Grainne McEvoy (Trinity College Dublin) and Pete Cajka (Boston College) are organizing a series of public events on ‘The Trump Presidency: The History of a Political Movement’ starting this week in Newry.
Category: News
Latest news
Single Lives: 200 Years of Independent Women in Literature & Popular Culture
University College Dublin, 13-14 October 2017
Proposal Deadline: 1 April 2017, midnight Dublin time.
Notifications by 1 May 2017
This conference will explore the last 200 years of literature and popular media by, about, and for single women in relation to aesthetics and form, race, sexuality, class, space, reproduction and the family, political movements, and labor.
Independent women —singly blessed, new, surplus, or adrift— have remained a center around which anxieties and excitement coalesce. A range of historians, demographers, and literary scholars have focused on the social and political significance of diverse single women in the nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries. Moving between the family home and domestic independence, between household and public labor, and between chastity and a range of sexual relations, the single woman remains a literary and cultural focus.
In recent years, especially in relation to UK and US elections, there has been an explosion of popular interest in contemporary singleness. Rebecca Traister’s Big Girls Don’t Cry and All the Single Ladies, comedian Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance, Eric Klinenberg’s Going Solo, the Washington Post’s “Solo-ish” column, as well as the work of psychologist and single-rights activist Bella DePaulo, author of Singled Out: How Singles are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored but Still Live Happily Ever After, all explore what it means to be a socially, politically, and sexually active single person in the 21st century. News outlets, film, television, and a host of social and marketing media have demonstrated that people are fascinated by the changing status of singles.
Singleness Studies has emerged as an academic field over the last two decades but has rarely had its own forum for collaboration and exchange. This conference will bring together multiple disciplinary perspectives to uncover the social, political, economic, and cultural connections between the “singly blessed” women and “bachelor girls” of the 19th and early-20th century and “all the single ladies” of the contemporary moment. We seek proposals that analyze single lives within or across this time frame, from disciplines including literature, media studies, history, geography, sociology, architecture, political science, and more. Papers and full panels that create new perspectives by crossing boundaries and integrating multiple disciplines are especially welcome.
Keynote Speaker: Rebecca Traister
Rebecca Traister is the author of the best-selling All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, a New York Times Notable Book of 2016. Traister, a National Magazine Award finalist and winner of the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism, is writer-at-large for New York Magazine, where she covers politics, media and culture from a feminist perspective. She has also written for The New Republic, Salon, Elle, The Nation, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Her book Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women was a New York Times Notable Book of 2010 and the winner of the Ernesta Drinker Ballard Book Prize. She lives in New York City.
Possible topics include
- Representation of singles in literature
- Representation of singles in film, television, and other digital media
- Narrative form
- Space and architecture
- Demographic change
- Reproductive rights and family structures
- Reproduction and temporality
- Independent women’s labor and political work
- “Women adrift” and crisis narratives
- Singleness and race, class, or identity politics
- Queer singleness
- Familiar Figures: bachelor girls, spinsters, new women, and single ladies
- The single and the state
- Singleness and literary or media genre
- Conservative and radical independence
- Singleness in Trump’s America
- Single activism
- Comparative singleness
- Singleness and disability
Scholars from all disciplines are encouraged to apply.
Full Panel Proposals: Panel coordinators should submit a 200-word rationale for the panel as whole. For each contributor, please submit a 250-word abstract, a short bio, and contact information. Panels
that include diverse panelists with a range of affiliations, career experiences, and disciplinary homes are strongly encouraged. Panels should include 4 papers. Submissions can be emailed as a Word document to singlelives2017@gmail.com.
Individual Papers: Individuals submitting paper proposals should provide an abstract of 250 words, a short bio, and contact information. Submissions can be emailed as a Word document to: singlelives2017@gmail.com.
Conference Statement: We hope to host a diverse, welcoming, open first Single Lives conference. We understand diversity to include attendees as well as academic subject, approach, and field. We welcome comparative projects, though because of its smaller scale, this conference will be conducted in English.
Please direct all questions about the conference and the submission process to: singlelives2017@gmail.com
For up to date conference details, see our website: https://singlelives2017.wordpress.com/
Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Single-Lives-2017-Conference-1262119710546609/
Follow us on Twitter: @SingleLives2017
Conference Organizers:
Kate Fama
Jorie Lagerwey
School of English, Drama, and Film
University College Dublin
Conference Sponsors
College of Arts and Humanities, University College Dublin
Humanities Institute, University College Dublin
The Annual General Meeting of the IAAS will take place at 3.45pm at Ulster University, Belfast on Saturday, April 29th. All members are encouraged to attend if possible as your input helps to shape the future direction of the Association. A number of positions on the Executive Committee will be open for election at this year’s AGM. We encourage nominations from members who have not yet had an opportunity to serve on the committee. You can view the agenda for the AGM here.
A brief EGM is scheduled for 3.30pm on Friday, April 28th. At this EGM, the following amendment to the IAAS Constitution will be put to a vote of the membership:
It is proposed to make the following changes to Section 4 (c) of the Constitution of the Irish Association for American Studies, and amend all subsequent references to these roles throughout the Constitution:
(c) The Executive Committee shall be:
(i) The Chair
(ii) The Vice Chair
(iii) The Secretary & Membership Secretary
(iv) The Treasurer
(v) The Postgraduate Representative
(vi) The Early Career Representative
(vii) The IAAS representative to the European Association for American Studies
(viii) Two Ordinary members.***
A copy of the Association’s Constitution can be found here.
(i) The Chair
(ii) The Vice Chair
(iii) The Secretary & Membership Secretary
(iv) The Treasurer
(v) The Postgraduate Representative
(vi) The Early Career Representative
(vii) The IAAS representative to the European Association for American Studies
(viii) Two Ordinary members.***
A copy of the Association’s Constitution can be found here.
As a result of this amendment, the following positions will be open for election at the AGM:
- Chair
- Secretary & Membership Secretary
- Postgraduate Representative
- Early Career Representative
Other positions may become vacant as a result of these elections. If you are interested in serving on the Committee you must be a fully paid-up member of the Association before submitting your nomination. If you would like to nominate another member of the Association for any of these positions, you must have their written permission to do so.
Nominations should be emailed to the Secretary (dalyj5@tcd.ie) by 6pm on April 28th.
Notice of nominations received will be posted on the IAAS website, as well as at the conference venue. Should more than one nomination be received for any position, an election will be held during the AGM. Only members present at the AGM will be able to vote.
The minutes from last year’s AGM are posted on the IAAS website here. If you have any items you would like discussed at the AGM please contact the Secretary by April 20th.
University of Cambridge – Trinity Hall
Location: Cambridge
Salary: £35,000 p.a. (pensionable). Remuneration will also be available for directing studies, at a fixed rate of £554 p.a. plus a per capita payment for the number of students taught.
Hours: Full Time
Contract Type: Permanent
Placed on: 17th March 2017
Closes: 21st April 2017
Trinity Hall invites applications from suitably qualified candidates for the post of Fellow and College Teaching Officer in English. The appointment will take effect from October 2017 and is permanent.
For further particulars and an application form: www.trinhall.cam.ac.uk/academic-vacancies.
Deadline for submissions: April 5, 2017
Full name / name of organization: Midwest Modern Language Association
Contact email: kbeutel@lourdes.edu
In addressing the conference theme of “Artists and Activists,” the Permanent Section on Native American Literature seeks proposals exploring a broad literary context for recent protests and legal action against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Possible topics may explore literary activism in the tradition of Standing Rock Sioux scholar Vine Deloria. Papers addressing activism with ecological perspectives are encouraged. Possible focus could include historical voices such as Sarah Winnemucca, William Apess, Zitkála Šá, or Jane Johnston Schoolcraft or more recent authors such as Gerald Vizenor, Louis Owens, Leslie Marmon Silko, Simon Ortiz, Thomas King, Louise Erdrich, or Sherman Alexie.
Please send proposals of 200-300 words by April 5 to the panel chair, Kate Beutel, at kbeutel@lourdes.edu.
Deadline for submissions: April 15, 2017
Full name / name of organization: Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins Society
Contact email: PHSscholaraward@gmail.com
Scholarship Award
2017
The Pauline Hopkins Society (http://www.paulinehopkinssociety.org) is pleased to announce its second bi-annual competition for the best essay or book chapter on Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins published between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2016. If you have published an essay or chapter that discusses Hopkins and/or her work, we invite you to consider entering before the April 15, 2017 deadline.
Because entries will be judged through a system of blind reviewing we recommend that any self-citation, either in the body or in notes, be reworked to the third person.
How to Enter:
Essays should be double-spaced throughout, with your name appearing only on the cover sheet, along with your institutional mailing address and e-mail address.
Please send essay as a pdf email attachment by April 15, 2017 to: PHSscholaraward@gmail.com.
The award of a $100 cash prize will be presented during a special ceremony commemorating Hopkins and her work in Boston during the American Literature Association annual conference in May 2017.
Deadline for submissions: April 1, 2017
Full name / name of organization: RMMLA
Contact email: cbattista@jwu.edu
Abstracts that look at the politics of space, place, empire, mapping, environmentalism as related to gender/race in late 19th century/early American literature. 250 words maximum with brief bio.
Deadline for submissions: September 1, 2017
Full name / name of organization: JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory
Contact email: hdugan@gwu.edu
JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory invites submissions that explore the questions and tensions that emerge when posthumanism and new materialism engage with feminist, anti-racist, queer, and trans* activism. Considering the rise in academic discourse of posthumanism and new materialism is concurrent with striking and strident attacks on women’s reproductive freedom, black lives, labor unions, and trans* rights, we invite papers that analyze these political moments and critical modes in tandem with one another.
How does political vitality connect to theories of materialism? Who and what matters and why? Is it possible to find connections and crossovers between theories of “matter” and political movements? How are the political stakes of defining bodies/objects/agents embedded in the narrative threads of theory and activism? When does political reality necessitate change in narrative theory?
We welcome papers that explore these questions through engagement with a wide range of topics, fields, and archives. Submissions should be between 25-35 pages, double spaced with one-inch margins, and in MLA Style (7th edition).
Please send submissions to hdugan@gwu.edu and mjones89@emich.edu.
Deadline: September 1, 2017
University of Sussex
Qualification type: PhD
Location: Falmer
Funding for: UK Students, EU Students
Funding amount: £14,553
Hours: Full Time, Part Time
Placed on: 15th March 2017
Closes: 1st June 2017
Qualification type: PhD
Location: Various
Funding for: UK Students, EU Students
Funding amount: Tuition fees, annual stipend and research expenses
Hours: Full Time or Part-Time
The University of Sussex and the British Library intend to make a PhD studentship appointment under the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership scheme (CDP) from autumn 2017.
This project will draw on the British Library’s extensive holdings of American political pamphlets to study and contextualise the writing, printing, distribution and dissemination of political pamphlets produced in the years preceding and during the Second World War. The Library’s collection of American pamphlets from the interwar period contains publications by different anti-fascist, anti-capitalist and pacifist societies. The researcher will also benefit from access to the extensive collection of US political pamphlets at the Marx Memorial Library, a partner of the project.
Through co-supervision the doctoral researcher will be guided towards the production of a multi-layered digital map of the pamphlets held in the collections, which would then be used to reanalyse the landscape of transatlantic radicalism during the period. In this way, the project will chart the origins, production, distribution and reception of the pamphlets. The resulting digital resource will document, and present in an accessible way, the British library’s collection of pamphlets in this area.
Studentships are awarded for 3 years (or part-time equivalent) initially. The AHRC stipend for 2017/18 is £14,553 (full-time, pro rata for part-time). The British Library will provide research-related expenses of up to £1,000 p.a. (against receipts, and in addition to the normal research expenses element of an AHRC studentship), including, but not limited to, travel to other libraries that hold relevant archival material and to project-related conferences.
Eligible candidates will have very strong academic records; they will normally have a relevant Masters’ degree or equivalent post-graduate qualification. Those with backgrounds in American Studies, English literature, History (and especially book history and print culture) will be especially well-prepared.
Potential candidates are welcome to contact Dr Sue Currell (s.currell@sussex.ac.uk) and Dr Mercedes Aguirre (The British Library – Mercedes.Aguirre@bl.uk) for further details.
Applications are to be made via potential candidates are welcome to approach Dr Currell (s.currell@sussex.ac.uk) and Dr Aguirre (Mercedes.Aguirre@bl.uk).
The deadline for submissions is 1 June. Interviews will be held on 26 June at the Sussex University.
Anglia Ruskin University – Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences
Location: Cambridge
Salary: £57,674 to £63,009 per annum
Hours: Full Time
Contract Type: Permanent
Placed on: 16th March 2017
Closes: 13th April 2017
Job Ref: 000245-4
About Anglia Ruskin University: Anglia Ruskin is a vibrant workplace and our University is gaining prominence both nationally and internationally. We have ambitious plans for the future and we are determined that our students and staff will realise their full potential. Our main campuses in the cities of Cambridge, Chelmsford and Peterborough have been transformed with major capital investment. With an annual turnover of over £200m, we are a major force for higher education and one of the largest universities in the East of England.
About the role:
The Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences provides first-class teaching, research and consultancy relevant to professional activity in arts, law and social sciences. We’re committed to the mutual reinforcement of theory and practice in teaching and research and have shaped our curriculum to ensure that traditional disciplines retain a clear academic identity but translate effectively into courses with professional relevance.
As a major provider of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in English, Communication, Film and Media, and a thriving research culture, we’re seeking an exceptional individual capable of providing strategic leadership for the Department.
With a PhD or Professional Doctorate, you’ll have a strong managerial track record and a proven commitment to research. You’ll have experience of developing and managing partnerships, both in the UK and internationally, and the vision and passion to lead the Department through the next stage of its development.
There is potential for this role to be appointed at Professorial level, subject to meeting Anglia Ruskin’s Professorial Appointment Criteria.
To find out more about working with us, click here.
We offer an extensive range of benefits including a generous holiday entitlement, occupational pension schemes, training and development opportunities, travel to work scheme and a competitive relocation package. Visit our benefits page for full details.
Closing Date – 13 April 2017
Guidance Notes: For a list of key requirements please press the apply button below, which will take you to the university’s website where you can download the job description and person specification. To apply for this role please demonstrate how your skills and experience match the criteria in the person specification.
We value diversity at Anglia Ruskin University and welcome applications from all sections of the community.