Category: Calls for Papers

CFP: ‘Power and Change in the Americas in the Modern Era’, an international PG conference

Posted on by Catherine Gander
University College London from April 30 – May 1, 2015
 
The UCL Americas Research Network is pleased to invite scholars to participate in its first International Postgraduate Conference.
 
This two-day conference seeks to cater to an international community of postgraduate and early-career researchers of the Americas from across the humanities and the social sciences. We welcome paper proposals that address the overarching theme of the conference:
 
Power and Change in the Americas in the Modern Era
 
Geographically, this includes the whole Western Hemisphere (Central, South, and North  America, as well as the Caribbean). By adopting a broad, hemispheric  perspective, we hope to encourage debates that extend beyond the boundaries of the nation-state, and to question the  validity of cultural divides that often limit research agendas and  enclose perceptions of complex problems and communalities.
 
The conference, organized by UCL Americas Research Network, especially invites doctoral students and early career researchers whose work ranges both geographically and temporally, and will encourage interdisciplinary conversations on national, regional and local topics  and those whose focus is comparative, transnational and global. By facilitating a space to have these discussions, this conference aims to  create an ongoing platform and network for collaborative exchange.
 
The structure of the conference consists of three thematic approaches:
 
1.      Representations, Ideology, and Ideas of Change:
Evolutionary  and revolutionary concepts in post-independence Americas have brought  about significant changes to the ways in which actors and groups think, represent, and position themselves and their demands vis-à-vis the formal structures of power. This stream invites papers that address the topics of “change” and “power” in the Americas  in its multiple forms of representations, ideas, and ideologies. The underlying tensions and contestations of certain ideas that have a direct impact on our understanding of what power and change means form the major rationale of this inquiry. Developing new modes of thinking continues to be fundamental in the attempt to understand the political in terms of the modern nation and the major forces shaping the lives of subjects in the Americas.
 
2.      Institutions, The State, and Governments:
This second thematic approach focuses on political institutions and the state in the Americas, and addresses the changing parameters of power and the political in modern times. This includes the ways in which the state and its associated institutions (both non-state and  governmental) have evolved over time and geographical space; the modes  of interaction between states and institutions, both within and across countries; as well as domestic, regional, and transnational actors. This stream invites papers that address themes from across the spectrum of political interactions, encompassing debates around sovereignty and global governance, regional integration and subnational decentralization, and institutional design and practice. We particularly welcome papers that take an explicit comparative and interdisciplinary approach, and that can appeal to students and scholars of the Americas from diverse disciplinary backgrounds.
 
3.      Contesting Power and Social Practices:
This thematic approach is interested in accounting for how different actors, communities, and movements in the Americas engage and interact with multiple-layered power structures, the state and its institutions and wider social systems. Social, economic, and political changes in the Americas are processes in which social actors are both objects and subjects. Confronted with these changes, historical and contemporary subjects have followed distinctive paths, from support and passive acceptance, to engagement in active contestation. This stream invites papers that address both the processes of resistance and the emergence of ‘from-below’ alternatives driven by non-hegemonic subjects, including, but not limited to, resistance to economic and productive models and to political and  governance regimes; the contestation of hegemonic knowledge; the  bottom-up emergence of social and material alternatives in the everyday  life of social subjects and movements.
 
For more information, please visit our conference homepage on http://www.ucl.ac.uk/americas/research-fields/uclia-resnet/cfp
 
The organizing committee invites all interested doctoral students and early-career researchers to submit abstracts, which should not exceed 300 words, as well as a brief biography of no  more than 50 words, which should include your name, email, and  institutional affiliation.  The deadline for abstracts and paper proposals is November 15th 2014. 
 
Please submit your abstracts to: uclamericasresearchnetwork@gmail.com
 
NB:  This  conference will be free to attend, both for speakers and for the general public, though prior registration for attendance without presenting a  paper is essential. Details on how to register will follow shortly. Keynote speakers will be confirmed soon.
 
Key dates:
Deadline for paper-proposal submission: November 15th 2014
Deadline for paper submission: March 20th 2015
Conference: April 30th to May 1st 2015

 

Early EAAS Biennial Conference Announcement

Posted on by Catherine Gander

Dates and Details for your diary!

The European Association for American Studies is pleased to announce that its next biennial conference will take place in Constanta, Romania from 22nd to 25th April, 2016.

The EAAS conference will be hosted by our colleagues at Ovidius University in Constanta, with the local support of the Romanian Association for American Studies. Constanta is an ancient and beautiful resort city on the Black Sea coast. The easiest entry point for international visitors is likely to be Bucharest airport, and this location provides a great opportunity to add days for vacation and exploration.  The conference website currently being designed will give full details of travel and accommodation options.

Open Call   for Presentations

To highlight the range and diversity of American Studies in Europe the EAAS is issuing an open call for proposals for the 2016 conference.

Proposers may wish to identify and explore long-standing, current and emerging intellectual debates in American Studies;   to explore critically the varying practices and methodologies in American Studies; to bring to life current discussions and to posit potential paradigms in American Studies.

The various anniversaries of 2016 provide a variety of potential foundations for proposals. It will be 150 years since the start of the post-Civil War era of Reconstruction. That was also the era   of the dime novel, and Seeley Regester’s The   Dead Letter, credited by some as the first full-length American crime   novel, appeared in 1866. 125 years will have passed since Thomas Edison patented the motion camera and 100 since the creation of the US National Parks Service.

1916 also saw the opening of the nation’s first birth control clinic, the election from Montana of Jeanette Rankin, the first woman to sit in the US House of Representatives, the release of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance and the   publication of Carl Sandburg’s Chicago   Poems. It was also the birth year of Shirley Jackson, Walker Percy, and   Walter Cronkite. The National Organization for Women celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2016, as does Star Trek.  

 

Contemporary American Studies topics could include, for example, discussion of the USA’s strong, diverse and expanding literary canon; the multi-dimensional character and seemingly endless inventiveness of America’s cultural output; the inventiveness of American culture in an age of new social media; the heritage that might be left after the nation’s first African-American presidency.

The EAAS conference encompasses topics across the disciplinary spectrum in American Studies, as well as interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary approaches to the subject.  The themes mentioned here are not intended to be a definitive list, and the conference committee looks forward to receiving many different and stimulating proposals.

 

Format

The EAAS is moving away from its former Workshop format. Proposals are now invited that  may use a variety of presentation styles.  The conference structure is expected mainly to consist of traditional panels sessions with papers, and proposals targeted at this format are very welcome indeed, but submissions may also be proposed as roundtables, workshops, shop-talks, dialogues, interviews, performances, individual   lecture presentations, readings or in other innovative formats. All proposals are expected to include the opportunity for discussion.

 

 

Session chairs

Volunteers are invited to fill the role of chairs or facilitators for sessions where these positions are vacant.  Volunteers to chair sessions should include their name and affiliation, and a brief statement of their areas of expertise.  The conference committee will gratefully call on volunteers to add them to appropriate sessions where possible.

 

Selection

The EAAS is committed to a conference that reflects the broadest disciplinary range within American Studies, the multinational membership of the EAAS, and the international participation that its biennial meetings attract.

The conference committee will take these aims into account in reviewing proposals and in constructing the conference programme.

 

Deadline

The deadline for Proposals will be 15 June 2015. The Proposals process will be managed by the Secretary General of the EAAS and full details of the submission process will appear soon on the EAAS website.

Meanwhile – note the dates in your diary, and take this opportunity to begin drafting your proposal for the 2016 conference.

 

CFP: Historians and the Margins: from North America to Former Empires

Posted on by Catherine Gander

 

CFP: Reading Short Fiction in Transnational Contexts

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

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

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

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

CFP: POETRY AND COLLABORATION IN THE AGE OF MODERNISM

Posted on by Catherine Gander

 POETRY AND COLLABORATION IN THE AGE OF MODERNISM

Trinity College Dublin and the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute

2nd–3rd July 2015

Keynote Speakers:

Alex Davis (University College Cork)

Peter Howarth (Queen Mary)

Poems are the products of collaborative exchange. This is possibly at no point
more apparent than during the period of Anglophone modernism. From the
late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, poets and poems interacted with a
complex array of publishing outlets; partnerships were established with
musicians, painters, sculptors, photographers, filmmakers, broadcasters, and
theatre practitioners; and translation was a central creative practice. All the
same, the modes and sites of such collaboration remain critically
under-examined. They can elude current historical, theoretical, and
methodological approaches to poetry in the period, which are sometimes still
overly invested in poetry’s separation from other discourses and art forms, or
in notions of single authorship.

This conference will seek to foster scholarly attention on the collaborative
nature of poetic production, mediation, and reception across Britain, Ireland,
North America and beyond during the age of modernism. It will welcome contributions
on any aspect of the conference theme from researchers in fields such as drama,
music, dance, visual and material cultures, publishing and media history, as
well as from literary scholars. Topics might include, but are not confined to:

 

·      periodical and publishing culture:
poetry in the magazines,  the role of editors.

·      poetry and the visual arts:
ekphrasis, palimpsests, concrete poetry, spatial poetics.

·      adaptation and performance: music,
theatre, cinema, radio, television.

·      translation as collaboration:
transnational exchanges.

·      textual interrelationships:
allusion, intertextuality, co-authorship, anthologisation.

·      poetry and the institution:
patronage, the university, broadcasters.

·      collaborative locations: salons,
clubs, studios, theatres, peripheries, centres.

·      digital perspectives: emerging
material and analytical avenues.

 
Please send proposals of c.300 words and a brief biography to the conference
organisers, Alex Runchman and Tom Walker, at collaboratingmuse@gmail.com by
30 November 2014. Please visit the conference website for more information: http://collaboratingmuse.wordpress.com/                              

CFP: SPECIAL ISSUE OF ‘SYMBIOSIS’ ON THE ‘IRISH TRANSATLANTIC: THE ACT OF UNION (1800) TO THE PRESENT DAY’

Posted on by Catherine Gander

                                

                          

Call for Papers: Special edition of Symbiosis: A Journal of Transatlantic Literary and Cultural Relations on the ‘Irish Transatlantic: Act of Union (1800) to the Present Day’

The Autumn 2015 issue of Symbiosis: A Journal of Transatlantic Literary and Cultural Relations will take as its focus the literary and cultural exchange between Ireland and the Americas from the Act of Union (1800) to the present day. We seek to provide a window onto the expansive and multifarious nature of Irish transatlantic studies, publishing a range of articles which illustrate the depth and breadth of contemporary scholarship in this area. Despite the unquestionable historical, material and political connections between these two geographical locations, the Irish dimension to transatlantic studies is often overlooked. Burgeoning interest in transatlantic studies has led to the publication of innovative book series on the topic; while this is an exciting move in scholarship, the number of texts that display sustained engagement with Irish transatlantic concerns is surprisingly low. Similarly, although the historiography of the Irish diaspora is a rich field, transatlantic Irish literary and cultural studies is an uneven area of inquiry; notably, while the Famine years have received plentiful commentary, there is a dearth of scholarship considering the decades preceding this.

We hope to touch upon emergent areas of enquiry, such as spatial mappings of Atlantic geography attendant to the richly rhizomatic nature of transatlantic exchange; examinations of Irish-American ethnic identity informed by critical race studies; and the impact of digital humanities on the field at large. The editors’ research interests lie in early nineteenth century and contemporary literary culture so they would be particularly receptive to articles investigating transatlantic exchange within these periods.

We are interested in articles exploring:

  • Methodologies and/or mappings for Irish transatlantic study
  • Transatlantic applications of (post)colonial theory
  • Gender across Atlantic space
  • Religion and spiritual practices
  • Transatlantic intersectionality
  • The role and function of literary form
  • Effects of the Act of Union on the publishing trade
  • Transatlantic circulations and critical receptions of texts
  • Exchange of correspondence and letters
  • Areas of consonance and dissonance between cross-currents of diasporic and migrant experience
  • Northern Irish exchange with North America
  • Replication and development of local and/or regional Irish identities after migration
  • The Big House in literary and cultural imagination(s)
  • Transatlantic medical humanities
  • Cultural performance, theatre and performing arts (particularly music and dance)
  • Contemporary constructions of Irish-American identity in popular culture
  • Critical race studies and ‘white innocence’
  • Irish folklore and Celtic mythology within North America

We are seeking articles of between 5,000 and 7,000 words in length (inclusive of notes and bibliographic material), written in accordance with MLA style. Deadline for submissions: 31st December 2014; submissions should be sent to muireann.crowley@ed.ac.uk and a.c.garden@sms.ed.ac.uk.

CFP: Death in the Cityscape

Posted on by Catherine Gander
Call for Papers

Canadian Review of American Studies

Death in the Cityscape

In contemporary literature, the intersection of the space of death and mourning within the confines of the city acts as a method of critiquing our understood modes of living. Since Plato’s Republic, the uneasy interplay of death and memorialization within the polis has been considered. Theorists like Gillian Rose in Mourning Becomes the Law and Sharon Zukin in Naked City have elaborated upon the discourse of space, death, and mourning within an urban setting. This issue of finding a space within the city for the dead remains with us, and recent American economic turmoil places the urban metropolis and its spaces of decay in sharp focus (seen in novels like Teju Cole’s Open City, television shows like The Wire and movies such as Synecdoche, New York). Where in the city is death (dis)allowed? Under what authority does the city, as a social nexus point, memorialize the dead? How does art work in concert with, or against, accepted practices of mourning and memorializing within the city limits? Can one mourn the passing of a city and, if so, how is this enacted? While this abstract focuses primarily on contemporary American work, we welcome papers related to any period of American urban history.

We invite scholarly articles on this topic in any genre of American studies. Submissions should be no more than 8000 words in length. Abstracts of no more than 250 words will be accepted until December 1, 2014. Completed articles must be submitted by April 1, 2015.
Send abstracts and submissions to dcalabre@uwo.ca

Possible topics may include:

–          Death’s relationship to identity in the American city

–          American Cities Characterized

–          Post-9/11 American Cities and Identity

–          Death and Mourning in the City

–          Death and Public Art

–          Memorials and Public Mourning

–          Urban American: Recession and After

Keywords:

–          African-American

–          Children’s Literature

–          Cultural Studies and Historical Approaches

–          Ecocriticism and Environmental Studies

–          Ethnicity and National Identity

–          Film and Television

–          Gender Studies and Sexuality

–          Interdisciplinary

–          Literary Modernism

–          Popular Culture

–          Postcolonialism

–          Postmodernism and Postmodern culture

–          Theatre Studies

–          Twenty-First Century Literature

–          Visual Art and Culture

CFP: First Biennial EAAS Women’s Network Symposium

Posted on by Catherine Gander

The State of the Nation: American Women in the Twenty-First Century

Marie Curie Skłodowska University, Lublin, Poland

Friday, March 27, 2015

As American women have obtained positions of world power, leader, and strength they are still facing continual struggles to maintain and shape their place within the public and private spheres. Legislation attempting to dismantle the 1973 Roe v Wade decision, the 2014 Supreme Court ruling in favor of an employer’s right to choose a woman’s contraception, and continual battles for equal pay are just some of the obstacles women still face. This one-day symposium seeks to discuss contemporary issues facing American women by examining their position in the United States and by assessing the “state of the nation” in terms of gender equality. The European Association for American Studies Women’s Network invites proposals that consider American Women in the Twenty-First Century broadly conceived. We particularly encourage  individual abstracts and panels which incorporate transdisciplinary explorations of the subject, and welcome submissions from any branch of American Studies. Possible themes include, but are not limited to:

  • Feminism and American Studies
  • New frontiers for women
  • American women writers
  • Activists, organizational techniques, NGOs
  • Feminist collaboration; collaboration across difference; gender relations
  • Women’s Studies pedagogy/the language of feminism
  • Women and American academia
  • American women and cultural studies
  • American women and consumer/popular culture
  • American politics/the politics of the body
  • Able-bodiedness/performativity
  • Education, the economy, government, public policy
  • Women and war/the military
  • Women and medicine/health care
  • Sexuality/LBTQ rights/reproductive rights
  • The beauty industry, media, sports
  • The work/family challenge
  • American women of color
  • Citizenship, immigration, and mobility
  • Diaspora, and (forced) displacement
  • FGM/violence/domestic abuse
  • labor exploitation/the environment
  • The impact of the Internet and social media outlets (Facebook/Twitter) on American women

 

Comparative approaches that include the United States

Proposals should be sent to the EAAS Women’s Network (eaaswomensnetwork@gmail.com) and should consist of a 500 word abstract in English, as well as a one-paragraph biography for each participant. The time allowance for all presentations is 20 minutes. An additional 10 minutes will be provided for discussion.

Deadline for proposal submission: December 15, 2014.

Notification of proposal acceptance:  January 15, 2015.

More information will be posted on our website as it becomes available: http://www.women.eaas.eu/

 

 

Neoliberalism and American Literature

Posted on by Catherine Gander

20-21 February 2015

 

Clinton Institute for American Studies

University College Dublin

 

Speakers include:

Elizabeth Maddock Dillon (Northeastern University)

Liam Kennedy (University College Dublin)

Walter Benn Michaels (University of Illinois at Chicago)

Donald Pease (Dartmouth College)

Stephen Shapiro (Warwick University)

 

How has American literature responded to the political, economic and cultural dominance of neoliberalism? What does neoliberalism mean for practices of writing, reading, and selling books? This conference will focus on the production, form and consumption of literature under conditions of neoliberalism.

We invite proposals for conference presentations – individual papers and panels. Conference themes will include, but will not be limited to:

  • The historical roots and routes of neoliberalism’s influence on American literature
  • The relationship between neoliberalism and literary form
  • How ideologies of choice, precarity, rationalization and privatization shape literary representation
  • The techniques authors have used to critique neoliberal values
  • Activist literary practices and poetics
  • New technologies of literary production and consumption
  • The compatibility of literary aesthetics with free market capitalism
  • Visions of social transformation in American literature
  • The presence of class in literary and critical analyses of the neoliberal present
  • The role of economics in literary theory and criticism

 

Brief abstracts (200 words) plus a short biographical statement should be sent to Catherine Carey at Catherine.Carey@ucd.ie by 17th November 2014.

The conference will take place at the UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies. Our website will feature further details about the conference, see www.ucdclinton.ie