Location: Magas, Ingushetia, Russian Federation
Conference dates: 6-7 May 2010
Deadline for proposals: 15 March 2010
Abstract review: 31 March 2010
Notification: first week of April 2010
Registration closing date: 30 April 2010

The conference will prioritize the following thematic lines although proposals relating to any of the Conference diverse interests will also be considered:

1.    Lingual identity and linguistic worldview in cross-cultural communication. Fight for cultures and identities.
2.    Russian, national and world literature in different aspects of reader’s perception.
3.    Corpora linguistics.
4.    Applied linguistics.
5.    Translation Studies.
6.    Analysis of a fiction text/discourse.
7.    Modern methods of language teaching. Cross-cultural aspect of communication in language teaching.
8.    Bilingualism and multi-lingualism.

The conference proceedings will be published after the conference in an edited book or a special journal issue (for a selection of papers).

Participation is possible in two formats: in absentia and in presence. Papers are allocated to 20-minute slots plus five minutes of discussion. Working languages: Russian, English, French, and German. Research on languages other than Russian is strongly encouraged. We also welcome submissions representing work in progress.

Note: The dispatching of publications, accommodation and transport costs are at participants' expenses. Meals are provided only during conference hours.

Authors should submit draft papers (as MS Word file). The total length of a paper should not exceed 8 pages. Please use plain text (Times New Roman 12, interline interval - 1, and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting or characters. State whether the submission is for a paper or conference presentation.

•    Papers will be refereed and accepted on the basis of their scientific merit and relevance to the workshop.
•    All accepted and presented papers will be published in the Conference Proceedings.

•    The best demonstrations will be selected to be shown to the general audience of the conference at a plenary session.

Please send abstracts for 20-minute conference presentations (or you paper for publication), together with a short biographical statement, affiliation and contact details, no later than 15 March 2010, by e-mail to:
or post to: 1 Universitetskaya str., Magas, Republic of Ingushetia, Russian Federation 386001.

(posted 1 February 2010)

The Organising Committee of the II International Conference on Corpus Linguistics is pleased to announce that the Spanish Association of Corpus Linguistics (AELINCO) will hold its second meeting at the University of A Coruña (13-15 May 2010).

As in the past, the Conference will focus on Corpus Linguistics as a discipline rather than on research on particular languages.

The deadline for the submission of proposals for CILC 10 (A Coruña, Spain, 13-15 May) both for posters and oral presentations (20 min presentation + 10 min discussion) is 15 February 2010. Such proposals (either in English or Spanish) may be included in one of the following thematic panels:

1. Corpus design, compilation and types.
2. Discourse and corpora
3. Corpus-based grammatical studies
4. Corpus-based lexicology and lexicography
5. Corpora, contrastive studies and translation.
6. Corpus and linguistic variation
7. Corpus-based ciomputatinal linguistics
8. Corpora, language acquisition and teaching
9. Corpora and literary analysis
10. Special uses of corpus linguistics

Please send the full text of presentation/poster (4000 words maximum following AELINCO guidelines) to: <cilc2@udc.es> indicating the panel in which you wish to beincluded.
The work must be sent in an MSWord file named as follows: paper/poster name (at least 6 first words) followed by _texto, as in the example below:

Corpus_linguistics_in_Europe_texto.doc

Do NOT include author/s name/s in this file.
You should include your personal details (name, affiliation, e-mail address, technical support needed, etc) in a different file. This file will be named following the same pattern as the one containing the text, but including _autor, as in the example: Corpus_linguistics_in_Europe_autor.doc

Participants will receive an answer after March 15th 2010.
A workshop will be held on Wednesday 12 May. Among others, members of the IrLab (University of A Coruña) will participate.
More information is available on the conference website: http://www.udc.es/dep/finc/Cilc10/main.html

(posted 15 October 2009, updated 17 November 2009)

Presentations (20 min) and workshops (60 min) are invited in the following sections:

• Language Studies
• Translation Studies
• Semiotics
• British and Commonwealth Literature
• American Literature
• Cultural Studies
• Gender Studies
• English Language Teaching

Please submit 60word abstracts, which will be included in the conference programme, to our website: http://www.litere.uvt.ro/formular_bas.php or to dr. Dascăl <reghina_dascal@yahoo.co.uk>.
Deadline: 15 February 2010.
Please include the following details:

- Details of presenter: First name, Last name, Title (Mr/Ms/Mrs/Dr/Prof), Affiliation, Email address, Address (work and home).
- Details of presentation / workshop: Presentation/Workshop (please indicate), Title, Section, Key words, Abstract (60 words; abstracts longer than 60 words are not accepted).

The early conference registration fee is EUR 80, to be paid by March 15; the late registration fee is EUR 110. For RSEAS members it is 200 lei, paid by March 15, or 250 after that date. 
Hotel reservations will be made by the conference organizers or can be made directly by participants by accessing  http://www.timisoara-tourism.com/index.php?page=hotels
 Prices per night vary between 40 and 100 EUR. Accommodation details will be available on the website by January 2009.
For additional information, please contact one of the following:
•  Reghina Dascăl, <reghina_dascal@yahoo.co.uk>, tel. and fax + 40 256 452224
•  Luminiţa Frenţiu, <frentiuluminita@yahoo.com>, tel + 40 256 492338
•  Loredana Fratila at <loredanafratila@yahoo.com>,  tel +40 740088329

(posted 17 October 2009)

A Conference organised by the Early English Text Society
Registration is now open for this meeting, which features plenary lectures by Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe, H. Leith Spencer, and Thorlac Turville-Petre. Panels include

From Script to Print to HTML: Electronic Editions;
Editing British Texts in Latin, Anglo-Norman, Celtic and Scots;
Old English;
Major Middle English Authors;
In Praise of the Variant;
Why Edit Critically?;
Palaeography, Dialectology and the Editorial Process;
Desiderata: What still needs doing?;
Middle English Scientific Prose;
Practices, Habits, Methodologies.

Proposals are also now invited from graduate students for poster displays at the conference. Please contact <vincent.gillespie@ell.ox.ac.uk>.

(posted 9 November 2009)

Keynote speaker: Dr Sarah Churchwell (University of East Anglia)
Identity remains one of the most central and most contested concepts icirculation today. No individual or group can escape the question of identity in a range of categories be it gender, class, nationality or race. Yet, an understanding of one's 'self' in relation to these somewhat rigid categories is problematic and as a result representations of identity are continually plagued by an irresolvable sense of unease and anxiety. 
This symposium will provide a stimulating environment for postgraduate students and other researchers to present work and discuss key ideas centred on the anxieties of modern identity from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Although the symposium’s primary focus will be literature based, proposals are also welcome from postgraduates
in related disciplines.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:

Memory and identity
Gender, sexuality and identity
Postcolonial identities
Identity and consumerism
Race, nation and identity
Authorial identities: appropriation and rewriting
Identity as 'performance'

Abstracts of no more than 300 words for papers not exceeding 20 minutes should be submitted by 31st January 2010 to the organisers at <cslpgconf@port.ac.uk>.
Please include the title of your paper, your name, e-mail address, institutional affiliation, and any AV requirements.
Deadline for Proposals: 31st January 2010
See the conference website for more details: http://www.port.ac.uk/pgconference
If you have any queries or require further information, please e-mail the conference organisers, Jon Evans, Lisa Felstead and Katrina Morgan at <cslpgconf@port.ac.uk>.

(posted 17 October 2009)

An international conference organized by theCommittee for Philology of the Polish
Confirmed plenary speakers:

Submission of Proposals and Registration: Be so kind as to send your abstract in English (of up to 500 words with selected bibliography) by March 10, 2010 to the conference secretary:
For more information visit the Conference website.

With the development of the modern state, there has been an ongoing tension between the will to control and at the same time allow free speech to develop. In English-speaking countries, the theme of ?Censorship and Discourse? has been a recurrent concern from the 16th century to the present day, as the numerous censored publications and writings against censorship testify.
This conference will focus on three different aspects of censorship and discourse:

1)    The nature of censorship and the way in which it reflects the norms and values of the day;
2)    The discourse of censors as institutions of censorship;
3)    The perception of censorship and the reactions it entails.

The aim is to bring together specialists from different disciplines: from the literary and linguistic disciplines to the human and social sciences. The conference will be organised on a panel basis and will be in English.
Submissions
We welcome submissions from a broad range of disciplines: Literature, Philosophy, Linguistics, History, Law, Political science, Sociology, Anthropology, the Visual Arts, and Economics. Postgraduates are welcome.
Please send an abstract of up to 250 words, together with your particulars (names, institutional address, occupational status, postal and e-mail addresses) to the following e-mail addresses:

<clairecharlot@wanadoo.fr>
and <delphine.texier@uhb.fr>.

Submissions will be examined by the scientific committee and answers given by the end of December.
The deadline is 15 December 2009.
There will be a registration fee of 50 euros as a contribution towards meals and conference expenses.

(posted 26 October 2009)

Our first conference on Autonomy and Commitment in Contemporary British Literature attempted to reappraise postmodern literature in the light of the two notions of autonomy and commitment that criticism has throughout the years played against each other, the New Critics, the structuralists and post-structuralists defending the thesis of a self-sufficient work of art while other schools of criticism -- cultural, feminist, Marxist, post-colonial studies, etc. -- have insisted on the connection between art and the socio-political context. Should we come to the conclusion that the autonomy of the work of art is necessarily at odds with any form of commitment? Or that the so-called autonomy of the work of art is fundamentally deceptive and finally impossible? Is commitment intrinsically linked with art and autonomy nothing but a form of respect for a certain class-determined ideology? Or should the two concepts be re-thought and re-defined both individually and in relation to each other?

These are the questions that we now want to ask about contemporary arts, in the wake of the 2009 conference on Autonomy and Commitment in Modernist British Arts which addressed a wide range of productions, from painting to sculpture, from film to photography, from radio plays to music and which covered a wide array of movements: post-impressionism, vorticism, expressionism, etc.

One might claim that autonomy has been banned from the contemporary period, when the superb abstraction of Modernist forebears, in its explicit autonomy, has been replaced by dependence on the generosity of patrons (one is inevitably reminded of the role of the Saatchi group in promoting the YBA, from the groundbreaking "Sensation" exhibition onwards at least), a far cry from the Modernist experiments. The fact that Rachel Whiteread's most famous works should systematically bear witness to collective memory seems to substantiate the hypothesis of the impossible autonomy of contemporary art that remains committed to the past and foregrounds its responsibility to collective, historical trauma. Sam Taylor Wood's reliance on and faithfulness to the genres and forms of the past (from Fra Angelico to Cézanne through Chardin) betokens yet another form of attachment and signposts the impossibility of autonomy.

Or does it? Is such art, in its flaunted dependency, to be understood as a form of autonomy? Would abstraction (or at least contemporary artists' problematization of mimetic devices), which Modernists tended to conflate with autonomy, have become the correlate, even the modality, of a form of commitment? Said differently, can committed art (aesthetically, politically, religiously, ethically) be autonomous in any way? Or is autonomy, both from the socio-historical context and the artistic context, unthinkable, and if so, does it mean that art is necessarily synonymous with commitment? Responsibility? Must art be a site of resistance, expounding a message, defending a political point of view? Are such politically committed art works servile and simply cultivating a clear conscience? Conversely can committed art be autonomous? Are autonomy and commitment exclusive of each other or compatible or even, necessary to each other? Along what spectrum have they come to cohabit?

These are some of the tracks that those among you committed to contemporary British arts are invited to follow, pursue further or question in this conference on Autonomy and Commitment in Contemporary British Arts that will take place at the University Montpellier III on 28-29 May 2010. Delineating the type of relation there may be between these two apparently antagonistic notions of autonomy and commitment in contemporary artistic production will be the aim of this conference. Walter Benjamin's writings about the "aura", Adorno's "Commitment" or his essays on music, or more recent essays by Jameson, de Bolla or Castoriadis among others may be apt starting-points for such a reflection as well as the contemporary artists' own essays (one might think of Winterson's contributions, here).

Proposals dealing with the two combined notions of autonomy and commitment in relation to modernist painting, sculpture, cinema, photography, music, etc. will be considered carefully. Selected papers will be published in a volume at the Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée.

Jean-Michel Ganteau <jean-michel.ganteau@univ-montp3.fr>
and Christine Reynier <christine.reynier@univ-montp3.fr>.

(posted 14 October 2009)

The conference is organised by Textes et Cultures, Artois University (EA 4028) in collaboration with CRILA (JE 2356), Angers University.

What is it that resists in a poem? What is the poem resisting? And what is the reader resisting in the poem? Poets are caught up within time and history, but also try to resist being conquered by time and oppose its sometimes destructive course. Poetry is by definition an art by which the individual - the poet - resists current cultural standards and the lowest common denominator. The poet calls into question the established order. In a relativistic world, poetry is a quest for the Absolute, be it linguistic, philosophical or religious, or all three, as is the case for Hopkins and Eliot. Geoffrey Hill argues that through the beautiful and moving character of the poem, the poet works against what Hill calls "the debasement of language".

- the reception of a particular poem or volume: why does poetry inspire such resistance in readers or non-readers? "We read poetry not to escape difficulty but to embrace it" (James Longenbach, 2004);
- a poet's resistance to his own past works and standpoints; the question of a poet's later revisions of his own work;
- the resistance of a particular poem or poet to (1) interpretation and (2) translation: the multiplicity of interpretations and translations is a sign of the fecundity of resistance within a poem;
- "syntactical difficulty" in Hopkins's poetry "underpinned by etymological and phonetic resistance" (Prynne);
- writer's block, barren periods in producing poetry; for Hugo Williams and perhaps other poets, it is a matter of finishing (or not finishing) a poem or a collection;
- poetry, and resistance as carrying with it notions of protest or contestation; the resistance at various levels of "war poetry";
- British and Irish poets‚ (Hughes', Heaney's etc) powerful responses to Eastern European poetry, especially in the seventies and eighties;
- J.H. Prynne, and the idea he puts forward in his seminal article "esistance and Difficulty", that the creative imagination offers "both the difficulty of contrivance and also a profound assurance that this difficulty corresponds to genuine resistance in the larger context of the outside world."; the link between resistance and difficulty in poetry;
- the popularity of certain contemporary poets like Steve Turner and Roger McGough; do these poets lend themselves to serious criticism and scholarship; does academia resist them (if such is the case) because their language lacks resistance?
- poetry as resistance to a dominant trend, a lukewarm or indifferent social consensus, the standardization of society, so that, as Hill writes, the poem becomes Œone of the instruments of resistance to the drift of the age‚;
- etc.

- Adrian Grafe (Artois) <grafe.adrian@wanadoo.fr>
- or  Jessica Stephens (Angers) <jessica.stephens@numericable.com>.

(posted 27 June 2009)

Taste as a socio-cultural, aesthetic, sociological, economic, and anthropological concept implies distinguishing, evaluating and judging, and also establishes boundaries between styles. Judging what is good or bad taste is about drawing distinctions, and in the philosophical aesthetic tradition it pertains to a universal attitude which is impossible to prove and which takes for granted the existence of a sensus communis, or common understanding. For Kant, "the judgement of taste is not founded on concepts, and is in no way a cognition, but only an aesthetic judgement" (Critique of Judgement). On the contrary, Pierre Bourdieu highlighted the sociological meaning of taste, stating that the legitimate taste of society is the taste of the ruling class (Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste). Thus, what does not live up to the norms of the elite and which fails to recognize their criteria of distinction can be qualified as bad taste.

If bad taste is generally seen as an error, deliberately employing it can also be seen as defying or questioning social, aesthetic or ethical norms. By putting itself on display it becomes a provocation or challenge to the dominant ideology and also to the consensual values. Ironically, ostentatious, exhilarating deviance would then be created by a new elite. For Baudelaire, "What is intoxicating in bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of giving offense" (Fusées).

The goal of the conference is to examine the notion of bad taste from a multidisciplinary perspective: literary analysis, film analysis, television, civilization, history and the history of ideas, sociology, economics, political science, communication and media studies. The papers can be theoretical or can present concrete case studies. They can deal with any or all of the fields which pertain to popular culture in the Anglophone world. The aim is to question how knowledge and practices are learned in order to extend the definition of cultural studies beyond a strict disciplinary approach.

* The aesthetic, ethical, political, economic, sociological standards which according to popular culture define the limits between good and bad taste and which define the incongruous, the out-of-place, the illegitimate, the discordant and the inappropriate in relation to an imposed standard;
* The use of bad taste, its expression and its appearance in Anglo-Saxon popular culture (indecency, vulgarity, violence, obscenity, camp, kitsch, trash culture);
* The appropriation of bad taste and the emergence of a strategy or an aesthetic of bad taste: the desire to shock, to clash with decorum, and to challenge decency; parody at its most outrageous;
* Using bad taste for transgressive or subversive purposes -- popular culture, or the creation of a counter-discourse and a counter-culture.

Papers should be twenty-five minutes long and should preferably be in English. A selected number of papers will be published in one of the GRAAT online publications: http://www.graat.fr in December 2010.

Proposals should be around 200 words accompanied by a brief CV of the author and should be sent to both:

Priscilla Morin <priscilla.morin@univ-tours.fr> and Sébastien Salbayre <sebastien.salbayre@univ-tours.fr> by February 28, 2010.

(posted 16 February 2010)

The conference will focus mainly on British (but also American) narratives of exploration dealing with the search for the Northwest Passage, from the first voyage in 1576 to the completion of the search in 1859.

- Nation, identity, inquiry
- Empire, commerce, technology
- History of cartography
- Language and interaction
- Inventing the 'Esquimaux'
- Methods of investigation
- The Admiralty and the Companies
- Policies and polemics
- Myth-making
- The Northwest Passage in British (or American) culture

All papers are expected to be delivered in English. Please send 250/300-word proposals for 30-minute conference presentations, together with a short biographical statement, affiliation and contact details, no later than 15 September 2009. Acceptance will be notified by 30 September.
Please also submit hard copies to: <Frederic.Regard@paris-sorbonne.fr>

We look forward to receiving proposals for papers representing the full diversity of possible approaches to the topic, both theoretical and text-based.
We are pleased to welcome as keynote speakers:

Michael Hattaway, University of Sheffield
Mihaela Irimia, University of Bucharest
Anthony Kemp, University of Southern California

Conference fee: 50 euro (conference documents, refreshments).
Presentations, in English, should be 20 min. long plus 10 min. for discussion. Authors are invited to submit abstracts, which may not exceed 300 words (including a list of keywords), and should be submitted in Word format. Proposals must include title of paper, name and institutional affiliation; mailing address, phone number, and e-mail address.
Deadline for receipt of proposals: 20 March 2010
Please send proposals (and inquiries) to <litcultstbucharest@gmail.com>.
A selection of papers will be published in University of Bucharest Review.
We look forward to welcoming you in Bucharest

Prof. Irina Pană, Chair of the Conference Committee
Prof. Monica Bottez, On behalf of the English Department's Literature Section

(posted 27 February 2010)

The conference will address the current trend in contemporary English-language drama and theatre towards using stories and story-telling. Such narrative elements occur with increasing frequency and can be observed across a wide range of different cultural contexts and genres (e.g. in documentary theatre, post-dramatic theatre, memory plays or In-Yer-Face Theatre). The structures employed by playwrights and theatre practitioners will be analysed in their various forms, including monologues, monodrama, narrator figures inside or 'above' the dramatic action and stage-managers. In all cases, the functions which these elements have in individual plays, genres or oeuvres will be of central importance. They differ significantly from classic forms like Epic Theatre.

Papers may focus on all kinds of narrative structures in contemporary (post-Beckettian, i.e. after 1989) theatre and drama in English. Comparisons with earlier plays are welcome where they help to clarify the specific new functions of the elements under consideration. According to the established CDE tradition, the stage potential of these current developments is a special point of interest, and they will also be seen in their wider cultural implications.

•    the dramatic and cultural meanings of specific narrative techniques in contemporary drama
•    the comparison between the use of a particular element in different kinds of plays
•    the development and change of narrative structures in a particular dramatic genre or in a dramatist's oeuvre
•    a historical perspective on the use of narrative in contemporary drama
•    intercultural comparisons with regard to stories and story-telling in English-language drama and theatre
•    the realisation of narrative elements in performance, both from the perspective of audience response criticism and in concrete productions

Please send abstracts (of about 250 words) for suggested papers (for 20-min. slots) to the con¬ference organiser, Prof. Dr. Merle Tönnnikes, Dept. of English, University of Paderborn, D-33095 Paderborn, Germany, <cde2010@upb.de>, by 5 January 2010, including a short bio¬graphical note plus full address and institutional affiliation.

N.B.: Only paid-up members are eligible to give papers at CDE conferences. Membership subscriptions may be taken out or renewed during the conference.

(posted 25 July 2009)

This session will address the following topics: literature and museology; writing the museum in literature (narrative fiction and poetry): the book as museum and the museum as book; reading and viewing: the eye in progress or the journey of the eye; ekphrasis and pictorial description; museophilia and museophobia; hybridity and iconotextuality.

Bearing in mind that in certain museums or art galleries, some of the art work is actually created in response to curators' specific desires, one may wonder to what extent a book that draws its inspiration from paintings displayed in a gallery, a museum, or an art exhibition ends up being itself a museum - a textual museum or "museum of words", to use James Heffernan's phrase. The book in its materiality, complete with text and images in praesentia in some cases, or with images in absentia - and therefore nothing but text - in other cases, constitutes a gallery through which the reader/viewer, just like the characters, wanders and muses in the manner of an art lover. The book plays the part of the galleries of old -- such as Philostrates' or those painting galleries in which, by providing the missing links between the pictures, the visitor made up a narrative while contemplating the legends represented. This wandering or musing process thus follows an old tradition recalling Roger de Piles' own definition of painting as pilgrimage.

Whether in poetry or in narrative fiction, the museum is therefore the locus of an interesting journey undergone by a reading and viewing "eye/I in progress" probing the image in search of answers about the self, or re-appropriating the image to turn it into a new, hybrid work, half word, half picture - a true instance of an "iconotext". Through an ambivalent discourse which oscillates between museophilia and museophobia - the literary museum being alternately seen as an invigorating source of inspiration and creation, or as a tomb threatening the self with annihilation -- literary texts thus offer a stimulating and conflicting museology which, depending on the period, anticipates, or resonates with, W.J.T. Mitchell's account of the "pictorial turn" in the second half of the twentieth century.

(posted 30 October 2009, updated 17 November 2009, updated 16 February 2010)

The thematic title "Strokes Across Cultures" invites differing interpretations and contains multiple possibilities for examining the languages, literatures and other cultural texts through which the legacy of the Commonwealth might be viewed and critically interrogated through disciplinary and/or interdisciplinary dialogues. The questions raised may include the following: What is the contribution of the Commonwealth to the World or the World to the Commonwealth and how has it changed over time and under the impact of globalization?  What sorts of ethics and politics or 'wealth' can we imagine for the (Un)common? How have circumstances of coercion, violence, imposition, or of affective intensity shaped our cultures in moments of encounter and reciprocal exchange? What kinds of disruption have these exchanges achieved upon conventional and assumed norms, expectations, patterns, topographies, and divisions into separate cultural units and nations?  Is there a community in our (un)commonality or has the term Commonwealth outlived its usefulness?  Can we envisage a stroke as a blow or caress, as the force of a fortuitous encounter, as a performative moment in a contact zone, as a site of exchange between cultures, or as a threshold which both engenders opposites and mediates between them?

Applicants are invited to engage with the above questions within the framework of Commonwealth languages, literary, critical and other cultural texts.  The following subheadings indicate trajectories of exploration:

• The commonwealth as figure of discourse; cultural articulations of the common/uncommon; ethics and politics of (un)commonwealth thought.
• Conflict, counterpoint, coexistence and collusion in commonwealth literatures and languages (englishes and vernacular languages).
• (Un)translatability of languages and cultures in geopolitics and geopoetics
• Cross-cultural depictions of specific political, regional, cultural, linguistic conflicts.
• Chance encounters across cultures, Cross-cultural circulation of affect and affective disposition; friendship.
• Formation of new communities across cultures, circulation and counter-circulation of capital, investments, media, cultures of resistance.
• Re-imagined communities through the twin lenses of oppression and desire.
• Transgressive sexualities / shifting sexual borders.
• Motherlands, Stepmotherlands, Otherlands and Oedipal desire as passage.
• The colonial moment as trauma and the post-colonial as both perpetuation and attempted recovery.
• The 'shock of the new', aesthetics and violence, formal experimentation and its political implications.

Abstracts of maximum 300 words for papers of 20 minutes duration, and maximum 400 words for three-paper panels (with the names of the panelists) which engage with these and other relevant questions along with a short bio not exceeding 100 words should be submitted to info@cyprusconferences.org by 31 August 2009.
More information on the Conference website: http://www.cyprusconferences.org/aclals2010

Organizers: Prof. Dr. Stefan Horlacher (TU Dresden), Prof. Kevin Floyd (Kent State University).
As R.W. Connell and James Messerschmidt have proposed, masculinities have to be studied at a number of different analytic levels simultaneously, ranging from the most location-oriented and culturally specific, to the national, to the transnational. This workshop will encourage scholarly movement in a direction that both builds on recent work in the field of masculinity studies and moves past it, toward more comparative kinds of analysis.
In Britain and the US the proliferation of differentiated masculinities becomes increasingly evident during the postwar period for specifically national and transnational reasons. These include global waves of decolonization, patterns of migration, the emergence of 'new' subaltern subjects demanding social, cultural, and political recognition, and conservative reactions against these developments.
What lines of interchange and influence in the cultural imagining of masculinity can be traced between the US and UK during this period? How do new, postwar forms of masculine identity in Britain and the U.S. reconstruct imagined national pasts in ways which retain force when global economic and military hegemony appears to have passed, finally, from Britain to the US? How should we understand relations between hegemonic and counterhegemonic masculinities in such a context -- and especially the ways in which these relations operate both similarly and differently in these two countries?
This workshop is designed to facilitate a collective scholarly conversation about the ways in which masculinities in the UK and the US converge as well as diverge. How to understand culturally differentiated masculinities not simply as incommensurate with each other, but also as operating in relation to each other?
We seek papers that examine, within a transatlantic framework, literary representations of masculinity in the U.S. and/or the U.K. from the post-World War II period to the period immediately preceding the era of Thatcher and Reagan. We especially encourage literary analyses that consider or propose connections between US and UK masculinities, and that examine those masculinities at simultaneously national and transnational levels.
Please send an abstract of no more than 500 words by December 31st 2009
to both:
This conference is funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and Kent State University.
Partial subsidies for participants will be available.

(posted 16 October 2009)

(posted 13 March 2009, updated 17 October 2009))

The renewed attention devoted to lexical blends (also sometimes called portmanteau words after Lewis Carroll) in the last fifteen years has resulted in a scattered body of work spanning several linguistic fields and research traditions. The aim of this international conference is to bring together linguists working on blending in various languages and different frameworks in order to encourage debate and cross-fertilization of ideas. Papers on the description of lexical blending in understudied languages, on the place of blending in morphological theory, and comparative work on two or more languages will be particularly welcome.

We are pleased to announce that Laurie Bauer (Victoria University of Wellington) and Stefan Gries (University of California at Santa Barbara) have accepted our invitation to give keynote presentations at the conference.

The language of the conference is English. Each presentation will be allotted 20 minutes, plus 10 minutes for questions and discussion. An overhead projector and powerpoint facilities will be provided.

- Abstracts should be no longer than one page (Times font, 12-point size, single-spaced). Please submit your file in .doc format to <lexical[dot]blending[at]univ-lyon2[dot]fr> by 30 September 2009. It should include your name, affiliation and email at the top of the page, directly below the title. Abstracts will be anonymized and reviewed by two members of the selection committee. Notification of acceptance will be sent by email by mid-November 2009.

- Notification of acceptance: mid-November 2009
- Accepted papers will be considered for publication after the conference.

- Conference email: <lexical.blending@univ-lyon2.fr>
- Conference website: http://lexicalblending.wordpress.com/
- Links to the program and to a registration form will be available on the conference website in due course.

(posted 27 Mar '09, updated 26 May '09, updated 25 September 2009)

The theme of cultural guides and conveyors offers the opportunity to explore the dynamics of cultural, literary and linguistic transmission in the English speaking world. The cultural guide (or conveyor) is both a guide and an intermediary between two shores or two countries, two cultures, two generations or two languages. A figure from mythology or the Bible who is to be found between heaven and hell, between the land of the living and the land of the dead. A figure which has always occupied a large symbolic territory and has a hold on the collective imagination because he is the one who seals a soul's destiny. From Greek mythology to the New Testament, he accompanies the dead on their last journey: Charon ferries them across the Styx to Hades; St Peter is entrusted with the keys to heaven and only lets in those who have proved themselves worthy. The cultural guide (or conveyor) is thus a highly symbolic and dynamic figure at the centre of discursive, cultural and literary tropes of the universal human imagination. He is the one who decides when and where the crossing takes place, the one who is responsible for handing things over and taking people to the other side, or to the other shore, while at the same time remaining in the same place as if untouched by the passage of time, the motionless centre of movement and transition.

The cultural guide (or conveyor) is at times a heroic figure whose help is necessary to overcome an obstacle or to move on to the next stage. As a guide his role is linked to discovery or initiation (in which case he is a scout, an explorer, the one who helps others across the border and discovers new horizons). He can also play the part of a rescuer. He is not an ordinary guide since he accompanies those who need his services at a key moment in their lives. Refugees and illegal immigrants have no other choice but to place their destiny in his hands.

The cultural guide (or conveyor) can be a stealthy figure or a resistance fighter, who embodies a form of withdrawal and necessarily remains at a distance. This agent, who plays a vital role in the hand-over, the transformation and the success of the crossing, must stay in the shadows. He has a vital role in football - the assist - the generous act which is essential to overall success but can remain anonymous and on the margins. He can thus position himself in the hidden zone between knowledge and secret, and contains the possibility of transgression. He knows, he acts, but from a distance, he occupies the paradoxical space of a person who both makes his presence felt and remains in the background.

The cultural guide (or conveyor) can be mystical or domineering (shaman, guru, inspirer, initiator), an ordinary teacher or a translator. What he hands over, legally or illegally, can be anything from the intangible (ideas which may or may not be subversive) to the real (legal or illegal substances). Finally he is a mediator who plays a crucial role both in the post-colonial world, which is characterised by a rapid increase in linguistic and cultural exchanges, and in the post-modern context, which is defined by the complexity of the interplay of intertextuality and hypertextuality.
The figure of the cultural guide is unquestionably linked to the history of demographic and migratory flows, and economic and cultural exchanges between the United-States and Europe (in particular Great Britain, the spurned mother and yet unfaltering ally): continual passages, exchanges, interaction between two continents resulting in a dynamic of constant attraction/repulsion. At the same time the cultural guide is part and parcel of the American continent whose vastness requires all sorts of passages, transmissions, endless trips and continuous flows. Some of the most significant examples are:

- the mythology of the New World and the Wilderness, the frontier and territorial conquest, as well as the mystical representation of the open road.
- the founding fathers or forerunners who helped America to break free from the shackles of European culture and to develop ideas of its own (Transcendentalism, Pragmatism), new literary forms (the Romance) and also various avant-garde art movements which introduced the American public to new aesthetic horizons, intrinsically linked to the American experience.
- the mythical figures of counter-culture, as well as committed artists, who send a message, or a warning, whether they belong to the mainstream or to minorities eager to defend, or even assert, their identities (Afro-Americans, Asians, Chicanos, Jews, gays, women). This role of the artist as a conveyor of messages has been developing since the 70s with the emergence of environmental art on the American artistic scene.
- the recent history of borders and illegal immigration -- in particular the Mexican-American border which for decades has given rise to a host of economic, linguistic and literary exchanges.

As for "celebrity culture" and literary prizes, both have become the necessary conveyors of literature to cultivated members of the general public.

In British studies a similar list of cultural moments and literary figures springs to mind:
-  the 18th and 19th century imaginary was built on the opening up to other worlds and on the new role of the writer as a crosser of both real and imaginary borders. Romanticism thrived on the social changes of the time; the French Revolution and the first Industrial Revolution transformed the poet and the novelist into conveyors of ideals.
- the development of new urban centres and the rapid growth of capitalism caused sociological and economic upheavals, which in turn caused great political and social tensions; novelists of the second half of the 19th century bear witness to these times of turmoil.
- the figure of the conveyor is also present in other areas. From the 18th century onwards, "Orientalism" has underlined the problematic relationship between two cultures and is evident in both literature and linguistics.
- in the realm of contemporary fiction, the author has gained beyond doubt the status of a conveyor of diegesis, History and individual memory.
- finally, the "tropicalization" of contemporary British fiction has inverted the Metropolis/Colony polarities and the conveyors of culture and metaphors are no longer the former colonial administrators but the new subalterns, writing from the margins of the Empire, who have discovered their own voices by reclaiming their former master's language. Whether they be conveyors of identity or of creolization and hybridity, the cultural codes of these guides have become blurred, and the religious, historical, ideological and literary landmarks have changed beyond recognition.

-Pascale Antolin <pantolin@club-internet.fr>, Arnaud Schmitt <schmitt.arnaud@orange.fr> (North American Studies)
-Susan Barrett <s.barrett@wanadoo.fr>, Paul Veyret, <veyret.paul@numericable.fr> (British Studies).

(posted 30 October 2009)

In 1649 the beheading of a Christian monarch by his own people stupified all of Europe. It was an event that was to haunt several generations, like Mary Stuart's execution in 1587. It inspired the moralist Blaise Pascal to write a maxim on the instability of all things: 'Could the man who cherished the friendships of the King of England, the King of Poland and the Queen of Sweden have thought he would one day be without a haven?'

These two regicides gave rise to an abundant literature and a host of visual representations all over Europe. In addition to a number of polemic essays, these regicides spawned a whole literature of its own including narrative pamphlets, both fictional and dramatized, novels, plays, ballads and numerous elegies and funeral orisons, many of which remained anonymous. Rather than reconsider the polemical arguments for and against the execution of royals, this conference will be interested in papers dedicated to the literary and visual representations of the two regicides in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England and in continental Europe.  Special attention will be paid to the discursive strategies in these works to thematize or sublimate the feeling of 'catastrophe', disaster or cataclysm that is often used to describe the monarch’s death.

Line Cottegnies <line.cottegnies@univ-paris3.fr>
and Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille <claire.gheeraert@univ-rouen.fr> .

(posted 26 October 2009)

The years between late childhood and early adulthood are particularly challenging in contemporary societies. The purpose of this international conference is to compare and contrast British, American and French youth, both as the subjects of youth policy and as actors in youth politics.

Young people are the subject of youth-centred policies as regards various social phenomena which involve the young in particular (e.g. anti-social and risky behaviour), as well as more fundamental youth matters, such as education and employment along with the school-to-work transition. Youth policy also involves a range of other issues, such as youth homelessness, youth poverty, youth protection, youth work, youth justice, health care provision, as well as Youth Service leisure provision and other activities aimed at contributing to the personal, social and economic well-being of young people.  

Young people are also political actors. Membership of political parties and voter turnout among young people have both been declining over the past decade in the UK and France, with serious implications for the future of citizenship and democracy. Conversely, in the USA, the youth vote has been increasing. At the same time, young British, American and French people are more and more involved in bottom-up, issue-based political activism (e.g. the environment, world poverty). This, too, has important implications for the political landscape of the future.

This conference aims to bring together social scientists from sociology, political science, geography, economics and Anglophone Studies as well as practitioners working with young people in the UK, the USA and France to share knowledge and experience.

Papers will discuss a specific issue of youth policy or youth politics in the UK, the USA or France today, or will make a comparison between countries on a particular point.  Each presentation (in English or French) will last 20-25 minutes to be followed by questions/discussion.

Université Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle, 5, rue de l’École de Médecine 75006 Paris, France
http://www.univ-paris3.fr/10436/0/fiche___annuaireksup/&RH=ACCUEIL

Université de Franche-Comté, UFR SLHS, 30, rue Mégevand, 25030 Besançon, France
http://corinne.nativel.org

(posted 27 June 2009)

From the Renaissance onwards, utopian writers in English have always had an ambiguous attitude towards the city. Many have used the urban civilization of their time as a dystopian foil to their utopian world. And yet the city has remained the horizon of utopia. Under various forms (from the village community to the garden city) the city has provided a setting to the ideal society described as a principal subject. Too often, however, the setting of utopias in their specific visual space has been found of little relevance.. Utopian texts have long been studied in an exclusively political perspective which overemphasized their abstract and theoretical character. Yet there is another way of reading these texts (and illustrations), through a close study of this visual space which contributes both to the critical and prospective function of the utopian genre.
The conference will deal with the relationship between utopian societies and their specific space, in its various urban or rural configurations, and with its new social and economic uses. It will study such points of interest as the responses to the urban dystopia of a given period, as well as the function of imaginary landscapes and townscapes. Using the rich data of utopian texts and pictures over several centuries, contributors will explore the origins, the uses and the meanings of these visual spaces.
Of particular relevance are the following fields of research :
Submissions for papers (in French or in English) to be sent to Professor Jacques Carré before 31 october 2009.
<jacques.carre@paris-sorbonne.fr>.

As soon as novels developed, women played an important role both as readers and as authors, since among the 2,000 works which were published in the 18th century, 600 were written by women. One can then wonder about the way they used that means of expression and ask whether Mary Wollstonecraft opened the path for a British female literature characterized by commitment through her desire for political and social equality with men. Let us specify that during http://www.massen-ramel.net/drupal/files/photos/lucie/3-4ans/DSC_9406_20090926_0802-exp.jpgthat conference the term "commitment" will be used in the sense it had in the 18th and 19th centuries rather than in the sense it took in the 20th century.
Some could focus on the different aspects of commitment whether it is political, social, religious, moral, intellectual, artistic… It would also be quite interesting to consider the sources of inspiration for that commitment in novels by Hannah More, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Margaret Oliphant, or the Brontës (this is not an exhaustive list). Besides one could deal with the role played by some major figures such as Harriet Martineau or Harriet Taylor Mill, John Stuart Mill’s wife, but also by some ideals and among them that of the "New Woman".
Other proposals could be centred on the form that commitment takes on. Does it influence women writers’ strategies for articulating their experience? How does commitment characterize the very text? Does it make itself known always strikingly? And more generally are women writers' means of expression the same as those adopted in the society of the time?

(posted 21 September 2009)

We may also wish to ponder over the apparent contradiction between art as a rupture in the continuity of time and art as a form of dialogical relation with the past. The relation of art and history may also be explored, through the capacity of art to address issues which were meant to excede their own times. The question of untimely art will thus provide us with an apt point of entry into the wider problem of esthetic truth which may be tackled from the angle of the prolonged destiny of art and of the different temporalities of artistic inscription, from the global approach to the painting which Nelson Goodman theorises, to the horizontal and more chronological reception of the linguistic text. The interdisciplinary nature of our conference will help us probe deeper into the mystery of artistic persistance and transhistoricity, so as to give a faithful account of the various facets of the inscription of art in time.

- Anne-Laure Fortin-Tournès <al.fortin-tournes@wanadoo.fr>

- or to Liliane Louvel <Liliane.Louvel@univ-poitiers.fr>

(posted 19 October 2009)

Organised jointly by the research team  Pluralité des Langues et des Identités en Didactique : Acquisition, Médiations (PLIDAM) of the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) in Paris, France and the SOAS-UCL Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning 'Languages of the Wider World' (LWW CETL) in London, UK, this International Conference will bring together lecturers and teachers to discuss topics and theoretical disciplinary backgrounds for a plurilingual and pluricultural perspective in education.

Today, Language Learning and Teaching needs to position itself in relation to an internationalised context of knowledge, tools for assessing competences adaptable to a globalised world and in relation to societies in which affiliations are apprehended as diverse. The impact of globalisation can be seen in political structures (states, national and international institutions), in social structures (urban life, family and individual stories and trajectories) and in dynamic communications (information and social networks). In this multi- dimensional context, characterized by international mobility, mixed affiliations and social and cultural representations, languages, which have become less and less foreign as well as those which have a more and more hegemonic position, are also perceived as both technological and social instruments.

The conference follows the wide debate launched with the publication, in 2008, of the Précis du plurilinguisme et du pluriculturalisme (Handbook of multilingualism and multiculturalism) - Editions des archives contemporaines.

The conference seeks to identify the changes and the new theoretical disciplinary dimensions which are emblematic of this new perspective within the field of Language and Culture Pedagogy, by answering the following questions:

Notions and concepts which have emerged or are gaining acceptance in Europe (Common European Framework, European Portfolios, etc.) shall be analysed and developed through the following:

- The social actor and the valorisation of his/her strategies in the field of language and culture teaching.
- The symbolic dimension of languages and cultures in the dynamic construction of identities and how it is taken into account into teaching.
- The social role played by languages and cultures in different forms of mobility -- geographic, social, economic – and acknowledgement of experience as a capital and its dimension in language learning.
- The power struggle between languages and the national, regional and local representations that make up a plurilingual environment, the resultant institutional logic and their impact on learning.
- The different forms of mediations – institutionalised or unstable –that compensate for conflict situations specific to a heterogeneous educational environment.
- The changes within these notions as they confront other ideologies, traditions or communicative patterns, as well as their adaptation in other languages.

Abstract  of up to 2500 characters (references included) will be required to present theoretical background, key words, the kind of data or corpora used as well as the methodological approach. This should be sent with the attached questionnaire (to be filled in) to <colloque-plidam-2010@yahoogroupes.fr> before 30th November 2009.

Languages for the conference are French and English. Conference proposals will be blindly reviewed by two readers and papers accepted for publication after the conference will only be published after a second assessment.

Ahmed Boukous, Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture, Rabat, Morocco
Aline Gohard Radenkovic, University of Fribourg  , Switzerland
Hideo Hosokawa, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
Claire Kramsch, University of California at Berkeley, USA
Danielle Lévy, University of Macerata, Italy
Samir Marzouki, University of Manouba, Tunis, Tunisia
Jean Paul Narcy-Combes, DILTEC, Université of Paris III, France
Nishiyama Noriyuki, Kyoto University, Japan
Fu Rong, University of Foreign Studies, Beijing, China
Claire Saillard, Université de Paris Diderot-Paris VII, France
Hugh Starkey, Institute of Education, University of London, United Kingdom
Monika Szirmai, Hiroshima International University, Japan
Li-Hua Zheng, Guangdong University of Foreign, China

SOAS-UCL Centre for Excellence in "Languages of the Wider World", University of London: Itesh Sachdev, Michalis Sivvas, Joanne Eastlake, Noriko Iwasaski,, Jane Fenoulhet (UCL, University of London).
PLIDAM, INALCO : Joël Bellassen, Pierre Martinez, Patrick Maurus, Thomas Szende, Geneviève Zarate
Organising Committee, PLIDAM, INALCO (coordinator Geneviève Zarate)
Evelyne Argaud, Georges Alao, Martine Derivry, Heba Lecocq, Jin-ok Kim, Nozomi Takahashi, Lin Chi-Miao, Ali Saoudé, Soyoung Roger, Elli Suzuki.

- Centre of Excellence for the Study of Cultural Identity, University of Bucharest, Romania
- Department of English and American Studies, St Cyril and St Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria.

The conference aims at exploring comparisons, interactions and contestations within and across cultures by bringing together scholarship in literary and cultural studies, linguistics, translation studies, history, sociology, geography, film, media, political science and other related areas of the humanities and social sciences. Topics include (but are not limited to) basis and mechanisms of intercultural comparison, intercultural comparison and/in cultural identity construction, intercultural comparison and language politics, cross-cultural interactions and their theorization, interactions and/in intercultural encounters, interactions and/in/through cultural exchange, cross-cultural interactions in/and architecture and town planning, cross-cultural interactions in/and culinary and sartorial practices and customs, contestation and/in socio-cultural practices, contestations of “tradition” and their representations in literature, the visual arts and the media. 

While the conference is targeted at scholars working in the broad area of English, it is also hoped that it will attract colleagues in Irish and Celtic studies. Comparisons and interactions between Irish culture and Eastern/Central European cultures will be of particular interest as well as parallels between Celtic and Eastern/Central European languages and literatures.

The conference will start in Bucharest, the capital and key cultural centre of Romania, will include a visit to Ruse, Bulgaria, the birthplace of Nobel prize laureate Elias Canetti, and will conclude in Veliko Tarnovo, "the ancient capital of Bulgaria, famous for its old university and monasteries, its storks and its frescoes, its castle and its ancient Arabesque merchants' houses" (Malcolm Bradbury).

Abstracts (ca 500 words) and short bios (ca 7-8 lines) are due by 1 February 2010.
Please e-mail to both:

(posted 2 July 2009)

Adaptors of films and television series work within certain professional traditions and conventions, but their practices are far from homogenuous. Subtitling laboratories and TV channels, whether in France or abroad, differ in the way they work. The medium, the technology, the viewing context and the public all affect the use (or misuse) of the spatio-temporal and lexical constraints we associate with subtitling. Today, professional practice is confronted with the development of amateur adaptors and fansubbing teams who subtitle Japanese and American films and series for specific "markets", thanks to the possibilities of file sharing.

In Europe, because of the existence of many languages and the specificities of each country regarding technology and culture, there is a tradition of research on adaptation. While Yves Gambier's 1996 publication  remains pertinent, other more recent research takes into account the changes brought on by the development of the internet and the increasing importance of allowing all citizens access to all media. We can cite, for instance, the work of Jorge Diaz Cintas and of Abé Mark Nornes.  These developments, both technical and political, push us to widen our definition of "translation", to open up our training of adaptors to other "translation" activities and to question the idea of standards and their transgression.

This conference proposes to be one of the first dedicated to subtitling norms and the phenomenon of non-professional adaptors. It will be an opportunity to assess practices in France and Europe in order to determine the importance of amateur subtitling, its impacts and consequences. The conference is part of the wider debates concerning the evolution of the media, especially with the development of the internet, and of their accessibility, from a legal (laws limiting free access) or social perspective (laws providing disabled access.)

- Current practices in professional adaptation
- The importance of norms in adaptation
- "Fansubbing": interest, quality, dangers?
- Heterogeneity in adaptation and its consequences for the public
- The place of norms in the training of adaptors
- Transgressive practices in adaptation
- Subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Audio-description
- Three-dimensional subtitling
- Live subtitling
- Legislative "norms" in the area of culture (artistic property, access to culture)
- Technical "norms" and the breaking of them

The conference is organised by CRELANCES, The Center for Research in Languages and Cultures of the Language Pole of the University of Evry Val d’Essonne.

Deadline for submission of proposals: 1st April 2010
Notification of acceptance of proposals: 15 April 2010

Sophie Bailly (Free-lance Adaptor)
Sabrina Baldo (University of Evry Val d’Essonne)
Eric Bigot (Adaptor at Télétota)
Joselyn Fernandez (University of Evry Val d’Essonne)
Stephanie Genty(University of Evry Val d’Essonne)
Joyce Sebag (University of Evry Val d’Essonne)
Rejane Vallée (University of Evry Val d’Essonne)

(posted 11 February 2010)

The 2010 conference on the afterlife of used things in the long 18th century will expand on the 2009 'cycles of novelty' symposium, which had explored some of the many aspects of recycling in particular in relation to art and literature. This year's conference will focus on recycling in relation to social, economic and material practices in the long 18th century and will broaden its geographical boundaries to include France.

We invite participants to study the versatile practices of recycling and refashioning that shaped the eighteenth-century world of goods with particular emphasis on the double question of waste and luxury. Thus the refashioning of old objects into new desirable ones, the thriving second-hand market often fuelled by the luxury trades and the problem of "waste management" in societies characterized by increased opulence are among the questions that the conference will seek to explore. The management of resources (both natural and man-made), their scarcity and their uses will also be central to the conference and we welcome papers exploring the topography or geographical circulation of goods and resources involved by practices of recycling. We also hope to somewhat chart the processes of valuation/devaluation and re-evaluation through which both fashionable luxury objects and discarded material went through and invite contributors to submit papers focusing on the cultural uses and values of objects/materials along the various stages of this process.

We are in contact with several publishers to get a selection of papers from this year and last year's conference published. This publication will be in English.

<ariane.fennetaux@univ-paris-diderot.fr>
<amelie.junqua@u-picardie.fr>

Ariane Fennetaux, Université Paris Diderot, Paris 7
Amélie Junqua, Université de Picardie Jules Verne
Sophie Vasset, Université Paris Diderot, Paris 7

(posted 30 January 2010)

As issues of nationalism, identity, and what it means to be 'British' continue to affect the cultural and political landscape of Britain itself, its impact on the islands that share (or have shared) a cultural heritage with the United Kingdom has become new ground for academics.

The Academy for the Study of Britishness at the University of Huddersfield welcomes proposals for 20-minute papers from academics, postgraduate students, independent scholars, and other professionals to present at its ‘Identity and the other British Isles' conference on 24-25 June 2010.

The conference will bring together research from a range of disciplines in order to explore issues of Britishness within island culture and society. Papers are welcomed on the identities, cultures, history, heritage, and society of any island/islands which share a cultural heritage with Britain. This includes islands within the 'British archipelago' and around the world. The focus of the conference is on smaller islands, and those whose relationships with Britain and Britishness have been often neglected in academic study.

- The culture and identity of The Isle of Man, The Channel Islands, Orkney and the Shetlands, The Scilly Isles, Anglesey, The Hebrides, Malta, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Singapore, The Falklands, The British West Indies and other 'British' islands

- Britishness and the island(s) in wartime
- Relationships between the island(s) and Westminster/the Monarchy
- Britishness within the commemoration and celebration of identity
- Britishness in island government and administration.
- The impact of Britishness (or Englishness) on the local language and culture
- Tourism
- Devolution, nationalism and post-imperialism within the island(s).

Proposals for 20-minute papers should be no more than 200 words and should include a one-page CV. The deadline for submission is January 25th 2010.

(posted 20 November 2009)

An international Word & Image conference will be held at the Université de Bourgogne (Dijon, France) on 24-26 June 2010 in association with the College of the Holy Cross (Massachusetts), the Université Paris-Diderot, the bilingual journal Interfaces, the Musée des Beaux-Arts and the Musée Magnin in Dijon.
The conference will focus on the current state of the art in Word & Image theory, and it will also be an opportunity to commemorate the recent passing of Michel Baridon -- one of the founding members of the journal in 1991.
The papers selected by the scientific committee will be published in Interfaces, as a sequel to the 1994 issue of the review (Interfaces 5, "La théorisation de la relation image/texte/langage").
This interdisciplinary event welcomes contributions from any relevant field of research across the humanities and sciences. Papers are invited to focus on any aspect of the relationship between word and image during any period, but should in each case provide a clear theoretical perspective reflecting recent research and publications in their field.

The abstracts and the papers can be submitted either in French or in English. The presentations should not be longer than 30 minutes.
Deadline: please send abstracts of about 300 words (along with a short bibliography and a short biography) to the organizing committee before 31st January 2010.

Université de Bourgogne
Research Centre: Texte, Image, Langage - Équipe d’accueil EA 4182
UFR Langues et Communication
Department of English
2, boulevard Gabriel       
F-21000 Dijon
France

Sophie Aymes, Marie-Odile Bernez, Christelle Serée-Chaussinand.

(posted 15 October 2009)

This conference provides an opportunity for all those interested in Languages and Business to exchange ideas, share experiences and outline opportunities for future research. Researchers are invited to submit abstracts and papers broadly consistent with this conference's special topic: 'Languages in Business Education'.

The conference is open to anybody involved in 'language and business' issues, including both young and experienced researchers, PhD students, post-doctoral researchers, and professionals from business, government and non-governmental institutions. The conference will be in English, but research may be related to any language.

Although all papers that fit the theme may be submitted, the conference committee invites in particular proposals related to themes such as the following:

- The interface of languages in business education and intercultural studies
- Acquisition of intercultural competence in business language training
- The place of languages in the curricula of business programmes
- Levels of language proficiency in business education

- Prof. Marie-Thérèse Claes (ICHEC, Brussels)
- Prof. Paul Verluyten (University of Antwerp)
- Prof. Andreu Van Hooft (Radboud University Nijmegen)
- Prof. Bob Wilkinson (Maastricht University)

Authors are allowed to submit more than one abstract. All submitted abstracts will be peer-reviewed. Authors will be notified whether their abstracts have been accepted for presentation by 1 April 2010. The full paper of accepted contributions is to be submitted by 15 May 2010.

Paper presenters are expected to discuss one other paper during the conference. The discussant assignments will be allocated by the conference organizers in due time.

Submission of abstracts: by 1 March 2010
Notification of acceptance: by 1 April 2010
Submission of full papers: by 15 May 2010
Registration: by 15 May 2010

(posted 20 January 2010)

In 2008 the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society, the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies and La Société Française d‚Étude du Dix-Huitième siècle launched a joint research programme on cultural transfers between their three countries in the Enlightenment period. This initiative has resulted in conferences at L'Université Paris Diderot-Paris VII (in 2008) and the University of York (in 2009). The third of these conferences will be hosted by the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society and will take place at the University of Limerick, Ireland, from 25 to 26 June 2010. The conference will run in parallel with the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society's annual conference.

Proposals for twenty-minute papers are invited for papers (in Irish, English or French) on the theme of the conference, but particularly on

1) The individuals and groups involved in transfers, who could be called the Œimporters‚ or Œpurveyors‚ of foreign ideas and who acted as cultural intermediaries. These may include politicians, diplomats, travellers, savants, authors, artists, booksellers;
2) The transfer of cultural items ˆ books, newspapers, works of art, and other objects ˆ and their impact;
3) The transfer of literary, philosophical, political or aesthetic models in processes of cultural legitimisation;
4) Transfer processes through imitation, translation or adaptation;
5) The effect of such transfers on the construction of national identities throughout the century: the invention of a past, a language, or a national history. It could be interesting to examine transfers in relation to mutual power play, wars and imperialist ambitions.

Proposals should be submitted (preferably by email) to the conference organiser before Friday, 29 March 2010.
Proposals should include the title of the paper and a 250-word abstract. Prospective speakers will be notified of a decision by 30 April 2010.

Dr David Fleming,
Department of History,
University of Limerick,
Limerick, Ireland.
Email: <david.fleming@ul.ie>.

(posted 1 February 2010)

Confirmed keynote readers/speakers: the UK poet laureate, Professor Carol Ann Duffy; poet and co-editor of Modern Poetry in Translation, David Constantine; co-editor of MPT Helen Constantine; modern American war poet, Brian Turner.
In the study and writing of poetry, voice is considered the essence which makes the work live. Critics and editors talk of a ‘distinctive voice’ and of poets 'finding their voice'. But what is 'voice' in poetry? What if a writer inhabits distinctly different voices as in the practice of the dramatic monologue or in the work of a Pessoa or Browning? Where does the voice of poet and subject overlap? How are such voices formed? How does one  ‘find’ one’s voice? And why is the finding of a voice expressed as a sense of discovery?
Furthermore, what is 'finding one's voice'?  A matter of identity? And is that identity stylistic, national, ethnic, gendered, age-related? Is it the voice of a generation (as so frequently stated) or a time? What are the pressures of history and culture that create a distinctive voice?
Poets have often chosen the subject of voice itself as their material, the physicality or echoing of a voice (voice and memory, as in Hardy's 'The Voice'). What is the relationship between voice and silence; between giving voice and enforced silences? (e.g. in the work of Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Ritsos and Ovid). How does the voice of the poet reveal yet conceal?
War poets conjure with their right, or not, to use the language of an invaded country. What choices do we make in employing voices and language not our own, whether in translation or in our own poetry?
And what of the lyric voice? All three of our confirmed guest poets employ the lyric voice to great effect. The lyric voice is ambiguous, both our own and not our own voice.
This creative and critical conference is open to academics and poets who would like to reflect on voice in poetry either through reading their own work, giving a paper, or, as is appropriate with so many poets now working in the academy, by giving a hybrid reading/presentation, where they read some of their own work and reflect on the use or influences of voice.

-    dramatic monologues or riddles
-    the lyric voice
-    the physical manifestation of voice in poetry e.g. timbre, sound, style, song
-    finding one’s voice, the losing of a voice
-    writing in many voices
-    forgotten voices
-    page and stage voices, recorded and live voices
-    the voices of the landscape or city
-    the voices of war or peace
-    contemporary voices
-    voice and style
-    voice and identity
-    intertextual use of voices
-    international voices
-    translating voice
-    voice themed workshop proposals

- a 250 word proposal for a twenty minute paper
- a 500 word proposal for a forty minute lecture
- a selection of 4-6 poems on the topic and a writer's c.v. of not more than 500 words
- a proposal of 250 words outlining the nature of your hybrid reading/presentation and four poems
- a proposal of 250 words outlining your specific workshop idea and how you would run it.

Send to the conference convenor Stephanie Norgate <s.norgate@chi.ac.uk> , and write ‘Poetry and Voice’ in the subject line. Please use an RTF or Word attachment. Proposals will be vetted by a conference committee of practising poets and academics.

(posted 16 October 2009)

As researchers we 'consume' texts, reading, interpreting and reusing material found in archives or specialist electronic resources. Libraries are a key tool in this process. Library-based research is no longer restricted to the book, but also encompasses archived materials, electronic databases and local resources. This conference provides an opportunity to explore both the practical and theoretical issues arising from attempts to understand the past: training sessions will investigate the use of archival resources in the arts and humanities whilst panellists will consider how texts themselves conceptualise and appropriate the past.

Taking place in Newcastle upon Tyne, at Northumbria University and the Literary & Philosophical Society (the largest independent library outside London), this free one-day conference is funded by Vitae and Northumbria University Graduate School and will include a training session by a representative of the British Library, exhibiting new ways of accessing printed texts and manuscripts. After the event a wine reception will be held at the Lit & Phil where a tour and description of the holdings will be offered, providing valuable training in using non-academic archives and resources.

We invite proposals from students and academics for research papers exploring the interpretation, appropriation, and reconstruction of the past. We welcome work which considers all periods and countries, and from all fields of text-based research. Possible themes include (but are not limited to):

- The ways in which historical and artistic depictions of the past are appropriated and consumed within different cultures and time periods.
 - The contemporary reconstruction of the past in the historical novel.
- Explorations of the extent to which critical theory may be a useful and/or anachronistic tool for dealing with older texts.
- Rethinking periodization.
- Exploring the boundaries of oral and textual culture.
- The theme of memory in historical writing and fiction.
- The advantages and/or disadvantages of using electronic resources (such as Early English Books Online).
- The ways in which textual editing reconstructs texts through a range of possible interventions.
- Consideration of how far it is realistically possible to access the past.

Please e-mail proposals for papers to <helen.j.williams@northumbria.ac.uk> by 15th April 2010, and include the following information: name, title, position, institution, e-mail address, title of paper, and a 250 word abstract. All papers should be in English, and should last twenty minutes. A provisional programme will be available by 1st June, also the deadline for registration. Lunch and refreshments and travel to the Lit & Phil will be provided. Please note attendance is limited.
Website: http://www.northumbria.ac.uk/sd/academic/sass/sassevents/condpast

The recent 'creative turn' in translation studies has challenged notions of translation as a derivative and uncreative activity which is inferior to 'original' writing.  Commentators have drawn attention to the creative processes involved in the translation of texts, and suggested a rethinking of translation as a form of creative writing.  Hence there is growing critical and theoretical interest in translations undertaken by literary authors.

This conference focuses on acts of translation by creative writers. Literary scholarship has tended to overlook this aspect of an author's output, yet since the time of Cicero, authors across Europe have been engaged not only in composing their own works but in rendering texts from one language into another. Indeed, many of Europe's greatest writers have devoted time to translation - from Chaucer to Heaney, from Diderot and Goethe to Seferis and Pasternak - and have produced some remarkable texts. Others (Beckett, Joyce, Nabokov) have translated their own work from one language into another. As attentive readers and skilful word-smiths, writers may be particularly well equipped to meet the creative demands of literary translation; many trans-lations of poetry are, after all, undertaken by poets themselves.  Moreover, translation can have a major impact on an author's own writing and on the development of native literary traditions.

The conference seeks to reassess the importance of translation for European writers - both well-known and less familiar - from antiquity to the present day. It will explore why authors translate, what they translate, and how they translate, as well as the links between an author's translation work and his or her own writing. It will bring together scholars in English studies and modern languages, classics and medieval studies, comparative literature and translation studies.  Possible topics include:

- individual author-translators: motivations, career trajectories, comparative thematics and stylistics
- the author-translator in context: literary societies, movements, national traditions
- the problematic creativity of the author-translator
- self-reflective pronouncements and manifestos
- the author-translator as critic of others' translations
- self-translation: strengths and weaknesses
- authors, adaptations, re-translation and relay translation
- the reception and influence of the work of author-translators
- theoretical interfaces

Proposals are invited for individual papers (max. 20 minutes) or panels (of 3 speakers).  The conference language is English. It is anticipated that selected papers from the conference will be published. Please send a 250-word abstract by 30 September 2009 to the organisers, Hilary Brown and Duncan Large <author-translator@swan.ac.uk>:

Author-Translator Conference
Department of Modern Languages
Swansea University
Swansea SA2 8PP
United Kingdom

(posted 25 July 2009)

In 2010, Penguin Books will be 75 years old and Puffin Books will be 70 years old. Organised by the AHRC Penguin Archive Project, the International Penguin Conference is occasioned by these two anniversaries of what is arguably the most distinctive and the most significant publishing house in the twentieth century and beyond. The conference will take place at the University of Bristol on three days: Tuesday 29 June - Thursday 1 July 2010.

The conference will seek to cover the diversity of Penguin’s publication history.  The Penguin Archive itself is held in the Special Collections of the University of Bristol Library and attracts the attention of researchers in many disciplines and fields at national and international level, including historians of the book, biographers, social and political historians, cultural analysts and literary researchers.

Papers are invited on any topic connected to Penguin Books, past and present, and the following suggested topics are intended to be neither prescriptive nor comprehensive:

•    The conduct of current affairs and the shaping of social and intellectual history (Pelicans, Penguin Specials and Peregrines);
•    The changing role of women in publishing; (Eunice Frost who became the first woman director of Penguin in 1960 is foremost among several women who have worked and work for Penguin in key roles.)
•    Typography and book design;
•    Translation of European and World literatures;
•    Translation and the reception of the Classics in English (seen for example in the papers of E.V. Rieu and of Betty Radice who succeeded him as editor of the Penguin Classics);
•    Publishing, censorship and the law (famously Lady Chatterley's Lover, but also Ulysses and other cases of possible libel or obscenity);
•    Art History and architecture (including Pevsner’s Guides to the Buildings of England);
•    Children’s literature (Puffin and Peacock Books);
•    Modern poetry (British and international);
•    Fiction (the establishment of a canonical list and the encouragement of contemporary writers);
•    Correspondence with individual authors.

Please send proposals (150-200 words) for papers of 20 minutes duration to <penguin-project@bristol.ac.uk>

(posted 21 July 2009)

The objective of this conference is to take stock of a duly socialized form of authorship which recognizes that while authors have agency, that agency is circumscribed by the multi-faceted social, legal, institutional, and intertextual pressures within which authorship takes place. Contributions are invited on any aspect of medieval and early modern authorship. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) the history of authorship, authorship and critical theory, authorship and its social contexts (gender, censorship, patronage, authority, anonymity), authorship and its literary contexts (imitation, intertextuality, style), authorship and the theatre, authorship and literary genres, authorship and the material text (book trade, scriptorium, paratext), medieval and early modern literary careers, the making of medieval or early modern authors through the centuries, and authorship attribution.
Proposals for full panels are welcome. These should include three proposed speakers, including, or in addition to, a chair and/or a respondent. Individual papers will be grouped with two others. Parallel sessions will last an hour and a half, which means that papers should usually be no longer than 20 minutes to leave sufficient time for discussion.
The final deadline for proposals is 15 January 2010, but early submissions are encouraged. Proposals should contain a title, an abstract (ca. 200 to 400 words) as well as a short bio sketch (no more than 100 words).
Proposals will be reviewed in the weeks following their submission, so that prospective participants will usually be notified of the decision within a month of reception of the proposal.
Proposals should be sent to <authorship2010@unige.ch>.
For the conference website, see www.samemes.org. A selection of papers presented at the conference will be published in a collection.
More information is available on the Conference website: http://home.adm.unige.ch/~erne/authorship2010/

Update: 18 February 2010
The deadline for the submission of abstracts was in mid-January. We have received numerous proposals and have been able to accept 55 of them, from academics in 15 different countries. In addition, there will be seven plenary speakers, Colin Burrow (All Souls College, Oxford), Patrick Cheney (Pennsylvania State University), Helen Cooper (Cambridge University), Rita Copeland (University of Pennsylvania), Robert Edwards (Pennsylvania State University), Alastair Minnis (Yale University), and Sir Brian Vickers (School of Advanced Study, University of London). Attached to this email is a document which lists the names of all confirmed speakers along with the title of their paper. The list is also available from the conference website (see above) under 'programme'.
Conference registration is now fully underway. The deadline is *15 March*, so please register soon. You need to do so via the conference website (with credit card payment), by clicking on 'registration'. For those who require accommodation in Geneva during the conference, information has been made available on the 'Accommodation' page of the website. Please note that the conference will begin around 10 a.m. on Wednesday, 30 June, and will end around 6 p.m. on Friday, 2 July.

(posted 24 June 2009, updated 18 February 2010)