Keynote speakers: Stephen Arata (Virginia), Joseph Bristow (UCLA),  Regenia Gagnier (Exeter), Catherine Maxwell (Queen Mary, London)

The initial reception of 'decadent' writing in both France and England was characterized by a focus on form and the importance of the poets of the late Roman Empire. From Theophile Gautier's Preface to the 1868 edition of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal to Arthur Symons's ‘The Decadent Movement in Literature’ and Paul Borget's famous delineation of decadent writing attempts to articulate a 'decadent poetics' were central to the definition of this new literature. Yet in recent years our understanding of decadence has been occluded by the focus on cultural politics and sexual transgression, which continue to dominate academic criticism of the fin de siècle. This conference seeks to return to the Victorian interest in language, poetics and form as the key to understanding decadence and aestheticism as literary phenomena. The focus here will be on both poetry and prose of the period and we particularly encourage those interested in marginal and forgotten writers of the period, along with the debates on the relationship between poetics and a culture in decline. In an attempt to outline a decadent poetics, we also seek to expand and complicate the canon of ‘'ecadent' writers who dominate prevailing versions of the Victorian fin de siècle.

- education and language;
- Victorians and Roman literature;
- Decadent prosody;
- Decadent and Modernist poetics;
- Aestheticist poetics;
- transatlantic Decadence;
- fin-de-siècle philology/linguistics;
- politics of Decadence and Aestheticism;
- satires of Decadent form;
- print/visual cultures of Decadence;
- Decadence and new technologies;
- genetic readings of Decadence;
- archival Decadence;
- material Decadence

Proposals for panels (comprising three speakers) are also welcome -- please submit the title and a brief description of the panel as well as abstracts for the individual papers. Speakers (whether part of a proposed panel or not) are asked to include a one-page CV with full contact details, institutional affiliation (where applicable) and a list of relevant publications.

(posted 9 June 2010)

Prof. Dr. Peter Becker (Johannes Kepler Universität Linz)
Prof. Dr. David Schmid (University of Buffalo)
Dr. Niall Scott (University of Central Lancashire)
Dr. Margrit Shildrik (Queen's University, Belfast)

n current theories of violence and crime, the monstrous has come to signify the non-human or the amalgamation of the human and its 'other', representing the embodiment of socially deviant behavior, or associated with physical disfigurement and mental disability, or excessive physical strength and exceptional intellectual capacity. Consequently, the monstrous has always played into the image/portrayal of the criminal, and has always been in the centre of attention - generating fear, repulsion, as well as fascination. Engaging with the prevailing antagonisms and dichotomies that surround and the monstrous, this interdisciplinary conference seeks to re-think, re-evaluate and reposition the correlation of this concept with issues of criminality and violence. We welcome proposals that consider the monstrous and its position in the discourse of violence and crime in relation to contemporary theoretical models, social and historical contexts, scientific developments, and other fictional and non-fictional influences. We are particularly interested in work that pursues an interdisciplinary approach.

The monstrous/monsters in fiction and film
Neuroscience and criminal biology
Body-modification, mutilation, dismemberment and criminality
Cyborgs, androids, technophobia, and monstrous technologies
Gothic and the monstrous
Monstrosity and exclusion -- crime as stigma
Terror, trauma, anxiety, and (social) paranoia
Containment, repression and criminal intent
The (anti-)aesthetics of monstrosity
Monstrosity and gendered crime
(Forensic) pathologies of the monstrous

Abstracts in English between 250-300 words for papers of 20 minutes to be given in English are invited by 1 November 2010. The abstract should also include a 50-word biographical note and AV requests. We will send acceptances by 1 January 2011.

(posted 29 June 2010)

Caroline McCracken-Flesher <cmf@uwyo.edu>
(307) 766-5113
fax (307) 766-3189 (attn cmf)
English Department, Box 3353    
University of Wyoming    
1000 East University Avenue    
Laramie, WY 82071
USA

Panelists will be notified immediately that their proposal has been received. Acceptances will be emailed by December 31, 2010. Early submissions are welcome, and early approval is possible. You must be registered by March 15, 2011, to appear in the conference program.

200 word proposals are invited on the theme: Walter Scott: Sheriff and Outlaw. The conference welcomes proposals from the open range of Scott studies and beyond, as we take the author into new cultural and critical territory. We particularly welcome arguments about the many ways in which Scott broke boundaries in his time, and the ways in which his work has redirected literature and culture in the years since his death.

Because this conference is all about breaking the rules, we also welcome proposals focused on other aspects of Scott.

Topics might include: Scott as innovative poet, novelist, letter writer, president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, agricultural improver, Romanticist, Scot, traveler, historian, friend, medievalist, anthropologist, etc.; Scott's contribution to ideas of landscape, architecture, or travel; his contribution to ideas of Europe and America (South, West), etc. All critical and theoretical approaches are welcome.

Include the convener’s short description, and no more than four 200-word proposals. The convener should have a reliable commitment from all participants.

Proposals should be accompanied by a short C.V. Panel proposals should include the convener's C.V., and a brief description of each speaker (university and appointment, field, major publications).

If you are a student, you may apply for a scholarship toward expenses. Submit that application along with your paper proposal.

(posted 27 March 2010)

This interdisciplinary conference will bring together researchers from a range of backgrounds to explore the work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and assess their legacy across several media.  The conference will be held in association with the Scottish Word and Image Group, and therefore papers related to the interface between word and image in the work of the PRB’s are particularly welcome.  The confirmed plenary speaker is Prof. Leonee Ormond (King's College, London).

• the work of tangential or marginal members of the PRB
• the PRB in Scotland
• the PRB and Victorian Mediaevalism
• influences on the PRB
• the influence of the PRB on painting, literature and crafts
• the PRB's relationship to parallel movements in art and literature
• the PRB as radicals and/or traditionalists
• the PRB and music
• the PRB and colour
• the PRB and design
• the PRB and publishing
• films about or influenced by the PRB
• the PRB in popular culture

The conference will also include an exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, with sketches taken from Dundee University's own holdings and the surrounding area. In addition, there will be an opportunity to see D.G. Rossetti's Dante’s Dream, the finest Pre-Raphaelite painting in Scotland, works by Millais and Joseph Paton at the newly renovated McMannus Gallery as well as other Pre-Raphaelite gems, including the recently restored St. Salvador's church, designed by George Fredrick Bodley.

- Dr. Jo. George <j.a.george@dundee.ac.uk>
- and Dr. Brian Hoyle <b.p.hoyle@dundee.ac.uk>

(posted 17 May 2010)

The Ninth World Shakespeare Congress of the International Shakespeare Association in Prague will mark the next phase in a journey through four continents. Beginning in Vancouver, this international conference has travelled every five years since 1971 to share Shakespearian scholarship, performance, and pedagogy at another great site: Washington D.C., Stratford-upon-Avon, Berlin, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Valencia and Brisbane. The culturally rich city of Prague, a new setting for the Congress in central Europe, offers a wonderful opportunity to engage in dialogue about Shakespearian reception both here and throughout the world.

The location of the Congress in Prague, where Shakespeare's plays were most probably performed during his lifetime, provides the opportunity to approach Shakespeare's theatre in the context of cultural and political relations between Elizabethan and Jacobean England and Central Europe under the Habsburg Emperor Rudolph II and later on the eve of the Thirty Years' War. Delegates will be able to trace the steps of Dr. John Dee, Edward Kelley, Edmund Campion, and Elizabeth Weston as they tour the Baroque theatres and Rosenberg castles of South Bohemia.

The Congress theme 'Renaissance Shakespeare / Shakespeare Renaissances' speaks to current debates about 'Shakespeare as Cultural Catalyst' and 'Global Shakespeare'.

· Proposals should be as detailed as possible and include a rationale as well as a list of problems or questions that the seminar, workshop or short paper (panel) session seeks to explore. They should include brief academic biographies of the proposed leaders and contributors of short papers.

· Preference will be given to proposals which, in their subject matter, reflect the international nature of the Congress. Geographical diversity in group leadership is actively encouraged so that the two leaders of a seminar, for example, may come from different countries or continents.

All proposals will be reviewed by members of the ISA Programme Committee.

· Proposals of 500 words should be sent to Dr. Nick Walton, ISA Secretary, preferably by email at: <isa@shakespeare.org.uk>
or to The Shakespeare Centre, Henley Street, Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warwickshire, CV37 6QW, United Kingdom, to arrive by 28th February 2009.
Those submitting proposals should ensure that their membership of the ISA is current.

(posted 23 Sep '08)

Spain has been chosen as a site for this Congress in recognition of Gower's unique transnational presence, as Confessio Amantis was the first English work ever translated into Continental languages -- first Portuguese, and then Castilian, both in the fifteenth century. The II International Congress of the John Gower Society has therefore a double purpose, the study of John Gower in his historical, political, social, cultural and literary context, and the promotion of a more in-depth knowledge of the Spanish and Portuguese translations of Confessio Amantis as well as the Anglo-Spanish historical, political and cultural relations in the Late Middle Ages.

- to the Organizing Committee <jgs.valladolid2011@gmail.com>
- and to RF Yeager <rfyeager@hotmail.com>.

Participants may also propose thematic panels, to include papers delivered by 3 or 4 participants. Please contact directly RF Yeager <rfyeager@hotmail.com>.
The abstracts will be evaluated by the Scientific Committee, and the authors will be notified the results of the selection process.

Submission deadline: Dec 1st 2010
Confirmation of acceptance: Jan 15th 2011
Registration period: April-June 2011

· Winthrop Wetherbee (Cornell University)
· Alastair Minnis (Yale University)
· Mª Luisa López-Vidriero Abelló (Biblioteca Real, Madrid)
· Fernando Galván Reula (Universidad of Alcalá de Henares)

(posted 30 August 2010)

The definition of a literary canon in medieval and early modern Scotland is closely connected with the definition of the Scottish nation. Attempting an assessment of medieval and early modern Scottish literature means above all dealing with a definition of this literature within a strongly defined national context: literature and nation grow together, and each contributes to the other’s definition.

Following these suggestions, we welcome papers addressing (but not necessarily restricted to) the following topics:

-    Redefining the canonical in early Scottish literature
-    One nation, many languages: issues of language and time range
-    New canons of neo-Latin and Gaelic poetry
-    Defining Older Scots
-    The ongoing circulation and adaptation of Older Scots literature
-    A tale of two nations: Scotland and England
-    Scottish-Italian relations
-    Local cultural centres: the influence of religious, educational, and legal institutions
-    The invention of literary tradition in seventeenth-century Scotland
-    Literary and linguistic theories and practices in seventeenth-century Scotland
-    Building a national epic
-    Poetry deriving from strands of Protestantism
-    Personal and political satire
-    The poetry of quietism

-    Medieval universities and the progress of learning

Alessandra Petrina
Dipartimento di Lingue e Lett. Anglo-Germaniche e Slave
Via Beato Pellegrino, 26
35100 Padova - Italy

(posted 9 February)

What is it that distinguishes poetic language from ordinary kinds of utterance? We probably wouldn't listen to poets if they weren't any better at using language than we are. But then poets have always striven to speak the "real language of man," or, as T. S. Eliot put it, "Every revolution in poetry is apt to be […] a return to common speech." Accordingly, we wouldn't listen to poets either (at least poets seem to think so) if they wouldn't use language the way we do. In the history of poetics, the question of poetic language has frequently been addressed in what one might call economic terms. Sir Philip Sidney points out that the (musical) nature of verse demands "the words […] being so set as one cannot be lost, but the whole woorke failes," which implies not only that there is, ideally, one right way of choosing and placing words but also that there is a right number: too many or too few words would destroy the work. This seems plausible and may provide an answer to our initial question: whereas most of us need too many or use too few words to make a point, poets get the number exactly right.

But in practice, things aren't perhaps quite so obvious. For what about the fact that poetry and other forms of literature) is frequently elliptical? Only think of Emily Dickinson's fragmentary syntax, which often lacks the function words that might establish a coherent utterance. And what about the notion that literary art deletes, condenses and compresses elements of language, that Dichtung is Verdichtung (as Kafka and others put it)? But there is also the contrasting notion that literature, and poetry in particular, is marked by an excess, superfluity and redundancy of words and other elements of language. There are not only baroque ideals of style with their emphasis on copia verborum, there is also Keats's dictum that poetry "should surprise by a fine excess," or there is the notion held in pragmatics that the effect of an utterance which is not primarily due to the proposition put forward but to a wealth of "weak implicatures" (such as attitudes, feelings and states of mind) should be called poetic.

One way of resolving these apparent contradictions would be to consider the question of "too little" or "too much" not in absolute but in relative terms. An aphorism may have too many words and a Victorian novel may lack the very words needed for a reader to regard it as a success. But this leaves us with the tricky question of decorum: what is the idea or purpose to which a particular number of words is appropriate and by which we measure the verbal economy of a literary work of art?
The venue will be a beautifully situated hotel in the Black Forest (near Freudenstadt), which is partly owned by Tuebingen University (see http://www.zollernblick-lauterbad.de). As the emphasis of the Connotations symposia is on critical debate, talks will be 30 minutes, leaving another 30 minutes for discussion.
Please send your proposal by October 1, 2010 to <symposium2011(at)connotations.de>.