Category: Conferences

CFP: Narratives of (Un)sustainability: Assessing U.S. Oil Culture

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Narratives of (Un)sustainability: Assessing U.S. Oil Culture

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Stephanie LeMenager, University of Oregon

Until newly-elected Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez propelled the “Green New Deal” into the public discourse following the 2018 midterm elections, ecological issues had remained largely absent in American political debate and agenda. Unsurprisingly, the US emerges as a longstanding contributor to the rising concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, one of the leading causes of climate change. The holder of one of the most important carbon footprints, the US ranks among the most unsustainable states. If the “American way of life” were to be replicated on a worldwide scale, its rate of resource consumption and waste production would require close to five planets to sustain itself. Since the end of WWII, the US has accumulated a colossal ecological debt at the expense of future generations, whose access to natural wealth is substantially jeopardized, and developing economies, which rely on a much lower resource supply.

Climate disruption is a symptom of this socio-economic matrix of unsustainability and of the unclaimed “check” or hidden cost of the US and other countries’ dysfunctional modes of existence. Specifically, unsustainability results from the harmful triad consisting of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas), a high-energy society, and economic growth. The refusal to address pressing environmental issues by engaging the country in broad, systemic changes (for instance through a national plan for a fossil fuel phase-out) attests to the pervasiveness of oil culture and its coterminous ideology of perpetual growth in American society. That being said, counter-narratives that seek other ways of relating to the environment and of living on earth’s rhythms have emerged in the past years (from the US itself and from elsewhere), and they offer an avenue for moving past the oil predicament.

With Prof. Stephanie LeMenager (University of Oregon, author of Living Oil: Petroleum in the American Century), an expert on America’s petroleum culture, as our keynote speaker, we would like to invite scholars from various disciplines to reflect on the narratives surrounding the US oil culture. We conceive of this conference as an opportunity to explore both ends of the spectrum: from narratives of how unsustainability fuels the oil culture by disseminating ideas such as the existence of inexhaustible abundance or the possibility of a technological “fix” to all environmental ailments, to narratives of sustainability that demonstrate how American culture could be changed through an awareness of the fundamental incompatibility between a politics of infinite growth and a finite biosphere.

Interested in presenting something? Please submit an abstract of 200–300 words and a biography of 100–200 words by 30 June 2019 to the conference organizers:

Audrey Loetscher@unil.ch

Agnieszka.SoltysikMonnet@unil.ch

Contributions should be twenty minutes in length, followed by approximately ten minutes of Q&A.

Please note that there is no conference fee.

Conference and CFP: Arts Patronage in Modern America

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ArtsPatronage in Modern America

26th–28th June 2019

Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, UK

 

The founding of the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965 was a celebrated occasion for many artists and cultural patrons in the United States, but it failed to put to rest the decades old public debate over whether or not art and culture ought to be supported by the federal government. From the Reagan era in particular onwards, straight through to the Trump administration, Culture Wars debates have centred on whether the federal government should fund art, if so, how much, and if not, who should? From the New Deal federal arts projects of the 1930s to the cultural Cold War and beyond, the story of the growth of American arts patronage has often been told through the lens of the federal government, with philanthropies, corporations, state and local governments playing supporting roles to leading federal agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States Information Agency, and the State Department, amongst others.

Although the American state’s role and influence in cultural affairs expanded in the twentieth century, the degree to which the state actually drove these transformations both at home and abroad remains to be examined. What role did American corporations or philanthropies play in shaping emerging forms of cultural patronage? Did state or local programmes and policymakers push changes at the national or international level? And what impact did artistic participants have on developing or curtailing the institutionalisation of American art and culture? Answering such questions will offer an insight into cultural relations between private and state actors, which promises, in turn, to inform not only understandings of the institutional forms of modern American culture, but also to illuminate how individual and private actors have shaped the American state. This conference therefore calls upon scholars, policy-practitioners and artists working on and in modern American arts patronage, broadly defined, to submit proposals for papers that explore and critique the existing narrative.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • philanthropy and government cultural cooperation or conflict
  • cultural funding, policy or exchange either at home or abroad
  • the creation, implementation, and impact of cultural policymaking at the state or local levels
  • how artists or academics experienced cultural policy or patronage
  • cultural policy and protest or lack thereof
  • philanthropy or philanthropic funding in the cultural sphere
  • federal cultural programmes and agencies
  • national or transnational public-private arts partnerships and programmes

Individuals interested in delivering a 20 minute paper should submit a brief abstract (approx. 400 words), a short CV (no more than 2 pages), and a brief biography (of around 250 words) to karen.heath@rai.ox.ac.ukand niedf005@umn.edu by 4th January 2019. Full panel proposals are welcome, although all-male panels will not be considered nor compiled by the organisers. We encourage submissions from scholars of colour and from those whose voices have traditionally been left out of scholarly narratives.

We hope to be able to offer a limited number of bursaries to support attendance by postgraduates and early career researchers. Priority will be given to those presenting papers. Please indicate in your email if you would like to apply for a bursary and whether you have access to institutional support, giving an estimate of potential travel and accommodation costs. You can visit our website at https://americanartspatronage.wordpress.com/

Conference Organisers:

Karen Patricia Heath, Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford

Over_Seas: Melville, Whitman and All the Intrepid Sailors

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Over_Seas: Melville, Whitman, and All the Intrepid Sailors
July 3-5, 2019
School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon

Herman Melville (1819-1891), sailor and writer, plowed the ocean as a tablet to be read, gazing at
the white page where unfathomable characters surface to the eyes of the puzzled reader. “Captain”
Walt Whitman (1819-1892), on the other hand, writing “in cabin’d ships at sea,” broke open and
passed the divide between in- and out-of-doors, as he urged his book to “speed on.” Both were
born 200 years ago.

ULICES’ Research Group in American Studies is pleased to announce the international conference
and exhibition “Over_Seas: Melville, Whitman and All the Intrepid Sailors,” to be held on 3-5 July,
2019. We aim to foreground the international afterlife of both authors and their contribution to the
interconnectedness between the arts, sciences, human philosophy and history, with a
special focus on the imagination and memory of the oceans. In line with one of the group’s
main axes of research, “(Re)imagining shared pasts over the sea and across borders: dialogue,
reception and projections between the USA, the Americas, and Europe,” the title “Over_Seas”
accommodates an eagerness to pore over the depths of wild and cultured nature(s), as well as the
transatlantic and transnational dynamics that Melville, Whitman, and various writers on both sides
of the Atlantic have helped to shape. The events will take place at the School of Arts and
Humanities of the University of Lisbon, the Portuguese National Library, and other public spaces
devoted to cultural dissemination and to the promotion of the vital resources within our ocean(s).

This bicentennial celebration aims to bring together scholars with expertise not only in nineteenth century
American literature and culture, but also in areas related with the broader and
interdisciplinary themes envisaged by the conference itself. Participation of junior researchers and
students is especially welcome. We invite submissions of abstracts for panel sessions (up to
1000 words), roundtables, papers and posters (up to 300 words) to be sent to
melville.whitman2019@gmail.com, with the following information:

. full title of paper, panel or poster;
. full name of author;
. institutional affiliation;
. individual e-mail address(es);
. brief bio (max. 5 lines).

Suggested, but by no means exclusive, topics are:

– Dialogue and tension in Melville and Whitman: their texts as an ocean and/or vessel;

– Home, overseas and at sea: Melville, Whitman, and/or other 19th century US writers (also in
dialogue with writers overseas who addressed the sea in their writings);

– The ocean(s) and/or sea in literature, arts and sciences;

– The ocean(s), what goes on within, down deep, what moves across and more – wilderness,
chaos, death, shipwreck, rage vs. fantasy, freedom, voyage, nourishment, commerce;

– To and fro: Atlantic trade, finance and industry;

– Bridging borders – translation, transatlantic (textual) commerce, Indic and Transpacific
influences, literary transformation;

– Transoceanic wave-sounds, wave-lengths, wave-motions;

– Women across borders, overboard, and at sea;

– The Anthropocene, Whitman, Melville, and/or other sailor-writers – environmental
sustainability / crisis and ecological protection;

– Changes, interchanges, and dialogues across oceans, continents, peoples.

Deadline for abstracts: March 11, 2019
Notification of acceptance: March 30, 2019

Common Ground 2018: Divided Selves and Societies in Irish and American Literature and Culture

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Common Ground 2018: Divided Selves and Societies in Irish and American Literature and Culture

26th, 27th October 2018

Queen’s University, Belfast

This event brings together postgraduate and early career researchers from across the
humanities and the world at Queen’s University Belfast, to explore the theme of divided selves and societies in 20th and 21st century Irish and American literature and culture.

Friday 26th October:

  • Gender and Northern Ireland
  • The Abject, Ruins, Resistance and the Body
  • Keynote by Dr Oona Frawley
  • Challenging Female Stereotypes
  • Race and Migration
  • Wine Reception and Creative Readings

Saturday 27th October:

  • Heaney and Division
  • Freedom and Sovereignty
  • Keynote by Dr Sinéad Moynihan
  • Performing Borders
  • Sexuality and Gender

View the full programme

Register for the conference

 

Reading Practices in the Digital Age: Call for Papers

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CALL FOR PAPERS
for an international interdisciplinary conference
READING PRACTICES IN THE DIGITAL AGE
The conference will be held on November 26, 2018
at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” in Sofia, Bulgaria
The conference Reading Practices in the Digital Age aims to explore reading across many different platforms: from book to screen, by examining the role of the medium, and of multimodality marked
by the interplay between text, image, and sound.
We invite individual abstracts and panel proposals in an array of topics, discussing but not limited to the areas below:
 What has happened to reading in the age of the Internet?
 How did the “digital turn” affect the usages of free time? What is the place of reading practices in the digitized contemporary usage of free time and its market-driven hierarchies?
 How have readers’ attitudes and behaviors changed as texts migrate from page to screen, and from the print medium to the digital ones: e-books, tablets, computer screens?
 What are the changes in the reading tempo and rhythms?
 How is reader-response affected?
 How are attention and concentration ability affected?
 How is comprehension and memory affected by reading on screen?
 Do the interactive features of the digital platform distract readers from the textual content
or do they facilitate comprehension?
 How are digital reading practices located between the poles of “reading-for-pleasure” and “reading-for-practical-goals” (cognition, information etc.?)
 What is “the future of the book” – elegiac or optimistic?
 What are the pedagogical implications for reading on a digital screen?
Proposals for twenty-minute presentations or for panels to be submitted by 1 November 2018. The official language of the conference will be English.
Please include the following in your submission:
 Name:
 Affiliation:
 Email address:
 Title of Paper or Panel Proposal:
 Abstract (250 words):
 Bio (100 words):

Please address emails to: readingpractices.conference@gmail.com

CONFERENCE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
The Cultural Center of Sofia University Team led by prof. Alexander Kiossev, Department of History and Theory of Culture, Sofia University &
Assoc. Prof. Alexandra Glavanakova, Department of English and American Studies, Sofia University & Executive Director of AFEAS
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Tatiani Rapatzikou, Assoc. Prof. at at the Department of American Literature and Culture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.
Talan Memmott, Professor of Creative Digital Media at Winona State University, USA.

American Islands: Outposts of Security, Prosperity and Culture

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American Islands:
Outposts of Security, Prosperity, and Culture
Roosevelt Institute for American Studies
Middelburg, The Netherlands
22 May 2019
CALL FOR PAPERS

Throughout the twentieth century, the United States has built what historian Daniel Immerwahr
has defined as a “pointillist empire” consisting of an intricate web of incorporated territories,
islands, and overseas bases. Expandable from a territorial point of view, these possessions have
nevertheless served as fundamental springboards for the worldwide projection of American
military, economic and cultural hegemony. As Brooke Blower has put it, “the United States has
always been at heart a nation of outposts.”

This conference aims to further investigate how the many “little Americas” spread all over the
world – broadly conceived as military or economic enclaves, missionary communities, research
and cultural centers, etc. – have actively disseminated typical elements of the American lifestyle,
acted as unofficial ambassadors, supported the expansion of American businesses, exported the
linchpins of American culture, and simultaneously challenged the traditional class, gender, racial,
and power relationships of their surroundings.

The conveners would like to discuss papers that, by adopting a bottom-up approach, may assess
the overall socio-economic, cultural, environmental or political impact of such American
outposts. The permeable insularity of these American communities overseas has indeed
alternatively favored the promotion of, smoothened the adaptation to, or spurred the resistance
against American visions of peace, stability and progress. For this reason, the conference invites
scholars to reflect on the polysemous nature of American security and prosperity as a core
component of the ethos of the American Century, as a crucial element of modern globalization,
and as a catalyst for contacts and exchanges between different cultural heritages.

Please submit proposals (maximum 500 words) to rias@zeeland.nl by 15 January 2019. The
conveners aim to publish the selected papers, but the format of the conference output will be
decided collectively. The RIAS will provide the invited scholars with board and lodging.

CFP: The Influence of American Freemasonry and Fraternalism on 20th Century Politics, Society and Culture

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The Influence of American Freemasonry and Fraternalism on 20th Century Politics, Society and Culture

October 3, 2020

University College Roosevelt, Middleburg, The Netherlands

At the start of the 20th century, the USA still lived in what some have qualified as the “golden age of fraternity”. Indeed, joining fraternal societies such as the Freemasons, the Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias and many hundreds like them was an essential feature of social and cultural life in the country. Although membership has declined since the 1930s, fraternal societies have continued to be more prevalent in American society than in Europe. Freemasonry and other similar orders have always proclaimed an apolitical stance, yet their political influence cannot be dismissed. This is not a concession to conspiracy: America was not secretively run by the lodges. But that does not imply that fraternal societies could not have more modest political objectives or that politicians did not try to mobilize support within their ranks. Already in the 19th century several examples are known of fraternities being founded to back up specific party tickets. Some orders were actively opposing immigration of particular groups. Even within apolitical societies, men running for public office did not hesitate to approach their brethren to obtain their votes. Was this still the case in 20th-century America? Did fraternal societies intervene in the electoral process? What fields of decision making were prone to see fraternal societies use lobbying tactics to foster their interests or values? Did the orders defend specific ideological positions? How much were sectional, religious, ethnical, gender and racial divisions relevant to the issue? The event will contribute to the inclusion of the study of fraternal societies as a serious, empirically grounded sub-section of political history.

University College Roosevelt (UCR) will host an international and interdisciplinary conference to explore these matters. The College was named after the American presidents Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who were both members of American masonic lodges. The conference will focus on the political influence of fraternal societies and the wider social and cultural significance of this. The conference will also include an undergraduate research session, where students from UCR (and other liberal arts colleges) can present their capstone work or undergraduate research thesis.

Interested participants should send an abstract (250-500 words) to the local organizer of the conference, by e-mail: b.mosselmans@ucr.nl. All proposals will be reviewed by the members of the scientific committee (see below). The deadline for submitting the abstract is 1 November 2018. Participants will be informed before 1 February 2019 whether their proposal was accepted. The final paper must be submitted before 1 February 2020. A discussant will be assigned to each paper. At the conference, the author of the paper should present a summary in 20 minutes. Then the discussant will have 5 minutes to provide comments, and another 5 minutes will be reserved for questions from the audience. Selected papers will be peer-reviewed and published in a special issue of Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism.

The members of the scientific committee are:
Jeffrey Tyssens (chair) Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium)
Kristofer Allerfeldt University of Exeter (UK)
Jan C. Jansen German Historical Institute, Washington (USA)
Kees van der Pijl emeritus University of Sussex (UK)
Albert Clement University College Roosevelt (Netherlands)
Giles Scott-Smith Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (Netherlands)
Bert Mosselmans University College Roosevelt (Netherlands)
(local organizer)

 

The conference will start on Saturday at 8:30 with coffee. The conference will be
officially opened at 9:00 (in the gothic “Burgerzaal”) and start with a commencement
lecture by our keynote speaker. Starting at 10:00, different sessions with paper
presentations will be held in the UCR conference rooms. Lunch will be served at 13:00 and dinner at 19:00. The conference will coincide with the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the masonic lodge “La Compagnie Durable” in Middelburg. There will be some side events, such as a guided city tour for partners (including a visit to the lodge building), music performances and art presentations. Conference participants can reserve a room in one of the many hotels that are available in Middelburg, a list will be provided by the organizers.

The contribution to the Conference will be €80, which includes coffee, lunch, dinner and conference materials. The Conference will be located in the Roosevelt Conference Center, in Middelburg, the Netherlands. The Roosevelt Conference Center, part of University College Roosevelt and Utrecht University, is housed in one of the Netherlands most beautiful buildings: the former, late gothic-style, city hall of Middelburg located centrally on the “Markt” in Middelburg. The Conference Center is an exclusive location for congresses, (international) events, receptions and workshops aimed at science & education, governmental & social organizations and NGO events.

CFP: Music and Social Movements Symposium, Northumbria University

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CFP: Music and Social Movements symposium, Northumbria University, November 30, 2018

This symposium, funded by the US Embassy and Northumbria University, will bring together academic historians, graduate students, and secondary school teachers to examine the role that music played in oppositional social movements that were active in the post-World War II period in the United States. This includes (but is not limited to) religious movements, the gay rights movement, labor organizations, and the African-American and Latino activist communities.

The event aims to share scholarship and pedagogy with the wider teaching and learning community and hopes to foster lasting connections between its participants. In particular, the symposium hopes to promote the work of graduate students and early career academics. It will facilitate this through bursaries to cover travel and accommodation. The day will include a series of academic papers and a ‘Teaching History with Music’ roundtable. Please send 250-word abstracts to Joe Street (joe.street@northumbria.ac.uk) before September 28, 2018 and please indicate whether you seek a travel bursary. Please note that postgraduate students will be prioritized for receipt of these funds. Registration for the symposium is free – and will include lunch and refreshments – but numbers are limited so please move quickly to reserve your place athttps://store.northumbria.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/arts-design-social-sciences/conferences/music-and-social-movements-symposium-at-northumbria-university-2018

For more information, please contact Joe Street.

The State of Human Rights: Historical Genealogies, Political Controversies, and Cultural Imaginaries

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18th International Academy Conference

July 5-7, 2018, International Conference, Amerikahaus Munich

The State of Human Rights: Historical Genealogies, Political Controversies, and Cultural Imaginaries

The BAA’s 2018 international conference investigates the role of human rights, both in diachronic and synchronic perspectives and with an interdisciplinary research design. Since their proclamation in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, human rights have become a dominant language in controversies over ethics around the globe and a normative basis for concepts of a just society and ideas of the public good. This concerns a variety of issues, from slavery and warfare through fights over indigenous rights and disputes over preserving the heritage of minorities, to same sex marriage debates or current conflicts over asylum law and the status of refugees. What is the state of human rights both within and beyond the boundaries of the nation state and how can it be considered from a multidisciplinary angle?

This conference offers perspectives from literary and cultural studies, history, political science, philosophy, sociology, and law, looking at historical controversies on human rights as well as at its current political and imagined state. Contributions reflect theoretical implications of interdisciplinary work on human rights agency and also take into account the significance of cultural texts in envisioning and critically reflecting the ‘state of human rights.’

info@amerika-akademie.de

www.amerika-akademie.de

CFP: 14th SAAS (Spanish Association for American Studies) Conference

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CFP: 14th SAAS (Spanish Association for American Studies) Conference

 

CALL FOR PAPERS

14th SAAS (SPANISH ASSOCIATION FOR AMERICAN STUDIES) CONFERENCE, SALAMANCA, APRIL 10-12, 2019

UNIVERSIDAD DE SALAMANCA

 

17) “9/11 – An Image Which Continues to Shape Twenty-first-Century United States Culture”

Panel Chair: Clair A. Sheehan

Institution: University of Limerick, Ireland

E-mail: clair.sheehan@ul.ie

If, as the current SAAS conference theme, “The Image and the Word”, suggests, “[o]ur 21st century stands under the aegis of the image” (Boletin 27), then the most significant guiding cultural image of twenty-first century America has to be the hauntingly repetitive film of domestic passenger jets colliding with the physical embodiment of twentieth-century US power, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre.

This panel for the SAAS Conference in 2019 is calling for submissions which explore how the now iconic image created by the 9/11 terrorist attacks impacted on American society. Papers that track the origins of this incident within late 20th-century literature, and/or consider the limitations these events placed on writers who chose to use their work to address the shifting socio-political climate of the early 21st century, will be especially welcomed. The panel is particularly interested in papers which imagine how popular authors, both within the United States and across the world, have chosen to revisit this historic episode and its aftermath, but it will give equal consideration to submissions which compare the manner in which these events were interpreted and depicted in literature and film.

Potential authors could include, but are in no way limited to, Don DeLillo, Jonathan Safran Foer, Joseph O’Neill, Phillip Roth, Paul Auster, William Gibson, Khaled Hosseini, Salman Rushdi, Art Spiegleman, Barbara Kingsolver, Amy Waldman, Mohsin Hamid, Jonathan Franzen and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

 

Deadline for papers: October 15th