January 2011




Truth/ Truths in the Anglo-American World of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries
Sorbonne, Paris, France  -  21-22 January 2011
Deadline for proposals: 15 June 2010 (closed)

Society for Anglo-American Studies of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries

1597 - Francis Bacon: "What is Truth, said jesting Pilate; And would not stay for an Answer. Certainly there be that delight in Giddiness. And count it a Bondage to fix a Beleefe; Affecting Freewil in Thinking as well as Acting" (Essays, Of Truth).
1776 - Declaration of Independence: "We hold these ntruths to be self evident that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".
1819 - John Keats: "Beauty is truth, truth Beauty, that is all
                  Ye know on earth and all you need to know."


Within that time framework anda round those three landmarks - two of them bearing on politics and ethics, the third one on aesthetics - an important research was carried on: enquiries, essays, poems, sermons, tracts, teatises, as if truth was indeed a metter of major concern, with culture and civilization at stake.
1-  Truth / Truths: science(s), epistemology:
One may think here of Hobbes in the fields of logic and language (Leviathan, ch.IV), of Locke's epistemology as explained in the Essay concerning Human Understanding ( bk IV, ch. IV) and also in Some Thoughts on Education . Bacon used to set dogmaticism and empiricism  against each other. Various paradigms oppose, complete one another or even sometimes overlap. The core issue of truth raises questionings on the place, the role and function of human beings as regards the cosmos, nature, time and the society they live in. The period under survey (1600-1820) makes it possible to point out trends of succession, continuity, and  breaks as well. Scepticism , already at work with Donne and Shakespeare is given full recognition by Hume, and there is an unmistakable way leading from Locke to Wordsworth.
2 - Truth/ Truths: religion:
Official theology can be discussed here, as well as other types of beliefs, experiences, faith, proofs, interpretations of creeds holders of the truth or pretending to be so, heterodoxy, dissent, etc.
3 - Truth/Truths: art(s), aesthetics, history (ies), literature:
Artists are certainly the best  witnesses of their times: various prose writings - autobiographies, biographies, memoirs, novels - theatrical plays tell about the truths and lies of reason and the heart, within the whole range of passions. In the field of painting, there are endless varieties and degrees of truth, from  emblems and engravings, visual illusions, down to landscapes and portraits. The written works of creative geniuses, their tratises, discourses are numerous and far-reaching. The names of Hogarth and  Reynolds are certainly not the only ones that come to mind.
4 - Truth/Truths: Ethics and politics:
As far as man and society are concerned, there are several texts, all relevant to the questionings, uncertainties, fears of our own times, for we go back to the writings of Bentham, Godwin, Paine, Adam Smith or  Mary Wollstonecraft when confronted with economic theories or models, or with the ever delicate issue of our (fragile) human rights.
Proposals of papers (300 words in French and/or in English ) are to be sent, preferably before June 15,  2010, to:
Suzy Halimi, Chair of the Society for Anglo-American Studies of the XVIth and XVIIIth centuries: Institut du Monde anglophone, 5 Rue de l'Ecole de Médecine, 75006 Paris, France <suzy.halimi@univ-paris3.fr>
Cc to Louis Roux (responsible for the scientific coordination of the conference), 1 rue de la Vapeur, 42100 - Saint Etienne, France <louis.roux@univ-st-etienne.fr>.
(posted 19 April 2010)



Representing Diversity in the City
Université de Cergy-Pontoise, France  -  21-22 January 2011
Deadline for proposals: 15 October 2010

The nineteenth century saw the emergence of laws that highlighted the increasing fragmentation of British society. As a political community, the city was extended by the franchise (Reform Acts) and tended to recognize the rights of women (Married Women?s Property Act), Dissenters (the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts), children, workers and the labouring classes (Chimney Sweepers Act, Factory Acts). Yet it also restricted freedom: class and racial prejudice was rife in Victorian and Edwardian times, suggesting a tendency towards uniformity and the will to impose a social and moral norm to the detriment of women, the Irish minority, paupers or criminals. The question therefore arises as to whether legislation and reform led to genuine representation or restriction of diversity. Did institutions and the political machinery reflect or rein in the needs and aspirations of various social groups? Other means of action became apparent in civil society to offset institutional under-representation: the chartist and cooperative movements, trade-unionism, a number of reforming and debating societies, the suffragette movement, along with the expansion of the press and the democratization of culture, testify to the diversity of representation that bypassed the political sphere.
In literature, representing the city gives rise to a multifarious vision ranging from realism to a mythic reading/perception. Such an extensive approach accounts for the wide scope of specific writing techniques, ranging from an accurate picture of reality to a phantasmic/fabulous/visionary representation of the city. First an object of speculation, the city turns into an actor/character, playing the role of a protagonist, now heroïc, now humanized and vulnerable, impersonating hope or featuring the depths of depravity. In the nineteenth century, the city enabled the readership to catch a glimpse of possible and even better worlds, while at the same time offering the worst, a place where decay and death take on a metaphorical sense.
These various ways of representing the city - sometimes congruous, sometimes paradoxical - also concerned the visual arts. At a time when a series of economic and political changes lastingly transformed a social order many felt was threatened, the Victorian city became remarkable for its growth and diversity, offering its visitors a constantly renewed social, architectural and human panorama.  Of this dense and changing space, the visual arts provided multiple and distinctive representations: in the pages of the illustrated press as well as in art galleries or exhibitions, ?pictorial journalism? and narrative painting testified to the city-dwellers? daily life, living conditions and activities. Vested with a moral purpose, the Victorian image mirrored, arranged and classified the world, offering its viewers a space where otherness might be conveniently framed. One of the purposes of this symposium could be to explore the impact of these multifarious visions on the urban space and its inhabitants. Finally, the Victorian city, with its museums and libraries, may also be regarded as the birthplace of progressive cultures, a process largely involving cultural institutions, or the rejection of them.
Please note that the deadline for proposals is October 15, 2010.
Abstracts of 300-400 words with a short academic CV may be sent to:
- Stéphane Guy <stephaneguy1@free.fr> (civilisation)
- Françoise Martin-Bernard <fmartinbernard@gmail.com> (literature)
- and Françoise Baillet <francoise.baillet@u-cergy.fr> (visual arts).
(posted 14 July 2010)



Forms and strategies of refusal
University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France  -  27-9 January 2011
New extended deadline for proposals: 25 June 2010 (closed)

An international conference organised by the CIRCPLES (Centre Interdisciplinaire Récits Cultures Psychanalyse Langues et Sociétés)
The concept of refusal is to be tackled here around two semantic axes: on the one hand, the relative dimension in which the concept is considered in its transitivity, i.e., in its relation with the object of refusal. In this interconnection between the refusing subject and the refused object the very nature of what is refused varies in time and space, which seems to encourage approaches and studies of a diachronic or generic nature. Considered in the absolute dimension on the other hand, refusal becomes an attitude in itself, a state of mind, a principle, a sort of categorical imperative which opens the way for analyses of a philosophical, psychoanalytical or political type.
What we wish to undertake is not so much to describe such or such a specific revolt but rather to examine the terms of the problematic issues inherent in the concept and in the conflict which takes place at the heart of a work or a document in relation to a form of otherness. Several analytical or hermeneutic directions might be explored in a great variety of fields such as literature, the arts, the cinema, political sciences, music, history, linguistics, psychoanalysis or philosophy:
- Refusal and dissidence: how and why does one espouse dissidence?
- Refusal of the new in the name of the old -- or vice versa.
- Refusal and resistance -- with an emphasis on the marginalisation of the self.
- Strategies and rhetorics of indictment, subversion or rejection: from simple objection to terrorism.
- Mechanisms of refusal in psychoanalysis: principles of denial and repression. Refusal seen in its relations to and in the gap between Law and Desire.
- Striving to have the unacceptable accepted.
- Refusal as in-betweenness, i.e., refusal of monologism, refusal as an axiological confrontation, as part of a process of becoming.
- Refusal as liminality, at the threshold of reterritorialisation.
In short, refusal is to be considered as a dialectical process, a strategy that is always already linked to the problem of redefining otherness.
A selection of papers will be published in a special issue of our review Cycnos.
The conference will take place in the form of workshops.
Proposals of about 250 words (along with a short biographical note) should be sent by April 15, 2010 to
- Michel Remy <scaperemy@aol.com>
- or Christian Gutleben <gutleben@unice.fr>.
(posted 15 October 2009, updated 19 March 2010)



'Such Total and Prodigious Alteration' / 'The Wounds May Be Again Bound Up': Readings and Representations of the Seventeenth Century
Chetham's Library, Manchester, UK  -  28-29 January 2011
Deadline for proposals: 15 October 2010

An academic conference to be held in Chetham’s Library, Manchester, 28th-29th January, 2011
For more details contact James Smith and Joel Swann at: <c17.conference@manchester.ac.uk>.
During the restoration and eighteenth century, the civil war period was consistently represented as a traumatic break in the history of England and the British Isles, separating the institutionally and culturally modern Augustans from either the primitiveness or idealised simplicity of the earlier epoch. Today, much academic practice silently repeats the period’s self-representation as a century divided between pre and post civil war cultures, whether in research, job descriptions or in undergraduate survey courses. Among the effects of this division of labour is a tendency for the earlier 'Renaissance' decades to be privileged over the restoration, which is frequently treated as a poor relation to the eighteenth century.
This conference provides a forum for researchers in all disciplines whose work spans all or any part of the long seventeenth century. As our titular quotations from Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion and Swift's sermon 'On the Martyrdom of King Charles I' suggest, we also encourage papers on subsequent imaginings of the period that have contributed to or contested the ways in which it is read today. Concerns include but are not limited to:
* The comparative study of seventeenth-century writing, sciences, visual arts and music before, during and after the civil war period; their material and intellectual dissemination; their relationship to ideas of what constitutes the early modern and the restoration.
* Constructions of the seventeenth century from the restoration to the present; representations in literature, art, history and film; the cultural influence of the seventeenth century on subsequent periods.
* The role critical theory can play in our reading of the period and/or narratives of the long seventeenth century from within literary criticism and critical theory; e.g. Leavis and Eliot on the Metaphysical poets, Walter Benjamin on the baroque, Foucault on madness, Habermas on the public sphere.
* The study of non-canonical and marginalized texts and materials, and nationally comparative readings of the period.
* The representation and reception of pre-seventeenth-century culture during the seventeenth century; the place of the past in the period's self-representations.
Confirmed speakers include: Rosanna Cox (Kent), Jeremy Gregory (Manchester), Helen Pierce (York), George Southcombe (Oxford), Jeremy Tambling (Manchester), Edward Vallance (Roehampton).
Please send abstracts of 300-500 words to James Smith (Manchester) and Joel Swann (Keele) by 15th October 2010, at <c17.conference@manchester.ac.uk>. Proposals from students are particularly welcomed, for whom attendance will be subsidized thanks to the generous support of the Society for Renaissance Studies.
Further information: http://www.chethams.org.uk/c17conference.html
(posted 14 June 2010)


  

February 2011




"Why Read Joyce in the 21st Century?": the IV James Joyce Birthday Conference in Rome
Università di Roma Tre, Italy  -  2-3 February 2011
Deadline for proposals: 15 October 2010

The IV James Joyce Conference in Rome, endorsed by The James Joyce Italian Foundation, will be hosted by the Department of Comparative Literatures at the Università di Roma Tre, on the occasion of Joyce’s 129th birthday, February 2-3, 2011.
Papers are invited on any aspect of Joyce's writings. Issues may include, but are not limited to:
1. Joyce and the Reading Public
2. Reading Joyce at University
3. Joyce and Visual Culture
4. Joyce’s legacy in Contemporary Literature
5. Joyce and Nationalism, Internationalism and Socialism
6. Joyce between Ireland and the World
7. Joyce in Eastern Europe
8. Postcolonial Joyce
We welcome proposals and abstracts for both individual papers and panel sessions. Proposals and abstracts should be limited to 250 words. Papers and presentations are limited to a maximum of 20 minutes. Submissions must include name, contact information, and institutional affiliation or independent scholar status.
Deadline for submissions: October 15, 2010
Proposals should be sent via email to: <joyce.foundation@uniroma3.it>.
(posted 7 August 2010)



One-day Conference on British Writer Rachel Cusk
Université Rennes 2, France  -  18 February 2011
Deadline for proposals: 15 September 2010

This one-day conference is organised by A.C.E. (Anglophonies: Cultures, Écritues), E.A. 1796, Université Rennes 2.
We invite papers of 20-25 minutes on any aspect of Cusk's fictional or non-fictional writing.
Abstracts of 300-400 words together with a short academic CV should be sent to:
- Maria Tang <maria.tang@univ-rennes2.fr>,
- Nicolas Boileau <nicolas.boileau@wanadoo.fr>,
- and/or Jean-Pierre Juhel <jean-pierre.juhel@univ-rennes2.fr> before September 15th, 2010.
Consult the conference web page at: http://www.sites.univ-rennes2.fr/ace/Bienvenue_files/Cusk.html
On account of the presence of colleagues from British universities, it is preferred that conference papers be in English.
British author Rachel Cusk made her début on the European literary scene in 2006 when the French translation of Arlington Park, which was hailed as an English version of Desperate Housewives, was greeted by general critical acclaim in France. Although this was the first of her novels to be translated into French, Cusk had already made a name for herself back across the Channel with five published novels and an autobiographical memoir. Following the publication of her fifth novel, In the Fold, she was named as one of Granta's 20 Best Young British Novelists in 2003, a tribute to the strength of her writing which probes with incisive, chiselled precision both the pain and the comedy of her middle-Englanders' humdrum existences. The publication of A Life's Work : On Becoming a Mother in 2001, an autobiographical account of the feelings of ambivalence motherhood can engender, saw her embroiled in a controversy with which her name remains connected and which she says has stuck to her like a label. Although she has received numerous literary prizes, her work has until now been largely ignored by university scholars, with the exception of a few published articles.
This one-day conference seeks to pave the way for a more in-depth scholarly study of Cusk's oeuvre, not only Arlington Park, although this will surely figure high on the list, but also her previous and subsequent novels, as well as her works of non-fiction (see list below). We will seek to map out the major themes of her work, many of which coincide with the preoccupations of contemporary criticism. Cusk has recently published an article in The Guardian (12th December 2009) entitled "Shakespeare's Daughters" on the legacy of the women's movement in an age that she describes as "barely acknowledg[ing] its debt to feminism". In the light of her remark in the article that another name for "women's writing" might be "the book of repetition", the representation of the feminine or of what Cusk has called "iterative female experience?" could fruitfully be re-examined.
While the influence of postcolonialism on feminist critical thinking has led to increased emphasis on the link between place or location and identity (Susan Stanford Friedman), Cusk's narratives play out scenes of dislocation and dispossession among a cast of largely white middle-class English women. Scenes of social gathering and interaction, be it the dinner party, birthday or more intimate encounter with a lover, or merely the face à face with the self in a changing-room mirror, do no more than disclose the fragile nature of human relations, the realisation of which often leads to a headlong flight from self (the protagonist of The Country Life, for example, flees into self-imposed exile from London to the countryside). Cusk exposes the tensions between the individual and her stifling community, outlining the contours of a world that is at times oppressively introspective (she is often compared to Virginia Woolf, another possible strand for exploration) and at the same time shot through with a lurking sense of menace.
Notwithstanding their introspection, however, Cusk's characters remain perfect strangers to themselves and to their readers. Uprooted and adrift, her men and women are all "anti-heroes" whose social, emotional or cultural failures are played out both in the most public of settings (the office, the workplace, the world of work being seen as always dissatisfying, if not slightly ridiculous) as well as the most intimate (the home) -- and even upon the maternal body, locus of the most firmly anchored social prejudices which Cusk sets out to challenge and upset. Her interest is in the mediocre, the banal and the everyday at the heart of which is an enigma that is never entirely resolved or dissipated, but instead forces her characters, from being once well-integrated in their social milieu, to confront their isolation.
List of publications by Rachel Cusk:
Saving Agnes (Picador, 1993)
The Temporary (Picador, 1995)
The Country Life (Picador, 1997)
A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother (Fourth Estate, 2001)
The Lucky Ones (Fourth Estate, 2003)
In the Fold (Faber, 2005)
Arlington Park (Faber, 2006)
The Last Supper (Faber, 2009)
The Bradshaw Variations (Faber, 2009)
(posted 10 May 2010)


  

March 2011

 


The foreignness of foreigners: cultural representations of Otherness in Britain (17th-20th centuries)
Université Lille 3 - Charles de Gaulle, France  -  17-18 March 2011
Deadline for proposals: 1 March 2010 (closed)

The relationship between the British and foreigners has played a crucial role in Britain’s search for a national identity and in its construction. More often than not, the perception of the foreigner spawns a feeling of strangeness, unease, even defamiliarisation when the “native” is confronted with geographical, cultural and linguistic differences. In the 17th and 18th centuries, voyages of exploration, together with commercial and colonial trips from the West to the East Indies led the English to discover other peoples and territories. 19th-century British imperialism and colonisation, 20th-century decolonisation and the rather strained British relationship with Europe raised many issues that beg the question of how the Other has been perceived and represented in Britain. Through these encounters, the British have made other nations fill the “empty space” (in Ricoeur's words) which characterises the figure of the Other.
Indeed, the foreign and the strange are concepts that are subsumed by the notion of Otherness. As Julia Kristeva points out, the foreigner is “the one that does not belong to a group, the Other”. The emphasis laid on the sense of belonging implies that foreignness is not necessarily linked to geographical distance since, first and foremost, the foreigner is or feels alienated or estranged from a group. Ireland, Scotland and Wales or the example of English regionalisms provide relevant case studies to explore the notions of Englishness and Britishness where the integration or the exclusion of difference plays a significant role.
The concept of Otherness is abstract and fluctuating. Its indeterminacy allows for various modes of representation which blend myth and reality. Indeed, the foreigner seems anomalous, even "abnormal" at times when compared to the cultural codes of "native" identity, although "nativeness" is a complex notion that needs to be qualified and examined as it itself depends on matters of representation and self-perception. This unsettling feeling that is observed in encounters between Self and Other leads the former to resort to stereotypes to define the foreigner's identity. One then needs to examine how important a role imagination and fantasy come to play in this process.
This conference aims at examining how the various figures of the foreigner have been constructed in Britain through representations and discourses in the political and literary fields, as well as in the visual arts. Of particular interest is the way Otherness has participated in the shaping of a national, religious or regional identity, through ambivalent relations of domination or admiration, integration or rejection, idealisation or demonisation. Thus the question of cultural transfers needs to be addressed to explore the particular ways in which British identity has been enriched by contacts with the Other. We also invite papers on British material culture and the visual arts which would consider issues of hybridity and hybridisation, and focus on cultural practices such as adaptation, borrowing and transposition Different theoretical approaches are welcome, among which colonialism and post-colonialism, orientalism, feminism, cultural history, historicism...
Topics may include but are not limited to:
- The representation of foreigners in times of crisis (wars, economic or religious crises) in the visual arts and the media.
- The contribution of the Other to British Art
- Exoticism and orientalism.
- The study of “contact zones” with foreigners in the visual arts, material culture or literature
- The Other's body, voice or dress.
- Racism and xenophobia.
- The Other within the Self and the concept of “third space” (in Homi Bhabha’s words): hybridisation, polyphony, dialogism ...
Abstracts (300-500 words) should be submitted, together with a short bio-bibliographical note, to Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding <vanessa.alayrac-fielding@univ-lille3.fr> and Claire Dubois <claire.dubois@univ-lille3.fr> before 1 March 2010.
Presentations will be expected not to exceed 30 minutes.
Final papers will be considered for publication following a peer-review process.
(posted 10 December 2009)



Bridging the Gaps, Minding the Context: New Perspectives for Young Researchers
Universida de Vigo, Spain  -  17-18 March 2011
Deadline for proposals: 1 December 2010




Bridging the Gaps, Minding the Context is a conference hosted by and designed for PhD and Postgraduate students. It seeks to address a number of issues related to literary studies today, in an attempt to bring together early-career researchers from different disciplines. As the title suggests, this conference proposes to discuss the intersection between literature and culture, and how such connection can successfully reflect deeper changes at other levels: how can borders be crossed in literature? And, how do we cross them when encountering a written text? The fragility and ever-changing nature of meaning and textual veracity will also serve as the starting point from which to explore shifting perceptions of power and authority in the text.
Delegates are expected to reflect on the present state of research in English literature and offer distinct pathways to challenge classical interpretations of literary works from a theoretical or analytical point of view. Therefore, this conference aims to provide a stimulating environment for postgraduate researchers and other students to present their work and get in touch with current avenues of research in the field of literary studies. We do hope to encourage researchers from a variety of disciplines, working across historical, theoretical and ideological borders to come together and discuss the direction of literary studies today while profiting from scholarly contact.
Confirmed plenary speakers include Dr Francisco Álvarez-López (University of Manchester), Dr Teresa Prudente (Universitá di Torino), Marisa Fernández López (Universidad de León) and Dr Maggie Ann Bowers (University of Portsmouth).
Suggested topics and interdisciplinary approaches include (although they are not restricted to):
- (Neo)Medieval and Renaissance Studies
- Children and Young Adult Literature
- Victorian and Modernist Studies
- Postcolonial and Diaspora Studies
- Graphic Novels and Picture Books
200-word abstracts for papers not exceeding 20 minutes should be submitted before the 1st of December, 2010 and sent to the organisers at: <bridging-the-gaps@uvigo.es>.
Abstracts should contain the title of the paper, full name and institutional affiliation as well as a 100-word biograpical note containing a summary of research interests.
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by the 10th of January, 2011.
It is envisaged that a selection of papers will form the basis of a co-edited volume.
(posted 14 June 2010)



Hegemony and singularities: orchestrating languages for specific purposes: 32nd GERAS Conference
University of Burgundy, Dijon, France  -  17-19 March 2011
Deadline for proposals: 25 December 2010

The theme of the 32nd GERAS Conference, to be held in Dijon in 2011, lies within the scope of research conducted by our scientific community since 2008 under the umbrella theme of "multiplicity and unity" in languages for specific purposes. For this year's event, the University of Burgundy, which hosted the 21st GERAS Conference in 2000, proposes the theme of: Hegemony and singularities: orchestrating languages for specific purposes
One of the major issues in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and its four traditional domains (the linguistic, cultural, didactic and technological dimensions), remains its theoretical foundations and its relation with regard to the other branches of Anglistics. Is it now time to redefine the major and minor modes within each domain? Is it possible, desirable or even feasible to harmonize the different fields of research?
The theme chosen may be understood not only as an investigation of the interface between ESP and the other branches of Anglistics, but also as the analysis of the domain of Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP). Paper proposals are invited to explore the following lines of enquiry in accordance with the research principles underlying the GERAS.
Linguistics and discursive dimension
Ever since its creation, the GERAS has sought to answer questions concerning the theoretical foundations of linguistics.
Should the study of specific discourse be considered within the framework of the existing major schools of linguistics (the enunciative school, systemic functional grammar, corpus linguistics …)? Are studies on enunciation still in keeping with the polyphonic perspective of discourse as defined by Bakhtine? What specific/singular approaches to applied linguistics have been developed from LSP teaching?
What are the different types of discourse investigated in terminological studies?
Is there a dominant form of discourse in each professional community and, if so, is it possible to identify common features in these dominant forms?
With regard to the subject of the study, should research focus on types of dominant discourse in a given community rather than the production of types of discourse which may be considered as minor?
Has the integration of statistics as an essential tool in corpus linguistics led to a trend in favor of systematic macro-analyses at the expense of micro-analyses?
Cultural dimension
Questions may be asked about the dominant status of English with regard to other languages, and especially the consequences of this dominance on English itself, on its representations, its different productions and methods of certification. More generally, these themes could also be considered from the point of view of the growing hegemony of pre-formatted thought, whether due to allegiance to the politically correct or to the development of word-processing software.
Is there any place today for original, personal thought? What can be said about writing workshops (novel writing, thriller writing…) so popular in certain countries, or courses that incorporate the teaching of formatted styles, such as academic writing courses in certain universities?
In a more introspective mode, has the GERAS contributed to the creation of a harmonious image of its community, or on the contrary, does the LSP community suffer from a lack of transparency resulting from a plethora of singularities?
How can LSP teachers establish their singularity within the science, medicine, law, economics or human sciences departments of universities?
Is there a culture particular to languages for specific purposes? If so, can it be conceptualized or didacticized? How can future ESP researchers and teachers be made aware of it and identify its different components?
Didactic dimension
In this area, the various specific practices and didactic perspectives in LSP teaching (global approach, action-based learning, task-based approach…) with regard to the Common European Framework of Reference for Language may be explored.
Is it necessary to use primary sources, authentic documents and real-life professional discourse systematically? What is the place of articles written for the general public, profession-based fiction and other forms of specialized fictional narrative, or pedagogical documents created in the teaching of ESP? For example, is there a positive relationship or a linear progression in the use of authentic specialized articles with regard to popularization articles?
What theoretical approach to the language can or should be used to build an LSP teaching program? What meta-language should be favoured?
Technological dimension
The relative proportions of classroom-based and on-line lessons may be considered, with a particular interest for the progress achieved in language centers and multi-media facilities.
Does the domain of LSP teaching still present specific features with regard to the use of Information and Communication Technologies in educational systems?
Is it possible to acquire or develop specific skills in ESP thanks to on-line resources or lessons?
With regard to academic publications, have paper-based scientific publications already lost their hegemony, overwhelmed by on-line publications, and if so, what are the foreseeable consequences of this trend?
How can the particularities of certain on-line publications, which render public criticisms and exchanges between reviewers and authors, be analyzed?
What attitude should be adopted in the face of confirmed or nascent hegemony in the field of knowledge acquisition and widespread general public accessibility to the contents of libraries around the world? Is it spinning out of control (search engines, web-based collaborative dictionaries or encyclopaedias)?
Timetable
15 December 2010: deadline for submissions
 31 January 2011: announcement of reviewed papers
Abstracts should be written in French or English (depending on the language used to give the presentation), including a title, 5 key words, and a precise, concise and informative description of the content of the paper (300 words maximum).
Submissions should be sent by 15 December to <martine.goiset@u-bourgogne.fr>.
(posted 21 June 2010)



Shakespeare and the Arts of the Table: 2011 Conference of the Société Française Shakespeare
Paris, France  -  17-19 March 2011
Deadline for proposals: 30 September 2010

Arts of the table are not that far removed from performing arts. The table is a stage. It has its actors, its backstage, its sets, its props, its rules, its mises en scène, its lighting and musical effects. In English, "boards" can refer both to a table and a stage -- both of which can indifferently be designated by "tréteaux" (trestles) in French. The early modern stage abundantly feeds on this spectacular and festive matter. Plays by Shakespeare or by his contemporaries, notably Heywood, Kyd, Marlowe, Lyly, Greene, Peele, Chapman, Marston or Dekker, teem with episodes where food, feeding and eating are staged and where the table appears as a place of creation, recreation and ostentation. From Titus'
bloody serving-up of dishes to the banquet whereby Timon literally makes his guests’ mouths water, through the trompe-l’œil feast conjured up by Ariel, Shakespeare presents cooking and eating rituals in all their musical, theatrical and visual artifice. "Shakespeare and the arts of the table" is an invitation to study early modern food culture, practices and discourses, to address the representation and aesthetics of both the table and the art of cookery, and to explore recipes, objects and utensils that give shape to the raw and the cooked.
"She makes hungry where most she satisfies": Cleopatra, described as "a morsel for a monarch", is changed through a gastronomic metaphor into a work of art whose meaning and taste are not exhausted in consumption but which feeds instead a pleasure that is endlessly renewed, generating desire that is consequently never satisfied. Foodstuffs must undergo transformation in order to become royal dainties whose meaning goes beyond mere physical necessity and pure instinct. Arts of the table refer not so much to food that satisfies as to food that leaves you hungry while being a source of sensual pleasures, be it for the hosts or the guests.
A study of Shakespeare and the arts of the table implies an exploration of the rules of hospitality and etiquette as well as of their transgression. The festive, civil table can become a table of torture. One should not only interrogate food stuffs but also table manners as they are taught in the numerous Renaissance treatises on civility and conduct and as they are staged and perverted in the plays. As was shown by Michel Jeanneret, arts of the table have to do with edibles but also with speakables and readables; they reconcile the stomach and the head by summoning the two functions of the mouth: eating and talking. In Shakespeare's world, the arts of the table inevitably lead to the arts and pleasures of the tongue, to table talk and feasts of words.
This appetizing theme is bound to provide food for thought and invite proposals which will enable us to draw up a mouth-watering menu.
Please send your proposals (title and 1/2 page abstract) by 30 September 2010 to: <contact@societefrancaiseshakespeare.org>
Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin
Institut de Recherche sur la Renaissance, l’âge Classique et les Lumières
UM 5186 du CNRS Université de Montpellier III Paul Valéry
(posted 28 July 2010)



English Language and Anglophone Literatures Today (ELALT)
Department of English, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, Serbia  -  19 March 2011
Deadline for proposals: 31 October 2010

Plenary speakers:
• Professor Ranko Bugarski, Faculty of Philology, Belgrade
• Professor Svetozar Koljević, Fellow of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, Novi Sad
Abstracts by university staff and doctoral students for 20-minute presentations in English on one of the following general topics are invited:
• English Language: (1) Phonetics, Phonology, (2) Morphology, Syntax, (3) Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis, (4) Sociolinguistics, Psycholinguistics, (5) Contrastive Linguistics, Contact Linguistics, (6) Corpus Linguistics, (7) Language Teaching, Language Acquisition, (8) Translation Studies, (9) Cultural Studies, (10) Lexicography
• Anglophone Literatures: (1) Literary History and Theory, (2) Literary Genres, (3) Approaches to Literature, (4) Literary Theory across Cultures and Disciplines, (5) Postmodernism and Postcolonialism, (6) Women’s Voices, (7) Contemporary Writing, (8) Literature and the Media, (9) Literature and the Film, (10) Poetry Today
Registration fee: 25 euros, in Serbian dinars, payable at the reception desk.
After the Conference, a refereed selection of papers will be published as an ISBN-numbered e-book of proceedings.
Organizing Committee: Professor Vladislava Gordić-Petković (chair), Dr Ivana Đurić-Paunović (coordinator), Dr Sabina Halupka-Rešetar (coordinator), Biljana Radić-Bojanić (secretary)
For abstract submission guidelines and other information, please visit the Conference’s website:
http://www.ff.uns.ac.rs/vesti/aktuelno/2010/elalt/elalt.htm
(posted 19 April 2010)



Shaping Modernism: Katherine Mansfield and her Contemporaries
University of Cambridge, UK  -  25-26 March 2011
Deadline for proposals: 20 September 2010

Patron: Dame Jacqueline Wilson
A two-day Conference in association with the Katherine Mansfield Society: <kms@katherinemansfieldsociety.org>, http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org

"I was only thinking last night people have hardly begun to write yet. Put poetry out of it for a moment & leave out Shakespeare -- now I mean prose. Take the very best of it. Aren’t they still cutting up sections rather than tackling the whole of a mind?" (Katherine Mansfield, 1921)

This conference explores new research concerning notions of modernism(s), with a particular focus on Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield was hugely influential on, and influenced by, writers including John Middleton Murry, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, A. R. Orage, T. S. Eliot and Aldous Huxley. Woolf's statement that Mansfield created ‘'he only writing I have ever been jealous of', highlights her significance within modernism and emphasises that her complex, experimental, satirical and humorous writing deserves further attention.
Proposals for papers are invited on topics that address Mansfield’' relation to other writers and artists, as well as the broader lines of influence and exchange within modernist networks and between different disciplines. We particularly welcome papers specifically concerning Mansfield, but are happy to consider submissions from researchers working in related fields of modernist study. Submissions from postgraduate students are encouraged.
Papers are invited on topics that address, but are not limited to:
- Mansfield and 'high modernism'
- Rhythm and modernist magazines
- Modernist literary form: tradition, innovation and experimentation
- Modernism and the short story
- The influence of the First World War on modernism
- Notions of avant-garde and marginal modernisms
- Modernist literature and music
- Modernism, politics and social class
- Mansfield and cinema
- Mansfield and queer modernisms
- Notions of the modernist canon and its revisions
- Expatriate, displaced and colonial modernisms
- Gendered modernisms
Abstracts of 250 words plus a brief 50-word biography should be submitted to the conference organisers:
- Alice Kelly <ark40@cam.ac.uk>
- and Dr. Kate Kennedy <kma23@cam.ac.uk>
by 20 September 2010.
Please also see our website: http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/cambridge-2011/
(posted 9 June 2010)



Postcolonialism and Labour: EACLALS Postgraduate Conference
Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany  -  26-27 March 2011
Deadline for proposals: 1 November 2010

Keynote by Professor Frank Schulze-Engler (Goethe University, Frankfurt)
This inaugural postgraduate conference aims to provide a space for debate and discussion on reconfiguring the category of 'Labour' within Postcolonial Studies. Historically speaking, given its Marxist affiliations and the tropes of eurocentrism in universalising 'Labour' as a normative category against the local and particular, Postcolonial Studies has not engaged critically with the notion of ‘Labour’. However, the concept is now gaining purchase in the field owing largely to globalisation, international division of labour, immigration and the radical restructuring of work and professions both within and outside the West. Yet, despite these recent developments, Postcolonial Studies can be criticised for effectively abandoning the economic essence of cultures by ceaselessly reworking 'difference', 'hybridity' and 'disjunctures' as the cultural markers of historical and persisting inequalities. In the last twenty-five years we have witnessed the emergence of a wide range of literary and filmic productions that reconfigure the notion of 'Labour', including Hanif Kureishi's My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace (1999), Monica Ali's Brick Lane (2003), Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things (2003), Hari Kunzru's Transmission (2004), Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) and Aravind Adiga's White Tiger (2008).
This conference seeks papers that address, but are not limited to, the following questions:
• How, and in what ways, can the concept of 'Labour' be redressed from a culturally contingent perspective (as opposed to totalising Marxist approaches)?
• How does the recent surge of immigrant and diasporic literature and film reflect the workings of 'Labour' in their narratives?
• In light of globalisation -- the increasing global division of labour, shifts and uncertainties of financial markets -- is there a need for Postcolonial Studies to embrace the Marxist concepts of labour without categorically abandoning its culturalist project?
We invite papers from postgraduates working in the disciplines of literature, history, cultural studies, sociology, film and media studies, human geography, linguistics, politics, religious studies and communication among others. Proposals reflecting an interdisciplinary approach are particularly welcome. Some suggested themes are:
- Labour and its Cultural Constructions
• The aesthetics of writing labour
• The visual aesthetics of labour
- Labour and Power Relations
• Restructuring labour in the Post-Imperial era
• Neo-imperialism and labour
- Labour and Globalisation
• New technologies and new forms of labour
• New technologies and old forms of labour
- Labour and Capitalism
• Revisiting Marx in the global economic crisis
• Transformations in the working class
- Labour and Gender
• New Feminism in the age of globalisation
• Deconstructing the gender divide in the job market
- Labour and Identity
• New Ethnicities for a new labour market
• Crossing national identities
- Labour and Exploitation
• Legitimising the exploitation of illegal immigrants
• Illegal exploitation of immigrants
- Labour and Exile
• Reflections on exile as survival
• Refugees, migrant workers and exile
We also welcome presentations in the form of workshops where postgraduate students can share and discuss their work in progress. In addition to the paper presentations, postgraduate students are encouraged to present early findings of their research in the form of posters.
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words for individual presentations (20 minutes), workshop presentations or poster presentations to <eaclals.pg.conference@googlemail.com>. Include your name, affiliation, email address, a brief biography and indicate whether you will present in a PANEL, WORKSHOP or with a POSTER.
Abstracts: Deadline for abstracts is: 01 November 2010
For further information about the conference, please see the website at http://www.eaclals.ulg.ac.be/pg-conference
Participants must be EACLALS members. Please see the EACLALS website at http://www.eaclals.org for subscription rates and further information.
(posted 24 May 2010)



Gissing's World within the World: Art and the Artist
University of York, UK  -  28-30 March 2011
Deadline for proposals: 15 November 2010
 
Fourth International George Gissing Conference, with the support of CECILLE Research Centre, University of Lille, France
The specific focus of the York Gissing Conference will be an often-overlooked aspect of Gissing's artistic philosophy. While many readers have emphasized Gissing's almost sociological engagement with material conditions, Gissing saw himself as a more detached devotee of art "pure & simple." In a famous letter to his brother Algernon (22 September 1885), he observed that the artist should "keep apart, & preserve [his] soul alive" because the natural environment of the artist is "the shade," where he "can make a world within the world." Papers are therefore particularly sought on all aspects of Gissing as an artist, notably his engagement with late Victorian aesthetics and obsessive "detachment from the vulgarities of the day." Topics may also include, but are not limited to the following:
- Absorbing non-verbal aesthetics into the fictional constructs: the world as picture; ekphrasis; the visual arts in Gissing
- Artistic leanings, amateur and professional: representational strategies
- Gissing and Aestheticism
- Exploring generic boundaries: Gissing and the Künstlerroman
- Not his line of work? Gissing, drama and poetry
- Classical Gissing
- Gissing as Critic
This conference will feature a session on "Teaching Gissing in the Twenty-first Century." If you are interested in participating in this panel, please provide the organiser with a brief description of your particular approach to teaching Gissing. You may apply both to deliver a paper and to participate in the teaching session.
Please submit abstracts of 300 words for 20-minute papers with a brief biographical note and/or applications to be involved in the Teaching panel to Nicky Losseff, University of York: <nl5@york.ac.uk> no later than 15 November 2010. Please include the following personal details with your abstract: name and institutional affiliation, email address, postal address, telephone and mobile phone numbers, and A/V requirements (if any).
Participants will be notified of their acceptance by 15 January 2011 (or earlier, for those who require official letters of invitation for the purpose of obtaining support from their home institutions). Further details about registration costs, travel arrangements and accommodation (ensuite single bedrooms available on campus) will be available on the conference website after the summer:
http://www.york.ac.uk/music/conferences/gissing
Conference highlights:
Conference dinner to be followed by a piano concert (by students from the Music Department of the University of York - Gabrielle Fleury repertoire)
An optional excursion to the nearby city of Wakefield, birthplace of the author. Anthony Petyt, of The Gissing Trust, will organise a visit to the Gissing Centre and a tour of Gissing’s Wakefield.
Gissing-related book stalls (notably The Idle Booksellers)
Conference Organiser: Dr Nicky Losseff (University of York)
Advisory Committee: Prof M. D. Allen (University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley); Prof Maria-Teresa Chialant (University of Salerno); Prof Pierre Coustillas (University of Lille); Prof Constance Harsh (Colgate University); Dr Christine Huguet (University of Lille); Dr Simon J. James (Durham University); Anthony Petyt (The Gissing Trust, Wakefield); Dr Bouwe Postmus (University of Amsterdam).
(posted 29 June 2010)



Disconnections Between Form and Meaning and "Deceptive" Syntax
Université de Provence, Aix-en-Provence, France  -  31 March - 1 April 2011
Deadline for proposals: 15 October 2010

Conference organised with the support of LERMA (EA 853)
Conference organiser : Monique De Mattia-Viviès
Scientific Committee: Pierre Cotte, Paul Larreya, Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Ruth Menzies, Jacqueline Percebois, Linda Pillière, Wilfrid Rotgé, Sandrine Sorlin, Monique De Mattia-Viviès.
Organisational Committee: Linda Pillière, Isabelle Richard, Jacqueline Percebois, Carole Normand, Wilfrid Andrieu.
Proposals (of around 20 lines) should be submitted, in attached files (.doc or rtf), to Monique De Mattia-Viviès, <mailto:monique.demattia-vivies@wanadoo.fr>monique.demattia-vivies@wanadoo.fr
Deadline for proposals: October 15th 2010
Notification of acceptance: November 15th 2010
Number of speakers: 12
Duration of papers: 25 minutes maximum
Languages: French or English
Papers may subsequently be published in the online journal E-REA, subject to approval by the scientific committees of the conference and the journal.
This conference will examine cases where there is a discrepancy between syntax and meaning and/or where syntax does not produce the expected meaning, raising the question of grammatical categories and, more generally, the workings of the language. Put schematically, such discrepancies are symptomatic of a potential unbinding between form and meaning, signified and signifier, and thus pose questions as to the definition of linguistic signs. Misleading syntax or, to borrow Laurence Rosier’s term, deceptive syntax, which reveals a constitutive residue in the language, which Jean-Jacques Lecercle terms a "remainder", is particularly prevalent in literary texts. Various types of disconnection between form and meaning can be analysed. To take but one example, utterances such as They say he is dead, where they is indeterminate, contain a discrepancy between form and meaning. The main clause in syntactic terms does not match what is, in semantic terms, the main information. The utterance possesses the formal characteristics of classic indirect speech, but is it in fact an example of indirect speech, when considered from a semantic perspective? This type of utterance raises questions about the category of reported speech itself and about its definition, which necessarily transcends formal considerations.
Analyses may give rise to epistemological reflexion on the workings of language: to what extent are Saussure's model and the theory of signs applicable here? Or the pragmatics of Austin (there is a locutionary meaning independent from the illocutionary meaning of the action) and Grice (the intentional subject dominates language and controls it, following a whole series of maxims)? What can be inferred regarding the residue (Jean-Jacques Lecercle's theory of the remainder), since language inevitably produces its own remainder? Where is this to be located? What role is played by context? Where should this be included in the grammar of the English language? These are just some of the questions which can be raised in the context of the symposium.
Papers can analyse various types of discourse (literary, oral, political, etc.).
Other examples of disconnection between form and meaning, as well as of 'deceptive' syntax, can be found in the extended version of this presentation, which is available on the LERMA website, at the following address: http://www.univ-provence.fr/gsite/document.php?pagendx=1356&project=lerma
(posted 2 July 2010)
 



Beyond Trauma: Narratives of (Im)possibility in Contemporary Literatures in English
University of Zaragoza, Spain  -  31 March-2 April 2011
Deadline for proposals: 1 December 2010

Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana, Universidad de Zaragoza.
For more than two decades, the causes, effects and manifestations of traumatic experiences have been studied from a variety of perspectives: psychoanalysis, medicine, anthropology, history and literature. As is well known, trauma involves personal or collective shock, disempowerment and memory disorders. The recovery process does not usually follow a linear, uninterrupted sequence; traumatic events refuse to be put away, since the memory of trauma keeps coming back in  incomprehensible and fragmentary forms such as hallucinations, nightmares or flashbacks. Somehow, resolution of the trauma is never final, recovery is never complete, as the impact of the traumatic event continues to reverberate throughout the survivor's life.
Beyond Trauma: Narratives of (Im)possibility seeks to analyse this phenomenon and the  possibilities of recovering from trauma as represented in contemporary narratives in English. Is fiction the appropriate site to explore the therapeutic process of working through traumatic events? Or are non-fictional forms like testimony or autobiography better equipped for it? What narrative strategies are deployed in order to convey that process? Are some literary genres more suitable than others for the representation of trauma and/or self healing? Is there any significant divergence in the approach to trauma and healing by hegemonic and marginal or minority groups? How are the ethical implications of representing trauma conveyed?
We welcome contributions that explore these and other related issues.
Suggested topics for discussion include, but are not limited to:
•    Ethics and the aftermath of trauma
•    The possibilities of working through trauma
•    Repetition, obsession and the return of the dead
•    Loss, mourning, commemoration and ritual
•    Formal experimentation and the representation of trauma and healing
•    The invisible inscription of gender and its traumatic effects
•    The depathologization of melancholia in non-normative genders and sexualities
•    Survival and guilt
•    Unresolved mourning
•    Victims as/and perpetrators
•    From dissociated trauma to acknowledged memory
•    From traumatic memory to the narrative of the unspeakable
•    Remembrance and affect
•    The revenge fantasy versus the forgiveness fantasy
•    Recovery and the reawakening of trauma
•    Trauma as the source of a survivor mission (political, social, religious commitment)
•    Transgenerational trauma and the (im)possibility of recovery
•    Unhealed racial divisions and violence
•    Testimony as a ritual of healing
Confirmed plenary speakers: Cathy Caruth, Avril Horner, Roger Luckhurst
Three copies of completed papers (max. 2,500 words, aprox. 9 double-spaced pages, including notes and works cited) following the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, together with a 100-150 word abstract should be sent to the organisers. Author information is to be sent in a separate sheet (including name, filiation, contact address and paper title). Deadline for submissions: December 1st, 2010.
Marita Nadal <mnadal@unizar.es> and Mónica Calvo <mocalvo@unizar.es>.
Dpto. de Filología Inglesa y Alemana
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Campus Plaza San Francisco
Universidad de Zaragoza
50009 Zaragoza
Spain
(Posted 21 June 2010)



Lawrence and Freud's essay "Civilization and its Discontents"
Université Paris Ouest Nanterre, France  -  31 March - 2 April 2011
Deadline for prooppsals: 30 November 2010

Lawrence and Freud were contemporaries but Freud's essay "Civilization and its Discontents" was only published in 1930, too late to have any influence on the novelist. Yet Lawrence, like many writers in this tormented period, had a lot to say about the disease and decline of  civilisation. His  views are sometimes strikingly similar to those expressed by the psychoanalyst in his essay and often very different. He hated Freudian theories, of which he had mostly a second-hand knowledge.  He  was infuriated when a reviewer read Sons and Lovers as an illustration of the Oedipus complex. We will see how this proximity and this antagonism helped the novelist to shape his Weltanschauung and his conception of the psyche.
We invite contributions around the following themes:
- The disease of the social body (trauma of the First World War, new ideologies, social tensions). Utopian temptation, myth and prophecy. The parallelism between  malaise of the body and cultural malaise. Violence and sacrifice.
- The notions of culture and civilisation in Lawrence. The savage and the civilised. Lawrence's interest in anthropology. The human and the non-human. Evolution and progress. Lawrence and Freud as readers of Darwin and evolutionist theories.
- Lawrence's contacts with psychoanalysis. His quarrel with Freud. Sexuality and collective activity. Deleuze's reading of Lawrence.
- Art as symptom and remedy (cf his  reflections on the visual arts, notably in "Study of Thomas Hardy")
Proposals for papers should be sent by e-mail before November 30th 2010 to:
- Ginette Roy <ginette.katz.roy@free.fr>
- and  Stephen Rowley <srroly@hotmail.com>
before the end of november 2010.
Please send an abstract.
(posted 7 July 2010)


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