Water imagery is one of the central topoi in poetic, fictional and critical language. Since the victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588, the national consciousness in Britain has been directed towards the movement from solid land and coast out into the open sea by the art of navigation. The literary imagination followed, and coast and sea have provided room for projections of hope, longing, and fear. The transition from solid land to fluid ocean challenges culturally induced value systems and world views; the confrontation with foreign worlds undermines identities and generates new images of alterity.

In this context sea and coast are historically highly semanticized and hotly contested topographical spaces, which enable the discovery and designation of new cultural spaces in imagination and practice. This conference will focus on fictional representations of sea and coast in their topographical, ecological, and economic specificities, as endangered and endangering realms, as enabling and conditioning forces of the cultural imaginary in the history of English-speaking literatures and media.

•    Postcolonial and transatlantic (re)writings of conquest and travel narratives
•    gendered perspectives on maritime heroism
•    first colonial encounters with overseas cultures
•    the role of the sea in the development of national identities
•    the cultural production of alterities
•    negotiations of 'class' and 'race' in maritime fictions
•    island and survival narratives
•    the sublimation of sea and coast in British Romanticism
•    the "Black Atlantic"
•    tales of emigration to the US
•    narratives of whaling and fishing
•    sea and coast as the unknown
•    sea monsters and the edge of the world
•    maritime utopia and dystopia
•    living by the sea
•    outposts of civilisation
•    ecocriticism
•    ships on stage

•    great floods in literature

There will be a section dedicated to papers by graduate students.

(posted 22 September 2009)

"Even scholars who are able to globetrot from collection to collection end up relying heavily upon their inadequate memories, notes, photocopies, and photographs to compensate for the distances in time and space between collections. Seeing the original prints, paintings, manuscripts, and typographical works is good in itself; but seeing them in fine, trustworthy reproductions, in context and relation to one another is the scholarly ideal. Difficulty of access to original and reliance on inadequate reproductions has handicapped and distorted even the best efforts... the result has all too frequently been distortions of the record, misconstructions, and the waste of considerable scholarly labor."
(Joseph Viscom 2002)

- Prof. Helen Taylor (University of Exeter)
- Dr Wim Van Mierlo (University of London)

This two day event explores issues of reclamation and representation within literary archive. The event seeks to foreground original archival research into literary legacies and the processes of authorial representation through research. Our main objective is to explore the unique methodological challenges and questions that arise from archival investigation, and how research working with the varied archival materials can both reclaim and re-cast authorial personas and scholarly interpretations of their work.

The event will include sessions that use some of the literary papers held in the University of Exeter's Special Collections as a way of highlighting issues in archival research.  Exeter's collections are particularly rich in archival sources on writers of the South West region -- such as Ted Hughes, Daphne du Maurier, Agatha Christie, John Betjeman, Henry Williamson, and TS Eliot -- BUT we welcome papers exploring questions which have wider application in archival research.

- The challenges of recreating the draft in scholarly writing -- re-representing an author’s works from archival sources
- The negotiation of biographical and textual difficulties and their impact upon how writers are known
- Questions of authority surrounding pre-texts and printed texts, and the interface between them
- The impact of 'anecdotal' archival material and evidence upon the shaping of literary histories
- Reconstituting 'the canon' in the reclamation of lost authors
- The location of newly discovered manuscripts within intertextual critical networks and literary histories -- e.g. Issues of theoretical conflict between the decentring of the author and the recovering of writers within theories of race / gender / colonialism etc.
- The search for authorial 'presence' in the archive in attempts to reconstruct biographical histories
- The 'fetishism of the document' in archival studies
- Archival silences
- The details of archival acquisition and its impact upon authorial representation
- Questions of copyright issues and their shaping of authorial scholarship and/or authorial representation
- The impact of archival restrictions upon research and scholarship
- The development of digital archives and their influence upon literary scholarship
- Ownership of archives -- what effect do issues such as archival location, / corporation funding have on the type of scholarship on particular literary figures and their representation?

We particularly invite papers on writers with connections to the South West, although all contributions are welcome.

(posted 16 April 2010)

This international conference, organized by the research group REWEST (Research in Western American Literature: http://www.ehu.es/rewest will focus on the different ways in which literary interpreters of the American West have shaped and reshaped traditional western imagery and themes. We would like this conference to offer as diverse and rich a picture of current research on the literature of the American West as possible. We particularly invite specialists of western American studies to consider the literary representation of the complex interaction between the mythic dimension of the West and its real historical, social, and cultural features. Papers can address a variety of critical issues in literary studies of the West:

- the role of "place", "space", and "region" in western writing
- the interplay between myth and history
- the construction and deconstruction of western stereotypes
- gender politics and power
- masculinity and cowboy mythology
- border landscapes and narratives
- race and ethnicity (multiculturalism, assimilation, exclusion, transculturation...)
- immigration and exile
- forgotten and neglected Wests
- the impact of globalization, urbanization, science, and technology on the West
- nature writing, ecocritical perspectives, and environmental concerns
- the popular West
- memory and (auto) biography in the West
- the New West
- class issues
- religion in the American West
- personal / regional identity (re/de) construction in the West
- the role of family and relationships
- the American West in non-U.S. literatures

Papers should not exceed 10 pages (2,500-3,000 words: 20 minutes‚ delivery). Although English will be the official language of the Conference, papers in Spanish or Basque will also be accepted.

Please submit your proposal (300 words) plus a brief CV to the conference organizers by April 30, 2010.
Proposals should be submitted via e-mail to David Rio <david.rio@ehu.es>, including copies to Amaia Ibarraran <amaia.ibarraran@ehu.es > and Martin Simonson <martin.simonson@ehu.es>.

(posted 23 January 2010)

The aim of this conference is to focus on the notion of hybridity, and to form a critical assessment of its scope and role in literature and the visual arts. The concept of hybridity is particularly widespread in the English-speaking sphere (Great Britain, North America, and the post-colonial world), but it is also relevant in the context of literatures in French, Spanish and Portuguese (from Latin America and the Caribbean in particular).

Over the last two decades, the concept of hybridity has been the focus of a number of debates and given rise to many publications. The term, which is often discussed in connection with such notions as métissage (or "mestizaje"), creolization, syncretism, diaspora and transculturation, has become a buzzword, and is at times used carelessly to describe a disparate body of subjects in widely differing domains. We propose to examine the development and various manifestations of the concept as a principle held in contempt by the partisans of racial purity, a process enthusiastically promoted by adepts of mixing and syncretism, but also as a notion viewed with suspicion by those who decry its multifarious and triumphalist dimensions and its lack of political roots. These three general stances have given rise to theoretical developments as well as to literary and artistic creations which this conference will focus on.

- Vanessa Guignery <vanessaguignery@wanadoo.fr>
- Catherine Pesso-Miquel (catherine.pesso.miquel@univ-lyon2.fr>
- and François Specq <francois.specq@ens-lyon.fr>.

(posted 16 June 2010)

Perspectives on 9/11, organized by the LERMA (Aix-Marseille University) conjointly with the research group ERIC LINT ("The Lower Manhattan Project", Figura, UQAM, Montreal).
Scientific committee : Gérard Hugues, Sylvie Mathé, Richard Phelan and Sophie Vallas for the LERMA ; Annie Dulong and Bertrand Gervais for ERIC LINT.
This symposium will focus on 9/11 and its aftermath in the US from two general perspectives : first, the political impact on American institutions; secondly, the challenges, ethical and aesthetic, posed to representation.

    • How far is the 9/11 drift of presidential power different from previous similar situations (Civil War, Pearl Harbor etc.)?
    • Causes and magnitude of the popular and mediatic consensus in the wake of the attack.
    • Slow and gradual emergence of an opposition with special emphasis on the forms it took.
    • Reaction (or absence thereof) of the other poles of power (Congress, Supreme Court) and of the media.
    • Role played by lobbies in the process of extension of presidential power.
    • Attitude of the major parties toward presidential activism.
    • Possible consequences of the crisis upon the future evolution of US institutions.
2. The challenges of representation: ethics and aesthetics

If, as Jay Parini writes in his poem "After the Terror," "Everything has changed, though nothing has," what are the challenges posed by the attacks on the World Trade Center in terms of witnessing and recalling, personal and collective trauma, historical and fictional representations, and more generally figurative and interpretive narratives?

We invite papers that will address aspects of the issues raised by the adjustment of aesthetics to ethics in the (re)presentation and recreation of the events of September 11 and their aftermath.

Presentations, in English or in French, should be limited to 25 minutes to allow ample time for questions and discussions.

Abstracts (under a page, with key-words and an abbreviated CV) should be sent by March 15, 2010 to:

This interdisciplinary and cross-cultural gathering welcomes presentations on the environmental challenges now faced by diverse populations, both human and nonhuman, in the Western lands of Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

Academics and other stakeholders from the wider community are invited to participate in this urgent and compelling dialogue. The conference invites academics from the humanities, social and natural sciences, as well as activists, businesses, artists and others to speak across the boundaries that conventionally divide them.

Since both the geographical and critical terrains at issue are considerable, a wide array of topics and time periods is welcome. The shared concern will be the interaction between humans and the natural environment in the context of Western history, geography, climate change, and commercial/sustainable development of lands and resources.

* sustainable economic development
* indigenous ways of knowing
* urbanization/suburban sprawl in the "New West"
* popular culture and the mass media
* literary or filmic representations of natural, urban or industrial environments
* government action/inaction on the environment
* ecofeminism
* environmental racism and justice
* ecological or ecocritical examinations of particular Western environs and climes
* specific issues such as the Cophenhagen Summit, Kyoto Protocol, or oil/tar sands development
* the borderlands of Canada / United States / Mexico
* environmental education in K-12, postsecondary and community contexts
* historical perspectives
* environmental activism
* environmental law and policy

Proposals of 250 words (attached to an email as a .doc or .docx file) can be sent to either Robert Boschman or Mario Trono : <RBoschman@mtroyal.ca>  or <MTrono@mtroyal.ca>.

(posted 11 February 2010)

Political systems in the Western world, and beyond, have been reshaped  by decentralising, federalising, regionalising and devolution reforms  since the 1960s. These reforms are often considered as challenging the  Nation-State model.

The existence of multiple layers of citizenship ñ regional, national, European, global ñ allows citizens to have both rights and duties, to take part in political and social life, to be part of territorialised identities at the local, regional and even European scales but this raises the  question of socio-spatial inequalities. The current drive towards a more decentralised State, the ever intensifying delegation of powers to sub-state communities are ways of better adapting the law  to each territorial community. However, one consequence is the growing  conflict of vertical interests (between the regional, the national and  the European levels) and of horizontal interests (between same-level  units).

In continuation with previous work on the questions of national and regional identities at the University of Poitiers (Devolution in Britain, the Canadian and Spanish cases), this international conference will further explore this multidimensional political and territorial challenge.

This conference invites 20-minute papers. Proposals for panels are also welcome. Although other topics may be considered, we welcome papers dealing with, but not being limited to, issues and questions such as the following:

- The history, sources, founding myths and ideologies of federalism, regionalism, decentralisation
- The legal and constitutional stakes of such reforms.
- Are all forms of decentralisation an efficient way of addressing the  question of the democratic deficit?
- The theoretical and scientific debate(s) around such reforms.
- Decentralisation reforms and party politics
- The global and European dimensions: what are the interactions between decentralisation and globalisation? The interactions between the European integration process and decentralisation reforms? Are they part of the same process of denationalisation of the State? Is there a pan-European convergence?
- The interrelations between national identity(ies) and the State.
- The role of such reforms in conflicts and their resolution.
- Case-studies and comparative approaches.

(posted 20 February 2010)

In the second half of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st, the material conditions of avant-garde poetry's circulation have come to the attention of critics. With the development of reader-response theory, research about the poets’ ways of informing the larger public of their experiments has come to encompass technical considerations, economic, social and political preoccupations. Small presses -- not the vanity presses of former times -- thus became the laboratories of the publishing world, picking up on the latest avant-garde movements.

How do these publishers, and the poets who entrust their works to them, contribute to poetic innovation in a publishing context marked by commercial decline of the book and the poem alike? To what extent do small presses convey aesthetic initiatives that would otherwise remain "readerless"? Could one talk, along with American poet Barrett Watten of a "systemic de-totalization" bringing about new configurations of the poetic landscape into networks and archipelagoes?

We are inviting papers that will risk answers to these questions in the context of a wider reflection on the publishing world, its margins and its objects, notably poetic texts inspired and shaped by the recent advances of sociology, philosophy and cultural studies. The aim is a global assessment of the circulation of avant-garde poetry.

Hélène Aji, Université du Maine, France <Helene.Aji@univ-lemans.fr>
and Manuel Brito, Universidad de La Laguna, Canary Islands, Spain <mbrito@ull.es>

(posted 27 February 2010)

Works of fiction in which a mimetic representation of the real plays a major role, or that include elements external to the work of fiction itself, call on both the imagination and the limited framework of the historical account, of a specific space, culture or linguistic system. They can therefore not be translated without making reference to the individual or collective memory, or both. Beyond the straightforward remembering of the past, this approach attempts to construct an interpretation -- absorbing an outside element plunged into the present of a translational situation with a contextual shift. Memory therefore boosts the movement towards the other, towards extraneous discourses the representation of which resorts to various hybridizing techniques such as collage, embedding, or merging. Integrating memory -- that is, reconstructing the real from non-fictional (or supposedly non-fictional) elements -- into the heart of a fictional work raises the question of superimposing different genres within a literary work and making the overall work coherent on the level of discourse as well as that of the textual object, with an eye on the social, historical and cultural factors affecting its production. Different texts will have different rationales depending on their origin, function and target readers and the translation will re-arrange conceptual borders considerably, given the linguistic and cultural constraints imposed on it.

Central to this study will be works of fiction (novels, short stories, plays and poetry) bearing the mark of the real (historical accounts, newspaper extracts, scientific or philosophical essays, etc) or containing documents conjuring up memory (personal diaries, letters, reports, etc)

In addition to studying the diversity of translating strategies when dealing with various types of texts or discourses, papers will focus on the analysis of discrepancies caused by overlapping discourses (history and poetry for example). Addressing both theory and practice they will bring together theorisation, the history of translating practices -- in particular the role of memory in these practices -- and text analysis.

Proposals (a half-page summary in English or French) plus a short CV should be sent, by 30 April 2009 at the latest, to:

Christine Raguet
<c.raguet@univ-paris3.fr>
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3
Institut du Monde Anglophone
5, rue de l’École de Médecine
75006 Paris

(posted 10 December 2009)

A conference organized by La société française d'études écossaises (SFEEc).
Notwithstanding Rab C Nesbitt's famous gibe, "Work, eh? What a stupid way to earn a living", the work ethic seems to be indelibly associated with the image of the Scots, as if without the one the other would be unrecognisable. In 2009, as the Scottish Parliament explored the "Scottish Diaspora" in the year of Homecoming, it pondered the idea that an aptitude for hard work was one of the defining qualities that make a person Scottish. Certainly to many Scots the work ethic seems to be the mainspring of life itself. To the Calvinist mind-set its justification goes back to the story of the Garden of Eden : the promise that work leads back to Paradise and a concomitant feeling of guilt in enjoying the pleasures of idleness. Spiritual but also intensely practical, Work, for Scotland's great philosopher Thomas Carlyle “is the grandest cure for all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind”. Even Scotland's historians as they struggle to tell the story of the stateless nation seem irresistibly drawn to a land of "Industry and Ethos", to an "Industrial Nation".

(posted 27 March 2010)

Prof. Dan Rebellato (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Dr Chris Megson (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Dr Graham Saunders (University of Reading)
Dr Aleks Sierz (Rose Bruford College, Boston University London branch)

The conference seeks to address representational trends and practices in post-1995 British theatre. It will examine the work of playwrights who produced their most influential plays during the last fifteen years and changed the face of contemporary British theatre, contributing to the development of new playwriting traditions in the UK. The conference will shed light on how these playwrights can be seen as belonging to a new canon, which is redefining extant notions of theatre and representation.

•    Influential plays and playwrights
•    Responding to social change: new issues for British theatre
•    Renegotiating form, content and genre: testing the boundaries of representation
•    New political theatre(s)
•    Contemporary British theatre and Europe: influences, exchanges, aesthetics
•    Contemporary British theatre and gender
•    Contemporary British theatre and national identity
•    Specific theatres, artistic directors and repertoire choices

(posted 1 February 2010)

March 2010: Download the 2nd circular for the lastest information about the Conference.

SELICUP, the Spanish Association of Literary Studies in Popular Culture, is pleased to announce its 4th international conference to be held at the University of the Balearic Islands in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. The global topic chosen for the conference is "Past, present and future of popular culture: spaces and contexts".

SELICUP was born with the aim of becoming a forum for scientific exchange between teachers and researchers sharing an enthusiasm for the study of popular culture in and outside Spain. The 4th International SELICUP Conference, to be held in Palma de Mallorca, a meeting point for cultures and languages on the Mediterranean, intends to continue with the work done by SELICUP up to now and to open lines of debate about the new realities of culture(s) in the globalised world.

Through a selection of papers, roundtable discussions, and keynote addresses, debates will be held around the present, past, and future of our fields of study and the cultural products that inspire them.

Proposals are to be submitted by 15 May 2010. The conference will prioritise the following thematic lines although proposals relating to any of the diverse SELICUP interests will also be considered:

- Popular culture and teaching
- Methodological approaches fostering the use of popular culture as a teaching tool
- 'Culture' vs 'culture’': perpetuation in society, deconstruction in teaching?
- Cultural studies: its place in the education system and Academia
- Educational reforms and popular culture
- Popular culture in the globalisation era: local identities
- The effects of globalisation on popular culture
- Popular culture and the audiovisual media
- The demands of local cultures and identities in the 21st century
- New forms of popular culture in the globalised world
- Birth, development and local adaptation of 'slow' movements- Theoretical frameworks for the study of popular culture
- Poststructuralist, postmodern and postcolonial views on popular culture
- Theoretical articulations of culture. Key voices and critical debates
- Cultural theory/ies and practice/s
- Minorities/multiculturalism: deconstruction in popular culture
- Appropriation, subversion, deconstruction in/of popular culture
- Representations of the subaltern in popular culture
- The subaltern and popular culture consumption
- Effects of multiculturalism on hegemonic cultures
- Language and popular culture
- Movements for the revitalisation and defence of minority languages and cultures, as well non-standard language varieties
- Manufacturing of languages or sub-languages in the fight for cultures and identities
- Language-contact situations
- Tourism and popular culture
- The representation of cultural identity in tourist promotion: stereotyping, exoticising, otherness
- Tourism and communities in contact: development and transformation of popular culture
- Tourism and its impact on the visitor: travel literature

Proposals for papers, roundtables and workshops are to be submitted online by 15 May 2010. Please follow the cfp link on the conference website http://www.selicup2010.org and follow the instructions. It must be noted that delegates may only submit a maximum of 2 different proposals.

Conference paper proposals should include a title, a 300-word abstract (including bibliographical references, if applicable) and a 100-word bio-note. Please note that presentations should not exceed 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes' discussion time.

Roundtable proposals should include a 1000-word abstract. This will briefly state the aims and feature a summary of each speaker’s presentation as well as a list of key bibliographical references. Please note that three is the minimum number of speakers per round table.

Workshop proposals should include a 1000-word abstract. This should briefly state aims, structure, and a list of key bibliographical references. Workshops will be allotted 90-minute slots and should always remain essentially practical in nature and foster audience participation.

(posted 30 October 2009, updated 27 March 2010)

We propose to offer new perspectives on Janet Frame's first collection of short stories, The Lagoon and Other Short Stories (1951). The seeds of most of the themes developed by the writer from New Zealand in her later works can already be found in these short stories, written while Frame was confined to a mental hospital. Contributors may therefore examine experiences of the margin and of marginality, more particularly by showing to what extent they are inscribed within the very modes of writing. The obsession with death and solitude may also analysed in its relation to narrative strategies. In short stories which are marked by a tragic stance, one may examine to what extent humour can be used as a means of distanciation, but also how language hides more than it reveals, how voices mix and blur, and how clichés are both denounced and revisited. A generic analysis of the form of the short story itself could be proposed in order to demonstrate its relevance to Frame’s creation.

- Vanessa Guignery, ENS de Lyon <vanessaguignery@wanadoo.fr>
- and Catherine Pesso-Miquel, University of Lyon 2 <catherine.pesso.miquel@univ-lyon2.fr>

(posted 16 June 2010)

This is a reminder that the deadline is fast approaching for the submission of abstracts to TISLID’10. This event promises to be an interesting opportunity to meet and mix with fellow researchers in an active and constantly changing field.

Over the last decade, research on language teaching/learning has led to an outstanding proliferation of technological applications. Many of these are oriented towards restricted professional and academic contexts of use as a reflection of real world demands for language tuition. The multiple divergences of such specialized linguistic domains with respect to general or standard languages require a dedicated perspective for the computer-based teaching and processing of what are also referred to as LSPs (Languages for Special Purposes).

Over the last decade, research on language teaching/learning has led to an outstanding proliferation of technological applications. Many of these are oriented towards restricted professional and academic contexts of use as a reflection of real world demands for language tuition. The multiple divergences of such specialized linguistic domains with respect to general or standard languages require a dedicated perspective for the computer-based teaching and processing of what are also referred to as LSPs (Languages for Special Purposes).

TISLID’10 will be hosted by the ATLAS research group ( http://atlas.uned.es ) in UNED, Madrid, 21-22 October 2010. This event will include plenary talks, keynote speeches, workshops, short presentations, posters, and a round table debate. The following plenary and keynote speakers have confirmed their participation:

• Dr. Elisabet Arnó, President of AELFE (European Association of Languages for Specific Purposes)
• Dr. Ana Gimeno, President of EUROCALL (European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning)
• Dr. Stephen Bax, Reader in English Language, Learning, Assessment and Technology, University of Bedfordshire
• Dr. Ricardo Mairal, Professor of English Language and Linguistics, UNED

The organisers welcome the submission of research papers dealing with technology-supported LSP teaching/learning and processing. We particularly encourage proposals on new theoretical and methodological foundations for the development of LSP-based systems. Scholars interested in submitting an article should send a 500-word abstract in electronic format by April 25th 2010.

Submissions are also welcome for one-hour workshops and for posters. All proposals will be subject to a double-peer blind review process. Acceptance will be confirmed by May 25th.

All accepted abstracts will be published on CD by UNED. Furthermore, a subset of the best articles will be published as a separate research book. The authors in question will be required to submit an extended version of their paper (2500-3000 words) by July 1st 2010.
A Best Research Paper Award will be given for the most significant contribution to the workshop in terms of theoretical and/or methodological advancement in the area of technology-supported LSP teaching/processing. Members of the scientific and organising committee are excluded.
The Best Research Paper Award will consist of a Certificate and a set of LSP books and electronic materials from a specialized publisher and it will be announced at the end of the workshop.

(posted 17 March 2010, updated 16 April 2010)

"What has been lost (…) is the epic, or rather, the taste for the poetic continuum such as once informed the epic vein of Romanticism" (C. Doumet). How much of a fact is that? For, as "a wandering path towards what must be an ancient skill" (S. Bouquet),  the epic and the heroic continue to haunt the literary landscape in a wide variety of fashions ranging from the "fictions of globalization" (J. Annesley)  to The Lord of the Rings craze and to the recent new translations of foundational texts of the genre -- Yusef Komunyaka's Gilgamesh (2006) and Ciaran Carson's Inferno (2002) and Táin (2007) among them -- as well as the uninterrupted dialogue with heroic gestures being written by contemporary poets.

Martinican writer Edouard Glissant in his Faulkner, Mississippi (1996) may offer a possible gate of entry to the question of the relevance of the epic when he observes that:

Participants in the conference are invited to address the question of whether or not the notions of "the exclusionary heroic" and of the "participative and inclusive heroic" are useful starting-points for a renewed reflection on the heroic and the epic. Should one speak of the expansion or even of the distension of the epic instead of the predicted dilution of the heroic?
However, it is equally obvious that this generic and political reexamination of the relation between the heroic and the building of worlds cannot be confined solely to the field of American literature as this would defeat the purpose of this conference, whose intention it is to consider a more global epic possibility. So both English-language literature specialists and comparatists are welcome to submit: this is primarily an invitation to examine American works with epic features of the past twenty years -- in the field of poetry and also of literature as a whole -- but this conference also wishes to rekindle "Relation" and be an occasion for taking a retrospective look at older works which may shed light on more recent uses of the heroic and the epic -- from Piers Plowman to Claude Simon's novels. The comparative approach is of course irreplaceable to attain even a tentative panoramic view of the genre.
The languages of the conference will be English and French.
A volume of the articles selected by the reading committee will be published.

Paul Bowles is widely acknowledged as one of the twentieth century's most skillful storytellers and imaginative composers of modern American music. His unsettling literary themes and expatriation to Morocco made him into a cult figure whose life and work continue to fascinate contemporary audiences.

By examining the interplay between literary, musical, visual and cultural texts, the conference aims at stimulating discussion on Bowlesian musical and literary themes, as well as cultural and anthropological issues and on the relationship between the artist’s challenging work and current inner and outer geographies.

Given the international and interdisciplinary academic mould of the conference, and the author's polymath profile, we encourage contributions from scholars and artists of different fields and welcome suggestions for papers, panels and sessions, and also multimedia proposals.

The Conference will be hosted by the American Studies Research Group at the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies (ULICES /CEAUL), Portugal, from October 21 to 23, 2010.

• Bowles and Portugal (influences, writings, translations)
• Paul Bowles and Jane Bowles (interactions/interinfluences)
• American Existentialism (the Beats, American negativity, dissonance, crime, Modernism)
• The Maverick Tradition (rebels, individualism/community, Avant-garde, Anti-art)
• New American Music (trends, aesthetics, fictions)
• Literature and Other Arts (music, contemporary opera, spoken-word, film music, cinema)
• Gothic and the Grotesque (American gothic, horror, dark poiesis)
• Exile (Moroccan fiction/place/culture and travel)
• Literature and Anthropology (Anarchism, cultural clash; magic/smoking/religion)

250-word abstracts, or any queries, should be sent by April 6, 2010 to: Anabela Duarte and Hermínia Sol at:

<doyoubowles@gmail.com>.

University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies
Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon
Alameda da Universidade
1600-214 Lisbon
PORTUGAL

(posted 30 January 2010, updated 20 April 2010, updated 17 May 2010)

This two day symposium to be held in Bordeaux in October 2010 seeks to mark the anniversary of the publication of Border Country (1960) Raymond Williams' first novel in which he explores questions of identities according to place and time, of border lands and margins, of migrants and the return of the native. The conference will be centred around two main themes, that of Raymond Williams himself, his writings, his theories and in particular his relation to wider intellectual traditions, a writer interested not in retrospective nationalist politics but rather in prospective politics. Although he died before the coming of devolution and the setting up of the Welsh Assembly, his instinct for Wales as a region with a distinct voice is clear throughout his writings
Raymond Williams - Welsh European
Raymond Williams has been described as "the last of the great European male revolutionary socialist intellectuals" and indeed he was not a typical British thinker. His intellectualisation of questions of culture, history and identity belongs more to the European tradition of Gramsci, Sartre and Foucault. The greatest of Britain's post-war cultural historians, theoreticians and polemicists, he was also one of the founders of Cultural Studies at the beginning of the 60s because he was concerned to understand cultural form as the manifestation of a social process. Crucially, he understood that this was linked to society, history and place. His politico-intellectual theories were thus linked to the social, to community, to place and time.
As a Welshman his deep historic sensibilities allowed him a highly privileged sense of identity and national identity, not constrained to questions about nationalism and society and definitely not concerned with patriotism, but examined within a broader, humanist context. This brings us to the question of language, for although Raymond Williams was not a Welsh speaker he defended the language as an identity marker underpinning social continuity within the fragmented historical, social, political and cultural complexity that is Wales.
His recognition of the plurality that is inherent in Welsh identity introduces the second theme of the symposium which is the plurality of identities inherent in the European model, a plurality which finds an outcome in the privileging of the European regions. There are several points in common between Wales and other "Historic" European regions, especially those of the Atlantic Arc, such as the Basque country, where regional authorities exploit their regional status to bypass central government, not least in the matter of language, where they seek the support of such EU institutions as the Commission and the Parliament. It is interesting to note that the so-called crisis among Europe's regions since 2000 actually seems to correspond to a wider crisis of national identity as much within member states as in the Union itself. This therefore complicates the application of EU policy, which is enforced concretely but lacks formal support on the part of the main European institutions. At the same time this situation allows the development of new thinking and fresh links within the European area which may in fact be a return to pre-nation-state identities.
Thus, within the wider European identity, Welsh and other regional identities find strength not in nostalgia for past grandeur nor in bitterness over lost causes but rather through political, social and cultural practices which reflect those diverse social identities which promote individual development and civic responsibility.

"Inquities in such a country somehow always made pictures" (“A London Life”, Complete Tales, Vol. VII, Leon Edel ed.p. 88).  Pondering over the contrast between the picturesque serenity of an old dower-house and the  scandalous custom of the expropriation of the widow it embodied, the American heroine of the story entitled "A London Life"  expresses her unfavourable judgment  of English institutions but is also overwhelmed and puzzled by the sense of a "curious duplicity (in the literal meaning of the word)" : "She had often been struck with it before - with that perfection of machinery which can still at certain times make English life go on of itself with a stately rhythm long after there is corruption within it" ("A London Life", Complete Tales, Leon Edel ed., p.105). Figures of duplicity abound in Henry James’s writings, both in form and contents, fiction and non -fiction, disrupting the established order, the normative vision or the canonic genre. "Successful duplicity" characterizes  some of James's achievements in the domain of short fiction — the way some nouvelles or “novels intensely compressed” managed to  “masquerade” as anecdotes to be accepted  as "good" short stories, "heroically" dissimulating their "capital". (Preface to Vol. XVI ot the New York Edition, Literary Criticism II, p. 1240). The art of "duplicity" is also part of the lesson of Balzac, and other supposedly canonic realist writers whose complex vision "washes us successively with the warm wave of the near and the familiar’ and the tonic shock of the far and the strange". (préface to  vol. II, Literary Criticism, p. 1060). Duplicity also pertains to the ghostly and the uncanny effect, the double register of representations embroidering "the stange and sinister" on "the very type of the normal and easy" (preface to vol. XVII, Literary Criticism, p. 1264). 
We propose to examine the multiple facets of Henry James's art of duplicity in both fiction and non-fiction, not forgetting the aesthetic borderlands  where text and paratext coalesce, the clandestine figure of the author, "marking off", as Foucault would have it, "the edges of the text". (« What is an Author ? », in Textual Strategies, J.H. Harrari ed., Cornell UP, 1979, p.147)

Annick Duperray, Université de Provence <annick.duperray@free.fr>
Adrian Harding, Université de Provence & American University of Paris <aharding@aup.fr>
Dennis Tredy, Université de Paris 3 (Sorbonne Nouvelle) <dennis.tredy@wanadoo.fr>.

Please send proposals (300 words maximum,) to <annick.duperray@free.fr> & <aharding@aup.fr>.
Deadline 1 June 2010.
Working languages : English or French

(posted 27 February 2010)

Fixed phrases are understood as idioms in the sense of Huddleston & Pullum (2002, 3): "items with special meanings that consist of more than one word." Fixed phrases make up a vast category, which can be divided into a variety of syntactic classes: fixed NPs (jack-of-all-trades), VPs (shovel up; kick the bucket), AdvPs (or rather), AdjPs (difficult to swallow), PPs (because of), as well as sentences or "ready-made utterances" (Lyons 1968, e.g. Every cloud has a silver lining).

The foundational properties of fixed phrases deserve investigation in order to determine precisely which expressions belong to the category, or indeed whether it is actually fruitful to postulate such a broad category -- which includes both lexical and functional items (lexical: kick the bucket; functional: or rather). It is equally pertinent to examine constraints on the use of fixed phrases, their syntactic and distributional properties, or to tackle the question of semantic
transparency, or rather the non-compositionality of their meaning (cf. Cruse 2000, 72-73). Some fixed phrases -- and especially fixed VPs and NPs -- characteristically conjure up a whole new image or semantic representation. Equally, since such phrases are "fixed", they must involve some degree of fossilization. Fixed phrases can therefore be analyzed with a special focus on the processes of fossilization or univerbation -- the diachronic process by which several words may fuse to become one.
In addition to fossilization, fixed phrases or constructions share a common pragmatic potential. They can be used strategically in discourse, and are frequently employed for their discursive, rhetorical or argumentative effects. How can the actual use of fixed phrases be accounted for in terms of such pragmatic functions? Many of the fixed phrases can be analysed in terms of inferences or procedural meaning. Some are used for conjunction purposes, and correspond to another strategic use as they reinforce cohesion or argumentation. Others reflect a given register or textual genre and correlatively generate multiple connotations and inferences. These can be used strategically by speakers to pitch communication at some pre-established ground or standard. Yet others contribute to conveying some rhetorical force (illocutory/perlocutory), which is best understood with reference to the contexts in which they are used.
All theoretical approaches are considered legitimate for selection. Papers can be presented in English or in French, and papers in each language will be grouped on either day (All the papers given on 23 October will be in English).
Plenary speakers:
Paper proposals are to be sent to one of the two conference organizers:
Deadline for submission: 10 May 2010.

FATHOM, the French Association for Thomas Hardy Studies ( http://fathomhardy.fr/ ) organizes in Lyon (France) an international conference on the theme of "Silence in Thomas Hardy’s work".
The object of the conference is to study silence in any part of the corpus which Thomas Hardy has left us: the novels, the short-stories, the poems, the autobiography, or any other writing-letters, note-books, etc.

Silence is a fundamental question for the reading of literary texts, since the voice of the text is a priori silent : it becomes resonant only if the reader lends it his own voice. The question may interest those who have studied Hardy's poetry, which is largely based on the problematic interaction of silence and voices; it may also concern researchers who specialize in the oral tale, who may ponder over the fact that, by laying down in writing the oral tales heard by the family fire-place, by making himself the last link of a chain of oral transmission, Hardy has somehow hushed (while perpetuating it) the tradition of the oral tale in his native Dorset. Finally, it could also inspire those who have underlined the visual dimension of Hardy's fiction: does silence work as a necessary complement, or as a counterpart, to the poet's "moments of vision"? Can it be heard/seen as as "a mere negation of noise" in a system of signifying oppositions, or as "a positive entity" (Tess of the d'Urbervilles, ch. XIX)?

The question may be addressed from various angles: it may interest narratologists, who will not fail to pinpoint the numerous ellipses with which the hardyan text is riddled. The "unspoken" may be studied in the diegesis as well as in the text, and the question of silence can be handled by resorting to different conceptions of voice: the lacanian conception (the concept of "object-voice"), Derrida's conception, or any other approach.

One might also be led to question the ambiguous status of Nature in Hardy's works: in the major incidents of the characters' tragic destinies, the natural world, while not truly hostile, remains essentially silent, under skies emptied of any transcendence. The eternal silence of infinite spaces may then be related to the crisis of faith, in a world where men are deprived of any divine interlocutor, and of any "guardian Angel"; but it may also open onto a wider analysis of the structures of perception, and of the post-romantic impressions of estrangement between man and surrounding space.

Beyond Nature, speakers may also ponder over the socio-economic forces which, in the diegesis of Hardy's fiction, silence some social categories (for instance the peasantry). By making use of Deleuze and Guattari's work, and/or by making reference to the article on "the violence of style in Tess of the d'Urberville" (J.J. Lecercle), it may be possible to explore "the violence of language" at work in Hardy's texts. The question of the violence inflicted on women in a society where women are usually silenced is also a crucial point to be explored. Cannot Hardy's fascination for hanging scenes, in his life as well as in his work, especially when the hanged person is a woman, be considered with respect to the question of voice-the disturbing, dangerously attractive feminine voice?

Annie Ramel
Professor Emeritus
President of FATHOM
University of Lyon 2
<annie.ramel@univ-lyon2.fr>

(posted 22 March 2010)

As is regularly demonstrated in the news, the representation of the past and the transmission of memories in contemporary societies are crucial stakes in terms of politics and identity. National history, as once symbolized by Lavisse in France, traditionally used to rely on the celebration of "defining moments", whose memory was to be transmitted from one generation to the other, but the way in which such moments are selected and represented is open to variation. As shown in La Guerre des Mémoires (Wars of Memories), edited by Pascal Blanchard and Isabelle Veyrat-Masson in 2008, the progress of knowledge, the accessibility of new archives, the emergence of new media as well as -- especially -- the evolution of political agendas or the appearance of new claims, may all result in the re-reading of events belonging to a more or less distant past, or even possibly their re-writing in order to suit new agendas and/or targeted audiences.

The conference will address these various types of fluctuating memories, and use a comparative approach to study the historiography of some "defining moments" of French- and English-speaking nations. It will examine how history is practised by "serious" historians ("academic history") or written in school-manuals ("school-history"), but also how it may be conveyed by fiction, a medium whose significance needs to be re-evaluated in the light of such works as Christian Salmon's analysis of "storytelling". Papers may compare the ways in which the same event is described in different national contexts, or the evolutions of national historiographies. They may also consider how historical and political legacies are instrumentalized and transferred from one community to another, or  analyse the use of fiction and personal accounts to introduce young people and adults to history. Preference will be given to papers that offer a comparative perspective on French-and English-speaking societies.
This is the first of two conferences that will be co-organized by CRIDAF and LERMA, in collaboration with the Institut International Charles Perrault. The second one will take place in Aix in 2011 and consider Histories of Forgetting. In a similarly comparative perspective, it will consider the gaps in collective memory and the episodes that have been ignored or dismissed from national narratives.
We invite scholars to submit case studies on the three folllowing themes / periods :
We are particularly interested in proposals that are based on:

The Department of British Literature and Culture, University of Łódź, is happy to announce an academic conference in cultural studies.

- Monty Python's humour
- the language of Monty Python
- the visual poetics of Monty Python programmes and films
- Monty Python and the British tradition of humour
- Monty Python and the idea of Britishness
- Monty Python and stereotypes
- cultural subversion and iconoclasm
- Monty Python and counterculture
- The postmodern contexts for Monty Python
- The influence of Monty Python on British/international culture
- The reception of Monty Python abroad (in Poland and elsewhere)

(posted 4 January 2010)

The arts of the present define and shape themselves by being different from the past -- but in the very act of othering the past, contemporary arts also enter into dialogue with the past. The arts of the present transform or hybridise media and genre conventions, often responding to the emergence of new issues and themes in contemporary societies. The symposium will aim to address in more detail a key aspect of ASAP's Mission Statement -- the priority, but also the difficulty, of grasping a Present that is currently unfolding around us - by focusing on how the arts of the present transform existing conventions and tackle contemporary issues through both a radical distancing from and a dialogue with the past.

Abstracts are invited which focus on contemporary issues, formal innovation or innovative reworkings of the past in the fields of print, film and performance narrative as well as visual and electronic media. Principle topics include:

The arts and key contemporary global issues:

Formal aspects:

Innovation and adaptation across arts and media: in print and film narrative; in visual and performance arts
Computer-generated worlds and/or contemporary game arts

Innovative dialogue with the past:

Abstracts of 700 words for panels of three or four participants are also invited, accompanied by brief bio-bibliographical statements for each panelist. Panel formats are strongly encouraged which offer a dialogue by panel members around a key aspect or issue as opposed to single successive papers; the planned format of the panel should be made clear in the submission.

(posted 17 March 2010)

The conference will host keynote speeches, round tables and workshops. The keynote speakers and the topic of their lecture will be published in the final version of the conference programme. The round tables are thought of as scholarly debates on professional topics. The workshops are organised in the following sections:

* American Literature
* British and Commonwealth Literature
* Cultural Studies
* English Language Teaching
* Gender Studies
* Language Studies
* Literary Theory
* Poetics and Semiotics
* Translation Studies

The speakers in the round table discussions are invited to address the convenors directly. These convenors are to be announced later on.

The participants in the workshops are expected to give a 15-minute general presentation of their papers, which will be followed by discussions between speakers and audience. Those wishing to participate in such workshops are invited to register online by filling in the Speaker Proposal Form before 1 September 2010.

(posted 27 March 2010)

The SESYLIA-LILT linguist research team at Paris 3's Institut du Monde Anglophone will organize a conference on the notion(s) of "events" with the following goals:

- Hagit Borer (University of Southern California)
- Jacqueline Guéron (Université Paris 3)
- Jean-Pierre Koënig (University at Buffalo)
- Robert D. Van Valin, Jr. (University at Buffalo & Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf)

Abstracts are invited for 30-minute talks in English or French on any topic related to the linguistic and non linguistic side of events; they should have between 300 and 400 words. They will be reviewed anonymously.

The new extendd deadline for submission is July 31st, 2010. The body of your email message should contain your name, affiliation and contact information. Please send abstracts to <corre.parisevents.eric@gmail.com>.

(posted 5 April 2010, updated 7 July 2010)

The way English is structured as a discipline encourages academics to focus their research on a particular period.   Very few students attempt PhD topics which span several hundred years, and job advertisements and publishers' catalogues also act as deterrents against a more transhistorical approach.  Interdisciplinary approaches, by contrast, are welcomed, including those which involve research in areas remote from literature such as medicine, but if you claim to have something to say about Chaucer AND Shakespeare AND Tennyson you may be viewed with suspicion.

People are quick to note that a transhistorical piece is less likely to exhibit the same complete expertise in all literary periods as a specialist, historicist approach. This is true, but it is also true that the historicist critic may overlook the influence of a much earlier text, and that this oversight may prevent that critic from grasping a work’s full significance.

This one day colloquium is being jointly organised by Berit Åström (Umeå) and Sarah Annes Brown (Anglia Ruskin). It is aimed at anyone working in the field of English literature (or related disciplines) who has interest or experience in transhistorical research.

(posted 16 April 2010, updated 14 June 2010)