Confirmed plenary speakers:

- Prof. Jeremy Tambling, English and American Studies, University of Manchester
- Dr. Roger Pooley, English, Keele University

The University of Manchester invites scholars and early researchers to submit papers for the conference 'Why Allegory Now?', an interdisciplinary event which will allow a forum of discussion on the disparate ways in which allegory has been used throughout history, and consider how such an elusive yet prominent form can be interpreted today.

The conference asks: What is allegory and why is it relevant today? Can allegory be best understood as a genre, a technique, a mode, a rhetorical device or a trope? Is allegory the practice of writing, interpreting or representing?  Can allegory only be understood in relation to its history? Is all allegory ideological?  Is all language allegorical?

From early Greek examples, such as Plato's Allegory of the Cave, through to Renaissance poetry, Orwell's Animal Farm and The Matrix trilogy, allegories have been used by philosophers, theologians, artists and authors to express complex ideas in simplified and universal terms.  Despite Maureen Quilligan's suggestion that 'the status of allegory has been low since the early nineteenth century' (Quilligan, 1992), it underpins many aspects of modern life, as Brenda Machosky points out: 'embedded in museum displays, providing structure for scientific thought, underlying the legal system, evading the hegemony of the idea, allegory is thriving in the twenty-first century' (Machosky, ed., 2010). Machosky's argument is potent given the number of recent studies on the topic (Machosky, ed., 2010; Tambling, 2004 and 2010; Struck and Copeland, eds., 2010), which have served to renew interest in the various forms and uses of allegory across the arts, humanities and languages. As such, this event will consider allegory in fictional and non-fictional literature, film, art, history, religion and cultural theory.

We warmly invite proposals for twenty minute papers from postgraduates and early career researchers from any branch of arts and humanities. Key topics may include (but are not limited to):

• Myths and fables from Ancient Greece to modern film
• National allegories in colonial and postcolonial contexts
• Medieval and Renaissance secular or religious allegories
• Allegorical concepts of history
• Theories of allegory and allegoresis

• Sign, symbol, emblem and allegory

Please send your abstract of 250-300 words to <whyallegorynow@gmail.com> along with your name, affiliation and title of paper.

The deadline for submissions is Monday January 3rd 2011. Acknowledgement of receipt of proposal will be sent. Selection of papers will be done by Monday January 24th 2011.

We are also delighted to offer two bursaries of £100 which will be awarded to postgraduate speakers on any Renaissance-related topics courtesy of the Society for Renaissance Studies, http://www.rensoc.org.uk and two bursaries of £50 to postgraduate speakers on history-related topics courtesy of the Royal Historical Society http://www.royalhistoricalsociety.org.

If you have any questions regarding the conference and/or proposal, please direct all enquiries to Jade Munslow Ong and Matthew Whittle at <whyallegorynow@gmail.com>.

(posted 6 October 2010, updated 21 December 2010)

The Research Groups I.D.E.A. ("Interdisciplinarité dans les études anglophones"), Nancy-Université) and ECRITURES, Université Paul Verlaine-Metz are announcing a call for papers for their international conference on the theme: “London-New York: Exchanges and Cross-Cultural Influences in the Arts and Literature”.

London and New York are two contrasting metropolises. They have been the cultural centres of many fruitful meetings, confrontations and exchanges since the colonial period. In the field of art and literature, what immediately comes to mind are the cultural exchanges between Paris and New York or between Paris, London and New York. The twentieth century saw the great "Paris-New York" exhibition held at the Pompidou Centre in 1977, followed by the "Paris-Berlin" and "Paris-Moscow" exhibitions in 1978 and 1979. Prior to the 20th century, one may also evoke the Paris-London axis and the strong artistic links that existed between the two capitals. At the dawn of the twentieth century, with the rise of modernism, the city of New York became the emblem and focal point of modernity. As a result, the exchanges between the three cultural capitals developed considerably.
The aim of this international conference is to study and analyze the cultural links and influences between London and New York in the arts and literature, a field which seems to have been overlooked by critics and academics alike. The relations between the two cities will be tackled in terms of dynamics and exchanges of ideas on the one hand, and of cultural, literary and artistic echoes and interactions, on the other. The conference will be the opportunity to examine the following issues: how does the work of an exiled writer, musician, playwright, director, or painter convey his/her sense of exile? How can uprootedness be a source of intellectual and creative emulation and stimulation for artists? This may concern the expatriate literary circle composed of key figures such as Henry James, Ezra Pound or T. S. Eliot in London, and the meetings between English and American artists and writers in New York. Other topics may include the opening of workshops in London (Benjamin West) and in New York (Stanley William Hayter), the cosmopolitan spirit that was very much alive at different times in both cities, and the exchanges between musicians (for instance, the influence of jazz on so-called serious music). How did/do the migrations from one city to the other contribute to the emergence of new forms of writing (stylistic and formal experimentation in poetry, painting and music)? How does one culture interact with the other? In what ways is the city a place of artistic fecundity, hybridization and crossbreeding? Will a work conceived for Broadway or the West End be performed and staged in the same way on both sides of the Atlantic? What are the modes of cultural transfer between the two cities? Finally, in our era of globalization, are the intercultural links and exchanges between London and New York still relevant today or are they just the resurgence of bygone days?
We insist that submitted proposals should focus on the intercultural and interdisciplinary links between the two metropolises.
Possible topic areas include:
Half-hour presentations can be delivered in English or in French. A selection of papers will be published in Regards croisés sur le monde anglophone, by Presses Universitaires de Nancy.
Please send your proposals (title and 300-word abstract) as well as a biographical note of 150 words to:
Deadline for proposals: Thursday 30 September 2010.

This conference will consider religious poetry in English from its origins to now, including poets such as anonymous Medieval poets, John Donne, George Herbert, John Milton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, T.S. Eliot, R.S. Thomas, Elizabeth Jennings, Geoffrey Hill, and others.

What links can one observe between poetry and religious texts? The poetic quality of sacred texts and the religiosity of certain poetic texts demonstrates an intersection of genres. Whether one takes up the via positiva or the via negativa, in both cases, one shall have to follow the paths of words opened by poets to reach to the divine. The point will be to examine how faith can influence the poetic aesthetic, which it illuminates or darkens. From these internal landscapes which leave the Word as final key for reading, it will be useful to discern contrasts between more or less Manichean visions of good and evil, while following, word by word, the scriptural pilgrimage that covers the degradation of virtue into vice or the progression of sin to redemption which art, in the image of religion, sometimes allows. The struggle between the sacred and the profane, will enable the reader to perceive all the aspirations of faith, while the poet, persuaded of his vocation just like any religious person, tries to carry out his or her task, whose ultimate goal is to come closer to the divine mystery which at times appears under the pen, and at others, seems infinitely remote.

- How does a poem best express belief?
- Must the reader of religious poetry be expected to suspend disbelief (as T.S. Eliot suggested) ?
- Can the borderline between faith and doubt be defined?
- What is the role of indirectly religious poetry?
- What is the relationship of religious poetry to the Psalms? to the Bible? to liturgical texts? to Mediaeval Passion plays?
- How "theological," "apologetic" or persuasive can a poem be?
- How does a poem draw the reader toward religious meditation?
- Which poems in English were influenced by other Christian classics such as Augustine, Dante, Eckhart, Loyola, Pascal, Renan, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, or Péguy?
- Does the Christian poet seek to make religious belief part of the creative process, affecting concepts of poiesis and ekphrasis?
- How do religious poets use blasphemy? humour and irony? rhetoric? figures of speech?

Proposals for papers (approximately 300 words) should be accompanied by a short bio-bibliographical statement, and sent to all three members of the scientific committee before 1December 2010:

- Anita Higgie (ICP/CORPUS/CRPA) <higgie@noos.fr>
- Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec (ICP/Université de Caen/LARCA) <jkilgorecaradec@gmail.com>
- Cathy Parc (ICP) <c.parc@yahoo.fr>

Submission of written papers will be required 2 months after the conference, according to specifications given by the organizers to participants.

(posted 19 July 2010)

"If we -- and now I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others -- do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world." (James Baldwin, TheFire Next Time, 1963)

"a call to action, a call to consciousness." (Assotto Saint, Spells of Voodoo Doll, 1996)

Bridging the 2009 Conference in Bremen on black epistemologies and struggles, and the 2013 Conference in Atlanta, the 9th International Conference of the Collegium for African American Research will be held in Paris in 2011. Placing the emphasis on the conditions of social transformation in the black world, it will articulate two main axes of analysis and reflection: the intersection of a socioeconomic approach with a multicultural and identity-focused perspective; the relation between theorizing processes and material transformation, between intellectual activity and political action, and between different communities with specific agendas.

The conference will highlight the recognition of the central historical contribution of black feminist studies and movements, notably lesbian, in the American and South African contexts. In both their sought after inclusiveness and productive failures they are exemplary of individual change and collective reformation. This goal, once pursued by Audre Lorde and James Baldwin, and still to be reached, is here emblematized by the figures of desire and the black states. In the wake of Lorde's esthetical and political alliance of the self and the community, of Baldwin's desiring consciousness and ethics of inclusion, desire and the black states are together rich with conscious revolutions to come. They work as immaterial and physical orientations, symbols of shifting identifications, of the diversity of black lived experiences. The black states of desire therefore set out to describe lack turned into impetus and actualization, the movement from what exists to what can be imagined and created, from words to the building stone, from statement to establishment.

In this broad perspective, we invite proposals from scholars in any discipline, but also from intellectual, artistic and cultural conversants, and socioeconomic, political, and institutional actors who aim at anchoring Black studies and creations in a social world to be concretely changed with innovative projects. Without being limited, either in number, scope, nor aims, the desired states of being black that the conference hopes to sketch will be related to the key notions of dispossession, circulation, and transformation. Cardinal poles of the worldwide black experience, they also open up the space for mapping and materializing the much-needed black utopias of the 21st century.
Black islands and alternatives to isolation may be one such. Instrumental in slavery, colonization, and in the shaping of modernity, with its long-ingrained racism, isolation has taken many forms including political subjugation, socioeconomic subordination and de-historicization, as the media coverage of the recent Haitian earthquake has shown. It has overshadowed that Saint-Domingue turned Haiti was the first black republic whose social transformation was spread throughout the worldwide 20th century anti-colonial movements of national liberation, especially African. The sister islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique may represent the Haitian utopia passed on to the black 21st century.
This is what seems to prove the February 2009 Martiniquan Manifest, which, among others, Patrick Chamoiseau and Edouard Glissant signed in the heat of the Guadeloupean collective mobilization. Its key word, poetical and political, is Lyannaj, which signifies in Creole dynamic and praxis linking individuals, peoples, communities. This urgent need of linkage has also always been carried through the African American text -- from Zora Neale Hurston's polyphonic voices to Toni Morrison's re-membered selves and others, from Richard Wright's political commitments to Melvin Dixon's instruments of love.
In opposition to the further dispossession of the dispossessed, and in order to generate a worldwide community based on solidarity, the circulation of black experiences, past and present, is thus of paramount importance. It also needs to include other islanders, unacknowledged or vanishing, such as Blacks of and in Europe, gays and lesbians in Africa or persons with AIDS, whose fundamental rights are denied. Cut off from the wealth and health of the North, they all call out for justice and, from their specific situations and conditions, for a profound reflection on communities -- be they inherited or elective: how do they culturally intersect? How can they be politically articulated?
To reach the necessary coalition-building between black communities, it is necessary to consider the multiple identifications and identities that found them, and the cross-cutting issues that impact them. While revisiting the African American literary esthetics of optics, through which things unseen are made evident, contemporary writers and artists, often activists as well, such as Essex Hemphill, Assotto Saint, or Sapphire, have complied with this double agenda. Their commitment to both art and the world prolongs the organic bond between literature and sociopolitical struggles, while eschewing academic aporias, conceptualizations disconnected from black reality, or, up until recently, the delusions promised by the proclaimed advent of, in the United States, the postrace, and in South Africa, the postcolony.
Abstracts should be sent to the principal organizer of the conference at: <jprocchi@wanadoo.fr>.
Presenters are expected to pay conference fees and membership to the Collegium for African American Research. More information can be found at: http://caar-web.org

The CRILA short story research group (JE2536) of the Université d'Angers, France, will be hosting an international conference in collaboration with Edge Hill University, U.K. on "The Figure of the Author in the Short Story in English," 8-9 April 2011 at La Maison des Sciences Humaines, Université díAngers, France

The specter of the author has haunted the scene of contemporary literary criticism since the advent of 20th century authorial displacements. William K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley heralded the age of Anglo-American New Criticism with The Intentional Fallacy (1946) and the The Affective Fallacy (1949), insisting that the meaning of a literary text is to be found in the textís status as an independent artifact and not in authorial intention. The author is later explicitly declared defunct in France with Roland Barthes' infamous The Death of the Author (1967), voicing the concerns of post-structuralism where the author is écriture rather than a historical, psychological figure. This tendentious essay, along with Michel Foucault's "Author function" in his 1969 essay "What is an Author?" helped foster an aura of suspicion and controversy around  authorial identity, and the repercussions of authorial ìdeathî or ìdisappearanceî continue to ripple through literary criticism today. The author has "died" only to be replaced by a proliferation of conceptual guises: "implied author," "text," "structure," "intentionality," or even, perversely, "reader." French scholar Antoine Compagnon even suggests in Le Demon de la Théorie (1998) that the author is like a demon who is virtually impossible to expel from literary criticism. In the meantime, the rise of Creative Writing as a distinctive form of critical discourse in the US, UK, Australia and elsewhere, seems to place the biographical author once more at centre stage.

Wherever we turn, we are confronted with the question of  authorship, particularly if we juxtapose criticism with the public sphere, where the expression ìdeath of the authorî meets with bewilderment as readers rush to book signings and author events Many authors actively cultivate authorial personas through websites, blogs, facebook and twitter . This conference proposes to re-investigate the question of authorship through the lens of the short story, as the brevity of the genre and its emphasis on form seem to intensify an impression of authorial presence. As Charles May has observed, short stories are "more dependent on craftsmanship and exhibit more authorial control than novels" (May 1994, xxvi.). We propose to bring together literary authors and scholars to examine the issue of authorial manifestations in the short story. Some questions to consider might include, but are not limited to, the following:

What concepts, such as the "implied author," have emerged in the wake of authorial "death," and how might these concepts be re-evaluated today?

What role does authorship (individual, corporate, anonymous, erroneous) play in both the composition and reception of literary works?

How might we draw connections between the theorization and study of authorship and the critical study of specific fictional works?

In what ways do short narratives amplify or attenuate perceptions of the authorial figure?
Has the gap between authors of fiction and the study of authorship been adequately addressed over the last 50 years? How do we perceive this gap in contemporary critical circles? How might we confront the perspectives of fiction writers and critics?

How do political contexts or concerns (race, class, gender...) affect perceptions of authorship? How does the authorial figure function in politically saturated fictional texts?

How do historical or cultural contexts affect concepts of authorship? In what ways have modern and contemporary writers recovered historical modes of authorship? (For example, contemporary appropriations of fairy tale or other forms of collective narrative (oral or written)).

How do metafictional/metatextual modes allow us to contemplate the question of authorship? How do such modes affect perceptions of authorial presence or absence?
We also welcome presentations dealing with authorial issues arising from translation or cinematographic adaptation and studies of authorial performance or marketing techniques. Presentations from short story authors are particularly welcome.
A selection of articles will be published in two peer review journals: Short Story in Theory and Practice (http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/shortstory/shortfiction), published by Intellect Press, and The Journal of the Short Story in English (http://jsse.revues.org/), published by Université d'Angers.
Paper proposals of approximately 300 words in English, followed by a short bio-bibliography, should be sent to the following conference organizers for 15 December 2010:

(posted 13 September 2010)

Intersections of Body and Mind have been revisited lately in a variety of discourses. Both the body and the mind can be seen as carriers of cultural codes, markers of identity and traces of diverse historical and theoretical contexts.

This intriguing interconnection has been approached in philosophy and aesthetic theory, anthropology, sociology and history, literature and psychoanalysis, gender studies, semiotics, performance studies, visual arts, the media, and others. Currently, burgeoning intercultural encounters have moved this nexus as a problem into new focus.

- representations of traumatic experiences inflicted through history, culture, and politics on the body and the mind;
- cultural memory vs. cultural amnesia;
- reworking the past: truth and reconciliation in cultures in distress;
- pain: the limits of language and intersubjective communication;
- violence, wounds, and healing.

<odymir@uaic.ro>  (Prof. Dr. Odette Blumenfeld),
<Monika.Reif-Huelser@uni-konstanz.de> (Herder Prof. Dr. Monika Reif-Huelser),
<veronica.t_popescu@yahoo.com> (Lect. Dr. Veronica Popescu),
<sorinachiper@gmail.com> (Lect. Sorina Chiper).

(posted 18 May 2010, updated 9 August 2010)

An interdisciplinary conference organized by the NDA-funded FCMAP Group of Investigators and  by the BCCW Research Group, Brunel University, London.

- Will Self
- Fay Weldon
- Barbara Czarniawska (Gothenburg Research Institute),
- Gillian Crossby (Director, Centre for Policy on Ageing),
- Keith Richards (Third Age Trust),
- Dorothy Sheridan (Director, Mass Observation),
- Pat Thane (Institute of Historical Research)

As representations of ageing circulate culturally as social and literary narratives, they radically impact upon identity, agency, attitudes, ideology, policy and even one's quality of life. Fiction, biography, academic criticism and other discourses contribute to this cultural modality. Critical and qualitative analyses of such narratives help us understand ageing both as currently experienced and the emerging shifts that indicate ways in which it may well be experienced and represented in the future.

This interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore literary, filmic and other representations of ageing, addressing various questions including the following. In what ways can literature help to provide us with a longitudinal perspective on the changing experience of ageing in the post-war period?  How are representations of ageing changing as we move through the early twenty-first century? In what ways are writers refiguring our imagination of the ageing body, as well as the social and physical spaces it inhabits?  In what ways does literature figure ageing as a gendered experience, and in what ways have feminist and gender critics and theorists responded to these representations?  What connections can be drawn between depictions of ageing in fiction and those in the other creative arts?  How far can post-war and contemporary writers be argued to have perpetuated, or to have disturbed, sedimented stereotypes of ageing-as-senescence?  What light can literature shed on the complex relationships between postcoloniality, globalisation and the changing experience of ageing in Britain and internationally?  Does it make sense to speak of ageing subcultures, and how might literature help to shed light on the differential contexts and experiences of ageing  in contemporary culture?  In what ways have literary texts addressed the thorny questions of ageing and disability/capability?

New Cultures of Ageing will bring together literary specialists with academics and professionals from other disciplines, including social science and social policy to examine the changing scene of ageing in contemporary Britain.  Our common understanding is that both social narratives of ageing and actual conditions of life are in flux. By providing a forum for mapping that flux, this event will investigate the necessity for future-directed inflections in literary studies and across many disciplines.

Add your name and affiliation; use the following subject line as the submissions will be sorted automatically: ‘New Cultures of Ageing conference FCMAP Brunel’

Natalia Clarke, FCMAP Administrator,
School of Arts, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH
Natalia.Clarke@brunel.ac.uk

(posted 3 June 2010)

Plenary Speakers:
Papers are invited for a two-day conference on the writings of John McGahern. Submissions are welcome on all aspects of McGahern's fiction, and how it relates both to canonical and contemporary Irish literature.

It is misleading to dwell too much on the notorious banning of The Dark by the Irish censor in 1965. By the time of McGahern’s death in 2006, his literary reputation in Ireland was secure -- there is now an international summer school devoted to his work. McGahern has also won critical acclaim in France, but his position in Britain is more elusive. Although some British writers and critics have written admiringly of McGahern's work, his fiction has been somewhat overlooked or misrepresented: there has been a certain asymmetry to his critical reception on either side of the Irish Sea. This conference, the first of its kind to be held in Britain, will begin to redress this imbalance, enquiring into McGahern’s role both as an Irish writer and a writer in English.

•    McGahern's engagement with, or disengagement from, Irish modernism.
•    That 'dubious enterprise, the Irish Short Story' (JM): McGahern’s contribution to the genre, Irish or not.
•    Representations of family, gender, church, country and city, nation.
•    The sacred and the profane; ritual.
•    'The universal is the local, but with the walls taken away' (JM, paraphrasing Miguel Torga).
•    The Law of the Father; the lost Mother.
•    Art and politics: the ideology of McGahern's aesthetic.
•    How McGahern's fiction relates to wider debates about tradition and modernity in Irish studies.
•    McGahern's critical reception in Ireland, Britain and elsewhere.
•    McGahern's library: Tomás Ó Criomhthain, Ernie O' Malley, Alistair Macleod, John Williams, Forrest Reid, and others.
•    Comparisons to and influences on contemporary Irish writers.
•    Memories voluntary and involuntary: approaches to Memoir.

Please submit an abstract (max. 400-words) before 17 December 2010 to Dr Richard Robinson, Department of English Language and Literature, School of Arts and Humanities, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK <r.p.robinson@swansea.ac.uk>.

(posted 13 September 2010, updated 15 October 2010)

The Sixth International IDEA Conference will be held at Istanbul Kültür University, Istanbul Turkey on 13 - 15 April 2011.
The Conference will be jointly hosted by The Department of English Language and Literature of  Istanbul Kültür University and The English Language and Literature Research Association of Turkey (IDEA).

The Conference will address topics from the fields of English Studies, Literatures in English, Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, Linguistics and Translation Studies in English.

(posted 21 October 2010, updated 7 December 2010)

John Barrell, York University; Roger Ebbatson, Loughborough University; Nick Groom, Exeter University; Ronald Hutton, Bristol University; Bridget Keegan, Creighton University; Donna Landry, University of Kent, Canterbury; Ruth Robbins, Lees Metropolitan University.

Performers, musicians and artists provisionally booked: Billy Bragg, Eliza Carthy, John Kirkpatrick, Hugh Lupton, Ceri Rhys Matthews, Chris Wood. Others to be announced. In addition to conference panels, there will be music and related workshops.

While the histories of Scots and Irish rural and local culture are well documented, and Celtic tradition celebrated, less explored are the traditional ways of life of English and Welsh rural or local communities and identities in terms of diasporic event. 'English & Welsh Diaspora' aims to address all aspects of rural and regional experience, consciousness, and representation of displacement, dispossession, the transformation or destruction of communities, the idea of community, across a millennium of change and loss, from the Norman Invasion and the Harrowing of the North, the loss of Welsh and the decline of the language community in Wales, to more recent historical and cultural events, such as the closure of mines and factories, the gentrification of villages, and the closure of post offices. There will, in addition be the exploration of the historical transformation of the landscape, the relation of land to identity, regional as opposed to national identity, folklore, folk practices and oral tradition through song, dance, story-telling and forms of ritual and seasonal practice

Papers are welcome from all humanities disciplines, including, but not restricted to, English, History, Geography, Cultural Studies. Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following: Representations of agricultural labouring classes; regional narratives and representations; Brythonic traditions; George Eliot & the midlands; landscape and identity; traditional song; folklore and belief; seasonal ritual and practice, oral traditions; enclosure; myth and tradition; changing ways of life; John Clare; the village; Thomas Hardy; dispossession & displacement; the remains of Anglo-Saxon culture & language; riots, rebellion, & protest; agricultural & labouring class poetry; William Cobbett's rural rides; cricket & rural life; de-Cymricization; local and communal subjectivities; 'documentary literature' from Woodforde to Blythe; mummers & Morris; modern English & Welsh rural life; parish records & local history; disappearance of the Welsh language; the Poor law; cultural memory & oral tradition; charity & the poor; politics & policing; rural & regional dialect; parish life; gypsies, witches, poachers, highwaymen & other demonized groups; rural crafts; technology & the destruction of traditional agricultural practices.

(posted 13 May '09)

Ars Identitatis is a recently founded independent non-profit association based in Paris (France) aiming at becoming one of the leading promoters of high quality research on identity in its different aspects.

We intend to publish a series of paperback volumes entitled Contemporary Identities (two volumes per year, one on a specific subject, the other miscellaneous). In order to make the selection process for the volumes as competitive as possible, we will organise a preliminary conference, which will take place in Paris at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, from 13 to 16 April 2011.

Send us your abstract on topics that fit in the wide range of how Identity is constructed and interpreted in the contemporary world. We welcome enquiries on any type of identity: ethnic, religious or non-religious, spiritual, sexual, political, identity related to gender, family, friendship, street culture, art, fashion, age, mentality, economy, war, crime, love, comparisons between mentalities of the same communities in different historical or economical periods, heroes, saints, myths, etc.

We accept both case studies as well as more theoretical approaches.

After the conference, the panellists will participate in the selection process and choose the best papers in order to create coherent and attractive publications. 

Every panel proposal should contain at least three abstracts. Individual abstracts should be of no more than 450 words in length. Ars Identitatis encourages also submissions by younger and competitive scholars and postgraduates.

Those who want to submit a panel proposal are kindly requested to send us a short Curriculum Vitae (one page) together with a presentation of the panel and the abstracts of the papers. Those who intend to send individual abstracts are kindly requested to submit a short bio note.

The deadline for sending abstracts is February 20, but we encourage early submissions, in order to allow the selection commission to have enough time for deliberation. 

We will acknowledge receipt of your abstract. In case you don't receive any reply from us after 3 days, please resend your abstract.

The deadline for registration for the conference is March 13. We are making efforts to keep as low as possible the logistics costs related to the conference and to the publication production process.
Please send your materials and adress your enquiries to Ms. Silvia Stoica (President, Ars Identitatis), Ms. Léa Agboh (Consultant) and Mr. Ionut Untea (PhD candidate, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes) at ars.identitatis@yahoo.com . For more information and updates please visit http://www.ars.identitatis.org

(posted 31 January 2011)

This conference aims to map and celebrate the achievements of contemporary women novelists writing after Angela Carter. From A. L. Kennedy and Nicola Barker to Sarah Waters and Ali Smith, the voices of these fine writers have established an intellectually demanding literary generation with its own distinctive imagination.

Claire Colebrook (Penn State)
Kaye Mitchell (Manchester)
Emma Parker (Leicester)

Fay Weldon
A. L. Kennedy
Tiffany Murray
Susanna Jones

Papers are invited on authors and texts concentrating on themes such as gender and sexuality; feminist discourses and criticism; reading culture, the publishing industry, literary prizes and retail trade; genre (popular fiction; chick lit etc); class; ethnicity; form and aesthetics; intertextuality; postmodernity and the contemporary; Otherness; place and space; memory and history; violence and trauma; ethics and morality; humour et cetera.
Send abstracts for papers of 250 words, together with a brief biographical note, to Sebastian Groes at the (email) address below, before 28 February, 2011. Proposals for special panels are welcome. A limited number of postgraduate student bursaries are available. Requests for early notification of acceptance for international delegates are welcome. For further information and registration details, please see the website below or contact:

Dr Sebastian Groes,
Department of English Literature and Creative Writing
Roehampton University
Digby Stuart
Fincham 303
Roehampton Lane           
London SW15 5PH            

Sebastian Groes (Roehampton);
Maria Soultouki (Roehampton);
Peter Childs (Gloucestershire);
Julia Noyce (Roehampton)

(posted 22 November 2010, revised 14 February 2011)

- DM Thomas, author of The White Hotel: Friday 15 April, 6 pm (Download the DM Thomas Event poster)
- Professor David Lomas, University of Manchester

How can we understand and take stock of the legacy of psychoanalysis for culture at large? Since its inception in the late nineteenth century, psychoanalytic thought has come to exert a powerful influence over critical discourse in the humanities, becoming one of the key theoretical resources in the analysis of art, cinema, literature and popular culture. However, comparatively little sustained attention has been given to the ways in which the variety of cultural forms have themselves registered, reflected and refracted the impact of Freud’s discovery, or have been fundamentally (re)shaped by it.

This conference will bring together clinicians, creative practitioners, and scholars from a range of disciplines in order to explore Freud’s cultural legacy: that is, a. the ways in which psychoanalysis has influenced, re-inflected or transformed certain modes of aesthetic practice and cultural production outside the clinic; and b. the transmission, development and interrogation of psychoanalysis within creative cultural forms which are not explicitly bounded by theoretical orthodoxies or therapeutic imperatives. In short, "Working Through Psychoanalysis" seeks to examine the cultural life and afterlife one of the most far reaching and widely recognised developments in the history of medicine. Provisionally suspending the classical interpretative paradigm whereby psychoanalysis is positioned as a critical lens through which to read cultural phenomena, "Working Through Psychoanalysis" aims to explore the ways in which the psychoanalytic discovery has itself reconfigured the frame of cultural reference and creative possibility, and to examine the myriad interpretations, disseminations and (mis)representations of psychoanalysis attempted within the cultural sphere during the last hundred years or so – from major aesthetic movements to pop-cultural manifestations.

•    The impact of psychoanalysis on the development of particular forms of cultural production (cinema, literature, plastic arts…) and/or particular creative practitioners in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
•    Creative reflections and refractions (fictional, visual, poetic, dramatic etc) of the history of psychoanalysis, of key figures in the movement, of psychoanalytic concepts, of the analyst/analysand relationship, the psychotherapeutic process etc.
•    The increasing tendency for analysts to use creative work to explore and examine theoretical territory (Bollas, Ettinger, Fink, Kristeva etc).
•    The creative possibilities which are opened up – and those which might be limited – by the conceptual inventions of psychoanalytic theory.
•    The epistemological relationship between creative or fictional representations of psychoanalysis (e.g. in literature and film) and the ‘theoretical fictions’ by means of which psychoanalysis props up its own conceptual apparatuses.
•    The extent to which creative reactions to or “workings-though” of psychoanalysis have generated/might generate legitimate interrogations and developments of psychoanalytic theory.
•    The (mis)representations of Freud and psychoanalysis in the popular media (television, film, radio, the press) and at the Freud museums in Vienna and London.
•    The social, intellectual, political etc exigencies which govern the popular fascination with Freud and psychoanalysis and/or the refraction of them in specific cultural domains.

Please send abstracts of 300-500 words to <workingthroughpsychoanalysis@gmail.com> by 25 March 2011 (NEW EXTENDED DEADLINE).

(posted 7 August 2010, updated 24 September 2010, 22 November 2010, 3 December 2010, 3 February 2011, 4 April 2011)

An international interdisciplinary conference organized by EMMA in collaboration with CRISES and DIPRALANG (Montpellier III, France), with the support of the French Society of English Stylistics.

The Platonic critique, while denouncing certain aspects of the persuasive approach of discourse (the rhetorical and sophistic practices), introduces the possibility of a truth-oriented philosophical rhetoric (especially in Gorgias and Phedre). Following upon these critical considerations, the philosophical and rhetorical traditions have then taken two distinct directions as regards the technical use of language.

One approach is focused on the danger inherent to any technical working-out of discourse, as it can degenerate into an instrument of manipulation and deceit. The other takes into consideration the moral gain that rhetoric can generate. Isocates for instance, Pato's contemporary, claimed that to speak correctly led to correct living. At the classical age, it would seem that some philosophers saw linguistic mastery as an ethical necessity. Bacon, Pascal, Hobbes and Locke indeed promoted a certain form of "language therapy" to expose various uses and misuses of words.

In the the 20th century, these questions -- though dealt with in a different manner -- came once again to the forefront with the development of neopragmatism in the US, (critical) discourse analysis in France and Europe (Amossy, Fairclough, Wodak, van Leeuwen, van Tdijk, Meyer, etc.), and, following Perelman's work, with the re-emergence of rhetoric. Can the revival of rhetoric thus be perceived as an ethical necessity? While Plato denounced the gap that sophistic rhetoric introduced between speech and reality, contemporary approaches to discourse aim at highlighting this gap, revealing the manipulative linguistic effects, be they conscious (spinning strategies, political use of stereotypes motivated by self-interest) or unconscious (expression of norms and stereotypes, stigmatisation practices, classifying discourse, etc.). Some of these approaches indeed seek to deconstruct pre-established classifications and renegotiate the assigned social positions for a potential reinvention of self and others. Can one therefore speak of a certain ethical progress having been made in contemporary discourse analysis?

The conference will be an occasion to confront French and foreign methodologies on topics centred on the links between ethical questioning and public discourse in a historical perspective. The proposals can be related to three major periods (ancient rhetoric, classical age, or the contemporary era) and can either take the shape of a practical analysis of discourse belonging to all genres -- literary, political, media-related -- or deal with theoretical aspects discussing the debates that ethical questioning has given rise to at all ages.

- Is ethical questioning stable throughout the different historical periods? Has its nature changed?
- If, in the age of Antiquity, rhetorical technique was a way to win over the other at all costs, what  exactly was the status of the other and what can be said about the image of the orator?
- Has ethical questioning disappeared from public discursive practice?
- In what way can contemporary discourse analysis -- itself a product of the discourse analysis of the 70s -- be said to  avour ethical questioning? Has it remained true to Plato's programme?
- What is the ethical reach of certain discourse (political, journalistic, literary, etc.)? Does rhetoric allow for an ethical
counter-interpellation? What kind of rhetorical construction/production of otherness could engender a reinvention of self and other?

Frans van Eemeren (Amsterdam)
Norman Fairclough (Lancaster)
Roselyn Koren (Tel Aviv)
Marie-Pierre Noël (Montpellier III)
Ruth Wodak (Lancaster)

Thomas Bénatouïl (Nancy II), Pierre Chiron (Paris Est), Diane Davis (Austin), Gilles Declercq (Paris III), Françoise Douay-Soublin (Université de Provence), Jean-Jacques Lecercle (Paris Ouest-Nanterre), Carlos Lévy (Paris IV-Sorbonne), Martin Reisigl (Vienna), Ruth Wodak (Lancaster).

<charles.guerin@univ-montp3.fr> (antiquity)
<gilles.siouffi@univ-montp3.fr> (modern age)
<sandrine.sorlin@univ-montp3.fr> (contemporary period)

(posted 28 May 2010)

The 4th biennial Media History conference will focus on the ways in which people have understood the social, cultural and political roles of the media over the past five centuries. The concept of 'the media' will be interpreted broadly, so as to include newspapers, magazines and one-off publications which included news and information, as well as manuscript, aural, visual, and broadcast and other electronic sources.

A great deal of work has been done by scholars on the institutional, political and cultural history of various forms of media. 'Perception, Reception and Deception' will build on this literature to explore the ways in which print, manuscript, visual representations and the broadcast media have been understood, conceptualised, and imaginatively represented in the societies in which they were produced. It will, in other words, focus not on media production but on the reception, depiction and perception of the media by individuals and groups of individuals in a variety of different contexts over time.

How have readers, consumers, and the industry itself framed arguments about the media as a force for good (or evil) at different points in time? Have contemporaries always seen the media as an agent of change, or is there a counter-history of the media to be written in terms of promoting conservatism, deference and order? How have people understood and represented the media in terms of concepts of personal and geographical space, time and changing belief systems?  Can we think ‘internationally’ about the similarities and differences between perceptions of the media in different states and nations over time, or is the media still best understood and examined in largely local or regional contexts?   How, in short, have men and women answered in different contexts the apparently simple questions, ‘what is the media, and what is it for?’

Abstracts, of no more than 200 words for papers of between 20 to 25 minutes duration, should be sent by close of business on 30 September 2010 to <Mediahistory2011@gmail.com>.

Additional enquiries can be directed to one or more of the following:

 (posted 24 May 2010)

To celebrate the centennial of Ameen Rihani's Book of Khalid, the Department of English, Translation and Education at Notre Dame University - Lebanon (http://www.ndu.edu.lb), invites scholars to the Second International Conference on Lebanese-American Literary Figures, titled "Ameen Rihani's Arab-American Legacy: From Romanticism to Postmodernism."

Rihani’s travelogues, correspondence, poetic, and prose works, especially The Book of Khalid, testify to his deep sense of Romanticism and Modernism. His eagerness to launch a cultural, political, economic, social, and spiritual revolution, one which would question Western and Eastern traditional norms and propose new systems of thought, is an expression of his universality.

Suitable topics for twenty-minute presentations related to Ameen Rihani's poetic and prose works, which exhibit Rihani’s originality as a Romantic, Modernist and Postmodernist precursor, may include but are not limited to the following themes:

The Romantic Dimensions of Rihani’s Works:

The Modernist / Postmodernist Dimensions of Rihani’s Works:

The Transnational / Transcultural Dimensions of Rihani's Works:

Conference Proceedings Volume: after the conference, participants will be invited to submit their manuscripts for possible inclusion (deadlines to be determined later) in a proceedings volume. Papers will be reviewed and selected by the Editorial Board.

(posted 28 May 2010)

The Moroccan Inter-university Network of English (MINE) is pleased to announce the organization of its annual conference. The aim of the conference is to bring together researchers from a wide variety of disciplines and specializations to explore the complex affiliations between language, culture, and identity. Over the last few decades, the globalization of media and mass communication, the fast growth of international economic markets, and the emergence of radical political discourses worldwide have exerted a profound and unprecedented impact on national cultures and languages as well as on the imagined sense of universal and communal identities. Academic responses to these transformations have been as rich and stimulating as divergent. This conference provides a platform for rich and animated discussions on the dialectics of language, culture, and identity in their local and global contexts.

* Cultures and Identities in Second Language Education
* Cultural and linguistic diversity
* Identity and linguistic variation
* Identity and the colonial experience
* Languages and cultures in contact
* Multilingualism, multiculturalism and globalization
* Cultural translation
* Cross-Cultural Communication
* Minority Studies
* Gender Studies
* Literary Studies

- 20 minute papers
- 60 minute workshops
- Poster sessions
- Book exhibition

(1) Title of the paper
(2) Name of the author(s)
(3) Affiliation of the author(s)
(4) E-mail address
(5) Contact phone number

Submissions should be sent by e-mail (as Word attachments) to <munivnet@gmail.com>. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or fill out the online form.

- Submission of abstracts: January 25th, 2011
- Notification of acceptance: February 15th, 2011

· conference pack, including a conference CD
· coffee break refreshments
· welcome party

Hotel reservations will be made by the organizers upon request. Prices range from 40 to 70 Euros per night (single or double room, breakfast included). If you are interested in booking or paying before, please let us know to send you our Bank swift and account.

(posted 14 November 2010)