The symposium will be about a subject which, strictly speaking, is not a subject at all. It is the road not taken: an opportunity missed, a word not spoken, a life not lived. One variation on this theme is the story of a middle-aged or old character who looks back on his life, in a more or less melancholy mood,  pondering a career he has not had or a relationship he has not embarked upon (e.g. James, "The Beast in the Jungle"; Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape; Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day). 

But the road not taken need not always be a good thing missed. It could also be the primrose path of dalliance or any other highroad to ruin avoided by sheer luck, by divine intervention, or because insight came just in time. An example would be Prospero's renunciation of vengeance in The Tempest or Christian's not following the way to Hell in Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. Another variant of the theme is the treatment of several plot developments that branch off from the same premises, as in John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman (i.e. the roads not taken are treated as more or less equivalent with the one actually chosen).
Questions to be dealt with include the following:
The conference venue will be the beautifully situated Waldhotel Zollernblick near Freudenstadt in the Black Forest, with some  meetings to be held at Tübingen.
Please submit proposals of about 200 words’ length by October 31, 2008, to: 

The Conference aims to give an impetus to the research into universals and typology in word-formation by a joint effort of both morphologists and typologists. Papers discussing correlations between individual word-formation processes as well as between WF processes and genetic types and/or geographically related languages are most welcome.  Space will also be given to any other typologically oriented research into word-formation as well as papers discussing the scope of word-formation and the relation between word-formation and other linguistic disciplines.
Main organizers: Rochelle Lieber, University of New Hampshire, USA, Pavel Stekauer, P.J. Šafárik University, Košice, Slovakia, Salvador Valera, University of Jaén, Spain and SKASE.
Guest Speakers:
Important deadlines:
All the relevant information copncerning submission of papers, accommodation, registration, travel instructions, and important deadlines, is available on the website of SKASE, The Slovak Association for the Study of English: http://www.skase.sk (follow "Kosice 2009 Conference").

EuroSLA 19 will be held in Ireland's second city of Cork, located on Ireland’s southern coast, and European Capital of Culture, 2005. The conference venue will be in historic University College, Cork, which was founded in 1845, and is located within 10 minutes' walking distance of the city-centre. Cork is served by regular flights with low-cost airlines from cities across Britain and Europe.

Conference Papers and Posters
The conference will include presentations in the form of 20-minute conference papers during parallel sessions, as well as posters which will be on display during the conference. Abstracts for conference papers and posters in either English or French are welcome in any area of Second Language Acquisition. Abstracts of 400-500 words (including the title and references), should be sent as an e-mail attachment in Word to <eurosla19@ucc.ie>.
2 copies of the abstract should be submitted: One copy should be anonymous, while the other should include your name, academic affiliation, and postal and e-mail addresses.
Please indicate in the abstract whether you wish your abstract to be considered as a conference paper for presentation during the parallel sessions, or as a poster.

Proposals for thematic panels are also welcome, in which case the organiser of the panel should follow the same guidelines as above in their proposal which should include a general abstract about the theme of the panel, a list of the proposed speakers in the panel, and the abstracts for their individual papers. The number of thematic panels and the amount of time available for each will be dependent on the final conference programme.

A Doctoral Workshop will also form part of the conference. This workshop offers students the opportunity to receive constructive feedback on their work from established researchers in the field. In particular, the workshop will focus on issues to do with methodology such as in relation to data analysis and research design. Proposals for short presentations during the workshop should follow the same guidelines as above. The aim and theoretical framework of your work should be clearly indicated, along with the methodological questions on which feedback would be welcome. Please indicate ‘Doctoral workshop’ in your abstract.

Paul Meara, Swansea University
Aneta Pavlenko, Temple University, Philadelphia
Vera Regan, University College, Dublin
Ema Ushioda, Warwick University

Martin Howard, University College, Cork
Muiris Ó’Laoire, Institute of Technology, Tralee
David Singleton, Trinity College, Dublin

(posted 15 Jan '09)

"Europeanise Ireland, Hibernicise Europe" - the motto for this conference is provided by James Joyce himself, who, it would not be an exaggeration to say, had spent most of his writing life in mainland Europe (including Austria or the Habsburg Empire, as it was then) benefiting from cultural hybridity and cross-currents characteristic of cultural and linguistic contact zones.

The recent referendum on the Lisbon Treaty firmly put Ireland into the limelight again and made continental Europeans aware of "the island behind the island". It also brought to a head the issue of Irish-European/European-Irish relations and the necessity for cross-cultural dialogue and exchange.

In accordance with its general objectives EFACIS invites contributions on the theme of "Ireland in/and Europe: Cross-Currents and Exchanges" from a variety of perspectives and a variety of disciplines (history, philosophy, theo¬logy, politics, sociology, economics, sport, literature, theatre, film and media studies, cultural studies and culture as lived experience).

Irish-European/European-Irish Cultural Relations;
Ireland in/and/out of the EU;
The Theme of "Europe" in Irish Studies;
The Irish Diaspora in Europe;
Emigration/Immigration/Re-Im¬migration (from the early missionaries to The Wild Geese to European migrants in Ireland);
Cultural Transfer;
Comparative Approaches.

Abstracts: If you would like to propose a paper (in English, not exceeding 20 minutes), please submit your title and an abstract of 250 words accompanied by a short biographical sketch. In addition to the presentation of papers we invite contributions to alternative forms of discussion: e.g. proposals for themed panels, poster sessions etc.

A special feature of the 2009 conference will be the inclusion of an information session on European funding, including representatives from major funding agencies in Europe, and "match-¬making" sessions/ workshops for participants seeking European partners for fund¬ing proposals.

Doctoral students are particularly invited to present aspects of their 'work in progress' in a specially arranged postgraduate forum.

Prof. Dr. Werner Huber, Department of English, University of Vienna, Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 8,

A-1090 Wien/Vienna, AUSTRIA, tel:+43 1 4277 42481, fax:+43 1 4277 42498;

e-mail: <wern.huber@univie.ac.at>.

NB: Only paid-up members are eligible to read papers at EFACIS conferences. (Membership subscriptions may be taken out or renewed during the conference.) To join EFACIS, please contact the EFACIS Treasurer: Mark Schreiber, <schreiber@anglistik.uni-siegen.de>.
The EFACIS website: http://www.efacis.org

(posted 2 Nov '08)

Ford was a major internationalist, and in particular a lover of France, its literature and culture.  He wrote much on France and French writing - wrote in French himself occasionally - and set several of his books in Paris and Provence, where he spent most of his time from 1922 to his death. He also edited the Transatlantic Review from Paris, publishing French writers alongside American and British ones. Yet Ford’s significant relationship to France has scarcely been studied.

This conference aims to mark a new beginning in French Fordian studies, relocate Ford in the cultural setting of Provence, and ensure that his coming out of copyright (in 2009) sees more of his work translated into French.

- Ford's editorial work for the transatlantic review and its supplements;
- Ford's as yet little-researched French network of writers, poets, artists and musicians: Philippe Soupault, Francis Carco, Tristan Tzara, Jules Laforgue, Jean Cassou, René Crevel, Georges Pillement, Valéry Larbaud, Juan Gris, Jacob Epstein, Braque, Brancusi, Nina Hamner, Georges Antheil and Eric Satie;

- Ford's treatment of France in his reminiscences and autobiography;
- Ford's vision of France, from his propaganda books to the French plots and settings in his fiction;
- Ford's views on the giants of French literature and culture – Flaubert, Maupassant, Proust, etc.;
- Ford and Biala in France.

(posted 2 Jul '08, updated 1 Dec '08)

Set out in the memory of Ovid, the Latin poet, from whose exilic journey we mark two millennia in 2009, this conference will explore the avatars of Publius Ovidius Naso, his legacy throughout the centuries as myth and exile, key concepts for the understanding of his life and work that have acquired enriched and urgent meanings in today's (literary) world. At the same time, the conference offers space for papers and debates on the broader implications of the concepts of myth and exile from an interdisciplinary perspective (literature, history, anthropology, sociology, iconology, the history of ideas, intellectual history, cultural history, cultural studies, geography, politics, and other associated fields and disciplines), offering a following up of the (Ex)patration Conference topics (Constanta, 2007). Participants are encouraged to (re)analyze writing by the Latin poet exiled to the city of Tomis (Constanta today), to (re)visit literature inspired by Ovid's exile and his specific use of myth, as well as to tackle the concepts of exile and myth from larger cross-/ inter-/ intra-disciplinary paradigms.

We are pleased to announce that the following colleagues have already confirmed our invitation to participate in the conference as key-note speakers:

- Stephen Prickett, Regius Professor Emeritus, University of Glasgow and Visiting Professor of English, University of Kent at Canterbury

- Sean Matthews, Director, D.H. Lawrence Research Centre, University of Nottingham
- Irina Pana, Professor of English and American literature, University of Bucharest

- Nicoleta Stanca <nicoletastanca@yahoo.com>
- Diana Hornoiu <dianahornoiu@gmail.com>
- Ludmila Martanovschi <ludmila_martan@yahoo.com>.

(posted 28 Nov '08)

Rokitanského 62, 500 03 Hradec Králové, Czech Republic.
Organizing Committee:
    * Ing. Jaroslava Dittrichová, Ph.D
    * Helena Holubičková
    * Dušan Khom, DiS.
    * Michaela Nováková
    * Jana Šimková
The registration form, speaker proposal form, guidelines for authors, as well as further information on payment, accommodation, venue, etc. are available on the conference website.

A conference organized under the auspices of Dr.h.c. prof. Ing. Anton Čižmár, CSc., Rector of the Technical University of Košice, Slovakia.

Conference topics

1. European Language Portfolio and Common European Framework of Reference for Languages
2. Why to teach foreign languages at higher education institutions?
3. New trends in teaching foreign languages for specific purposes - distance education, e-learning, etc.
4. Other methodological issues – project learning, presentation skills and workshops in foreign language learning.

Papers written according to guidelines and sent as MS Word attachments to <forlang.conference@tuke.sk> by 16 September 2009 will be published in a peer-reviewed conference proceedings distributed after the conference.
Visit the conference website for more information: http://web.tuke.sk/forlang/index_EN.html

A conference organized jointly by the Polish Institute and the English Institute of the University of Gdańsk, Poland.

The conference has as its primary focus the Second World War (1939-1945). This concentration is motivated by the site of the conference (Gdańsk, Poland, where the conflict began) and its opening date (on 17 September 1939 the Soviet Union invaded Poland in support of the earlier German attack on the country). In addition, the choice of focus recognizes that for Poles, as for Jews, the 1939-1945 war outweighs any other recent war in importance. The literature and culture of English-speaking countries is, however, also rich in responses to the Second World War. It is hoped that the bringing together of Polish and English-language treatments of the conflict will open up useful comparative perspectives.

The conference organizers also invite contributions on French and German experience of the 1939-1945 War.

They further seek proposals for papers on post-1945 conflicts, such as the war in Vietnam, colonial struggles, and the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

The languages of the conference will be Polish and English. Simultaneous translation services (Polish-English and English-Polish) will be provided for all sessions.

- "Just below the Manchurian border / Korea's the name of the spot" -- literature and the Korean War
- "The Battle of Algiers" -- colonial conflicts (Kenya, Cyprus, Algeria, Suez, Mozambique, Angola)
- "Why Are We in Vietnam?"/"Dispatches"/"Charlie don't surf" -- the Vietnam War

Send abstracts of papers (250 words, in the body of the text, not in an attachment), with a brief biographical note, to Professor Marek Wilczyński <marek@amu.edu.pl> and Professor David Malcolm <angmd@univ.gda.pl> by 30 April 2009.

(posted 10 Feb '09)

The following keynote speakers have confirmed their participation at the conference: Marie-Noëlle Lamy (The Open University, UK) and David Robison (University of Bradford, UK). Selected papers will be published in a volume after the conference.
Please send 250-word abstracts by 31st July, 2009to the conference convenors:
- Javier Enrique Díaz-Vera <JavierEnrique.Diaz@uclm.es>
or
- Eduardo de Gregorio-Godeo <Eduardo.Gregorio@uclm.es>
Please indicate your full name, address and affiliation.
Further information will be updated on: http://www.uclm.es/actividades/2009/mobilearn (website currently under construction).

(posted 8 Jun '09)

The registration form is available for download on the conference website.
All delegates are kindly asked to register before 6 September.

From the fin de siècle to the Second World War, the construction of alternative social and private spaces exerted a peculiar fascination for many British writers. The cataclysmic historical events of the period stimulated Utopian thinking and feeling even as they seemed to make them problematic or impossible. At the same time radical demands for new spaces, whether political, religious or aesthetic, also generated new ways of reading and writing the familiar urban and domestic spaces of everyday life.

The focus of the conference is on the spatial manifestations, geographies and practices of Utopianism, rather than on Utopianism as a category of millenarian anticipation. Papers are invited which address the various material and imaginary spatial forms of the Utopian impulse in the literature of period. How do certain spaces become associated with particular political or aesthetic visions of modernity? Does the Utopian bear a particular affinity to some spaces, rather than to others? Is the Utopian impulse articulated as a desire for order or anarchy?

Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words in length, including your name, position and institutional affiliation to <utopianspaces@ell.ox.ac.uk>. Deadline for submission: 15 July 2009.

Plenary speakers: Professor Jay Winter (Yale); Dr Matthew Beaumont (UCL); Iain Sinclair (London).

Papers are invited on any aspect, historical and/or theoretical, of the conference theme. Topics may include but are not limited to:

- the political, religious, aesthetic nature of Utopian spaces
- the city as a Utopian space
- imaginary, geographical and textual maps
- representations of Utopian spaces in literature and other media (e.g. painting, film, architecture)
- gendered/queer Utopian spaces (e.g. the struggle for female emancipation; representations of the New Woman)
- Utopian aspects of the everyday; strategies for defamiliarising the everyday (e.g. Mass Observation, Surrealism)
- theoretical considerations of Utopian ‘places’ and geographies (Walter Benjamin, de Certeau, Henri Lefebvre, Guy Debord and others)
- the theatre as a Utopian space
- mobility and transport
- exclusiveness of certain Utopian spaces (who is locked out from these spaces and for what reasons?)
- racialized Utopian spaces

(posted 29 Apr '09, updated 15 Jun '09, updated 17 Aug '09)

The postgraduate students of the Department of English and American Studies at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Maribor invite colleagues from other universities to a conference in English and American Literature, Language and Linguistics to be held on Saturday, September 19, 2009 at the University of Maribor.

You are kindly invited to send abstracts (max. 250 words) and registration forms to <mbgrad@uni-mb.si> by May 31st, 2009. Mention your full name, affiliation, postal address, e-mail address, subject area, key words, and the title of your presentation. A selection of articles will be published in MIR, the online literary journal of the Department of English and American Studies at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Maribor.

E-mail notifications of acceptance will be sent to authors whose papers are accepted by June 30th 2009.
The presentation of your paper will take the form of a 15 minute talk plus a 5 minute question session.

Submission of abstracts and application forms: May 31th 2009
Notification of acceptance: June 30th 2009
Conference fee payment: July 31st 2009

(posted 14 Apr '09)

The aim of the conference is to provide an interdisciplinary forum to present and discuss recent work on markers of discourse structure: adverbials, connectives, discourse particles, etc. How can we categorize these markers? What kind of relations do they express? Can they combine several functions at the sentence level and/ or at the discourse level and, if so, which ones? What impact do discourse structure markers have on comprehension? When and how are they acquired? From what age are children able to master their use in oral and written discourse?

The goal of the conference is more specifically to advance research into the relationship between the position of the markers concerned and their ability to play a role in discourse organization. Do these markers have a privileged position? We know that sentence initial position is a strategic position in terms of information structuring/packaging and memory. But can these factors override the word order constraints of each language? Are there also observable variations between discourse genres and between written and oral modes? 

We invite papers using cognitive and functional approaches, based on corpora in different languages at different stages of their evolution, as well as papers that report on psycholinguistic approaches based on behavioural data.

- Segmentation and linearization
- Initial positioning
- Saliency and Information Structure
- Grammaticalization and evolution of structure markers 
- Typological approach to structure markers 
- Spatial and temporal discourse structure
- Effects of discourse organization markers on comprehension
- Acquisition and mastery of their use in discourse production 
- Role of text structuring devices in acquiring knowledge

- Peter Crompton (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates)
- Tuomas Huumo (University of Turku, Finland)
- Tuija Virtanen (Åbo Akademi University Department Of English, Finland)
- Isabelle Tapiéro (University of Lyon 2-EMC, France)
- Yves Bestgen (FNRS - UCL, Belgium - representing the psycholinguistic group of the Spatial Framing Adverbials project).

Proposals will be subjected to a double, blind review and should be anonymous. They should  not exceed 1000 words (references excluded) and be sent via email as an attachment (MS--WORD doc, rtf, or PDF) to: <LPTSO9@ens.fr>.

Please put in the subject line: “LPTS09_submission”. In the body of the mail, please specify: author(s); title; affiliation of author(s); presentation or poster; 3-5 keywords.

- Submission deadline: May 15th 2009
- Notification of acceptance: June 15th 2009
- Early registration deadline: July 10th 2009

(posted 19 Mar '09)

In his momentous Sorry speech of February 13, 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd confidently announced Australia’' firm resolution to /turn a new page in history by writing the wrongs of the past /and find solutions for the future. The overwhelming task at hand for Australians in the 21st century is none but to /close the gap that lies between indigenous and non-indigenous /peoples and /shape the next chapter /of their history by redefining the terms of the country’s foundational myths and (his)stories. Certainly, to quote from Henry Lawson, the country has come a long way since "it began to boomerang". But in order /to take heart for the future/ and for its peoples /to become fully reconciled to their past/ they need to revisit and reassess whole chapters of their history until old lies, myths and stereotypes dissolve and clear the ground for new solutions, aimed at reconciliation but addressing also possible ways of articulating a multicultural Australia.

Across the Tasman they have been clearing the ground for a considerably longer while; nonetheless there are still pending gaps to be bridged, not only between Maori and Pakeha, but with other ethnic and social minorities, in relation to their position and partaking in the diverse national debates in which New Zealand is currently engaged. As the general election approaches in late 2008, this might be a good moment both to discuss possible solutions for old and new problems and to consider the revision, if not the dissolution, of some of the country’s narratives and myths.

As for the wider Pacific region, the challenges faced by its peoples in the 21st century continue to be determined by uninterrupted currents of change. Migration movements, political and economic instabilities and global flows of transcultural exchange have altered the profile of the region, resulting both in the dissolution of local allegiances and traditional values and in the creation of new transnational bonds and interinsular networks, which will inevitably determine the future of the region and the ways in which we choose to undertake any discussion of its past.

Under the same sun, but from the opposite hemisphere, with this conference we propose to light a homely fire, put another billy on and invite boiling academic discussion over the issue of national and cultural (dis)solutions in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. Our aim will be to explore to what extent the future of these nations and the region at large will depend on the disintegration of the allegiances and narratives of the past, whether those /old approaches /that have failed so far can really be superseded by new political solutions, new cultural (re)constructions and narrative formulas, and which aspects are involved in the process of (dis)solving the past and the present /to go forward with confidence/.

· The dissolution, reconstruction, faking and performance of cultural, national and ethnic identities.
· The dissolution of History in favour of histories, herstories, stories.
· Dissolutions and new configurations of landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes.
· Dissolutions of gender, racial, social, ethnic and indigenous conflicts.
· Dis/solving multicultural, migration, refugee issues.
· Dis/solving historical mysteries, silences, traumas.
· Dissolving and resolving political and cultural dilemmas of the 21^st century.
· Dis/solving memories. Re/membering stories.
· Dis/solutions and dis/illusions.

· Diasporic, global and local dis/solutions.

Our Association’s inter- and multidisciplinary approach to studies on Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific can host presentations from a wide range of disciplines and subject areas such as: Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature, Media and Film Studies, Political Science, Sociology, Visual and performing arts, etc
We encourage a liberal and creative approach to the topic.
One day preceding the conference will be devoted to a *Postgraduate Seminar*, where postgraduate/advanced students will be able to discuss their work with experts in their field in a lecture + workshop format.
Please e-mail your 250-word abstracts, marking its subject "10th EASA Conference", by 1st APRIL 2009 to: <paloma.fresno@uib.es>.
Acceptance of papers will be communicated by 1st May 2009.
For further information, please visit: http://www.easa-australianstudies.net/intro.php
Organising Committee: Paloma Fresno, Aurora García, Alejandra Moreno, Eva Pérez, Cristina Suárez, Lucía Loureiro, Marta Fernández, J. Igor Prieto, Marian Amengual, Juana Mª Seguí and Caty Ribas (members of the research group "Cultural Diversity in English-Speaking Countries" (University of the Balearic Islands).

A Symposium organised by the Katherine Mansfield Society to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship

The year 2009 sees the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship, offered annually to enable a New Zealand writer to work at the Villa Isola Bella in Menton, once the home of Katherine Mansfield. During a week of celebrations in Menton from 21-26 September 2009 to mark this anniversary, the Katherine Mansfield Society will be holding a Symposium on Friday 25 September.

- Vincent O’Sullivan (invited by Association France Nouvelle-Zélande)
- C.K. Stead

- Gerri Kimber, (Deputy-Chair, Katherine Mansfield Society), will present a talk on Katherine Mansfield's reputation in France.
- Amelia McBride, playwright, will perform her play 'Something Childish but Very Natural', including adaptations of Katherine's stories, on the subject of growing up and learning to love.

- New Zealand Embassy Paris
- The Winn-Manson Menton Trust
- Association France Nouvelle-Zélande
- Mairie de Menton

(posted 13 Apr '09)

An interdisciplinary postgraduate conference supported by the UCD Graduate School in Arts and Celtic Studies.

In his seminal 1974 book, Theory of the Avant-Garde, Peter Bürger wrote that the aim of the avant-gardists was to "reintegrate art into the praxis of life".  With this statement in mind, we are pleased to announce the call for papers for an interdisciplinary conference examining the European Avant-Garde, during the period 1890-1930.

- the movements of Futurism, Cubism, Dadaism and Expressionism
- specific writers, artists or playwrights within the time period and their relation to avant-garde aesthetics
- the interaction of avant-garde movements with politics
- the interplay between different avant-garde movements
- the avant-garde as an attack on the concept of art as an institution
- technology and the avant-garde
- the legacy of the avant-garde
- the avant-garde at the turn of the century
- translating the avant-garde

Proposals may come from the disciplines of modern languages (French, Italian, Spanish, German, Portuguese), English, art history, film, drama and theatre studies and comparative studies.

We invite proposals for twenty-minute papers from postgraduate students.  Papers should be in English.  Abstracts (maximum 300 words), together with a short biography indicating your academic background and research interests should be emailed to the organizers at the addresses below by June 15th, 2009.  Please include your name, academic affiliation, and contact details.

Selena Daly <selena.daly@ucd.ie>
Monica Insinga <monica.insinga@ucdconnect.ie>.

(posted 8 Apr '09)