History and the related memory processes of remembering and forgetting have been crucial concepts in the definition of communal belonging in Ireland, as especially underscored by the nation-building process that unfolded at the end of the nineteenth century. However, the globalisation and cosmopolitisation of Ireland as experienced in the last decade and a half, together with the strained socio-economic circumstances of contemporary Ireland, has arguably provoked the need for cultural and literary artifacts to concentrate on the present in an attempt to comprehend and come to terms with the momentous transformations that the island has experienced in the last few years. In this context, where the presence of the present seems more pervasive than the presence of the past, a re-examination of the role of history in the construction of Ireland, past and present, is called for.

The conference will examine representations of history and the changes in the narratives of individual and collective identities that Ireland, north and south, has undergone, from modernism to the current global epoch. The focus of the conference will be on past and present uses of history in definitions of national identity from the time of W.B. Yeats and the Celtic Revival to the post-Celtic Tiger and post-Good Friday agreement era, and how these are reflected in literature and culture.

- postnationalism and nationalist identity
- migration and belonging
- images of home and the nation
- migration and earlier minorities in Ireland
- dual tradition vs. a culture of difference
- history of conflict
- historical representations of gender
- history and the visual arts
- Yeats and definitions of national and historical identity

- Irene Gilsenan Nordin <ign@du.se>,
- Billy Gray <bgr@du.se>,
- and Carmen Zamorano Llena <cza@du.se>.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is 30 April 2011. Notification of acceptance will be sent by 15 May 2011. A selection of the papers presented at the conference will be published in book form.

(posted 26 January 2011)

As opposed to the Gothic labyrinths of vaults and broken palaces or shattered abbeys, in the nineteenth century the picturesque legacy grew into a passion for sublime ruins as crystals of time, suffused with melancholy pleasure. From Romantic hubris (and the fascination for Troy or Pompei) to Turner's luminous visions or Hardy's carved windows and stone coffins, ruins offered dwindling points of aesthetic stability as well as symptoms of mutability in a changing world stamped by Darwinian ruthlessness.
This conference proposes to analyze the hybrid function of ruins as they shift from sublime metonymies to broken hints of shattered times and troubled consciousness, focusing not only on the visual motif of ruins but on the function of citation as an attempt to include the ruined pieces of bygone art and cultural systems, whether the purpose be to "shore fragments" against ruin, as in the case of Modernism, or to challenge and deconstruct present exhaustion and past master discourses, as in the case of post-modernism. The postmodern emphasis on remains, from Ackroyd to Ishiguro or Stoppard, on textual experimentation with broken fragments, the function of architecture and visual motifs will be of interest, showing that twentieth-century British art and fiction revisit ruins not only as the broken pieces of a vanished past, but as artificial to begin with.
Emphasis on architecture will necessarily include cultural context, and moments of acute fragmentation such as the Blitz, the British equivalent of the Twin Towers, faultlines leaving not only the smell of smouldering remains, but a division between before and after, an intense sense of the collapse of ideologies and promises. The ultimate negotiation of the bankruptcy of meaning may lead to repetition and elegy or parody, or to the intense attempt to create an ephemeral art retaining the traces of a glorious past but displacing them, leading to brief presences and vanishing points, as residue becomes resistance and art articulates waste.

- Isabelle Gadoin <<Isabeluis2@free.fr>
- and Catherine Lanone <catherine.lanone@univ-tlse2.fr>.

Organisers: Catherine Lanone, Isabelle Gadoin, Christine Reynier, Liliane Louvel, Delphine Cingal, Laurence Petit.

 (posted 26 January 2011)

Strength, virtue and bravery have long characterised the subjects of narrative. If protagonists surmount threats, or survive danger, we are inclined to ascribe the triumph to their heroism. When stories veer into realism, antiheroes receive the attention formerly reserved for gods and heroes.

The gospels are an enquiry into the heroism of their subject. Their opening unstated question is whether there was anything heroic in one who walked open-eyed into an avoidable death? Soon resurrection and a new interpretation of Jesus' heroism was found, and it was seen that he fulfilled a hidden paradigm, Messiahship. A succession of martyrs would bear witness to the same interpretation.

Papers are invited which discuss aspects and counter-examples of heroism, whether in sacred or secular canons. Carlyle's pantheon in 1840 went from Odin to Cromwell and Napoleon, and our papers can also range widely. David or Stephen for example in the Bible, Achilles or Aeneas, Beowulf or Galahad, Pilgrim or Samson Agonistes, Elizabeth Bennet or David Copperfield,  Eugène de Rastignac or Emma Bovary, Napoleon or Kutuzov, Paul Morel or Pinkie Brown, Holden Caulfield or Mr Sammler, the list goes on; papers need not deal with pairs.

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 1949
Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History, 1841
Michael P Jones, Conrad's Heroism, 1985,
Roger Sale, Modern Heroism: Essays on D.H. Lawrence, William Empson and J.R.R. Tolkien, 1973
John Steadman, Milton and the Paradoxes of Renaissance Heroism, c. 1987
Marina Warner, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism, 1981
James D Wilson, The Romantic Heroic Ideal, 1982.

Offers of papers to be read at the conference (and subsequently printed in The Glass) are invited before the deadline 31 May 2011.
Papers should have a reading length of 25 minutes.

(posted 17 February 2011)

A conference of the History of Art Department, University of Cambridge and held at King's College, Cambridge, 7-8 November 2011

This interdisciplinary conference will explore the relationship between art and politics in Britain from late antiquity to the present. The conference aims to provide a forum for both postgraduate and established scholars who are investigating the ways in which art can function as a tool for political legitimation, a method of political argument, and can express cultural values in material form.

- Art's ability to influence political actions, movements, and personal worldviews
- The medium and display of political art
- The influence of community and collectivity in the production or function of political art
- The initiative and authority of the artist
- High art versus low art; avant garde versus kitsch in the reception of political imagery
- Convention and tradition in political images
- Methods for assessing the influence of political art
- Historical case studies of nationalistic art, propaganda, political cartoons, or other political material culture

We welcome papers from scholars working on visual material in relevant fields including but not limited to history, literature, anthropology, archaeology, and sociology. To submit a paper, please send an abstract of up to 300 words to Laura Slater <lss33@cam.ac.uk> by 20 June 2011. Papers should be designed to last no more than 20 minutes and submissions should include the paper title, institutional affiliation, and AV requirements. Including light refreshments the event will be £10 for postgraduates and £15 for senior scholars.

- Laura Slater <lss33@cam.ac.uk>
- or Chloe Kroeter >ck361@cam.ac.uk>.

(posted 11 June 2011)

A one-day conference organized by Institut de recherche sur la Reniassance, l'âge Classique et les Lumières, UMR5186 du CNRS.

On 8, 9 and 10 November 2011, Montpellier's Théâtre des 13 Vents will run Théophile de Viau's Pyramus and Thisbe, in a production by Benjamin Lazar. Lit by candelabra, performed in the baroque declamatory style, this production, created in 2010, offers an outstanding revival of one of the oldest tragedies in the French repertoire, which stages an episode from Book IV of Ovid's Metamorphoses.

The IRCL, which includes specialists of Pyramus and Thisbe and/or French and English 16th-18th century drama, has chosen to mark the event with a one-day conference on 9 November 2011, which will be rounded off with a performance of the play at the Théâtre des 13 Vents. The conference will be organised in two sessions:

This session proposes to approach a number of aspects of the play, without seeking to be exhaustive: themes, dramatic and rhetorical devices, philosophical or political topics, as well as the play in performance, the play as a tragedy of its time, or the play and its posterity (its influence until the mid-17th century, which contrasts with Boileau's derogatory comment on Thisbe's address to the dagger).

2) Around the death of Pyramus and Thisbe: early modern representations in England and France (16th-18th centuries)

This session marks the launching of a project created by the IRCL, "Scenes from…", which is centred on multiple approaches of a given scene in a wide repertoire. The scene chosen here is the death of two lovers (Pyramus and Thisbe). Approaches include: transposing Ovid's text to the stage, tension between performance and inset narrative (cf. Pradon's adaptation of the myth in 1674), representations of the death of Pyramus and Thisbe in art, opera and cantatas, or the generic reversibility that the subject and the double suicide seem to invite (cf. Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet, Théâtre de la Foire, etc.).

Proposals (a 400-word abstract and 300-word biographical note) should be sent to Bénédicte Louvat-Molozay and Janice Valls-Russell by 1 March 2011.

- Bénédicte Louvat-Molozay <benedicte.louvat@neuf.fr>,
- Frédéric Delord <frederic-delord@wanadoo.fr>,
- Janice Valls-Russell <cahiers@univ-montp3.fr>.

- Bénédicte Louvat-Molozay
- and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin <nathalie.vienne-guerrin@univ-montp3.fr>.

Venue: Hotel “Four Points by Sheraton Panorama Zagreb”, Trg Krešimira Ćosića 9, 10000 Zagreb: http://www.hotel-fourpointspanorama.com/
This symposium is part of the 5th International Conference on Advanced and Systematic Research (Zagreb, 10-12 November 2011), which includes several symposia (research symposia).
Plenary sessions:

- Professor Milica Gačić: European Documents on Early Language Learning and Teaching, and on Young Learners
- Professor Jelena Mihaljević Djigunović: Early Language Learning Today: High Expectations Facing Reality
- Professor Marianne Nikolov: Research on Young Learners Classrooms: a Shift towards Mixed Methods Approaches

Joint Research Symposium Chairs:

- Dr Milica Gačić, Full Professor , Chair of the English Teaching Department, Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Zagreb.   , 10000 Zagreb, Savska cesta 77, Croatia.  Tel: +385 1 6327-346; Mob:+ 385 91 506 86 69
e-mail: <milica.gacic@ufzg.hr>
- Dr Renata Šamo, Assistant Professor , English Teaching Department, Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Zagreb , Savska cesta 77, 10000 Zagreb, Phone: + 385 1 6327 354 ; Mob :+ 385 91 729 36 07
e-mail: <renata.samo@ufzg.hr>

Invited lecturers:

- Dr Marta Medved Krajnović, Associate Professor  
- Dr Gloria Vickov, Assistant Professor
- Dr Renata Šamo, Assistant Professor

Symposium framework topic: Research into Early Foreign Language Learning and Teaching: Experience and Perspectives
Presentations on a variety of aspects pertaining to the central symposium topic are welcome. Suggested topics for papers are:

The final formulation of the presentation topic is proposed by each participant, and approved by the Symposium chairpersons. Researchers taking part in projects covering the early foreign languages learning, scholars from teacher education and training faculties, practitioners from relevant institutions and associations linked to these issues, interested postgraduate and doctoral students are all welcome to take part in the work of the Symposium.  

Official languages of the symposium are English, other FLs taught at Croatian primary schools and Croatian.

Papers addressing any of the above mentioned topics are welcome. An abstract of approximately 200 words should be submitted for evaluation. All proposals will be evaluated on the basis of their scholarly quality and originality.  

Abstracts may be submitted electronically (Microsoft Word), by filling in the attached registration form (p. 11) or by mail, no later than September 15th, 2011, to the following addresses (note the symposium title: Early Foreign Languages Learning and Teaching - EFLLAT-2011).
Please send a copy to:
Papers will be published in the Conference-Symposia Proceedings ELC/MT/FL-4 after the Conference. 
Important  Dates:

This symposium seeks to explore contemporary indigenous performances as transformative strategies and praxes aimed at enhancing social cohesion. It focuses specifically on the role of festival performances in advancing reconciliation efforts and investigates how such events contribute to reimagining communities and rebuilding trust. With reference to the philosophical, historical and religious roots of reconciliation, the symposium will look at the tensions and affects involved in performances that engage with (hi)stories of colonialism and contemporary formations of injustice.

We also seek to probe the conditions that enable festival arts to flourish in their own contexts and to be taken from local to national and transnational forums. The role, and limits, of festivals as resonant interfaces where emancipative strategies, wellbeing, creativity and indigenous cultural capital are promoted will be of particular interest here. Responding to current debates on the question of reconciliation and social justice, the symposium hopes to provide comparisons of various artistic, community-driven, cross-cultural and trans-‐local initiatives.

(posted 11 April 2011)

Through the various papers that will be given during the conference, more than facts and theories, the witnesses' activities and testimonies,  as well as their testifying regarded as an act and/or a process will be explored. Different genres and forms such as prose, poetry, drama or any other means of expression ranging from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, up the 17th century included, will be studied. Through testimonies, evidence and revelations, even through contestation, experiences  and opinions can be defended and supported. Taking action and being  involved can provoke constructive intellectual exchanges. To these ends, the supports can be textual and/or non textual.

Papers will focus on commentaries and analyses as well as on any supports where some reflection on institutions and values, on epistemic exchanges, on dogmatic reactions, on doctrinal hesitations, on changing taste, on dreams and speculations, cognition-based or emotional tendencies can be read / found.

The last conference of the four-year "Témoigner" research project will focus on 'The interpretation of evidence, rules and (the) law(s)' whether in the context of the court of justice or in any other context where rules and evidence are essential laws and staples.

This three-day conference will be held in « La Maison des Sciences de l’Homme », rue Ledru, Clermont Ferrand (France). It will be organised jointly by CERHAC (UBP, Clermont Ferrand, France) and SINRS (Scottish Institute for Northern Renaissance Studies, Stirling, Scotland, GB).

Scientific board : Professors Danièle Berton-Charrière & Monique Vénuat (CERHAC, Clermont Ferrand, France), and Professors John Drakakis et David Richards (SINRS, Stirling, Scotland).

(posted 4 March 2011)

In the United Kingdom, according to the canonical interpretation, the sixties were characterized by an almost revolutionary spirit of contestation: the thirst for freedom and the strong wish to free oneself from social and moral constraints were illustrated in a rich, varied, often provocativeand subversive artistic production, as well as in many a societal phenomenon. There was to the "Sixties", or to what could be referred to as the golden age of youth, with its mods and rockers, but also to popular culture, which was definitely asserting itself through series (Coronation Street, The Saint, Danger Man, The Avengers) or movies (Cathy Come Home, The Servant, If), nevertheless, and above all, a political dimension where confrontation and reassessment through violence were often the norm: from pop festivals to protest marches, from flower power to black power, the period freely and forcefully associated innovative cultural expression forms with determined and cleverly structured political demands.

Political and social authority as well as literary and aesthetic canons were redefined at a time when television writing was emerging as the new dominant artistic  form: film output staged and reassessed authority and its figures, sometimes shattering them. What’s more, they sanctioned the advent of an opposition force, that of youth, and they gave another raison d’être to the work of art, for instance increasing the importance of photography.

From the United Kingdom, the "Sixties" phenomenon was to reverberate both spontaneously and on a long-term basis, particularly in Western Europe and the United  States. The extent of the phenomenon was so wide that it has never stopped surprising, drawing attention and raising fundamental questions. Nowadays, the so-called advanced industrial world is still striving to escape social reasoning and economic logics which, as they were triggered enthusiastically at the time, still give rise to doubt and frequent questioning, thus generating anxieties and sometimes virulent reactions.

Inducing participants to analyze the concrete influence of protest movements and the diverse artistic innovations on the United Kingdom’s political culture and British society, the organizers intend, in the first place, to better define, or redefine, the "Sixties" object: to what extent does this periodization retain pertinence, integrity or homogeneity? The thing is that interpretation of this object has continuously evolved : besides the clichés which apparently still monopolize our emotional relation with the Sixties (The Beatles standing on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street, Twiggy on the frontpage of Vogue), today the heritage of the period seems to be complex: it is both redundant and rich, liberating and restrictive, creative but trying to format our relations with the style and our expectations in terms of legitimate methods used to challenge norms.

Please submit proposals of approximately 200 words, in French or English, by June 30, 2011, together with a short bio-bibliography, to both:

Conference organized by Armel Dubois-Nayt (Univ. Versailles-St-Quentin), Carine Ferradou (Univ. Aix-Marseille III) et Line Cottegnies (Univ. Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3).

This one-day conference will explore the works of the Scottish humanist, George Buchanan, through the lens of translation. It will consider both the translations he published and those that were done of his own works. George Buchanan is often considered as one of the best Latin scholars of his time and this sometimes overshadows the plurilinguistic dimension of his writings and of his work as a translator. This conference aims to bring this twofold aspect of his oeuvre into focus by looking at the texts he translated and the translations of his writings.

Some of Buchanan's works are in fact translations from Scot to Latin (Somnium), others from Greek to Latin (Medea, Alcestis, Epigrammata) and some others from Hebrew to Latin (Psalmorum Dauidis… Paraphrasis). As for his sacred tragedies, he wrote them in Latin but he was inspired by Greek tragedies and by Seneca. Written in the middle of the 16th century, all these texts were published at a time when the practice and theory of translation was evolving from the ad sensum (translating the spirit of the text) to the ad verbum method ("word for word"). The first aim of this conference is therefore to investigate the various aspects of Buchanan’s translation practice in the texts he published. Buchanan also wrote in the vernacular (Ane Admonition to the trew Lordis, Chamaeleon).
Yet he did not translate his own works from Latin to English or Scot. The political context of the Reformation and of the religious conflicts that led to the use of the vernacular for ideological and pragmatic reasons invites us to examine further the reasons why some of the texts Buchanan wrote in Latin, his best-loved language, were immediately translated into Scot and English (De Maria Scotorum Regina, Rerum Scoticarum Historia), while others took longer to be translated. The De Jure for instance was only translated for the first time in 1680, while Jephthes was translated into French (1566, 1580), German (1572, 1582), Hungarian, Polish (1587), Dutch (1658) and Italian long before it was even published or translated in Scotland.
We are inviting proposals on one or several of Buchanan’s works. Areas for discussion include:
Papers should not exceed 30 minutes.
Please, send 250-word abstracts (with a short bio-bibliographical note) by March 31 2011 to:
Selected papers from the conference will be published in the peer-reviewed electronic journal Études Épistémè (http://etudes-episteme.org).

Whatever the domain, context or period in question, the concept of "exchange"  does not only imply reciprocity and mutual compensation, but also an opportunity for the parties concerned -- be they individuals, organisations, territories, cultures or systems – to mutually enhance their position through the discovery or acquisition of something new. While reinforcing self-identification, the act of “exchange”  is also supposed to highlight complementarities;  and for the optimum satisfaction of the parties concerned, it should in principle be balanced.

Globalisation, which has proved to be both the cause and the consequence of the acceleration and diversification of communication processes and vectors, has led to the intensification and multiplication of opportunities for exchange in every domain: cultural, social, political or economic. In this framework, opportunities for exchange are most frequently presented as assets, as drivers of growth and of economic development or as factors of cultural and social interpenetration.

However, on the one hand, "theories of exchange" existed long before the notion of "globalisation" of trade, culture or lifestyles. On the other hand, the concept is both complex and difficult to define, and acts involving "exchange", though they may be perceived as essentially beneficial, can raise a number of questions. For instance, in reality, is exchanging always possible or even desirable? Is it always positive for both/all parties? Can one exchange without losing something, or without losing oneself? Is it at all possible to elude the logic underlying the exchange process? What are the values of exchange? What is at issue? What intrinsic and extrinsic factors does it depend on? Might these not alter the rules of exchange, in other words, the terms of the exchange? Consequently, are “theories of exchange” not limited by its reality and its constraints?

This pluridisciplinary and cross-cultural conference is organised in the context of a transdisciplinary reflection which has derived from the research work carried out in their respective research fields by a group of academics and postgraduate students at the University Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 Department of Applied Languages (Langues Etrangères Appliquées). It aims to analyse exchange-related benefits as well as to look for answers to the above-mentioned questions. The workshops will be organised in a manner that brings together specialists from different disciplines to compare and contrast approaches to shared questions. While the contributors specialising in cultural studies will find ample material for analysis within the framework indicated, the steering committee also welcomes contributions in linguistics, literature, economics, law, political science, history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and new technologies, from historical or contemporary perspectives.

To encourage the highest level of interaction, the conference will have two working languages, both French and English. For the benefit of any contributor wishing to give a paper in one of the following languages (Spanish, Italian, German or Arabic) a translation into French will be organised by the steering committee, and circulated during the conference. During question time in workshops and keynote lectures, the organisers will provide assistance for translation.

Abstracts of approximately 350 words signs, together with a short bio-bibliography and five key words, should be submitted to <colloqueLEA2011@univ-paris3.fr>, by no later than April 30th, 2011.

Submissions will be blind-reviewed by the academic committee, and authors will then be notified of the acceptance of their proposal by May 21st, 2011 at the latest.          

(posted 23 March 2011)

The Moroccan Culture Research Group (MCRG) at the Faculty of Letters & Human Sciences, El Jadida, is organizing its 1st International conference on Cultures and Languages in Contact, 23-24 November, 2011.
The main goal of this symposium is to bring together scholars and academics of languages, culture, and intercultural communication to debate on the role of culture and language in bridging the gap between nations within a globalized world. Areas of interest include (but are not confined to):

1. Languages in Contact and  Cultural plurality
2. Cultural Representation & Cultural Translation
3. Language Attrition and Language Loss
4. Literacy & Ethnography
5. Bilingualism and Multilingualism
6. Intercultural Communication

Please submit a 250-word abstract by 29th of June 2011, by email to Pr. Abdelkader Sabil: <abdelkaders@gmail.com>.

The conference registration fee is 50 euros, covering access to all sessions, 2 lunches, coffee breaks and conference materials. Special arrangements will be made with local hotels for a limited number of rooms at a special conference rate.

By adopting Benveniste as its central theme, the aim of this conference is to provide a platform to promote discussion by confronting different points of view on enunciation as a distinct way of posing and dealing with linguistic problems as opposed to other major current theoretical frameworks.

One of the main objectives of this event is to consolidate thevisibility of the enunciative approach and to encourage exchange between researchers who sometimes follow separate paths, be it for reasons of geographical dispersion or because of the diverse nature of their scientific specialties. It is therefore appears crucial to show that however diverse individual approaches may be, enunciative research remains the unifying objective of a common project and constitutes a scientific specificity which needs to be maintained over the long term. It is with the aim of finding a theme which transcends the diversity of approaches adopted by enunciativists that we launch this invitation to reflect on the work of Benveniste as the source of a specific way of doing linguistics.

- What tools, modes of reasoning and modes of representation are being used or developed today in order to bring out the enuciative properties of language or discourse phenomena?

Proposals should be sent as a Word document containing the title, a summary (maximum of one page) and short bibliography by the 14th March 2011. Each
Proposal will be evaluated anonymously by two members of the scientific committee.
New extended deadline for receipt of proposals: 30th March 2011
Notification of acceptance: Monday 16th May 2011
Presentations will last 30 minutes + 10 minutes for discussion.
The conference will take place at: Université Marne-La-Vallée, Cité Décartes. Precise details will be sent out nearer to the date of the conference.
The conference will take the form of thematic workshops (discourse approach, syntax, semantics, oral discourse…). There will also be four plenary lectures delivered by invited professors.
The organisers:

The nature of genres has always been defined as both static and dynamic, functioning as discursive action within particular social, historical and cultural contexts but open to individual and collective creativity and innovation. Corpora can be powerful tools in tracking this kind of change, as clearly shown by a well-established tradition in historical linguistics, where growing interest has been shown in the diachronic analysis of specialized genres. Elements of change, however, can also be seen at work in contemporary discourse. As a consequence, there is an increasing need for diachronic approaches that may help map changes brought about for example by new technologies or globalization.

Nowadays, with the recession of the traditional constraints of geography on social and cultural arrangements brought about by globalization, new cultural and linguistic interconnections are being established, for example in academic and professional settings. This state of things can account both for the emergence of new 'globalizing genres', and for the implementation of a series of adaptations to the existing ones, as possible solutions to guarantee the success and survival of different genres in an era which celebrates the need for a 'global reach'.

The conference intends to focus on such issues in order to provide a better definition of the methods of investigation of language change, the tools, the approaches, the new perspectives, bringing together two complementary strands of linguistic investigation -- corpus analysis and genre analysis. The conference purports to describe the extent to which language resources and generic resources are creatively exploited in discourse, variously responding to or determining new socio-cultural scenarios, with a special interest in technological developments which have radically changed the way specialized knowledge is disseminated. 

In particular, contributions are invited, focusing on textual, intertextual, organizational aspects of genres, as well as on interdiscursivity and other aspects which contextualize genres as reflections of changing disciplinary and professional cultures, investigating how their integrity is negotiated and exploited, in the following domains:

•    Academic
•    Professional
•    Institutional

PANEL PROPOSALS
The organizers encourage proposals for panels including sets of four related papers.
The conference is held by the CLAVIER (Corpus and Language Variation In English Research) group, a research centre founded by the Universities of Bergamo, Firenze, Modena and Reggio Emilia, Roma "La Sapienza", and Siena, currently based in Modena.

One of the purposes of the 2011 CLAVIER conference is to reinforce national and international cooperation with scholars and research centres that can widen and complement the interest in language variation both in quantitative and qualitative terms.

Plenary speakers who have accepted to participate are:
Dawn Archer (University of Central Lancashire)
Winnie Cheng (Hong Kong Polytechnic University – Hong Kong)
Marianne Hundt (University of Zurich)

The conference will start early in the afternoon on the first day and close around lunchtime on the third day, after a roundtable in which participants and invited speakers will discuss theoretical and methodological issues emerged from the papers presented in the previous sessions.

Papers will be allotted 20 minutes, plus 10 minutes for discussion. The working Language will be English. Contributions will be accepted on condition that they are relevant to the special theme of the Conference.

Please send your anonymous abstract totalling no more than 500 words by June 20th to the following address: <clavier11@unimore.it>.

Important dates
Conference website at: http://clavier11.sltt.unimore.it

How can one adequately address the ethics of a video game player's actions? There is a field of rapidly growing importance in ethics that has not yet been mapped sufficiently, a whole category of acts that has not yet been the focus of ethical theory, acts that are neither actually performed nor merely contemplated: simulated acts.

Ethical theory has spent considerable energy investigating performed or contemplated actions, with some of the major ethical theories like consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics divided along these lines. Even the ethical interest in (passively) contemplated acts has recently increased with the rise of ethical criticism in literary studies. But our culture today is increasingly influenced by advanced systems of simulation that provide their users with a sense of agency that is as interesting as it is problematic for ethics. The heated public debates about the potential for unethical behaviour in video games is a testimony both to the cultural relevance and the deficient theoretization of the topic.

This conference wants to approach the question of how ethics can adequately deal with the special status of simulated acts. As such it will hopefully be groundbreaking in addressing a hitherto virtually uncharted field for both ethical theory and game studies that cannot be ignored but that has been, so far, only very insufficiently discussed. Differing and opposing positions on this topic will hopefully provide the basis for fruitful discussions.

- The player as moral agent
- Agency, simulation and ethics
- Fictionality, simulation and ethics
- Karma meters and notoriety systems: Video games as moral judges
- Schießbefehl: Ethical responsibility distribution between player and game designer
- Ethical aspects of multi-player simulations
- Digital (In)Justice: The impossibility of poetic justice in simulations
- Video games and moral didactics

(posted 12 July 2011)

The conference is organized with the support of the CECILLE Centre for studies in foreign cultures, languages and literatures (Centre d’Etudes en Civilisations, Langues et Littératures Etrangères).

This conference seeks to address the complex dynamics and influences of the act of translation upon the perception, definition and/or redefinition of territories. If a territory may be defined as a space that comes into being from the moment it is thought and/or appropriated, its boundaries are consequently fluctuating, constantly in motion. Translation as a means of communication between cultures is therefore bound to intervene in the negotiation of the outlines and borders of a territory. It necessarily shapes the migration of the text-as-territory, and is inherent to symbolic border crossings as conscious and/or unconscious processes.

· How does translation handle the migration of texts between different territories?
· In what way(s) does the translation process affect the opening and annexing of borders and territories?
· How does translation take part in a permanent stability/instability of the text-as-territory?
· What linguistic, lexicographic, technical, and/or literary resources can the translator tap into when he/she wants to account for the various realities of a territory, whether they be physical, geographical, political, geopolitical, historical, cultural and/or language-related?
· What territories have emerged thanks to the various trends in Translation Studies?

- Dr. Christine Raguet, University of Paris III Sorbonne-Nouvelle
- Dr. Maria Tymoczko, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA.

Scientific Committee: Edwin Gentzler (Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA), Elzbieta Skibinska (Professor, University of Wroc∏aw, Poland), Fabrice Antoine (Professor, University of Lille 3), Ronald Jenn (Associate Professor, University of Lille 3), Corinne Oster (Associate Professor, University of Lille 3).

Abstracts or proposals (approximately 300 words), in English or in French, including the presenter's name, academic/professional affiliation and a short resume can be sent to Corinne Oster <corinne.oster@univ-lille3.fr> and Ronald Jenn <ronald.jenn@univ-lille3.fr> no later than September 10, 2010.

(posted 27 March 2010)

Poetics and fantastic literatures already share a long critical history. In French academic research, "fantastique" texts stand out as the main object of study in poetics whilst the Todorovian distinction between the space of the "fantastic" and the space of the "marvellous" (the distinction between disorientation and acceptation stemming from the presence of the supernatural) has dominated critical perspectives despite the formulation of more recent qualifications or reservations. Science fiction, on the other hand, has for some time attracted less interest in French academic circles and has lent itself to a constant and passionate strain of internal definition. Its relation to other aesthetic forms of the imaginary has consequently been neglected. The emergence of a form of fantasy specific to the English-speaking world -- as a new narrative genre, which does not accommodate itself easily to existing typologies -- also argues for a wider (re)vision of the inter-relatedness of the different expressions of the fantastic imagination, especially given today's global context. Another crucial factor of generic evolution must also be considered: the manner in which the growing impact of the media (cinema, television, video games and other digital forms), combined with developments of shared universes provided by this multimedia industry, actually changes our perception of what "fantastic", in its broadest definition, signifies or should signify.

The aim of this symposium is to reflect upon this necessary re-examination of the theory of poetics, giving due place to the marvellous -- that Cinderella of the Todorovian and modernist critical stands -- at the same time seeking a re-evaluation of its opposition to the fantastic.

Proposals (in English or in French) are invited in the form of an abstract of 500-1,000 words, to be sent by email in pdf format before September 5, 2011 to the organising committee:

- <annebesson@free.fr>
- <evelyne.jacquelin@aon.fr>

(posted 30 June 2011)

The Belgian Association of Anglicists in Higher Education (BAAHE) is organising its fourth international conference from 1 to 3 December 2011 at the Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel (University College Brussels), Belgium. Celebrating the association’s 30th anniversary, the interdisciplinary conference Facing Present, Past and Future aims to map the various ways researchers deal with the challenges they are faced with in the research fields of English Linguistics, English Literature, Translation and Interpretation Studies and ELT. Approaches and topics for papers include but are not limited to the suggestions below. Note that contributions that explore interfaces between these disciplines are particularly encouraged.

- Face and politeness from a synchronic as well as a diachronic perspective
- The concepts of face and politeness: from an anglocentric to a global perspective
- The tenses from a synchronic and diachronic perspective
- Resolving old dichotomies by building interfaces: present, past and future approaches to reconciling disciplines and paradigms (e.g. semantics and pragmatics)
- Past, present and future in corpus linguistics: from small-scale written corpora over large multi-media corpora to…?
- Conceptualisations and representations of the notion of ‘time’ in English (possibly in contrast with other languages)
- Diachronic and synchronic approaches to the study of intersubjectivity

- Facing the Other: historical representations of otherness in literatures in English
- Representations of time and Janus’ double-facedness in literature: theoretical approaches (narratological, psychoanalytic, impact of ritual, forms of commemoration vs. forgetting, …)
- Authorial and narratorial reflections on one's own time/age and its relation to the literary and cultural past and future - whence and whither this present?
- Theory today: current problems and challenges of literary theory (incl. trauma studies, autobiography and autoperformance)
- Literature and canon: canon formation, genre mixing, …
- Historicist approaches to literature
- Stylistics /use of imagery, figures of speech: defacing the other (forms of satire), deformation (different forms of prosopopeia); interrelations between literature and painting (contemporary and other)
- Facing the Continent: British and Irish literature in a European context (e.g. reception and/or translation of British and Irish authors)

- Facing the tradition: role of translations in the development of a literary tradition or canon
- Facing the news: role of transediting in the spread of news in a globalised world
- Facing the unknown: new challenges in Translation and Interpretation Studies (e.g. machine translation)
- Facing the interpreter: role of the interpreter as a neutral conveyor of messages, a(n intercultural) mediator or an involved party in establishing effective communication in various settings

- Face-to-face communication in ELT: from traditional classroom discourse to innovative virtual communication
- Facing each other and facing the other: research on teacher-student interaction and on student-student interaction and collaboration in the classroom both of native speakers of English and of learners of English as a foreign language (e.g. face-to-face communication, (a)synchronous communication via/in electronic environments, chat room conversations between students, peer feedback in its different guises, teacher feedback and student uptake, collaborative learning, …).
- Saving and representing face in different forms of student-student interaction and teacher-student communication both in speech and in writing (e.g. politeness strategies, intercultural perspectives).
- Corpus-based approaches to ELT: facing “authentic” language use as an innovative turn
- Facing non-native varieties of English in the classroom
- CLIL: the way forward for ELT?

Abstracts of up to 500 words (excluding bibliography) should be submitted through the conference website http://www.hubrussel.be/baahe2011 before 1 July 2011. Care should be taken that authors' names or affiliations are not mentioned in the abstract. Abstracts should be in .doc or .txt format. Authors are allowed to submit a maximum of two abstracts if at least one of these is co-authored. Proposals for posters are equally welcome. All submitted abstracts will be peer-reviewed.

Much information will be made available on the conference website: http://www.hubrussel.be/baahe2011. For any further enquiries please get in touch with the organising committee at: baahe2011@hubrussel.be.

First call for papers: 20 March 2011
Second call for papers: 1 June 2011
Submission of abstracts: by 1 July 2011
Notification of acceptance: mid-July 2011
Provisional programme: September 2011
Early-bird registration: mid-July 2011 to 15 October 2011
Late registration: by 15 November 2011
Conference opening: 1 December 2011

The conference will be hosted at the city campus of the University College Brussels (Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel), situated in the historical centre of Brussels and within walking distance of Brussels Central Railway Station, which has convenient train connections to and from Brussels Airport, London, Paris and other major European cities. Further information can be found on http://www.hubrussel.be/eCache/IEE/13/250.html.

(posted 23 March 2011)

This conference aims at exploring the historical roots of the Nobel Prize for Literature as well as its role in world culture. It poses (but is not limited to) the following questions: How does the Nobel Prize for Literature build bridges between cultures? How does it influence literary reception across the globe? How does the Prize affect writers’ reputations? How is literary merit defined by the Nobel Prize Committee? What messages do Nobel laureates for literature send to the rest of the world? What is the impact of the Nobel Prize for Literature on translation and translators across the globe?

The conference is targeted at a wide range of scholars in the humanities. It is also hoped that it will attract younger scholars, postgraduate and undergraduate students.         

- Prof. Penka Angelova, D. Litt.
- Prof. Nikolay Daskalov, D. Litt.

- Assoc. Prof. Vladimir Sabourin, D. Litt.

- Assoc. Prof. Margreta Grigorova, PhD

(posted 29 June 2011)

This conference evokes the four-hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare's The Tempest in order to promote a broader discussion of the impact of nature's accidents and disasters on the literary imagination. We welcome contributions drawing on texts from a variety of periods and traditions, and will be particularly interested in representations of nature in turmoil that involve an extension from writing to other discourses and media.

- natural disasters: literature and geography
- natural disasters: literature and historiography
- natural disasters: literature and the arts
- the sense of an ending: apocalyptic writing
- anxieties, commitments: ecocriticism

- Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University, USA)
- Helena Carvalhão Buescu (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)
- Chris Morash (National University of Ireland, Maynooth)
- Maggie Gee (novelist, UK)

- the full title of your paper;
- a 250-300 word abstract of your paper;
- your name, postal address and e-mail address;
- your institutional affiliation and position;
- AV requirements (if any)

(posted 15 July 2011)

The English Department and the Department of Foreign Languages and Comparative Literatures of the University of Extremadura will host an International Conference which will commemorate the life and work of poet, novelist, memoirist, playwright, etc., Tennessee Williams, to mark the centennial of his birth in 1911.

Among the keynote speakers (pending confirmation) who will participate in the conference are three leading Tennessee Williams scholars: Dr. John S. Bak (Professor of American Literature, University of Nancy II, France), Dr. Alessandro Clericuzio (Professor of American Language, Culture and Literature, University of Perugia, Italy), and Dr. Félix Martín Gutiérrez (Professor of American Literature, Complutense University, Spain)

The Organizing Committee invites proposals for 20-minute presentations and/or round table sessions in one of the two official languages of the conference: English and Spanish. The paper and round table proposals can address but are not restricted to the topics suggested below. All proposals should be submitted before the 30th of October, 2011.

• Tennessee Williams' "Seductive" Influence on his Contemporaries
• Tennessee Williams' Reception Abroad: Influence, Reputation, Affinities and Translations into Other Languages
• Tennessee Williams' Impact in World Literature
• Tennessee Williams in Spain/ the Hispanic Presence in Tennessee Williams
• Influence of European Theater on Williams' Drama
• Psychoanalysis in Tennessee Williams
• Tennessee Williams as a Poet
• Tennessee Williams as a Novelist
• Tennessee Williams as a Playwright
• Tennessee Williams as a Social Critic
• Intertextuality in Tennessee Williams
• Tennessee Williams' "Poetic" Dramatic Style
• Tennessee Williams in Revision: Text, Context and Genre
• Tennessee Williams: Gay, Lesbian and Queer Studies
• New Directions in the Teaching and Scholarship in Tennessee Williams Studies
• Politics and Ideology in Tennessee Williams
• Verbal/Physical Violence in Tennessee Williams' Drama
• Tennessee Williams' Works on Stage and Film
• The Intersections of  Race, Class and Gender in Tennessee Williams' Oeuvre
• Innovation and Originality in Tennessee Williams
• The Significance of Place in Tennessee Williams
• Music in Tennessee Williams

1) Name, institutional affiliation, academic status, address, phone/fax and email of author.
2) Short bio-bibliography (c. 150 words)
3) Title of paper
5) Audio-visual equipment needed.

1) Individual papers should be scheduled for a maximum of 20 minutes, allowing 10 for discussion.
2) The languages of the conference will be English and Spanish.
3) Acceptance notification will be sent by email by November 5th, 2011.
4) By submitting an abstract, authors give permission to publish it on the conference web site and/or in the printed conference booklet.
5) A selection of papers will be published (after revision where appropriate) in a collection of essays by an international publisher.

(posted 25 October 2011)

The impact of the Celtic Tiger and the following recession on cultural creation and practices opens a new area of investigation for scholars in cultural history, cultural economy, sociology, art history and media studies.

At conferences and advocacy events, the Irish Arts Council, Department of Culture and cultural policy-makers directed considerable efforts to reach out to public opinion, tourists, companies and the Irish diaspora to raise awareness about the economic dimension of culture in the country. Culture indeed generates wealth and employment, and cutting public funding of culture would have negative consequences on the economy. The economic justification has dominated cultural discourse over the past few years, so that the cultural process, ie artistic creation and reception by the public have been almost totally excluded from public debate. The Arts Council is only just beginning to investigate the living conditions of artists and the social bonding potential of culture. Social sciences are also beginning to research cultural practices.

The comparison with Northern Ireland will be welcome. The impact of the recession on cultural funding and creation may be compared with the situation in the Republic. Another 'after' is also to be investigated, through the impact of the Good Friday Agreement on cultural practices and productions and the effective community bonding that has taken place as a result of Northern Irish cultural policy.

Culture will be understood broadly, including not only the arts and formal cultural practices such as the attendance of cultural institutions but also cultural industries, and generally, as is the case in the English-speaking world, all modes of expression which are codified?design, fashion and culinary arts which are the multi-sensorial translation offered in daily communion of a new, more sophisticated and cosmopolitan self-perception on the part of the Irish.

- Perceptions of actual or putative prosperity of cultural sectors
- Contemporary artistic creation: literature, music, cinema, architecture etc.
- Cultural institutions : attendance, evolutions of museography
- Cultural tourism, festivals, marketing strategies
- Cultural industries
- Formal or informal cultural practices (purchase of commercial cultural goods)
- Media (broadcasting, the press, the internet) as a critical space

(posted 14 December 2011)

"Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage", and since the time of Orpheus, so have words and music. This conference will explore the relationship between words and music, and the place of that relationship in modern culture.

Possible topics of relevance include, but are not limited to, songs and song lyrics, poems set to music, novels about music and musicians, opera and librettos, rock opera, metaphor in music, translating song lyrics, phonetics and pronunciation in singing, drama and dramatic elements in music videos, using song lyrics in the classroom, music journalism, music and ideology, and songs and culture.

Interested individuals are asked to submit an abstract of up to 250 words (including presentation title) and complete contact information (name, institutional affiliation, mail and e-mail addresses, and contact telephone number) by August 30, 2011.

(posted 15 June 2011)

The history of the 20th and 21st centuries merges with the history of cinema and its latest developments. On the one hand, the emergence of cinema is associated with the idea of a democratic art form. Never before had an artistic manifestation reached and affected so many people at the same time. On the other hand, besides constituting one of the privileged cultural products through which past and current conflicts are represented and thoroughly examined, cinema is a medial construction that serves as a 'stage' that interrogates the very act of representation, since it also reflects the problems and conflicts experienced in the context of filmic production. Cinema and conflict went hand in hand from the very beginning. Soon after the appearance of the cinematograph, a short film on the war in Cuba, a war that would lead to the island’s independence, was shown to the public in 1898. In 1915 Griffith famously portrayed a war-torn American society during the Civil War in Birth of a Nation, and raised a huge controversy on the issue of racism.

Keeping in mind the revolutionary aesthetic developments and the consolidation of cinema as a multidimensional art form in the 20th century and at the beginning of the new millenium, it is important to discuss how and to what extent new cinematographies inspired by the examination of issues of memory and oblivion experienced in the last century respond to the challenges imposed by 21st-century conflicts (terrorism, economic and social crises, Islamofobia, various forms of racism, civil wars, exploitation of natural resources, among others).

With a view to discussing the dynamic process of conflict and post-conflict situations, this international conference seeks to analyze how 20th and 21st-century (post-)conflict cinema addresses and (re)mediates the following issues:

•    Post-memory, Post-Conflict and New Cinema
•    Preserving/Rebuilding cultural heritage
•    Reimagining the landscape of the self after conflicts
•    Gender and reconstruction in post-conflict societies
•    Cultural identities in post-conflict contexts
•    Conciliation, punishment and the challenge of democracy
•    Human rights in war-torn societies
•    Ethics and discourses of legitimation in post-conflict situations
•    Film and the Pain of others
•    Globalization and post-conflict societies
•    Translating the other and the self in times of conflict
•    Post-Conflict Cinema in Post-Colonial Contexts

Please send the Organizing Committee 300-words abstracts for 20-minute papers, as well as a brief biographical note (circa 100 words), to <postconflictcinema@gmail.com> by July 30, 2011.
Proposals should list paper title, name, institutional affiliation, and contact details.

•    Samuel Maoz (director of Lebanon)
•    João Canijo (director of Fantasia Lusitana)
•    Thomas Elsaesser (University of Amsterdam)

•    Isabel Capeloa Gil (Catholic University of Portugal)

Scientific Committee: Isabel Capeloa Gil, Adriana Martins, Carlos Capucho, Alexandra Lopes
Organizing Committee: Adriana Martins, Carlos Capucho, Alexandra Lopes, Mónica Dias, Fabíola Maurício, Daniela Agostinho

€50 (with paper)

€70 (without paper)

Postgraduate students: €30 (with paper) and €50 (without paper)

(posted 16 March 2011)

Proposals for papers (maximum 30-minute delivery) should be sent to arrive no later than 31st March, 2011, to Professor Gail Fincham at the University of Cape Town <Gail.Fincham@uct.ac.za>.

Proposals should be 200–300 words long.
Participants will be informed whether their proposal has been accepted within a month of submission.
We plan to provide details of invited plenary speakers, the proposed academic programme, and the entertainment/ excursion programme by April 2011.

(posted 3 March 2011)

This conference seeks to bring together the 'ego-histoires' of Indigenous scholars working on Australian and European studies as well as those of settler and European scholars engaged in the field of Australian Indigenous Studies. 'Egohistoire', a term introduced by French historian Pierre Nora in the 1987 collection Essais d’ego Histoire, draws on studies of personal memory and its relationship to public history.
In recent years there has been a growth of interest in life story research within a wide range of academic disciplines and contexts (eg the Auto/Biography network of the British Sociological Association; oral history, historical anthropology). This work in turn reflects the concerns of critical historiography since the 1980s that emphasizes the ambiguous relationship between the past and the writing of history and draws on some of the productive exchanges between the fields of history, literary studies and anthropology in the 1990s and 2000s.
Nora claimed ego-histoire as a 'new genre, for a new age of historical consciousness'. Major figures such as Georges Duby, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Mona Ozouf, Maurice Agulhon and Annie Kriegel are among the twenty or more prominent French scholars to engage in book length projects in this area. The works of key thinkers including Bourdieu and Lacan draw in different ways from this approach. The 2001 collection 'European Ego-histoires: Historiography and the Self, 1970-2000', edited by Luisa Passerini and Alexander Geppert (special issue of Historien: A Review of the Past and other Stories) established ego-histoire as a 'new' European tradition.
Ego-histoire differs from conventional autobiography in that different life
histories are printed and read side by side forming a series analogous to the serial data featured in many Annales school monographs for example. Whereas autobiography highlights the unique and personal, the essays from Nora's ego-histoire collection invite comparisons and stress the relationship between the personal and collective identity. Works in the area of ego-histoire demonstrate the close connection between individual and national identity and the inextricable intertwining of both objective and subjective evidence, understood to be of different but equal value. At its best the collective exploration of life history can recognise and value experiences that have been silenced or help come to terms with difficult individual and national aspects of the past.
In Australia there is something of a tradition of Indigenous Australians telling about their lives to convey history. This has resulted in a double-sided effect: on the one hand, these life histories provide valuable Indigenous perspectives on Australian history; on the other hand, they expose Indigenous lives to an extent that is hardly comparable to that of non-Indigenous scholars. Yet the life experiences and social background of non-Indigenous scholars in Australia exert an important influence on
This conference is supported by University Paris XIII, the CRIDAF and the Austrian Centre for Transcultural Studies scholarship--what has driven them to practice Indigenous Studies and how do they relate their 'selves' to their studies? Moreover, the pressure on Indigenous scholars to tell about their lives has ledto the paradox of them being thought to write only about ‘Indigenous’ issues.
Indigenous perceptions on European history have thereby often been neglected--what motivates Indigenous intellectuals to write about Europe and how do they relate their 'selves' to such studies? Finally, there are some European scholars who, with considerable geographical distance, have been working on Australian Indigenous Studies--what is their incentive to research in Indigenous Studies and how do they relate their 'selves' to their studies?
Increasingly Australian Indigenous Studies are practised beyond Australian shores, particularly so in Europe. The focus on writing the self and other provides a methodologically innovative tool to understand the mechanisms and different powerrelations in scholarship and throws light on the motivations of researchers to engage in Australian Indigenous Studies both in Europe and in Australia.
This conference provides researchers with an opportunity to present their reflections on their selves in relation to their studies in a supportive and respectful environment and involves three major areas: non-Indigenous Australian and European researchers of Indigenous Studies as well as Indigenous researchers of Australian and European Studies.
Please submit abstract of approximately 200-250 words and a short bio line by 30 September 2011 to all of the conference organisers:
- Vanessa Castejon: <castejon.vanessa@wanadoo.fr>
- Anna Cole: <annacole.uk@gmail.com>
- Oliver Haag: <oliver.haag@transcultural-studies.org>
- Karen Hughes: <Karen.Hughes@monash.edu>

Organised by LERMA (Laboratoire d’études sur le monde anglophone), Université de Provence (Aix-Marseille Université), and CRIDAF (Centre de recherches interculturelles sur les domaines anglophones et francophones, Université de Paris-Villetaneuse, Paris XIII)

"Histories of Forgetting/Histoires de l’oubli" will be the third and last conference in an international series on the themes of the politics of memory and the History wars 'without frontiers' in partnership with the University of Paris-Villetaneuse (Paris XIII) and in collaboration with two Australian universities -- the University of Sydney and the University of Technology Sydney. The first two encounters were a joint workshop at the University of Sydney entitled "Histories of Forgetting and Remembering: Cultural Memory, History and the Nation" and a conference at the University of Paris-Villetaneuse in October 2010: "Fluctuating Memories and Founding Histories in the English and French-speaking worlds, 19th-21st centuries." The contributions to the day session at the University of Sydney have since been published as special edition of the revue Portal - Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies (UTS, Sydney) entitled "Fields of Remembrance" (vol I, 2010) which opens the field of investigation:

This international conference will evoke the paradoxical relation between history and forgetting to explore – from a comparative, social sciences perspective – the lacunae in collective memory, the hidden, lost or forbidden episodes of the historical record; those forgotten histories which define the national, local or diasporic community as much as the official histories or landscapes of memory. How do we account for the persistence of certain collective memories and the silences which surround others? If we accept, with Renan, that it is the capacity to forget which makes the nation possible, what of memories recollected? Forgetting and remembering are not abstract forces that operate in and on history.  Nonetheless, while the rediscovery of aspects of the past exposes the role of agency, from government to the actors of civil society to long-ignored minorities, forgetting is all too readily attributed to the natural forces of inertia and decay, concealing the diversity and complexity of its agents and the political expediency of its construction. Yet we know that states and polities have been founded on the forgetting of inconvenient histories which are systematically repressed or air-brushed from the public record.

How then do we reconcile the sociocognitive idea that forgetting is the necessary corollary of remembering, with the modern, statutory concept of the duty of remembrance according to which forgetting is a source of injustice, a moral fault which requires redress, and one which invests the historian with the responsiblity for uncovering and retrieving episodes buried deep in the collective memory in order to renew and revitalise national narratives? At what stage do these forgotten objects and events merit their own histories? Indeed, in an era of hyper-memory, of instant history and of the encyclopedic scope of virtual archives, is forgetting conceivable in the absolute?

If forgotten histories may be retrieved and reconstituted, to what extent is it possible to write a history of forgetting? This conference sets out to examine the processes and mechanisms which lead to the loss of the past, the non-inscription or transmission of communicative memory, and by tracing the shifting frontier between remembrance and forgetting, to gain a clearer understanding of the attendant political and historiographical issues.

Conference papers will be published in the electronic journal E-rea (LERMA, Aix-Marseille University), a revues.org listed publication. A special issue of the papers of the Paris XIII conference will appear in June 2011, followed by a further issue drawn from the Aix-Marseille conference in May 2012. An English-language print edition combining selected essays will be published subsequently in memory of our friend and colleague François Poirier, founder and former director of the CRIDAF, who died in March 2010.

The conference will take place at the Faculté de Lettres et Sciences Humaines (University of Provence), 29, avenue Robert Schuman, in Aix-en-Provence, from 8-10 December 2011. Propositions for papers are invited in the domain of 19th-21st century Anglophone and Francophone Studies. Abstracts are to be sent by 8th July 2011 to the organisers:

- Valérie André & Matthew Graves (Université de Provence)
- Elizabeth Rechniewski, Judith Keene & Robert Aldrich (University of Sydney)
- Devleena Ghosh (University of Technology Sydney)
- Claire Parfait, Rose-May Pham Dinh, Karine Bigand (Université de Paris XIII)
- Viviane Fayaud (CNRS, MSH Paris)
- Catherine Delmas (Université de Grenoble)

(posted 29 June 2011)

The starting-point of this interdisciplinary international conference is the artificiality ot the ending and ending of any work of art (text, painting, music, films). It will deal will the great number of incomplete texts, published as such or completed by other writers. It will also consider  rewritings, sequels, series, apocryphs, plagiarism, pastiches,  films, remakes, and legal protections. The period coverered will stretch from the XVIIth to XXIst centuries.

<François Gallix fgallix@free.fr>,
<Armelle Parey armelle.parey@unicaen.fr>,
<Isabelle Roblin Isabelle.Roblin@univ-littoral.fr>.

(posted 12 February 2011)

- Professor Sophie Levie (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)
- Professor Barbara Mittler (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg)
- Professor Sascha Bru (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

To mark the foundation of the European Society for Periodical Research (ESPRit), the Centre for Periodicals Research at the University of Salford is hosting the Periodicals Across Europe Conference on 9-10 December 2011. The theme of the conference is the comparative study of European periodicals and periodical cultures, and the conference organizers now welcome proposals for contributions.

We take 'periodical' in its widest sense to mean magazines, journals, newspapers and any other form of serial publication.  'Comparative study' is equally broadly defined.  The conference aims to consider the differences or similarities in periodical cultures between European nations and languages; between historical periods; and between European and non-European periodical cultures.  The organizers anticipate that this comparison will arise from the juxtaposition of papers, so individual papers need not be explicitly comparative.  Topics for proposals may include, but are by no means limited to

• Periodicals and national culture
• Internationalization of and in periodicals
• Trans-European periodical culture
• Europe seen from abroad in periodicals
• The language of periodicals
• Cultural exchanges between periodicals
• Periodical genres (such as the illustrated newspaper; satiric, fiction or poetry magazines; the review; the woman’s magazine; little magazines; trade journals)
• Imitation/Influence/Borrowing in periodical culture

• Periodicals and print and image technologies

While we welcome proposals in any of these areas, we seek especially work on non-Anglophone and/or post-1900 periodicals. While the study of nineteenth-century Anglophone periodicals is well-established, part of ESPRit's mission is to open up periodical research beyond this field. 

In line with ESPRit's stated aims, the organizers hope to bring together some of the 'many European scholars in different disciplines -- historians, sociologists, literary scholars, media studies scholars -- who use periodicals in their work'.  Ideally, the conference will put experienced researchers from the established field in dialogue with more recent arrivals. Accordingly, we also welcome contributions which are focused on questions of theories and methodologies of periodical research, as well as proposals dealing with teaching periodicals, and the impact of digitization on periodical research.

The organizers are looking for proposals for conference papers of 15-20 minutes length or for panels of related papers.  However, we also encourage proposals which vary from the conventional format; for example, roundtable debates, workshops, posters, etc.

The conference will be held at The Burgess Foundation, an attractive venue in central Manchester.  It is convenient for hotels and restaurants and a 2-minute walk from Oxford Road Railway Station with direct links to Manchester International Airport.

(posted 6 April 2011)

We invite you to send your 250-word proposals for 20-minute papers to <wwwbnc@metu.edu.tr>.
Deadline for proposals: 12 September 2011
For queries and further information contact <huyildiz@metu.edu.tr>.

Organizing Committee: Prof. Dr. Meral Çileli, Assist. Prof. Dr. Margaret J-M Sönmez, Assist. Prof Dr. Dürrin Alpakın Martinez-Caro, Assist. Prof. Dr. Nurten Birlik, Assist. Prof. Dr. Hülya Yıldız, Assist. Prof. Dr. Elif Öztabak-Avcı.
Honorary Committee: Prof. Dr. Ayten Coşkunoğlu Bear, Prof. Dr. Nursel İçöz, Assoc. Prof. Ünal Norman, Dr. Deniz Arslan.

(posted 16 April 2011)

Complutense University of Madrid and Friends of Thoreau Research Group UAH are pleased to announce the international conference Reading Nature, which will take place in Madrid, Spain, on December 14-16, 2011.

Environmental disciplines have recently gained prominence due to the potentially devastating consequences of climate change: increasing natural disasters, the greenhouse effect, temperature variations, changing sea levels, etc. Such issues have raised awareness on the necessity for a drastic change in thinking. Ecocriticism -- along with other green disciplines dealing with the relationship between society and the environment -- places nature as the center of the intellectual debate. As Kate Rigby states, "culture constructs the prism through which we know nature." Reading Nature Conference aims to explore from a critical perspective how such a prism is constructed. International reputed experts, along with young scholars will examine the way in which different notions on nature and the environment are conveyed in cultural manifestations.

Bill Mckibben (videoconferencing) (Middlebury College)
Paul Waldau (Harvard University, Yale University, Tufts University)
Phillip Terrie (Bowling Green State University)
Mario Petrucci (Artist and Poet)
Carmen Flys (Universidad de Alcalá de Henares)
María Novo (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia)

Ecopoetics: the rhetoric of environmentalism
Sense of place and identity
Reassessing ecocriticism: race, gender, sexuality and the environment
Transcending ecocriticism: ecofeminism and feminine geographies; ecotheology; postcolonial/transnational ecocriticism and global ecologies
Animal studies: literary, visual and cultural representations of animals in history and in contemporary society. Figuring animals as sentient beings.
Indigenous environmental aesthetics
Representations of 'wilderness' in Anglo-American culture; mythologizing and demythologizing nature in literature and the arts
Genre fiction and environmental representation: sciencie-fiction, gothic fiction, utopia, dystopia, narratives of apocalypse in all media
Disaster narratives and environmental concerns in current narrative discuourses: literature, media, and the arts
Writing/Representing climate change; popular perceptions of climate change
Ecology and Literary studies: methodological tools and theoretical perspectives
Other related topics

(posted 19 January 2011)