Call for Articles:

New Voices in Jewish-American Literature

The retirement of Philip Roth in 2012 signifies a definite break with the past, the silencing of one of the last living links with the Jewish generation that dominated post-war American literary culture (Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Isaac Bashevis Singer et al.). This does not, however, mean the end of Jewish-American literature. Recent years have rather shown the remarkable tenacity of Jewish-American writing: its enduring ability to grapple with contemporary society’s pivotal issues along with its power to initiate new critical debates.

Now is the perfect moment to start talking about younger Jewish writers as they emerge from the shadow of the “kibitzing giants” of their literary adolescence. From Michael Chabon’s cheerfully ad-hoc appropriation of popular culture to the historical consciousness of writers like Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer, Jewish-American literature continues to prove its inventiveness and range. In exploring themes as varied as queer sexualities, Israeli relations and the experiences of specific religious communities, today’s writers force critics to constantly adapt their conception of the nature of Jewish writing in, and of, America.

This collection follows in the footsteps of Derek Parker Royal’s Unfinalized Moments: Essays in Development of Contemporary Jewish Narrative (2011) and special issues such as Studies in American Jewish Literature’s “Contemporary Jewish Writers Respond to Judaism” (2006), by asking how twenty-first century writers contend with the unique challenges of writing in a modern Jewish-American milieu—one, as ever, marked by the competing factors of rapid change and weighty tradition. We invite submission of either thematic or author-focused essays that share a fascination with the ceaseless dynamism of the field, and that offer original perspectives on contemporary writers and works that have yet to receive significant critical attention.

Topics could include (but are not limited to):

• The return of the religious in Jewish-American Literature

• Shalom Auslander and Jewish Irreverence

• Queer/LGTBQ+ perspectives in Jewish-American Literature

• Depictions of American-Israeli Relations

• Third generation Holocaust narratives

• New Developments in Jewish-American poetry

• New Developments in Jewish-American playwriting

• New Developments in Jewish-American graphic novels

• The novels of Allegra Goodman

• The novels of Nicole Krauss

• The novels of Gary Shteyngart

• The novels of Joshua Cohen

• The writings of Michael Chabon

 

Research articles should be approximately 8000 words in length, including references and a short bibliography. Submissions should comprise of:

• Abstract (250 words)

• Full-length article (8000 words)

• Author information (short biographical statement of 200 words)

The deadline for submission is 30th July 2016.

The special collection, edited by Dan O’Brien and Mike Witcombe, is to be published in the Open Library of Humanities (OLH) (ISSN 2056-6700). The OLH is an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded open-access journal with a strong emphasis on quality peer review and a prestigious academic steering board. Unlike some open-access publications, the OLH has no author-facing charges and is instead financially supported by an international consortium of libraries.

Please contact newvoicescollection@gmail.com with any queries.

Submissions should be made online at: https://submit.openlibhums.org/ in accordance with the author guidelines and clearly marking the entry as [JEWISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE SPECIAL COLLECTION]. Submissions will then undergo a double-blind peer-review process. Authors will be notified of the outcome as soon as reports are received.

To learn more about the Open Library of Humanities please visit: https://www.openlibhums.org/site/about/

Call for Chapters: Edited Collection on the writing of Richard Yates

Richard Yates, author of the cult classic Revolutionary Road, has been described as America’s least-known great writer. Spoken of in revered terms by other writers such as Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Ford, Yates has a reputation as a writer’s writer. However, during his lifetime his books went in and out of print with alarming regularity, and he never experienced sustained success. The recent reissue of all of his books by Vintage and the release of a major movie adaptation of Revolutionary Road has sparked a resurgence of interest in Yates’s work both with the general public and within academia. With the approach of the 90th anniversary of his birth in 2016 the need for a new volume of essays on this particular writer is pressing. Proposals for chapters to be included in this collection are requested. Possible topics include, but are by no means limited to:

• The American dream
• The role of place in Yates’s writing; suburbs and cities
• Houses and homes; material culture and objects
• Autobiography in fiction
• Yates as a realist
• Gender; masculinity; attitudes to feminism; representations of women
• Marriage in Yates’s fiction
• Mental illness and addiction
• The nature of work
• Yates’s short stories
• Literary influences on Yates
• Yates as teacher; his work on creative writing courses
• Legacy; the influence of Yates on other writers

Submission guidelines:

Proposals of no more than 350 words should be submitted by 1st March 2016. Please also include a short biography (maximum of 300 words). Notification of acceptance will be made by 31st March 2016. Full chapters will be due by 1st August 2016. This collection has attracted firm interest from a publisher and it is expected that the full manuscript will be submitted in late 2016. All chapters will be subject to a blind peer review process. Contributors may also be asked to act as reviewers for this collection.

Please submit proposals as word documents to dalyj5@tcd.ie using the subject line ‘Richard Yates Collection’. Full details and submission guidelines will be provided to contributors on acceptance of proposals.

Any queries can be sent to the editor, Jennifer Daly: dalyj5@tcd.ie

Society for the Study of American Women Writers & Université Bordeaux Montaigne

Dates: 5th – 8th July 2017

Venue: Université Bordeaux Montaigne, France

Conference director: Stéphanie Durrans

To maintain a continuity with our previous conference (in Philadelphia, November 2015) on liminality and hybrid lives, we would like this first SSAWW conference in Europe to address the significance of “border crossing[s]” in the lives and works of American women writers. Such experiences have always been important to American women. Early diaries and travel notes left by 17th– and 18th-century women provide us with valuable records of and about their migratory experience to the New World and their lives and experiences in America. Besides offering more records of such experiences, the 19th century also witnessed an explosion in travel writing, fiction, and poetry treating with travel, as growing numbers of American women writers could afford to travel across Europe and more widely. Throughout the 20th century, more American women writers found in foreign lands a source of inspiration and creativity (e.g. Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Kay Boyle, and Djuna Barnes in France, Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil, Katherine Anne Porter in Mexico) and some of them even made the choice to write from abroad. Meanwhile, women writers originating from other countries drew on their first-hand experience of migration, border-crossing, and uprooting to add to the growing canon of American literature (e.g. Jumpa Lahiri, Bharati Mukherjee, Shirley Geok-lin Lim). No study of border-crossing can afford to neglect the rich mine of writing contributed by Chicana writers throughout the 20th century. As pointed out by Carmen Tafolla, “[Chicanos] did not cross the border; the border crossed [them].” This was also true of many other women, moving into or across America. From such a perspective, crossing borders lends itself to the most radical strategies of subversion and defamiliarization. Last but not least, such writers as Toni Morrison explored the darker side of border-crossing by seeking to express and represent the trauma of the Middle Passage for whole generations of Africans, and the multiple dilemmas facing African American women down the decades.

The conference theme invites participants to explore the broad spectrum of possibilities generated by such cross-cultural interactions, as well as the challenge consequently posed to literary canons. How has this experience affected women writers’ worldview and conception of language? To what extent do their modes of exploration differ from that of their male counterparts? How important were such contacts in allowing women writers to develop a consciousness of otherness and/or forge a community of feeling and experience transcending national and/or cultural barriers? “Chroniclers bind the inner and outward history of isolated humanity, but travellers connect all humanity together,” stated Grace King in one of the first entries to her diary. More often than not, indeed, geographical borders assume an ontological dimension, and crossing them amounts to an exploration of the self as much as to a confrontation with otherness. Crossings have always involved a necessary stage of transition, transformation, and consequent redefinition of the self that questions the very stability and permanence traditionally associated with women’s conventionalized roles. Thus we are very happy to consider writers using the idea of border crossing and travel symbolically or metaphorically as well as literally: early female travellers, explorers, and adventurers crossed borders in more ways than one, often by transgressing gender expectations, using this experience or awareness to reshape the conventions of many genres. One might also approach the topic by focusing on what happens when literary works cross national borders to reach foreign readers in translation. In this respect, translation studies and studies of American women writers’ reception abroad constitute another potentially fruitful arena.

As a multiethnic, multilingual society, the U.S. undoubtedly provides fertile terrain for the development of a transnational consciousness that will be pivotal to our questioning on the topic. Possible approaches to the conference theme may include but are not limited to such keywords and ideas as:

• Women writers and travel writing
• The migratory experience
• Expatriate American women writers
• Expatriate women writers in Paris
• The Lost Generation
• Redefining the national canon
• Transnationalism
• Transatlantic studies
• Transcontinental/Transpacific/Transatlantic literary relationships
• Geographical borders/ontological issues
• Representations of otherness
• Cross-cultural interactions
• Cross-linguistic perceptions/living between two languages
• Women and frontier experiences
• Translation studies
• American women writers’ reception in foreign countries
• Women writers’ reception in America and Europe

Submission Instructions
Deadline: August 31, 2016 (Individual Papers)

Submissions are electronic. Submit individual proposals and completed panel proposals to ssaww2017.bordeaux.montaigne@gmail.com both attached in Word or rtf, and pasted into the body of the message.

The conference organizers welcome and encourage complete session submissions as well as individual paper abstract submissions. Affiliate associations and regional groups should follow the submission guidelines for complete session submissions.

Conference participants may appear on the program twice as presenters: once on a panel presenting a formal academic paper, and once in an additional way (for example, on a roundtable, as a respondent, or in a “professionalization” session).

Complete Panel Submission Guidelines-Deadline 30 June 2016

The cfp for complete panel submissions can be posted on the SSAWW website in addition to other venues of your choice. For posting on the SSAWW website, please send cfp to ssaww.web@gmail.com.

Listserv members can circulate the call at: ssaww-l@ucsd.edu.

Session lengths are 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Complete sessions may take the form of panels or roundtables. A panel normally consists of three, preferably four presenters, who speak for approximately 15 minutes each with 15 minutes left for discussion. Roundtables consist of five or more participants who speak briefly (6-8 minutes), and emphasize discussion among themselves and with the audience.

The organizers welcome variations on and innovations in format within the allotted time frames. If you are proposing a different format for a complete session, please explain the format clearly, and state the rationale and benefits.

If submitting a complete session, please ensure that notifications go out by the end of June at the latest to those whose proposals are declined for the particular panel so that they can still submit individual paper abstracts by the conference submission deadline of August 31.

Email Header: Please put 1) “Complete Session” in the subject line, followed by a brief title (one to five words); 2) OR the name of the affiliate association; 3) OR the name of the regional group

Please include the following information for complete session proposals in the body of the email, as well as attached in Word or rtf.

Adapting the guidelines set out by the American Literature Association which facilitates the copying of accepted submissions directly into the program, we ask that you provide a summary of the panel information at the beginning of the submission in the following format, listing the session title, the chair and affiliation (if any), the organizer (if different from the chair), and affiliate association/group name (if any), and each of the presenters, citing name, affiliation (if any), and title of paper in quotation marks. Please turn off auto format to prevent automatic indenting. Commas separate the name, affiliation, and title, and there is no period at the end. Here is an example:

Gender and Print Culture
Chair: Mary Smith, Nu University
Organized by the North American Society of Women Scholars of Print Culture

Jane Eyre, Thornfield College, “The Afterlife of Women’s Words”
Will Ladislaw, Middlemarch University, “Writing the Right Moment”
Hester Prynne, Independent Scholar, “Embodied Print”
Jo March, Concord State College, “Writing for Money, Writing for the Self”

In addition, please provide the following information:

• Contact person’s name and contact information: email and phone (to be used only if email fails)
• Title of session
• Type of session: please indicate if this is a panel or roundtable, or please explain if you are proposing an alternate format
• Chair: name and affiliation (if any)
• Brief biography (60 word limit)
• Organizer’s name and affiliation (if any), and brief biography (60 word limit) if different from the Chair; or if the session is being organized by an affiliate association or regional group, please provide its name here
• Abstract overview of session submission (250 – 300 words)
• A/V requirements: please indicate none or yes; if yes, please specify the equipment required.

For each presenter:

• Name and affiliation (if any)
• Title of paper
• Abstract (250 – 300 words)
• Brief biography (60 word limit)
• Email contact

Submit to: ssaww2017.bordeaux.montaigne@gmail.com by June 30, 2016 (complete panel).

Individual Paper Abstract Submission Guidelines-Deadline August 31, 2016

Email Header: Please put “Individual Submission” in the subject line, followed by a brief title of the paper (one to five words)

In the body of the email, as well as attached in Word or rtf, please include the following:

To facilitate the copying of accepted submissions directly into the program, please provide the submission in the following format at the beginning of the submission:

Name, affiliation (if any), title of paper in quotation marks; the items are separated by commas and there is no period at the end.

Example:

Mary Smith, Nu University, “Empowered by Literature”

Then, please provide the following:

• Name and affiliation (if any)
• Email and phone contact (phone will only be used in the event of email failure)
• Title of paper:
• Abstract (250 – 300 words)
• A/V requirements: please indicate none or yes; if yes, please specify the equipment required.
• Brief biography (60 word limit)

Submit to: ssaww2017.bordeaux.montaigne@gmail.com by August 31, 2016 (individual papers).

Every attempt will be made to notify submitters of the status of their proposals by October 31, 2016 and to have the draft program in place by November 30, 2016.

Estimated Conference Costs

Early registration (between November 1, 2016 and January 31, 2017):

• Faculty members: circa 130 euros (incl. lunch, coffee breaks and closing banquet)
• Students: circa 100 euros (incl. lunch, coffee breaks and closing banquet)

Late registration (after February 1, 2017): circa 145 euros (faculty)/115 euros (students)

Accommodation: 60-150 euros per night (hotel) or 30-40 euros per night (basic student accommodation)

Questions about conference registration can be directed to:

ssaww2017.bordeaux.montaigne@gmail.com

Migration, Transnationalism and the Cultural Logic of Global Identity

A special issue of the American, British and Canadian Studies Journal, December 2016

 

Guest Editor: Dr. Susan Flynn, University of the Arts, London

 

J.P. Sartre’s existentialist notion of man’s freedom is that he can always choose to attempt an escape. In the aftermath of the Arab spring (soon turned into Arab winter), there is little doubt that profound changes are shaping the life choices of millions who now look toward Britain and continental Europe to regain the sense of freedom for which the latter still stand. As global migration soars, hundreds of thousands of migrants are queuing at European border crossings as we write, seeking a broader, more encompassing, New European identity. Whether the phenomenon is viewed as a ‘migrant’ or as a ‘refugee’ crisis, suffice it to say recent events in the Middle East have cast the concerns of mass movement of people across Europe to the forefront of world attention. We therefore find it both timely and compelling to consider the cultural expressions and reverberations of forced and voluntary migrations toward Britain in the framework of the current refugee crisis. This special edition of ABC Studies Journal thus seeks to reflect on the personal, religious, political and economic ultimacies of travel and migrancy, in the hope of contributing significantly to current academic discourse on global identity. To this end in view, we invite platform papers as well as original critical articles which address these concerns from a variety of perspectives and disciplinary angles. Submissions in film, television, literature and media studies illustrative of these emergent discourses are especially welcomed. We are particularly interested in research on the new directions in scholarship engendered by current patterns of global migration.

Key themes may include, but are not limited to:

• Global mobility and cultural diaspora
• National immigration policies within the EU
• Spaces, borders, transnationalism
• Globalisation, regionalism and cultural identity
• New media and the ethics of spectatorship

Articles will be subject to a blind peer review process and must not be under consideration for any other publications. Please refer to the author submission guidelines on the American, British and Canadian Studies Journal website, http://abcjournal.ulbsibiu.ro. Complete manuscripts, of up to a maximum of 7500 words including bibliography, are requested by June 15th, 2016 for publication in December 2016. Please include a biographical note of up to 200 words, accompanied by an abstract (500 words) and a list of 10 key words/concept. Enquiries and submissions are to be directed to Dr. Susan Flynn, School of Media, London College of Communications, University of the Arts, London, s.flynn@lcc.arts.ac.uk and copied to abc.journal@ulbsibiu.ro. Authors will be notified within six weeks of the closing date.

Urban America: Mediating City Space as Place
Fifth American Studies Leipzig Graduate Conference
April 2, 2016 – Deutsches Literaturinstitut Leipzig

“Place is space that has been given meaning and borders, and so a
location with a human-created ensemble of features.”¹

Not only can space be seen as an entity or as a point on a map but it can also be turned into a place whenever an individual or a group assigns meaning to it. Due to its interdisciplinary approach, American Studies is an ideal framework to examine the construction, mediation, and representation of urban spaces as places in the US. From topics such as gentrification and the development of ethnic neighborhoods to the representation of cities and urban spaces in literature and culture—in TV series (Mad Men, Treme) or novels (Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, Teju Cole’s Open City)—urban spaces and places have gained relevance and recognition in the academic world and thus require continued inquiry.

With the Fifth American Studies Leipzig Graduate Conference “Urban America: Mediating City Space as Place,” we will explore the cultural, social, and political production of spatial realms and places in an interdisciplinary framework. Possible topics to examine the construction, mediation, and representation of urban spaces and places can be located in literature, culture, history, sociology, and politics. While we welcome proposals from any of these fields, we encourage presenters to analyze “urban place-making processes”² across disciplinary boundaries. Potential research questions could include but are not limited to the following:
• In what ways are identities and meanings of urban spaces constructed and negotiated, for example in literature and/or film?
• What is the function of American cities as political agents on a transnational level?
• How do concepts such as gender, race, class, religion, age, and/or migration influence the construction of personal and collective identities in urban spaces and places?
• To what extent do cities in particular lend themselves to an analysis of larger social conflicts?
• How can the dynamics of subcultures and/or gentrification, for instance in particular neighborhoods (suburban or inner-city areas), be interpreted and theorized?
• How are metaphorical and literal borders mediated in cities and metropolitan areas?
• How are cities influenced by language and communication, for example urban slang or advertising?
• In what ways can tourism shape the representation of cities as specific places?
• How do feelings and affects manifest themselves in urban geographies and vice versa, e.g. with regard to architecture or infrastructure?

As a platform to discuss the complex representations of urban spaces and places, our conference invites all interested graduate students and professionals in the field of urban research. Within this unique forum, participants will have a chance to present their work to an international audience, which will also allow for excellent networking opportunities.

 
Please submit your proposal (ca. 300 words) for a 20-minute presentation including your name, current level of graduate study, research interests, affiliated university or current occupation, and email address to asl-gradconference@uni-leipzig.de by January 8, 2016. We will notify all contributors by January 25, 2016. A limited number of travel grants may be available on a case-by-case basis.
For more information please refer to the conference website, contact us via email, or find us on Facebook under “Urban America – American Studies Grad Conference 2016.”

 

1. Mahoney, Timothy R., and Wendy J. Katz. “Introduction.” Regionalism and the Humanities. Lincoln: U of Nebraska, 2008. x. Print.
2. See Warnke, Ingo H., and Beatrix Busse, eds. Place-Making in urbanen Diskursen. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014. Print.

Call for Submissions

A one-day symposium on Marilynne Robinson

Nottingham Trent University, 10 June 2016

Featuring a roundtable discussion with Prof. Sarah Churchwell (University of London) and Prof. Richard H. King (University of Nottingham)

Since the publication of her debut novel, Housekeeping, in 1980, critics have celebrated Marilynne Robinson as a singular author of American fiction. A prolific essayist, teacher, and public speaker, she is best known for a trilogy of historical novels set in the small town of Gilead, Iowa: the Pulitzer Prize winning Gilead (2004) and its “partner” novels, Home (2008) and Lila (2014).

This one-day symposium seeks to chart the development of critical opinion on Robinson and welcomes papers on any aspect of her fiction and collected/uncollected nonfiction. We are particularly interested in submissions that address the following areas:

• Regionalism and the role of the “Middle West” in Robinson’s writing
• Portrayals of small town America in the work of Robinson and her
  contemporaries
• Robinson’s use of domestic spaces and her portrayal of the American family
• The ecocritical concerns of Robinson’s fiction/nonfiction
• The importance of time and temporality in the Gilead novels
• Robinson’s influence on contemporary writers via her role in the Iowa
  Writers’ Workshop
• Review culture, prize giving, and the production of “literary” fiction
• Robinson’s stated influences, including Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville,
  Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and the Bible
• Robinson’s engagement with history, particularly the ongoing relevance of the American Civil War and Civil Rights movement to contemporary politics
• The role of Congregationalist and/or Calvinist traditions in Robinson’s
  writing
• Robinson and US intellectual history, particularly the forgotten intellectual traditions of the Midwest
• Readings of gender and/or sexuality in Robinson’s fiction
• The Gilead novels and their relationship with genre, including popular
  religious fictions, romances, westerns, or historical novels
• Robinson’s international reputation

Please email abstracts of no more than 300 words to robinsonsymposium@gmail.com no later than Monday 18 January 2016.

Speakers will be notified by 19 February 2016.

Regular updates can be found on the symposium website.