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Meet the Committee: James Hussey

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

James Hussey is a PhD candidate in the School of English at Trinity College Dublin, and was recently elected as one of our Postgraduate and Early Career Representatives.

How did you end up where you are now?

I completed my B.A. (Hons) in Trinity College Dublin in 2013 and, after taking Prof. Stephen Matterson’s “Hawthorne and Melville” course during my final year, I decided that these ostensibly gloomy nineteenth century writers had a pretty good view of things. This inspired me to opt for Trinity’s MPhil in Literatures of the Americas. After trying desperately to stay within the confines of New England I realised there was only one thing for it, and, here I am, over three years later, working towards a PhD on the life and career of Nathaniel Hawthorne, for whom solitude, sherry and good cigars often took the place of companions or friends. Apart from the first of these I haven’t quite got the hang of the latter pair.

Tell us a little bit about your current research interests?

I’m in the penultimate year of a PhD that researches the influence of Jacksonian individualism on the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne. My contention is that Hawthorne’s career and writings were informed and influenced by a societal-acceptance of individualism that transcended mere ethical concerns, and took on identifying qualities for Americans of the era. I have published on Faulkner and Hawthorne respectively, and have contributed to a wide variety of panels, largely on nineteenth century American literature, at international conferences, including the MLA and ALA. Other interests include baseball literature and culture, Thomas Pynchon, Ralph Waldo Emerson and the lyrics of Hank Williams.

Favourite book/film/album?

My favourite book is The Sickness Unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard. I’m not a fancy, big city lawyer usually one for big claims or statements, but Kierkegaard is my vote for best prose writer of the nineteenth century. This work, quite apart from its philosophical implications, is written with wondrous dexterity. It’s a fascinating look at the self from an interesting, unique perspective.

My favourite film is Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I never get tired of Bill S. Preston Esq., Ted “Theodore” Logan or Rufus, not to mention the fact that “strange things are afoot at the Circle K”. Is it the best film ever? Absolutely not, but it’s unapologetically my favourite.

There are a couple of albums I could choose as a favourite (Ok Computer, Songs for the Deaf, Sea Change), but I’ll go against most critical belief and all sense of public taste or decency and say Be Here Now. Sure, “All Around the World” is nearly 10 minutes long and they probably should have eased up on the arguments (and cocaine), but it was initially considered the most ambitious British album since Sgt. Peppers, and we can all get behind ambition right?

Universities don’t exist. What job would you have instead?

A baseball writer. The “thrill of the grass” as W.P. Kinsella put it. The chance to get paid to do something you love is rare, so to be paid to watch something I love is unimaginable. A beat writer for the Yankees, couple of books on the historical tidbits that the game accumulates. I reckon I’d settle for that.

Who would play you in the movie of your life?

If I was to answer this seriously and ask for a sympathetic portrayal I would go with Casey Affleck. He’s been my favourite actor for years, and after Manchester by the Sea I feel like his next great acting challenge could be that of a PhD candidate/academic.

If Casey passed up on this opportunity to impress the Academy, then a mid-fifties version of Robert Mitchum would do just fine, maybe without the “Love” and “Hate” tattoos on his knuckles.

How did you get involved with the IAAS?

Throughout my MPhil programme in Trinity, the IAAS was advertised as an excellent way to meet like-minded, academically-inclined postgraduate students at symposia, the annual conference, and various other occasions during the year. I, of course, promptly ignored all advertisements and spent the following year, the first of my PhD, wondering at my own foolishness. From the start of my doctorate onwards, I began to engage with the aforementioned events and learned that this organisation provided a friendly, not-at-all sarcastic view of academia, one that encouraged scholarship and participation within a community of emerging students and established professors.

In an alternate universe to question 4, you have somehow ended up establishing your own university. What’s the motto?

“There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.” I was tempted to quote Dante, but Melville will do fine – just to welcome the undergraduates on the right note.

We’re all going to call around this evening. What’s for dinner?

Chili con carne. Various dried and fresh chillies, lots of spice, and no kidney beans (blasphemy!).

Who is your hero, academic or otherwise?

I’ll go with Alessandro del Piero. The only time I have ever cried over a “celebrity” was when he injured his ACL against Udinese in November 1998. I can tell you where I was, what I had just eaten for dinner and other strange little details of which traumatic incidents tend to provoke remembrance. My 7 year old brain, attempting to process the Channel 4 commentary, genuinely believed that football was about to end.

Free space! You have about 200 words to plug something dear to your heart/announce plans to take over the universe/tell us about the grand plans you have as a member of the committee…

Well, apart from telling everyone to get on the Jackson-as-comparison train before Trump gets impeached/resigns/couldn’t be bothered, I would implore all students and teachers of American Studies to explore the heterogeneity of approaches that the IAAS brings to an already varied field.

Symposia, conferences, guest lectures, workshops, funding applications; not only is this a list of rejected 1960’s Batman sound effects, it is also an indication of the breadth of opportunity provided by this tireless association. I must also take this chance to ask people to visit and re-visit this website, which is updated regularly and is, truly, a one-stop shop for all things American Studies. It is a resource that cannot be underestimated.

Look out for news about upcoming postgraduate events over the next year, as your representatives, Sarah and I are looking forward to putting together an exciting, fruitful symposium that caters for the diversity of students applying themselves to the study of the Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave. Of course, we also encourage study of South and Central America, I just got a little hyped there.

CFP: Hemingway in Paris

Posted on by Jennifer Daly
XVIII International Hemingway Conference
Hemingway in Paris: “Paris est une fête” . . .
Hemingway’s Moveable Feast
JULY 22-28, 2018

“The Feast in Motion: Paris 2018-Hemingway, nous voilà!“
 Conference Directors: H. R. Stoneback & Matthew Nickel
“If you are lucky enough . . . then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
George Plimpton, founding editor of The Paris Review and one of the early readers of the manuscript of A Moveable Feast remarked: “I can’t imagine sending anyone to Paris without suggesting that they read the book. It has the hard brilliance of his best fiction.” Consider that homework-to read or reread Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast as you prepare to attend the not-to-be-missed once-in-a-lifetime 18th International Hemingway Conference in Paris July 22-28, 2018. Plans for the Paris Feast are very much in motion. If we haven’t firmly convinced you yet that you really must be there in July 2018, what shall we say here? Come to the City of Light (not Lights; it’s about Enlightenment not Electricity-but the luminous lights of La Ville Lumiére are pretty spectacular, too). Come to La Capitale de la gastronomie, de l’art de vivre, de la mode, de l’amour; come to what is often called “the most beautiful and most visited city in the world”; or come because you just want to be there with Hemingway, in Paris, the place that he called “the city I love best in all the world.” Come, too, because the conference offers the opportunity to celebrate the Centenary of the End of The Great War. Come and say with Hemingway and over 4,000,000 Americans mobilized for that war: “Lafayette, we are here!” (No, General Pershing did not say it. The moving story of who first said it, when and where, is told in many books, on many websites.)  And now, some announcements and practical matters:
Speakers: We are delighted to announce that Terry Eagleton, one of the world’s leading writers, literary critics and public intellectuals, author of more than 45 books, has agreed to be a featured speaker at the conference. We are also excited to announce that Adam Gopnik, leading writer for The New Yorker for decades and author of Paris to the Moon and many other works, will be a featured speaker.We await the resolution of our invitations to other potential featured speakers-from Milan Kundera to Jean Echenoz and Patrick Modiano. We will also have an all-star lineup in special sessions featuring the authors of new and recent books on Hemingway.
Conference Papers:  As the conference Call For Papers stresses, we invite not just papers that may deal with Hemingway and Paris or Hemingway and the World War(s) but also presentations on the widest possible range of topics. The deadline for abstract submissions is Aug. 30, 2017. We look forward to receiving your abstract soon.
Special Events: We are currently in negotiations regarding special events-the Opening Reception, the PEN-Hemingway event, the Closing Banquet-to be held at some of the world’s most spectacular venues. Watch for announcements soon. We will also hold special academic plenary sessions in one of the legendary amphithéâtres of the Sorbonne.
   
Location and Paris Site Coordinators: The American University of Paris (AUP) is our host institution and our Paris Site Coordinators are AUP Professors Alice Mikal Craven and William Dow. AUP is located in the 7th Arrondissement, often called the safest and most serene quartier in the heart of Paris.
   
Lodging:  We will shortly post on the website the AUP list of lodging in the 7th Arrondissement, within walking distance of our meeting spaces and with costs as low as around 130 Euros a night. As we’ve noted before, contrary to popular myth, Paris does not have to be an expensive city when you know the terrain, and a number of 2-Star and 3-Star hotels near AUP will cost less than lodging in Oak Park (2016) and Venice (2014).
American literature is inconceivable without Paris, without the feasts of Hemingway and all the others in the Capital of Modernism. Did Gertrude Stein say it best: “Paris, France is exciting and peaceful . . . Paris was where the 20thcentury was” (Paris France). Or did Hemingway say it better: “There is never any ending to Paris . . . Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it.” (A Moveable Feast).
See you in Paris next summer, where we will raise our glasses and proclaim: Hemingway, nous voilà-Hemingway, we are here!

 

Call for Papers: PRECARITY, POPULISM AND POST-TRUTH POLITICS

Posted on by Jennifer Daly

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS

PRECARITY, POPULISM AND POST-TRUTH POLITICS

 1-3 February 2018

Universidad de Córdoba, Spain

 

This three-day event—a two-day conference followed by a workshop on the third day—aims to interrogate the multiple and overlapping global processes underlying three emergent relational fields or modes of enquiry: precarity, populism and post-truth politics. As a network, we are committed to the pursuit of arguments and ideas that will foster articulation of research questions and positions and the construction of one or more interlinked, interdisciplinary projects. We seek to identify the interconnections between precarity, populism and post-truth politics in ways that will enable the development of cross-cutting thematic and theoretical approaches to these manifestations of global inequality, injustice and tension.

Judith Butler first introduced the concept of precarity in Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (2004), defined as a type of precariousness by which human life can be understood from a collective, communal and interdependently political point of view. Whereas all lives are born precarious—i.e. vulnerable and hence finite—precarity refers to a “politically induced condition” (2009, 25) derived from (in)action on the part of social and economic systems, usually maintained by nation-states, which fail to protect human lives from physical impairment for reasons such as disease, poverty, starvation, or political violence. In a similar way poverty also has been reframed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum,[1] as not just material deprivation but a failure of the world system, due to social cultural exclusion, lack of agency and access to rights and capabilities.

In these contexts, a new form of populism has recently emerged, albeit not unprecedented in history, as a powerful social response, tainted by xenophobia, which emphasises the need for protection against perceived threats to national security, health and well-being, employment and living standards. More peripheral groups, often aided by Non-Governmental Organizations, independent associations, Refugee Councils or other transnational agencies, have traditionally been targets of populism; but recently more affluent social sectors have also begun to experience conditions of precarity, to demonstrate hostility towards immigrants, and to demand sovereignty, as with Brexit, or secession, as with Catalonia in Spain. Examples include the European austerity policies and the emergence of right wing political parties and pressure groups such as UKIP, the Front National (France), The Golden Dawn (Greece) and the Freedom Party (Netherlands), which both foster and are symptomatic of the opposition between the haves and the have-nots. This growing fracture entails the dehumanization and/or reification of the Other, rendering asylum seekers, illegal migrants or refugees—i.e. border subjects—considered outside national and ethnic boundaries, as unintelligible and unrecognizable.

This per se intricate situation of our contemporary moment is complemented by a third phenomenon, known as “post-truth”, a term which was awarded the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year in 2016.[2] Post-truth, usually associated with the noun “politics,” is described by the Oxford Dictionary of English (ODE) as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”. The complex interrelationship between precarity and populism is thus marked by the unparalleled mass media impact on our globalized era and the tendency towards distortion of the news in the press and social media. Factual events are set aside; emotional appeals are foregrounded. This implies that reality is multifarious, kaleidoscopic and that multiple overlapping and sometimes colliding “truths” co-exist. Global issues of poverty worldwide (regardless of whether those areas are classified as developed or developing countries) are in danger of being overlooked and political governments and agencies are faced with ethical and aesthetic issues of representation, concerning aspects of voice, agency and authenticity.

In taking up the critical concepts of this three-field intersection, we suggest precarity, populism and post-truth politics can be interpreted through the lens of racial, gender, or ethnic discrimination, silencing, censorship and marginalization on the part of governments, corporations or other forces, leading to violence and terror and ecological degradation in the context of fierce neo-liberal capitalism.

This International Conference also proposes to examine precarity, populism and post-truth politics through multiple research disciplines, ranging from sociology, economics, ethnography, anthropology, literary and comparative studies, visual and media studies, translation, among others, by focusing on individual or collective cases, imaginative responses, and theoretical or experimental approaches. The aim of this conference is to provide a multi- and transdisciplinary platform which will allow delegates to (un)settle, (re)frame, and analyse the global issues from multiple viewpoints as well as their cultural representation.

We invite abstracts that focus on, but are not limited to, the following:

* Global Health and Safety, starvation and housing

* National and transnational terrorism, war, and violence

* Subalternity, marginality, poverty, and economic inequality

* Gender, sexuality, poverty, and precarity

* Diasporas, immigration and global population trends and growth

* Mass media representations of economy, democracy and global conflict

* Depletion of natural resources, ecological degradation and the Anthropocene

* Imperialistic globalization of cultures

* Human Rights, refugees, asylum seekers, illegal migrants and social activism

* Populisms and aesthetics

* Global emergence of right wing ideologies

* NGOs, UN and other corporate stakeholders

* Racism, discrimination, and ontologies of the grievable

* The role of censorship in mass media and cultural representations

* Neo-liberal capitalism and human sustainability

* The role of science and technology in poverty, populism and the post-truth era

* The humanities and social sciences in the global world

* Truthiness,[3] Truth and Post-Truth Politics: political discourse and consciousness

* Scapes of poverty and precarity and its representational practices

* Contested representations of precarity, populism and post-truth phenomena

* Political separatisms, populism and Brexit

* Literary and visual representations of precarity, populism, post-truth politics

* Ethics and aesthetics in the representations of poverty

 

CONFIRMED PLENARY SPEAKERS

Elleke Boehmer (University of Oxford, UK)

Tabish Khair (Aarhus University, Denmark)

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

We invite abstracts of 300-400 words for 20-minute papers which can be either oral or virtual. If virtual this should be stated on the abstract as instructions about content and delivery will be sent on acceptance. Proposals for 90 minutes panels, with a 500-word justification in addition to individual abstracts of 300 words, are also welcome. Please include personal information (name, affiliation, contact information) with the abstract, and send it to the following:

 

Om Dwivedi, Sri Ramswaroop Memorial University, Lucknow, India (om_dwivedi2003@yahoo.com)

Cristina M. Gámez-Fernández, University of Cordova, Spain (cristina.gamez@uco.es)

Janet Wilson, University of Northampton, UK (Janet.Wilson@northampton.ac.uk)

 

Deadline: 30 September 2017.

Notification of acceptance: 31 October 2017.

 

[1] See, for example, Amartya Sen, ‘Capability and Well-Being,’ in M. Nussbaum and A. Sen, The Quality of Life. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); and Martha Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2011).

 

[2] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016

[3] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/truthiness

CFP: David Thelan Award

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DEADLINE: APPLICATIONS MUST BE SUBMITTED BY MAY 1, 2019

The David Thelen Award (formerly the Foreign Language Article Prize) is given biennially by the Organization of American Historians to the author of the best article on American history written in a foreign language. The winning article will be published in the Journal of American History. David Thelen was editor of the Journal of American History (1985–1999).

To be eligible, an article may have already been published (during January 1, 2017 through December 31, 2018) or may be an original work that broadens the presentation of American history. The winning article will illustrate how the understanding of American history can be approached differently when it is conceived in the scholarly or public debates of a country other than the United States. Submissions should be interesting, compelling, and highlight a way of thinking or writing about the United States that offers a perspective most American readers rarely encounter. The award is open to roundtables, keynote addresses, conference papers, or other types of scholarship. The manuscript should be framed and communicated to people outside the U.S. and written in a language other than English.

Submission process:

Length: Equivalent to approximately 5,000-15,000 words when translated into English. Languages: Other than English

Please write a brief abstract (in English) explaining how the manuscript meets the criteria set out above.

Submission should be clearly labeled “2020 David Thelen Award Entry.” An electronic version of the manuscript should be sent to jah@oah.org, and one hard copy of the manuscript should be mailed to the following address postmarked to arrive by May 1, 2019:

Benjamin H. Irvin,

Chair,

2020 David Thelen Award Committee Executive Editor,

OAH/ Editor,

Journal of American History Journal of American History,
1215 East Atwater Avenue,

Bloomington IN 47401

The application should also include the following information:

*name
*mailing address
*institutional affiliation
*fax number
*e-mail address
*language of submitted article

Copies of the article and application will be reviewed by contributing editors of the Journal of American History who are proficient in the language of the submission, as well as by referees (proficient in the language of the submitted article) who are experts on its subject matter.

The final decision will be made by the David Thelen Award Committee by February 2020. The winner will be provided with details regarding the OAH Annual Meeting and awards presentation, where she or he will receive a cash award to assist with the translation. The winning article will be printed in the Journal of American History.

DEADLINE: APPLICATIONS MUST BE SUBMITTED BY MAY 1, 2019

For more information, visit the OAH website.

CFP: Organisation of American Historians: Willi Paul Adams Award

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DEADLINE: SUBMISSIONS MUST BE POSTMARKED BY MAY 1, 2018

The Willi Paul Adams Award is given biennially by the Organization of American Historians to the author of the best book on American history published in a foreign language. The award (formerly the Foreign Language Book Prize) is named for Willi Paul Adams, who was an active member of OAH in Germany and a tireless advocate of the internationalization of American history.

The OAH defines both “history” and “American” broadly. To be eligible, a book should be concerned with the past (recent or distant) or with issues of continuity and change. It should also be substantially concerned with events or processes that began, developed, or ended in the American colonies and/or the United States. We welcome comparative and international studies that fall within these guidelines. Authors of eligible books are invited to nominate their work. We urge scholars who know of eligible publications written by others to inform those authors of the award. Since the purpose of the award is to expose Americanists to scholarship originally published in a language other than English—to overcome the language barrier that keeps scholars apart—this award is not open to books whose manuscripts were originally submitted for publication in English or by people for whom English is their first language.

Each entry must have been published during the two-year period July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2018.

The award will be presented at the 2019 OAH Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 4–7.

Please write a one- to two-page essay (in English, along with the title in English) explaining why the book is a significant and original contribution to our understanding of American history, and include a summary of the book’s main argument.

The application should also include the following information:

*name
*mailing address
*institutional affiliation
*fax number
*e-mail address
*language of submitted book table of contents in English

Copies of the book and essay will be reviewed by contributing editors of the Journal of American History who are proficient in the language of the submission as well as by referees (proficient in the language of the submitted book) who are experts on its subject matter.

Four copies of the essay and book, clearly labeled “2019 OAH Willi Paul Adams Award Entry,” must be mailed to the following address and postmarked by May 1, 2018:

Willi Paul Adams Award Committee
c/o Organization of American Historians 112 North Bryan Avenue
Bloomington IN 47408-4141

Bound page proofs may be used for books to be published after May 1, 2018 and before July 1, 2018. If a bound page proof is submitted, a bound copy of the book must be postmarked no later than July 9, 2018 and sent to the OAH address above.

Electronic page proofs also will be accepted as a placeholder only. Please e-mail the file to the OAH Committee Coordinator at khamm@oah.org by midnight PST on May 1, 2018 and follow with bound copies of the book as soon as they are available but postmarked no later than July 9, 2018.

If a book carries a copyright date that is different from the publication date, but the actual publication date falls during the correct time frame making it eligible, please include a letter of explanation from the publisher with each copy of the book.

The final decision will be made by the Willi Paul Adams Award Committee by February 2019. The winner will be provided with details regarding the OAH Annual Meeting and awards presentation.

Willi Paul Adams Award Committee

Carl J. Guarneri, Saint Mary’s College of California (Committee Chair)

Nicolas Barreyre, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales

Walter D. Kamphoefner, Texas A&M University
Hannah Spahn, University of Potsdam

Jean-Christian Vinel, Université Paris Diderot

DEADLINE: SUBMISSIONS MUST BE POSTMARKED BY MAY 1, 2018

For more information, visit the OAH website.

CFP: Philosophy and the American Renaissance (NeMLA 2018)

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Deadline for submissions: September 30, 2017
Full name/name of organization: Northeast Modern Language Association
Contact email: bnelson@gradcenter.cuny.edu

In Moby-Dick, Ahab, the monomaniacal captain of the Pequod, famously iterates the following lines: “Hark ye yet again,—the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!” In this instance, Ahab might be seen as possessed by what John Dewey called philosophy’s endless “quest for certainty.” Thus, Ahab’s monomaniacal discourse can be said to turn on the appearance/reality distinction—a dichotomy germane to Western metaphysics since Plato. Philosophy, and questions frameable in philosophical terms, is all over Moby-Dick, just as philosophical questions and allusions to philosophy permeate many of the literatures belonging to the creative period known as the American Renaissance.

This panel aims to examine literature from the American Renaissance (and 19th century America, broadly conceived) in terms of its intersections with philosophy. As such, papers that take a distinctly philosophical approach (by pairing philosophy and philosophers with American literature) will be given special priority. Assuming the inherent value of interdisciplinary scholarship, this panel seeks to examine 19th century American Literature by placing it in generative dialogue with the philosophical methods and/or the intellectual histories of Western and Eastern philosophy. One question the panel poses is: What happens when we pair philosophers and philosophies with literatures traditionally dissociated or excluded from philosophic inquiry, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin? This panel will be particularly useful in highlighting philosophy as a critical approach to all forms and genres of 19th century American Literature.

Possible paper topics might include (but are not limited to): Cartesianism and anti-Cartesianism; dualism, monism, and/or pluralism; epistemology after, or in pursuit of, modernity; philosophy of science; pragmatism and proto-pragmatism; phenomenology and philosophies of the body; discourses of sentiment and sympathy; stoicism; platonism and/or neo-platonism; transcendentalism’s platonic (or counter platonic) leanings; object oriented ontology; Stanley Cavell and skepticism; feminism; existentialism; Wittgenstein and ordinary language philosophy.

Please submit your 250-word proposal through the NeMLA submission system. A direct link can be found here: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/17023.

Proposals are due by Sept 30, 2017. Participants will be notified by October 15.

The Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) conference will be held in Pittsburgh, PA, April 12-15, 2018.

CFP: Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900

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Deadline for submissions: September 11, 2017
Full name/name of organization: University of Louisville
Contact email: alan.golding@louisville.edu

The 46th annual Louisville Conference on Literature & Culture since 1900

February 22 – 24, 2018

The 46th annual Louisville Conference on Literature & Culture since 1900 will be held at the University of Louisville, February 22-24, 2018. Critical papers may be submitted on any topic that addresses literary works published since 1900, and/or their relationship with other arts and disciplines (film, journalism, opera, music, pop culture, painting, architecture, law, etc). Work by creative writers is also welcome.

Submissions may be in English, French, German, Italian or Spanish. Submissions will be considered if received by 11:59 P.M. EST September 11, 2017.

Critical panels

Panels pre-organized by participants are welcome. Panel proposals are to be emailed to submissions@thelouisvilleconference.com with two attachments in pdf, rtf or doc format. The first attachment is to include: (a) copy of each abstract; (b) rationale for grouping papers, including a suggested title for the panel; and (c) name, address, email address and phone number of panel organizer and/or panel chair. The second attachment is to contain a cover sheet for each participant. The panel presentation should be designed for a 90-minute time slot. Please submit all panel abstracts together within the same email.

Critical Submissions

Send an email to submissions@thelouisvilleconference.com with two attachments in pdf, rtf or doc format. The first attachment is to consist of a 300-word abstract (double-spaced and titled), omitting all references to the submitter. The second attachment is to contain a cover page (see details below). Previously presented or published papers are not eligible.

Creative submissions

Send an email to submissions@thelouisvilleconference.com with two attachments in pdf, rtf, or doc for- mat. The first attachment is to contain poetry or short fiction/nonfiction selections suitable for a 20-minute reading. The second attachment should contain a cover page. Submitter’s name should appear on the cover page only (see details below). Creative submissions may be published or unpublished works. Manuscripts cannot be returned.

Seminars

Seminars are limited to 15 participants, who write short position papers that are circulated and read prior to the conference. At this point, we are calling for seminar leaders and topic proposals. After seminar topics are announced on the conference website in fall 2017, participants will be able to sign up on a first- come, first-served basis, at the point when registration for the conference as a whole opens.

Prospective seminar leaders should send an email to submissions@thelouisvilleconference.com with two attachments in pdf, rtf or doc format. The first attachment should contain the title of the proposed seminar and a 300-word summary of the seminar’s theme(s) and purposes, suitable for posting on the conference website. The second attachment should contain a submitter’s cover page (see details below).

Submitter’s cover page to include:

Name (as it will appear in the program)

Address (home or institutional)

E-mail address (necessary to confirm your acceptance) Academic affiliation (if applicable)

Title of paper/work/seminar (as it will appear in the program)

National origin/genre of work discussed (please be specific) Personal biographical note (100-150 words)

Group Societies

Group societies are welcome. Society panel organizers should email proposals to submissions@thelouisvilleconference.com as an attachment in pdf, rtf, or doc format. The attachment is to include: (a) abstracts and titles for the papers to be presented; (b) a suggested title for the panel; and (c) the following information for each presenter and for the panel organizer or chair: name (as it will appear in the program), address, e-mail address, academic affiliation (if applicable). The panel presentation should be designed for a 90-minute time slot. Please include the society name in the subject line of the e-mail submission.

Conference registrants may participate in up to two, but not more than two, of the following activities: (1) a critical or group society panel; (2) a creative session; (3) a seminar. Registrants may also chair one or more panels. Submissions are limited to one entry in each category.

Section Chairs

Submitters as well as guests are encouraged to chair a session. Please submit a brief statement specifying your area(s) of interest.

Inquiries: E-mail janna.tajibaeva@louisville.edu (Conference Coordinator) or alan.golding@louisville.edu (Conference Director).

Website: www.thelouisvilleconference.com. Consult our website for additional conference information.

Registration: Please see rates below for presenters and presenter-chairs, panel chairs, and guests.

Presenters, chairs and guests must remit fees by January 31, 2018.

Price Before Deadline (January 31, 2018) 

Regular $150

Independent Scholar/Metroversity $125

Graduate $85

Chair $50

Guest $15

Price After Deadline (January 31, 2018)

Regular  $180

Independent Scholar/Metroversity $125

Graduate  $100

Chair  $60

Guest $15

CFP: Tales of the Border: Migration Narratives and Border Studies in the Trump Era (NeMLA 2018)

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Deadline for submissions: September 30, 2017
Full name/name of organization: Northeast Modern Language Association
Contact email: rponcecordero@keene.edu

Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States on an openly anti-immigrant, and indeed anti-Mexican, platform constitutes a challenge for the field of border studies: What is border culture when the leader of the most powerful country in the world insists on closing the border? This panel aims to map the current state of the discourse(s) on and from the U.S.-Mexico border, including literature, film, journalism, and music. Papers in English and Spanish will be considered.

As an interdisciplinary field that seeks to examine the ways polities, cultures, identities, and subjectivities merge and constitute each other at junctures that are deemed “borders” in the geographical or, rather, geopolitical sense, border studies has been a vital area of scholarly reflection and research in the last three decades. Specifically, academic work about the U.S.-Mexico border has been influential in positioning the notion of transnational migration as being not just a “social problem” but also a productive dynamic that shapes our world. Our time is marked, however, by the election of Donald Trump as the President of the United States on a platform that prominently featured an overtly anti-immigrant, and actually anti-Mexican, discourse, to say nothing of the antisemitism, islamophobia, plain racism, and rampant misogyny of his campaign. As a result of this event, NeMLA published a statement in support of diversity and regretting the current bigotry and racial/ethnic violence in the United States, as well as reminding the public of the classic academic principles of truth, inclusiveness, and peaceful relations. In other words, this election and the distorted reality into which it has seemingly inserted the whole political discourse on migration, international relations, and human rights makes it more urgent than ever that we take border studies seriously and talk about its issues in a more prospective way.

Please submit a 300-word abstract and brief biographical statement by September 30, 2017 directly through NeMLA’s system: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/17035.

The 49th Annual NeMLA Convention will take place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on April 12-15, 2018.

2017 Peggy O’Brien Book Prize

Posted on by Jennifer Daly
IAAS Vice-Chair Dara Downey and winner of the 2017 Book Prize, Dan Geary

The Winner

Daniel Geary, Beyond Civil Rights: The Moynihan Report and its Legacy (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).

The book provides a detailed history of the Moynihan Report, The Negro Family: A Case for National Action, authored by Daniel Patrick Moynihan shortly after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The report highlighted socio-economic inequalities facing African-American families, while also making controversial statements about the role of single mothers. As Daniel Geary argues in Beyond Civil Rights, the report’s considerable impact and ongoing relevance over the past fifty years has been considerable, while remaining critical of its gendered attitudes.

In his own words, “I am honored and delighted to receive the Peggy O’Brien Prize for my book, Beyond Civil Rights: The Moynihan Report and Its Legacy. I wrote this book as an American immigrant to Ireland, where I have lived since 2008. I believe the project benefited from my having lived here. Certainly it helped attune me to the ethnic identity of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who drew on his Irish-American heritage to claim authority about African Americans and their family life, the subject of his controversial 1965 report that made him famous and helped launch a long career that culminated in his four terms as U.S. Senator representing New York.

“Beyond that, however, living here gave me the courage and perspective to write on one of the most heated intellectual controversies in recent American history. To many of Moynihan’s critics, his report was a racist document that blamed African Americans for persistent racial inequality by highlighting the ‘instability’ of ‘matriarchal’ families. Moynihan’s defenders, however, view criticism of the report as political correctness run amuck. Though I tend to side with Moynihan’s critics, the point of my book was not to rehash the controversy but to explain how it came about and to treat all participants’ views fairly in order to show how discourse over persistent African American inequality has changed since the Civil Rights era. Working in Ireland gave me the necessary distance to tell that story.”

 

What Our Judges Said

“superbly and clearly written and structured […] an extremely topical book with major relevance for contemporary American politics. It brings the debates over the implications of Moynihan’s report The Negro Family (1963) up to date and provides an exhaustively researched but compellingly written summary and analysis of the report’s impact.”

“a very fresh, well-researched study of the Moynihan Report and its legacy. It alerts us to the Report’s continuing relevance and malleability. […] us[ing] primary sources, including archives and interviews […] it thoughtfully navigates several perspectives (e.g., black sociology, feminism) on the Report. […] The lucidity of the writing is one of the key rewards of reading this book.”

 “There is much to learn and reconsider in reading this book, not only about the politics of race but also about the intellectual limits of liberalism – provocative and timely lessons for today. […] a significant contribution to our understanding of American social and political history.”

 

Short-Listed Books

Steve Gronert Ellerhoff, Post-Jungian Psychology and Short Stories of Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut (Routledge, 2016) – reviewed by Miranda Corcoran here.

Clare Hayes Brady, The Unspeakable Failures of David Foster Wallace: Language, Identity, Resistance (Bloomsbury, 2016) – available for review.

Lee M. Jenkins, The American Lawrence (University of Florida Press, 2015) – reviewed by Gillian Groszewski here.

David Coughlan, Ghost Writing in Contemporary American Fiction (Palgrave, 2016) – available for review.

Lecturer – English

Posted on by Web Intern

University of Derby
Location: Derby
Salary: £29,301 to £30,479 p.a. pro-rata
Hours: Full Time, Part Time
Contract Type: Permanent
Placed on: 28th June 2017
Closes: 9th July 2017
Job Ref: 0418-17
Lecturer – English (Full and Part Time posts available)

Location: Buxton & Leek College

Inspire, Innovate, Impact.

At the University of Derby, people are at the heart of everything we do. As a major, local employer we not only offer one of the region’s most competitive reward packages, but we are also constantly recognising and rewarding individual contribution, as well as helping to develop colleagues both personally and professionally. We take pride in being a really friendly, supportive and innovative workplace and we are genuinely committed to offering colleagues the opportunity to develop a fantastic, long-lasting career here with us.

We encourage applications from a diverse workforce who can help us achieve our desire to be the ambitious student’s natural choice for quality, support and achievement.

About the role
To effectively carry out teaching and the management of learning across designated curriculum areas in line with the requirements of the duration and Training Foundation Professional Standards.

Benefits

*Accessible location; Derby is a thriving, multi-cultural city with easy access from any location within the UK
*Competitive rates of pay
*Competitive, family friendly reward packages
*Access to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme
*Discount savings scheme and extensive staff discounts on accredited courses for yourself or family to study here at the University
*Cycle2Work scheme and subsidised travel
*Vast programme of training courses and secondment opportunities
*Local recognition scheme

Application procedure
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