alter this methodological frame. Feminism, ethnic and sexuality studies, and critical race theory have transformed the field’s hermeneutical perspectives since the 70s, while the end of the cold war helped crystallize a critique of American exceptionalism in the 90s and beyond. A recent development, perhaps even a paradigm change, is the influence of affect studies on explorations of American culture, as exemplified by the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Lauren Berlant.

All these developments notwithstanding, the field’s most rudimentary discursive procedures have retained many characteristics of a historicizing narrative and of literary readings. American studies is no longer devoted exclusively to literature and to political and social history, as emphasis has shifted to popular culture, including film, television and the new media. Yet, the field essentially remains a form of cultural studies, while social sciences, political science and economics, philosophy and art history are represented to a modest extent. This is especially clear in the construction of many American studies curricula and is reflected by institutional settings.

Linked to questions of methodology are recent calls for a transnational turn in American studies, theorized in recent decades by such scholars as (among others) Donald Pease, Amy Kaplan, Alice Kessler Harris, Rob Kroes, Heinz Ickstadt and Winfried Fluck. This approach means placing the US squarely in the global context rather than beginning with the premise of its special role. In fact, one of its main projects has been to challenge “the tenacious grasp of American exceptionalism,” as Kaplan put it.  Such calls appear to require a comparative perspective, including, though not limited to, the European. The approach may thus invite a discussion of American influences on European unification, or lead to placing the current immigrant crisis against the backdrop of American history, political system, and the way the US has integrated some of its constituent minorities. Conversely, the US is to be regarded not as unique but as occupying a determined place in the global economy and in the international system.

 

We are also keen to explore how writers, scholars, artists, filmmakers and others outside and within the United States have tackled received ideas about America, questioned its idealism and its founding mythology, or otherwise engaged with its self-image. Critical readings of America by outsiders represent a long-standing tradition that includes Alexis de Tocqueville and a multitude of others, Henryk Sienkiewicz and Bernard-Henri Lévy among them. Also worth considering are writings by American expatriates, such as Henry James, Gertrude Stein, Henry Miller and James Baldwin, and by Americans whose perspective was influenced by their travels abroad, such as Herman Melville and Mark Twain. Indigenous dissenters have offered and inspired a range of critical insights that may lend themselves to comparative readings and to being discussed from the perspective of a transnational American studies.

 

Conference organizers invite proposals for individual papers and panels exploring how Americanists in Poland and elsewhere understand their field and how they wish to change it and to challenge some of its entrenched premises.

 

Suggested topics and themes:

  • transnationalization of American studies;
  • examinations of the interdisciplinarity of American studies, or lack thereof, including the place of sociology and political science within the field.
  • impact of recent theoretical perspectives: affect studies, object theory, posthumanism, etc.;
  • historical perspectives on the evolution of American studies as a field
  • key works and key theoretical controversies in the development of American studies;
  • Americanization and globalization: cultural, economic and political perspectives;
  • American studies and the discourses of anti-Americanism, US imperialism, and neoliberalism;
  • critics of American exceptionalism and their impact on American studies;
  • European enthusiasts and detractors of the USA; American expats looking back at the USA;
  • the role of race, gender and class in American studies;
  • intersectional perspectives in American studies;
  • American studies and postcolonial studies;
  • religion studies and American studies;
  • comparative perspectives on American and European societies, politics and cultures;
  • institutional and methodological aspects of American studies in specific locations;
  • American studies and the crisis of the humanities;
  • the role of political contexts in shaping American studies;
  • American studies during and after the Cold War;
  • American studies’ responses to 9/11;
  • American studies and US diplomacy.

 

Please send paper abstracts (250 words) and panel proposals to:

paas2016warsaw@gmail.com by JUNE 10, 2016.

 

The conference will include a parallel session or sessions for PAAS members, including doctoral candidates, to present work in progress that may be unrelated to the conference topic.

 

Notification of acceptance will be sent by June 20, 2015.

 

Conference fee – PLN 500 (USD 130; EUR 115), PLN 450 for doctoral students

Deadline for registration and payment of the conference fee: September 9, 2016.

 

Conference venue: University of Warsaw main campus and American Studies Center.

 

Conference organizers:

Dr. habil. Agnieszka Graff                                 Dr. Karolina Krasuska

Dr. habil. Tomasz Basiuk                                  Ms. Ludmiła Janion

Department of American Literature, University of Łódź

September 29-30, 2016

 

Beginning with the modernist aesthetic revolution, poetry has continuously shown a stubborn resolve to respond to social, political and cultural shifts and crises with technical innovation. Such innovativeness speaks of the resilience of poetry, as genre, as it refuses to succumb to various announcements of its death or cultural irrelevance. The historical lineage of these responses is an impressive inventory of technical innovation in itself. While the New York School poets reacted to the monumental edifices of their modernist predecessors, their own performative-surrealist modes or varieties of “personism” were later replaced by the Language poets’ insistence on the dissolution of personal expressivity, while both the Language and New York School poets have been seen as responding to the technically moderate “scenic mode” of the 1970’s.

But these innovations have already had their continuations and further reverberations. As various prominent commentators suggest, poetry written in English, now also resounding beyond the Anglophone scope, has continued to respond to social and cultural crises and turmoils with technical innovation. Michael Davidson has argued that the “negative capability” of the contemporary poet, now resolving more around social crises than “personal uncertainty,” has given us poems of increased “interruption” and deliberate “illegibility,” as poets seek to make the genre responsive to the crises of global migrations, economic meltdown, ecological degradation, and fluctuations in our understanding of gender and labor. From a slightly different viewpoint, reinforcing Charles Bernstein’s advocacy of poetic artifice as resistance to dominant poetic “verse cultures,” Marjorie Perloff has defended the cause of technical poetic innovation and practicing poetry “by other means,” proposing an aesthetic platform which, while it calls for a rethinking of the notion of individual originality, also delivers a staunch defense of the capacity of poets and their practice to keep the genre afresh by technical and formal innovation.

These critics’ favoring of the poetry of citationality and cultural material appropriation has found support through various archival projects. One of them is the recently published 2014 Poetics Journal Digital Archive, preceded by a 2013 co-publication, A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982-1998. Edited by Lyn Hejinian and Barrett Watten, both volumes document critical developments, taking into account an impressively broad range of aesthetic perspectives. Meant as a resource for research, collaborations, and interventions, rather than a definitive collection of criticism, the archive offers an encouragement to view poetry and poetics as “an expanded field” of both theory and poetic practice. Poetic tradition does not take center stage in this project; instead, it privileges the realm of the avant-garde with its many theoretical and aesthetic debates. For the editors,

 

[p]oetics is a site for reflection on the making of the work that extends its construction into the fields of meaning in which it has its effects. Such fields of meaning are manifold, from the readers’ responses to historical contexts, social motivations, relations to other arts, and philosophical concerns, finally entailing something like a cunning of poetics: the manner in which the work of art extends its principle of construction, the way it makes meaning, through the contexts it draws from, finally, to transform them.

 

The challenge posed by this archival initiative may serve to sum up the thrust of what we are proposing to explore in this thematically focused conference. We invite scholars to present their views and stance on the technical innovation in the poetry written in English, as it continues to respond to crises of various kinds – social, economic, cultural, globalized – remaining a vitally flexible genre, able to shape insightful perspectives on the human situation.

The “new poetries” that we invite you to consider are the poetries of technical and aesthetic innovation. The conference presentations that we welcome and invite may include, but are in no way limited to, the following tendencies, contexts, and issues as well as the ways in which they have been intertwined:

 

  •   language-centered poetics (including Language- and post-Language writing)
  •  performance-based poetics
  • the political character of the aesthetic
  • (non-)originality/individuality/voice amidst technical innovation
  • subject-construction in poetry
  • ecopoetics
  • New Narrative
  • hybrid & cross-genre poetic modes
  • conceptual and post-conceptual poetry
  • poetic and poetic/artistic collaborations

 

 

 

Abstracts of paper proposals, up to 250-300 words, should be sent to conference organizers by May 15, 2016: dr Kacper Bartczak (kacper@uni.lodz.pl) and dr Małgorzata Myk (goskamyk@gmail.com).

 

The conference fee is 350 PLN.

 

The 1st conference circular, contacting the authors of accepted proposals and containing further payment, venue, and accommodation information, will be sent by May 30.

The Profane West

Big Sky, Montana

September 21-24, 2016

The profane: not limited to the blasphemous or the obscene, but rather encompassing that which is underrepresented, undervalued, censored, denied, and/or secretly shared. Unofficial and unsanctioned pleasures and punishments. The necessary complement of the sacred, helping both to define and erode it.

The 51st annual Western Literature Conference, hosted by Linda Karell (Montana State University), will take place in the spectacular natural beauty and undeniable tourist development that is Big Sky, Montana. We invite you to think about “the profane West” in ways that challenge entrenched definitions/conceptions/celebrations of the West—including the once subversive.

In addition to proposals on the conference theme and any aspects of literature about the North American West, we especially encourage innovative proposals on the following:

°  Indigenous literatures of and about the West
°  Feminist and queer approaches to Western literature
°  Women’s autobiographical and memoir writing
°  Pedagogy and K-12 issues in Western literature
°  Animals (and sacred cows) in Western literature
°  Montana literature and writers

Proposals for panels and roundtable discussions should include an abstract for each paper or presentation. Deadline: June 1, 2016.

Please direct your questions to WLAConference2016@westernlit.org.

For more information about the Western Literature Association visit their website here.