January 2012



Landscapes & Environments: British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies 41st Conference
St Hugh's College, Oxford, UK  -  4-6 January 2012
Deadline for proposals: 30 September 2011
The annual meeting of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies is Europe's largest and most prestigious annual conference dealing with all aspects of the history, literature, and culture of the long eighteenth century.
We invite proposals for papers and sessions dealing with any aspect of the long eighteenth century, not only in Britain, but also throughout Europe, North America, and the wider world. Proposals are invited for fully comprised panels of three or four papers, for roundtable sessions of up to five speakers, for individual papers, and for ‘alternative format’ sessions of your devising.
While proposals on all and any eighteenth-century topics are very welcome, this year the conference theme will be Landscapes & Environments. We would thus particularly welcome proposals for panels and papers that address eighteenth-century uses of, and attitudes to, landscapes and environments of all kinds, throughout the long eighteenth century and in any part of the world. These might include, but will not be confined to: changes in the landscape (including urban landscapes) and environment; climate and weather (for example ‘the great storm’ of 1703); ‘greening’ the eighteenth century; landscape gardening; enclosure; pastoral; the picturesque; sacred landscapes; ruins and archaeology; representations of the landscape; and meanings and significance given to landscapes and environments, in all fields from history to the arts, literature, and philosophy.
All enquiries regarding the academic programme of the conference should be addressed to the academic programme co-ordinator, Dr Corinna Wagner <academic@bsecs.org.uk>.
Proposals are due by Friday 30 September. Registration will be available in September and you will be notified whether your paper has been accepted or not by Friday 21 October.
(posted 8 June 2011)



American Name Society Panel at the Modern Languages Association Annual Meeting
Seattle, Washington, USA  -  5-8 January 2012
Deadline for proposals: 1 March 2011
In conjuction with the M.L.A., the American Name Society is pleased to announce its second call for critical papers on literary onomastics (the study of names and naming in literature).  From character names, place names, author names, and literary pseudonyms, to the names of literary works themselves (e.g. novels, novellas, plays, poetry, (auto)biographies, etc.), paper proposals dealing with names of any and all type are warmly welcomed. Furthermore, as we are interested in representing the international diversity of modern literary onomastics, all periods, genres, and literary works are equally welcome as well.  Proposed papers may either focus on a single work or on a body of work by one or more authors. 
Possible topics for submission include the following:
• the importance of names and naming in children’s literature
• critical theory and the analysis of the literary form and/or function of names
• literary translation, names, and naming
• the etymology of names in literature
• name symbolism in literature
• pedagogical strategies for heightening students’ appreciation of literary names and naming
• the issue of (re)naming and the rewriting classics for modern audiences
• fact vs. fiction: the legal and moral issues involved in naming and names within (auto)biographical works
• the social, political, and historical importance of names and naming in literature
• the effect of names and naming in combating and/or reinforcing readers’ stereotypes
Interested authors are requested to submit a 250-word abstract as a Word document by March 1, 2011 to Dr. I. M. Laversuch  <at mavi.yaz@web.de>.
All submissions must be in English and conform with the MLA stylistic regulations.  If you should have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at the above web address. 
Please note that you do not need to be a member of the American Name Society to submit an abstract.  However, if your paper is accepted for presentation, you must become a member in order to present in our panel.
(posted 12 February 2011)






Poetry and Revolution
University of Manouba, Tunisia  -  9-11 January 2012
Deadline for proposals: 20 November 2011
An international conference organised by the Intercultural Studies Research Group, University of Manouba, Tunisia.
Literature and the arts maintain an uneasy relationship with political history. When the latter erupts in violent revolutionary moments, the relationship becomes even more problematical. The forms, themes, genres and discourses this relationship generates provoke interesting critical and philosophical thinking.  
It is also eaqually interesting to see how poets themselves have interacted with revolutions. While Wordsworth enthused about the French Revolution in his youth, celebrating the new "dawn" both in poetry and prose, he turned more ambivalent in later life.  Hugo and Lamartine followed an opposite trajectory. Royalists in youth they turned into passionate Republicans after the 1848 Revolution.  W. B. Yeats's ambivalence towards revolutionary upheavals in his lifetime is well-known: "a terrible beauty is born" from Easter Rising 1916, he has affirmed, but goes on to add that when "things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." 
In the aftermath of the Tunisian Revolution and its sequel the "democratic transition", it seems timely to organize an international conference on poetry and revolutionary change. Papers are invited to examine the dialectical relationship between poetry and politics; to see whether there exists a chronological, logical, or organic relation between them; to discuss how political consciousness is born or constructed, and chiefly whether radical political change engenders new aesthetic forms.  Also, how does consciousness transform itself into political action, and how does poesis convert itself into praxis?  What role did cybernetic literature play in the Tunisian Revolution?  What is the place of "cyber-textuality" in future revolutions?  What role do intellectuals play before, during and after revolutions? 
Papers should not exceed 25 minutes.  Please send proposals (approximately 300 words) no later than 20 November 2011 to:
- <mounir.khelifa@sit.edu>
- <rachedkhalifa@yahoo.co.uk>.
(posted 20 September 2011)



Shakespeare and Tyranny
University of Murcia, Spain
New dates: 16-18 January 2012
New extended deadline: 31 July 2011
Work on the reception of Shakespeare under different types of tyrannical government (absolutist, dictatorial, etc.) has reached remarkably similar conclusions as to how that reception came about. Carefully regulated attitudes to, and practices in, Shakespeare criticism, performance, translation and adaptation, and of course the aesthetico-ideological structures of centralized, all-seeing state apparatuses, have been shown to follow analogous patterns and to pursue similar, if often unachievable, goals.
The symposium, which is organized by Murcia University's research team "Shakespeare's presence in Spain within the framework of his reception in Europe" (https://www.um.es/shakespeare), invites contributions from scholars, translators and theatre practitioners with an interest in the appropriation of Shakespeare’s work in different tyrannical contexts. Among the many topics that might be usefully pursued are:
- The role of censorship and self-censorship in the revision and production of Shakespearean material
- Institutional controls on the dissemination and publication of Shakespeare's work
- Assumptions and techniques in the staging of Shakespeare's plays
- State intervention in the elaboration of a Shakespeare 'canon'
- The role of Shakespeare in the construction of identity under tyranny
- Overcoming the subversion/containment paradigm
If you are interested in taking part in this symposium, please send a brief abstract of the paper you intend to give (250-300 words) and an even briefer biog indicating institution and country of origin, line of work, chief research interests, etc., to <shakespeare@um.es>. The new deadline for the receipt of abstracts is 31 July 2011.
(posted 10 May 2011, updated 4 July 2011)



The Perception and Representation of France and the French in the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American World
Paris, France  -  20-21 January 2012
Deadline for proposals: 15 May 2011
Société d'Études Anglo-Américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe Siècles
This conference will aim at studying the multiplicity of glances cast by the Anglo-American public on France and the French throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Papers should thus afford a reflection on the perception of a foreign reality, on the notion of stereotype and "cultural screen", on all those prejudices, readymade assumptions and pre-conceived systems that pre-structure our perception of strangeness and otherness, sometimes leading to what Husserl and Merleau-Ponty have called ante-predicative judgements. Whether such judgements revealed systematic francophobia or excessive francomania, whether they were induced by knowledge derived from experience and observation or merely by hearsay and prejudice, attitudes toward the French friend or enemy were highly influential, on both sides of the Atlantic, in the construction and definition of a national identity. Whatever position will be defended, the debate should prove or disprove the principle according to which: "esse est percipi" ("to be is to be perceived").
In Britain, for instance, the words that spontaneously spring to mind are probably 'rivalry', 'misunderstanding' or 'strangeness', no doubt because relations between England and France were particularly tense in a complex period, which the historian John Robert Seeley, in the nineteenth century, did not hesitate to call "the new Hundred Years' War". And yet, the conflict went far beyond commercial or strategic interest, for the tensions between Britain and France were actually based on an opposition between systems, or between two visions of the world even, an opposition which might well be declined along the following paradigms: French 'tyranny' vs. British 'liberty'; Roman Catholicism vs. Protestantism; theism vs. deism; mercantilism vs. free trade; cartesianism vs. empiricism, etc. On both sides of the Channel, philosophers as well as political and religious thinkers endlessly discussed the pros and cons of the rival systems, often misunderstanding or misrepresenting them, sometimes perhaps intentionally…
In the American world, the French were regarded as those expanding papists allied to Indian nations, whom British colonists kept fighting throughout the eighteenth century. Papers are thus invited to focus on the various forms that the distrust and hostility towards the French and their values -- or supposed values -- assumed in Puritan writings and early North American newspapers. After the French defeat in 1763, and French support of the thirteen insurgent colonies between 1778 and 1781, the question becomes: were the French perceived differently immediately, and by whom?
However, what has been called the second "Republic of Letters", a community which of course does not exclude North America, was also the scene of mutual influences ignoring political, religious and economic antagonisms, and the multiple exchanges between the three nations, whether they were tinged with distrust, scepticism, admiration or fascination, drew the interest and attention of the Anglo-American world towards that ever-disturbing 'neighbour' from across the Channel or the Atlantic.
In the American field, where few of the Founders were real francophiles (maybe even Jefferson...), one might be led to wonder about the role played by the French experience in the later career of the American diplomats who stayed in France between 1776 and 1789, not to mention those who came later. As well as in Britain, the French Revolution did play a major role in the United States after 1789, fascinating rulers and the people at large. The perception and representation of France and the French was at the heart of the national political debate through caricatures, toasts, and newspaper articles, all the more so since North American cities were filling with émigrés and refugees from Santo Domingo working as bakers or dancing-masters. This was before the victorious armies of the French Revolution could impress a martial and threatening image on the minds of ‘young’ Americans devoted to democracy and to free trade. Papers could thus address the varied and ever-evolving perception of France and the French in the British North American colonies through private correspondence, newspapers and illustrations.
Britain also needed its intimate enemy, if only to define itself in opposition to it, and its eyes were riveted on all things French: literature, fashions, food, arts and crafts. During the Restoration the exiled Stuart kings who had absorbed French culture and tastes during their forced stay, notably Charles II, tried to impose them on their return, sometimes to the displeasure of the Court and the people at large. The presence in London of French composers like Robert Cambert and Louis Grabu fostered the anti-Catholic feeling that permeated the country. In the periods when the two nations were not at war, British travellers visited France and wrote about their experience, often but not always seen through jaundiced eyes (Smollett, Sterne and Young). Frenchmen also travelled to Britain and America, and some of them even settled there. After 1685 and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the influx of talented French Huguenots was a shot in the arm for London, and their experience as well as their customs and mores raise the perennial issue of cultural assimilation. Fournier Street, in Spitalfields, abuts on Brick Lane...
One century later, and for very different reasons, other French émigrés sought refuge in London. Both in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French writers, philosophers, artists and craftsmen, whatever their religion (or lack of it), were widely admired across the Channel. Even a Francophobe like Hogarth admitted through gritted teeth how much he owed to French painters. Philip(pe) Mercier established the Conversation Piece as a successful genre in Britain. In the musical field, Handel did not hesitate, in the 1730s, to modify the structure of his Italian operas so as to accommodate dancers coming from France, and the French actors who flocked to London after the dissolution of the "Théâtre de la Foire" no doubt influenced the development of the ballad-opera, a theatrical genre usually said to be typically English. In the world of art and crafts, Louis Laguerre, Jean Tijou and many others had extremely successful careers in Britain. As far as hard sciences are concerned, the spectacular example the first cross-Channel flight in a balloon carried out by Dr Jeffries and Blanchard in 1785 proves that collaboration between the two rivals was not impossible. Politics, religion, artistic choices, commercial and strategic interests might set the two nations apart, but educated men and women of good will were always able to develop an Entente Cordiale.
Papers submitted for this conference could thus address the follow disciplinary fields:
- history and politics: the perception of France and the French in the various conflicts and debates of the period under scrutiny (wars, revolutions, institutional changes…);
- trade and economics: France and the French as seen in the development of commercial strategies, in the search for new markets, in their attitude towards competition…;
- religion, history of ideas: the perception of the French Enlightenment, the influence and the vision of the "Philosophes"...;
- science(s): the attitude of the Anglo-American world towards French scientific discoveries (scepticism, admiration?);
- literature: the reaction of the Anglo-American public towards French literary production, or the representation of France and the French in Anglo-American literature;
- art and crafts: the perception of French gardens (rejection, envy...), music, dance, opera, painting, sculpture, crafts, etc. ;
- daily life and mores: cooking, comfort, fashions, sexuality, etc.;
- travels, immigration: the glance cast by British or American people during their travels to France and the continent, or the perception of the French during their own trips to the Anglo-American world.
The scientific committee will give priority to innovative projects (primary sources, methodological approaches, etc.) rather than to syntheses of well-known elements.
Calendar:
- 15 May 2011: deadline for submission. Please send your abstract (c. 400 words, “.doc” format for PC), plus a selective bibliography and bio-bibliographical CV, to:
- Guyonne Leduc <guyonne.leduc@univ-lille3.fr>
- and Pierre Degott <degott@univ-metz.fr>.
- 30 June 2011: decision of the scientific committee, which will be constituted according to the nature of the proposals.
(posted 17 February 2011)



The Screenplay in English-Speaking Cinema: The Invisible Visible Text
Université de Bretagne Sud, France  -  26 January 2012
Deadline for proposals: 30 June 2011
Organized by Shannon Wells-Lassagne (Université de Bretagne Sud) and Isabelle Roblin (Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale)
In a society with a seemingly unquenchable thirst for "behind the scenes" tidbits, where DVDs are regularly reissued (and purchased) according to their bonus features, it is unsurprising that the screenplay has gained new recognition in academic circles. This increased interest is obvious to publishing houses, as can be seen in the publication of screenplays of popular films in collections like "Newmarket Shooting Scripts" or by large publishing houses like Faber & Faber; it is obvious to the artists themselves, as evidenced by the deliberate choice made by Nobel prizewinner Harold Pinter to include his screenplays in his "Collected Works", or in documentaries or works of fiction focusing on the phenomenon (Tales from the Script, 2010, Adaptation, 2002, Le Professeur de scénario, 2009). Finally, the creation of a new academic journal, The Journal of Screenwriting, in 2010, suggests that the study of screenwriting is finally considered an academic field worthy of study in and of itself, thus going beyond the practical "how-to" books or the personal memoirs that have dominated the area until recently.
That is not to say that the study of screenplays is without its difficulties; the co-editor of The Journal of Screenwriting, Ian Macdonald, lays bare the problem of its ambiguous status: "[It has been considered] an awkward and peripheral subject […] sidelined because of its problematic relationship to the apparently more concrete final 'text' of the film. Considered as rough sketches or the 'blueprint', or as incomplete or transitional, who would not look at the screenplay in its various forms as somehow inferior?" For this one-day seminar, we seek to highlight both the complexities and the richness of the screenplay as text, while always keeping in mind its problematic nature as a text that is not meant to be read, whose function is clear but whose status is not.
We invite papers that deal with subjects including:
- The theorization of the screenplay:
• Defining the term “screenplay”: is it the simple retranscription of the final film, of the final version of the script (the "shooting script" to which Newmarket's series refers), or of previous versions (for example in Harold Pinter's decision to publish his original script of The French Lieutenant’s Woman). Indeed, what can be made of screenplays that were never filmed, like Pinter’s The Proust Screenplay, or only partially filmed, like Nabokov's screenplay of Lolita?
• To what extent can the screenplay, as an essential tool for the construction of a film, lay bare the narrative techniques of film or literature? What are the narrative specificities of the screenplay?
• Is it possible to study a screenplay without studying the subsequent film?
• Should the screenplay be studied as one studies manuscripts, as a form of textual genealogy, or as a source text, similar to film adaptations?
- Case studies that highlight essential elements of the relationship between the screenplay and its resulting film:
• Examples of transposition (or lack thereof) of the visual nature of film in the written text of the screenplay.
• Examples of fruitful or difficult relationships between screenwriters and filmmakers and the impact of these relations on the film.
• The relationship between the screenplay and the source text in the case of the adaptation of a novel, a true story, etc.
• The problems with credit (and copyright) for one or several screenwriters after successive rewritings of a screenplay.
Of course, this list is not exhaustive.
Proposals (250 words or less) accompanied by a short biography should be sent before June 30th 2011 to:
- Shannon Wells-Lassagne <swellslassagne@9online.fr>
- and Isabelle Roblin <Isabelle.Roblin@univ-littoral.fr>.
(posted 4 April 2011)


  

February 2012



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Polytropic(al) Joyce: The Fifth James Joyce Postgraduate Conference
Queen's University Belfast, UK  -  2-4 February 2012
Deadline for proposals: 30 November 2011
The 5th annual Joyce postgraduate conference will take place on the 2nd to 4th of February, 2012, at Queen's University, Belfast. The first birthday conferences were held simultaneously in Rome and Dublin in 2008, and since then the conferences have been alternately held between universities in Italy and Ireland. This year, for the first time, the conference will be hosted in Northern Ireland. Joyce visited Belfast in November 1909 while searching for locations for new premises for cinema to expand on the Volta Theatre in Dublin. The strong presence of the Ulsterman, Mr. Deasy, in the "Nestor" episode, the second chapter of Ulysses informs Joyce’s engagement with the particular issues around the politics of Ireland and Great Britain as well as the special position of Northern Ireland.
In recognition of this significance, the theme of this year’s conference will be "Polytropic(al) Joyce: North, South, and Beyond," addressing issues of geography, history, time, language and politics in context. "Polytropic(al)" is an adaptation of "polytropos," an epithet for Odysseus that suggests his versatility and his ability to consider and take multiple courses of action. Here it refers to the many contexts in which Joyce’s works were written and the many in which they can be read.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- Joyce and Northern Ireland
- Joyce and Scotland, Wales, or England
- Northern and Southern Europe in Joyce
- Joyce and his readers
- Time and place
- Joyce and the Irish Revival
- Joyce and Empire
- Geographical Joyce
- Language and culture
- Genetic criticism
- Bioregionalism and ecocriticism
- Landscapes/ cityscapes
- Religion and politics
Please send abstracts of 250 to 300 words to <joyceinbelfast@gmail.com> by 30 November 2011.
(posted 22 September 2011)



Preaching Death in Early-Modern France and England (16th-17th centuries)
Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier III, France  -  8-10 February 2011
Deadline for proposals: 15 April 2011
Institute for Research on the Renaissance, the Neo-classical Age and the Enlightenment (IRCL, UMR 5186, CNRS)
Preaching death to the living is not only a matter of rhetoric. It is a practice which raises significant theological and anthropological issues and needs to be examined from different perspectives, be they confessional, doctrinal, generic, geographical or ritual. The sermon, whether it is about death or occasioned by death (like the funeral sermon or the memorial sermon), helps crystallise the boundaries between orthodoxy and heterodoxy.
Encouraging a multidisciplinary and comparative approach (at the intersection of theology, the history of mentalités, the history of religious ideas and literary history), this conference aims to carry out a geographical and confessional investigation of the Christian sermon anddeath in early-modern France and England. We invite papers that address the sermon not only as a printed text, but also as a public act, a speech delivered to and for an audience, a performance bringing together different actors from the fields of religion and society. The conference shall not focus on the illustrious figures who carried the art of preaching funeral orations or sermons to such a degree of sophistication that their works have ever since been considered as epitomes of the genre.
It shall rather give pride of place to lesser-known preachers who help us understand the genre in its most familiar and everyday expressions. Papers may deal with collections of sermons or isolated sermons delivered on the occasion of a given event in collective or individual history e.g. the death of a prominent magistrate or clergyman, or that of a close relative or a child. Other topics include the place of sermons on death in contemporary treatises of rhetoric or homiletics.
In all cases the sermon is to be considered as both a text and an event and is to be analysed in relation to its context. Within this framework, papers may focus on one of the following topics:
- the making of the sermon, particularly the choice of a given scriptural text or the interrelation between biblical and other references (e.g. models, biblical characters, types or commonplaces);
- the use of the sermon as a vehicle for theological and doctrinal controversy;
- reception, impact and choice of audience (e.g. court audiences, parish audiences or communities of readers);
- the iconography of frontispieces or the engravings to be found in printed sermons or collections.
We invite proposals for 25-minute papers. Titles and abstracts are to be submitted by 15 April 2011 to the conference organisers by email.
Working languages: French and English.
Organisers:
- Paula Barros, PhD (IRCL, Lecturer in British civilisation studies, 16th-17th centuries), Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier III), <paula.barros@univ-montp3.fr>
- Inès Kirschleger, PhD (IRCL, Teaching assistant, Doctor in French literature, Université d'Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse), <ineskir@aol.com>
- Claudie Martin-Ulrich, PhD (IRCL, Lecturer in French literature, 16th-17th centuries, Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour),<claudiemartin@free.fr>.
(posted 4 April 2011)



Children and Childhood in the English Renaissance
Universität Siegen (Arthur-Woll Haus), Germany  - 10-11 February 2012
Deadline for proposals: 28 February 2011
Despite the fact that the terms "child" and "childhood" have inspired scholars of various disciplines and ages, the representation of childhood in the time of the English Renaissance remains an under-investigated topic. The reasons for this oversight are manifold. Although Philip Ariès’s thesis that childhood was discovered in the eighteenth century has meanwhile been revised (see, for instance, Orme and Hanawalt on the Middle Ages, or Pollock on the Early Modern Period), comprehensive studies of childhood in the Renaissance are still comparatively scarce. This is the more deplorable since the Renaissance can be regarded as a transitional period between the Middle Ages and the increasing influence of Puritanism in the seventeenth century, with its focus on childhood as a crucial period in spiritual life. In fact, childhood is a central topic of Renaissance literature. The dramatic works of Shakespeare are a case in point: the parent-child relationship, for instance, is of prominent significance in many of the Bard’s principal tragedies. In Romeo and Juliet and King Lear it is precisely this relationship that stands in the core of the tragedy causing the ultimate end of the protagonists. Besides, the concept of childhood was also a part of the state apparatus. Elizabeth I was often represented as "the mother of the nation" and a pelican who feeds her subjects, respectively children with her own flesh. While scholars have frequently focused on the maternal side of such metaphors, the implications of childhood are yet understudied. Last but not least, one could think of the emergence of numerous books on education and teaching methods for children by Mulcaster or Ascham who certainly develop their own concepts of childhood and adolescence.
The international symposium at the University of Siegen therefore seeks to explore a wide range of questions related to the representation of childhood in this widely neglected period in childhood studies. Papers are invited on various topics dealing with the representation of children and the development of the concept "childhood" in the Renaissance. Suggested topics may include:
- Representation of Children in literature, the visual arts and music
- Conceptualizations of Childhood (e.g. in philosophy, rhetoric, science)
- Childcare (medical advice, handbooks, nursing, swaddling etc.)
- Educational issues
- Children’s literature, toys and games
- Family relationships
- Childhood and religion
- Royal children
Please send your proposals (200-300 words) for papers of c. 20 minutes to both <am.englit-si@muelleranja.eu> AND <drenkov@anglistik.uni-siegen.de>.
The deadline for proposals is 28 February 2011.
Selected papers will be published in the conference proceedings.
Contact: Dr. des. Boris Drenkov and Prof. Dr. Anja Müller, Universität Siegen, FB3: Sprach-, Literatur- und Medienwissenschaften, Anglistik II: Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft, Adolf-Reichwein-Str. 2, 57076 Siegen, Germany.
(posted 3 December 2010)


ESSE has opened a FaceBook page.
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Joyce and/in Italy: The 5th JJIF Graduate Conference
Università Roma Tre, Italy  -  New revised dates: 16-17 February 2012
Deadline for proposals: 10 December 2011
The 5th James Joyce Graduate Conference - Rome, endorsed by The James Joyce Italian Foundation, will be hosted by the Department of Comparative Literatures at the Università Roma Tre, on February 16-17, 2012 (new revised dates), to celebrate Joyce's 130th birthday. Papers are invited on any aspect of Joyce’' response to Italy and Italian culture, and/or the Italian reception of Joyce's life and works. Papers can be either in English or in Italian. We welcome proposals and abstracts for individual papers and for panel sessions from graduates, young researchers and independent scholars.
Concerns include, but are not limited to:
- Joyce and his Italian Contexts
- Joyce and/in translation
- Joyce and the issue of copyright
- Joyce and European nationalism
- Joyce and Internationalism
- Joyce’s teaching
- Teaching Joyce
Proposals and abstracts should be no more than 250 words. Papers and presentations are limited to a maximum of 20 minutes. Submissions must include name, contact information, and notice of institutional affiliation or independent scholar status.
Deadline for submissions: December 10, 2011. Accepted speakers will be notified by January 10, 2012.
Proposals should be sent via email to: <joyce.foundation@uniroma3.it>.
(posted 20 September 2011, updated 5 October 2011)




Literature, Culture and the Fantastic: Challenges of the Fin de Siècle(s)
University of Rijeka, Croatia  -  17-18 February 2012
New extended deadline for proposals: 8 January 2012
Keynote Speakers:
- Philip Healy, University of Oxford, UK
- Dr Thomas Hubbard,  honorary fellow of Glasgow University (2004-211), visiting professor at Université Stendhal (Grenoble 3), France
- Dr Tatjana Jukić, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Hosting institutions: Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Rijeka (English Department, Section for Literature)
Conference Organizing Committee:
- Irena Grubica, University of Rijeka, Croatia, president
- Dr Zdenek Beran, Charles University Prague, Czech Republic, vice-president
- Dr Claire Basin, University of Paris Ouest Nanterre la Défense, France
- Dr Francesca Saggini, Tuscia University, Italy
- Dr Tamás Bényei, University of Debrecen, Hungary
- Dr Željka Švrljuga, University of Bergen, Norway
For further information contact the conference organizer: Irena Grubica <igrubica@gmail.com>.
Fantastic literature has been receiving increasing scholarly attention, often discussed in relation to various cultural and discursive practices. This conference invites scholars who orient in their work at exploring the fantastic and related issues and who are interested in various discourses the term itself generates. Although broader inputs are also welcome, we would particularly like to delineate various relations between the fantastic and the fin de siècle(s) and to contextualize their historical and cultural significance. We would, therefore, appreciate discussions on the fantastic in the light of the development of the idea, challenging traditional historical contexts and offering new ones. In this respect we are especially interested in the fantastic and its relation to the genesis of aesthetic ideas, the concept of terror/horror, the sublime, to Gothic and sensation fiction, to the Aesthetic Movement and Decadence, etc.: in what way does fantastic literature (as well as art) of various fin de siècles reflect the dynamic and all too often controversial development of these concepts? At the same time, it seems to be of the equal importance to investigate a broader context of specific social, political and economic conditions along with the development of science and scientific discourses, including psychology and sexology. The fantastic is also a realm of what Stephen Arata calls "the pathology of everyday life" (in Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siècle), which addresses more private issues such as personal identity, body or sanity.
In view of the above mentioned the topics may include but are not limited to the following:
• The fantastic and various aspects of the fin-de-siècle(s) aesthetics
• The fantastic and the canon; genres and sub-genres, popular literature, intertextuality, influences 
• The fantastic and gender, body, corporeality
• The fantastic and identity, dualism, doppelganger, grotesque
• The philosophy of the fantastic
• The fantastic and memory, cultural memory
• The fantastic and narrative manipulations, supernatural, temporality, scientific development and progress, cultural anxiety and social crisis, cultural subversion
• The fantastic and visual; literary in relation to other modes of representation, visual and performance, film
• A single author/text: e.g. O.Wilde, R. L. Stevenson, Vernon Lee, Grant Allan, George Egerton, etc., comparative analyses and cultural studies approaches
• the fin-de-siècle fantastic as reflected cross-culturally in Scottish, Welsh, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, American, Caribbean etc. writing, emphasising specific predominant cultural or generic aspect, the genesis of the fin-de-siècle fantastic in these cultures and literatures and their relations to wider historical and cultural framework, possible relation to the issue of postcolonialism
• The fantastic and its relation to (post)colonialism, imperialism, nationalism
We also invite papers, exploring the legacy of the term in various fin de siècles and beyond, especially its application to literature and culture of the end of the 20th century, raising or challenging parallels and questioning the very idea of end (fin).
Proposals of 400 words and a short biographical note should be submitted by 8 January 2012 (nex extended deadline) to:
<igrubica@gmail.com>
During the conference the editorial meeting for the book The Fantastic in the Fin de Siècle, ed. by I. Grubica & Z. Beran, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, will take place.
A few selected papers from the conference not included in the book will be published in a special journal issue of Literaria Pragensia.
(posted 5 October 2011, updated 26 January 2011)


ESSE has opened a FaceBook page.
All the information that you want to share but that does not fit into the columns of this website can be found on the ESSE FB page: books just published, announcements of exhibitions, interesting websites, etc. Just use your imagination!



Workshop on L2 proficiency assessment
Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, France  -  24-25 February 2012
Deadline for proposals: 30 October 2011
A conference organised by EMMA: https://sites.google.com/site/l2proficiency/home
This bilingual French/English workshop seeks to bring together linguists interested in the assessment of proficiency in second language (L2) use. Generally, the workshop aims to identify reliable methods to assess L2 learner proficiency so as to enhance comparability across Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research results.
Traditionally, Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research focuses on:
- defining how learners' source and target languages influence their interlanguage (Hickmann et al. 1998, Hendricks et al. 2008, Lambert, et al. 2008, Perdue 1993, Slobin 2004);
- determining stages of L2 acquisition (Perdue 1993, Bartning 1997, Bartning and Schlyter 2004, Hawkins and Buttery 2009); and
- identifying cognitive mechanisms common to learners' native language (L1) and their L2 (Watorek 2004, Lenart 2006).
Independently of their line of investigation, SLA studies tend to rely on learners whose proficiency level in L2 is yet to be clearly assessed. Although such assessment is essential to reach accurate and meaningful interpretations of research results (Thomas 1994, Pallotti 2009), a range of proficiency measures remain to be identified to ensure consistent assessment of L2 learners' levels of proficiency. In addition, and beyond research purposes, identifying proficiency measures will directly benefit second language teachers who need reliable tests to assess students' language skills through exams or language certificates (e.g. TOEFL, Cambridge and Oxford language tests, CLES in France …).
Questions we are currently exploring, and which we would like to submit to discussion are: 
- what morpho-syntactic and lexical criteria can be used to determine learners' stage of acquisition?
- what psycholinguistic indicators can be used to determine learners' proficiency level? (e.g. processing speed?)
- what kind of language test is appropriate to assess L2 learners' production and comprehension skills?
Submissions for paper and poster presentations are welcome in French and in English and we particularly welcome submissions on the topics of:
- the acquisition of French and English as a second language;
- the assessment of tense, aspect and modality in SLA;
- language certificates as a way to assess language skills
Interested researchers are invited to send a 500-word abstract (excluding references) in French or in English before 30th October 2011 to <L2proficiency@gmail.com>.
A publication of the conference proceedings is envisaged.
Language policy: presentations in French or in English are accepted. All speakers will be asked to provide a handout or a power point presentation in English.
Plenary speakers : Inge Bartning (Stockholm University), Heather Hilton (Paris 8 University)
Organizing committee : Sandra Deshors, Pascale Leclercq, Isabelle Ronzetti (EMMA - Université Montpellier 3)
(posted 20 October 2011)



The Language of Women's Fiction, 1750-1830
Chawton House Library, Hampshire, UK  -  24-25 February 2012
Deadline for proposals: 1 july 2011
Keynote Speakers:
Prof. Sylvia Adamson (Emeritus Professor, University of Sheffield, UK)
Dr. Joe Bray (Sheffield University, UK)
Prof. Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (Leiden University, The Netherlands)
Important dates:
Deadline for abstract submission: 1st July 2011
Notification of acceptance: 1st September 2011
Recent scholarship has questioned established accounts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, revising traditional periodisations in order to foreground continuities, overlaps, and dialogues. The nature of current scholarship itself reflects the move to dissolve former boundaries, with the linguistic turn of literary scholarship in the 1980s contributing to revisionist discussions of style during periods traditionally described as Enlightenment or Romantic. However, although there has been steady linguistic interest in the poetry of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, developments in the style of prose fiction of the period remain largely unexplored. Fiction written by women offers a particularly rich site of investigation.
A glance at an archival resource such as that at Chawton House Library (http://library.chawton.org/heritage/) confirms that women writers made significant contributions to fiction throughout the period 1750-1830. Women writers worked in a variety of genres, ranging from the gothic and historic, to novels of sentiment and manners; they produced hybrid forms, such as gothic romance or the moral novel, and hybridizations which drew on European fiction through their work with translations; women writers experimented with form also, producing innovative narrative strategies, and metafictional narrations. Such novels allowed their writers to engage with contemporary debates on gender, class, regionalism, nationalism, language, identity and other social and political issues.
This conference aims to bring together scholars working at the interface of language and literature, who are interested in the historicization of literary language, style practices and effects in the fiction of this broad period. In particular, the conference invites contributions from scholars interested in works by women, or works traditionally categorized as being predominantly for female reception. The organisers invite papers which consider:
1. How writers made choices of language for generic or thematic purposes
2. How far writers’ linguistic choices were influenced by contemporary attitudes to standard or regional Englishes, and by contemporary theorizations of language that related it to notions of thought, ‘truth’, ethics and identity.
3. In what ways editorial decisions and printing conventions manifest themselves in stylistic features in fiction
4. The extent to which the aestheticization of literary style by periodical reviews influences writers’ language choices
Contributors are invited to submit a 300-word abstract for a twenty-minute paper, using the conference website: http://www.languageapproachesatchawton.co.uk
(posted 2 May 2011)




In Analysis: the Work of Hanif Kureishi
University of Roehampton, UK  -  24-25 February 2012http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/News/‘In-Analysis--the-work-of-Hanif-Kureishi’, -a-conversation-and-reading-from-‘Work-in-Progress’/
Deadline for proposals: 15 January 2012
Conference events include: Hanif Kureishi in conversation and reading from work-in-progress
Invited speakers include:
Susie Thomas (Independent, UK)
Geoffrey Boucher (Deakin, Victoria, Australia)
Peter Childs (Gloucestershire, UK)
Philip Tew (Brunel, UK)
Hanif Kureishi is one of the most exciting and provocative writers of his generation. He has written across many different genres and is a key, and often controversial, critic of our contemporary culture, recently claiming that 'We're all mixed-race now.' This conference presents a unique opportunity to reflect on the significance of Kureishi's achievements, bringing together prominent Kureishi scholars, critics working on modern and contemporary fiction and Hanif Kureishi himself. Screenings of rare footage, an exclusive viewing of archival material and a special session with Kureishi’s creative collaborators are planned for the conference programme.
Short papers and special panels are invited on aspects of Kureishi's writing focusing on specific texts/periods or addressing his relation to genre and cultural hybridity; music and the popular imagination; (international) reception and influence; screenwriting, adaptation and 'genetic' approaches; place, space and London; postcolonial criticism and beyond; documentary fiction, autobiography and life writing; psychoanalysis; gender and sexuality; morality and ethics; class and Englishness.
Send abstracts for papers of 250 words, together with a brief biographical note, to the organisers at the email address below, before 5 February 2012. A limited number of postgraduate student bursaries are available. Requests for early notification of acceptance for delegates are welcome.
To propose papers, please contact Professor Susan Alice Fischer and Dr. Sebastian Groes at: <Sebastian.Groes@roehampton.ac.uk> and/or: >safischer@mac.com>
For further information and registration details, please visit:
http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/News/‘In-Analysis--the-work-of-Hanif-Kureishi’,-a-conversation-and-reading-from-‘Work-in-Progress’/
or email Julia Noyce: <Julia.Noyce@roehampton.ac.uk>.
Conference organisers: Sebastian Groes (University of Roehampton, London, UK) and Susan Alice Fischer (Medgar Evers College of The City University of New York)
(posted 26 September 2011, updated 23 January 2012)



Joyce and/in Italy: The 5th JJIF Graduate Conference
The dates have been revised to 16-17 February 2012


ESSE has opened a FaceBook page.
This will have no effect upon the ESSE website, which will continue exactly as it is.
The new FaceBook page is an additional link between ESSE members. It can be used to post information that cannot be fitted into the existing columns of the ESSE website.



Féidir Linn! [Yes we can!] : Politics and Ideology in Children's Literature. Biennial Conference of the Irish Society for the Study of Children's Literature
Dublin City University, Ireland  -  25-6 February 2012
Deadline for proposals: 18 November 2011
Proposals are welcome relating to the overall theme and associated topics in the context of both Irish and international literature for children, and in relation to historical as well as contemporary issues.
Associated themes include:
• Utopias and dystopias
• War and peace
• Nationalism
• Cultural memory and empowerment
• The literary marketplace
• Education: choice and change
• Imagology: images and perceptions of the Self and Other
• Geocriticism: space, place and time
• Ecocriticism: nature and the physical environment
Proposals of 300 words maximum should be sent to ISSCL Conference Secretary Dr. Áine McGillicuddy at: <aine.mcgillicuddy@dcu.ie>
Subject line should clearly indicate "ISSCL Proposal" to arrive no later than Friday 18th November 2011.
Celebrating 10 years of the ISSCL: 2002-2012. Affiliated Society of IRSCL. http://www.isscl.com
(posted 31 October 2011)



The Phonology of Contemporary English. Variation and change
University of Toulouse II-Le Mirail - Toulouse, France  -  29 February- 2 March 2012
New extended deadline for proposals: 1 November 2011
In view of the number of abstracts received for the PAC Conference taking place next March, the conference organisers have decided to extend the length of the conference by one day (29 Feb-2 March 2012), and the deadline for receipt of abstracts will now be 1st November. Details of the conference are given below.
On 29 Feb-2 March 2012, the CLLE-ERSS research institute (CNRS and University of Toulouse II) will be organizing its first international conference on The Phonology of Contemporary English: Variation and Change.
Websites:
http://w3.pac.univ-tlse2.fr (under construction)
GOALS OF THE CONFERENCE
All papers focusing on the main theme summarized by the title of the conference are welcome but, to contextualize this forthcoming event, participants should be aware that PAC 2012 is a logical extension of the open workshops that the PAC project has organized annually since 2000, on a European level, at the universities of Toulouse II, Montpellier III and Aix-Marseille I, and reflects the developing activities of this project.
The PAC project (Phonologie de l'Anglais Contemporain: usages, variétés et structure - The Phonology of Contemporary English: usage, varieties and structure) is coordinated by Jacques Durand (University of Toulouse II) and Philip Carr (University of Montpellier III). The main aims of the project can be summarized as follows: to give a better picture of spoken English in its unity and diversity (geographical, social and stylistic); to test phonological and phonetic models from a synchronic and diachronic point of view, making room for the systematic study of variation; to favour communication between specialists in speech and in phonological theory; to provide corpus-based data and analyses which will help improve the teaching of English as a foreign language.
To achieve these goals, the cornerstone of the PAC project is the creation of a corpus of oral English, coming from a wide variety of linguistic areas in the English-speaking world (such as Great Britain: Received Pronunciation, Lancashire, York, Ayrshire, Edinburgh, Glasgow, West Midlands: Birmingham, Black Country ; Republic of Ireland: Limerick, Cork ; Canada: Alberta, Ontario ; Australia: New South Wales ; New Zealand: Christchurch, Dunedin ; India: Delhi English, Mumbai ; USA: California, West Texas, Saint Louis, Boston, North Carolina). The protocol used is the same throughout and was inspired by the classical methodology of William Labov. Although significant corpora of oral English already exist, many of them have been conceived along exclusively sociolinguistic rather than explicitly phonological lines. In other cases, hardly any information is available on speakers beyond gender and regional affiliation. Furthermore, few corpora are based upon a single methodology permitting a fully comparative analysis of the data. The approach chosen by the PAC project is modeled on the French PFC project (La Phonologie du Français Contemporain, coord. M.-H. Côté (Ottawa University), J. Durand, B. Laks (Paris X) and C. Lyche (Oslo/Tromsø), http://www.projet-pfc.net/). This parent project has demonstrated how a corpus which was originally conceived for phonology can lend itself to many other types of linguistic exploitation: the lexicon, morpho-syntax, prosody, pragmatics, dialectology, sociolinguistics and interaction.
All contributions on the phonology and phonetics of contemporary English are welcome. Other things being equal, papers with a focus on variation and change within a corpus approach will be given priority. Plenary sessions will alternate with shorter oral presentations along with swift, five-minute presentations to accompany posters presented, in our two Speed Postering sessions. A PAC workshop will form part of the general programme of the conference. Papers are expected to be delivered in English.
INVITED PLENARY SPEAKERS
Felicity Cox (Macquarie University, Australia)
Ulrike Gut (University of Augsburg, Germany)
Nicolas Ballier (University of Paris VII, France)
SUBMISSION OF PAPERS
Abstracts should be no longer than one side of A4, with 2.5cm margins, single-spaced, with a font size no smaller than 12, and with normal character spacing. All examples and references in the abstract should be included on the one single page, but it is enough, when referring to previous work, to cite "Author (Date)" in the body of the abstract - you do not need to include the full reference. Please send two copies of your abstract - one of these should be anonymous and one should include your name, affiliation and email at the top of the page, directly below the title. All abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by members of the scientific committee or other experts in the field. The named file should be camera-ready, as it will be used in the abstracts booklet if the proposal is accepted.
Abstracts both for talks and posters should be submitted in the same form, in a PDF file, by email to:
- Anne Przewozny-Desriaux <anne.przewozny@univ-tlse2.fr>
- with copy to Steven Moore steven.moore@univ-tlse2.fr.
The scientific committee will decide the final format of each accepted abstract.
Time for papers: 20 minutes, plus 10 minutes for questions.
DATES AND DEADLINES
Conference: 29 Feb-2 March 2012
Final deadline for submissions: 1st November 2011
Results of refereeing of abstracts: 15th December 2011
(posted 18 October 2011)


 

March 2012
 

The Phonology of Contemporary English. Variation and change: PAC 2012
University of Toulouse 2-Le Mirail, Toulouse, France  -  1-2 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 1 October 2011
PAC 2012 is organized by the CLLE-ERSS research institute (CNRS and University of Toulouse 2).
http://w3.pac.univ-tlse2.fr
http://w3.erss.univ-tlse2.fr
http://clle.univ-tlse2.fr
All papers focusing on the main theme summarized by the title of the conference are welcome but, to contextualise this forthcoming event, participants should be aware that PAC 2012 is a logical extension of the open workshops that the PAC project has organised annually since 2000, on a European level, at the universities of Toulouse II, Montpellier III and Aix-Marseille I, and reflects the developing activities of this project.
The PAC project (Phonologie de l'Anglais Contemporain: usages, variétés et structure - The Phonology of Contemporary English: usage, varieties and structure) is coordinated by Jacques Durand (University of Toulouse II) and Philip Carr (University of Montpellier III).
The main aims of the project can be summarised as follows: to give a better picture of spoken English in its unity and diversity (geographical, social and stylistic); to test phonological and phonetic models from a synchronic and diachronic point of view, making room for the systematic study of variation; to favour communication between specialists in speech and in phonological theory; to provide corpus-based data and analyses which will help improve the teaching of English as a foreign language.
To achieve these goals, the cornerstone of the PAC project is the creation of a corpus of oral English, coming from a wide variety of linguistic areas in the English-speaking world (such as Great Britain: Received Pronunciation, Lancashire, York, Ayrshire, Edinburgh, Glasgow; West Midlands : Birmingham, Black Country ; Republic of Ireland: Limerick, Cork ; Canada : Alberta, Ontario ; Australia : New South Wales ; New Zealand : Christchurch, Dunedin ; India : Delhi English, Mumbai ; USA : California, West Texas, Saint Louis, Boston, North Carolina). The protocol used is the same throughout and was inspired by the classical methodology of William Labov. Although significant corpora of oral English already exist, many of them have been conceived along exclusively sociolinguistic rather than explicitly phonological lines. In other cases, hardly any information is available on speakers beyond gender and regional affiliation. Furthermore, few corpora are based upon a single methodology permitting a fully comparative analysis of the data. The approach chosen by the PAC project is modelled on the French PFC project (La Phonologie du Français Contemporain, coord. J. Durand, B. Laks (Paris X) and C. Lyche (Oslo/Tromsø), http://www.projet-pfc.net/). This parent project has demonstrated how a corpus which was originally conceived for phonology can lend itself to many other types of linguistic exploitation: the lexicon, morpho-syntax, prosody, pragmatics, dialectology, sociolinguistics and interaction.
All contributions on the phonology and phonetics of contemporary English are welcome. Other things being equal, papers with a focus on variation and change within a corpus approach will be given priority.
Plenary sessions will alternate with shorter oral presentations along with swift, five-minute presentations to accompany posters presented, in our two Speed Postering sessions. A PAC workshop will form part of the general programme of the conference. Papers are expected to be delivered in English.
Invited Plenary Speakers:
- Felicity Cox (Macquarie University, Australia)
- Ulrike Gut (University of Augsburg, Germany)
- Nicolas Ballier (University of Paris VII, France)
Abstracts should be no longer than one side of A4, with 2.5cm margins, single-spaced, with a font size no smaller than 12, and with normal character spacing. All examples and references in the abstract should be included on the one single page, but it is enough, when referring to previous work, to cite "Author (Date)" in the body of the abstract - you do not need to include the full reference.
Please send two copies of your abstract - one of these should be anonymous and one should include your name, affiliation and email at the top of the page, directly below the title. All abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by members of the scientific committee. The named file should be camera-ready, as it will be used in the abstracts booklet if the proposal is accepted.
Abstracts both for talks and posters should be submitted in the same form, in a PDF file, by email:
- to Anne Przewozny-Desriaux <anne.przewozny@univ-tlse2.fr>
- with copy to Steven Moore <steven.moore@univ-tlse2.fr>.
The scientific committee will decide the final format of each accepted abstract.
Time for papers: 20 minutes, plus 10 minutes for questions.
Important dates:
- Final deadline for submissions: 1st October 2011
- Results of refereeing of abstracts: 15th December 2011
(posted 30 June 2011)



1912-2012: A Time to Reason and Compare. An International Conference on Modernism
Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, Portugal  -  1-3 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 16 December 2011
CETAPS (Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies)
ILC (Instituto de Literatura Comparada Margarida Losa)
The purpose of this conference is to commemorate the centenary of important events in the history of Modernism in several cultural domains, such as the first editions of the journals Poetry and Georgian Poetry, the publication of the first imagist poems and the first futurist exhibition outside Italy, in Paris. Also to be noted the revelation of the Russian cubo-futurist manifesto "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste" and of the "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature", the Der Blaue Reiter exhibitions and the publication of Der Blaue Reiter Almanach, Oswald de Andrade’s decisive trip to Europe and, obviously, the beginning of Fernando Pessoa's acquaintance with Mário de Sá-Carneiro, as well as other well-known publishing and artistic events of decisive impact. Our chief aim is to organize a critical conference with a broad horizon, with an international and inter-artistic focus, which will bring together the work of scholars from several disciplines in a productive manner.
Papers may be presented in Portuguese, English, French and Spanish.
CONFIRMED SPEAKERS:, Alexandra Moreira da Silva (Univ. Porto), Antonio Saez Delgado (Univ. Évora) , Arnaldo Saraiva (Univ. Porto), Daniel Albright (Harvard Univ.), Eunice Ribeiro (Univ. Minho), Fernando Cabral Martins (Univ. Nova Lisboa), Fernando Guerreiro (Univ. Lisboa), Fernando J. B. Martinho (Univ. Lisboa), Francisco Saraiva Fino (Univ. Évora), Gualter Cunha (Univ. Porto), Jerónimo Pizarro (Univ. Lisboa), Leyla Perrone-Moisés (Univ. São Paulo), Maria de Fátima Marinho (Univ. Porto), Maria de Lurdes Sampaio (Univ. Porto), Maria do Rosário Dias Diogo (King’s College), Nuno Júdice (Univ. Nova Lisboa), Pedro Eiras (Univ. Porto), Rui Mesquita (Univ. Porto)
Paper proposals (20 mins.) should be e-mailed to <modernism@letras.up.pt>, with the following data:
- title of the paper;
- abstract (ca. 250 words);
- name and contact information (email, phone number and postal address);
- institutional affiliation;
- short curriculum vitae.
Proposals should be sent until 16 December 2011.
Notification of acceptance: 31 December 2011.
Deadline for registration: 31 January 2011. 
Registration fee: 80 euros / Students: 40 euros
Late registration: 100 euros / Students: 50 euros
Registration should be made by means of the form on the conference webpage http://web.letras.up.pt/modernism.
Registration will be considered valid after confirmation of payment.
(posted 21 November 2011)



Sociability in Great Britain and in France in the Enlightenment: forms, functions and operational modes
University of Western Britanny, UBO, Brest, France  -  8-9 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 10 July 2011
Organised by CEIMA (Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of the English-Speaking World)/HCTI (Heritage and Constructions in Texts and Images) EA 4249.
Venue: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Victor Segalen, Brest, France).
This conference is the third stage in the completion of a three-year project sponsored by the Maison des Sciences Humaines de Bretagne (MSHB), "Sociability in France and in Great Britain in the Enlightenment: the emergence of a new social model" and is the climax of a series of scientific events which started in December 2009.
The foundational research undertaken in the 1970s by French historians Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and Maurice Agulhon led to a redefinition of sociability as "an ability to actively interact publicly" and paved the way for an innovative exploration of its forms and practices. For contemporary sociologists like Michel Forsé, it "refers to the entire nexus of relationships that an individual has with others considering the form of these relationships". The concept of sociability does not have the same historicity in France and in Great Britain where it is equated with conviviality while its sociological meaning is largely ignored. It appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century in social sciences thanks to German sociologist Georg Simmel who saw it as a type of interaction and highlighted "the reciprocal link which somehow freely unites individuals". Simmel apprehended sociability as "an unsettled form which is never permanently defined". All the forms of "relations and reciprocal actions" will be of primary interest to us, from a perspective which takes into account the Chicago School interaction theory, but which is open to other schools of thought and favours a cultural studies approach.
Papers will be given along two lines, the public sphere and the private one, and will examine the emergence of new rituals, of new social codes, that often took place in new social spaces where the role of cities was decisive. The question of the relationship with the other and of the part played by the individual within new social networks will be addressed; a systematic comparison between the two nations will be made at the end of the conference in a round table session.
The short-term objectives of the research conducted in the conference and also by the members of the project are the following ones:
*a definition of the meaning of sociability for each of the two nations, the establishment of a typology of sociability, an exploration of the solutions that were put forward to solve the self-versus society conundrum
*an examination of the balance between sociability and repression: to what extent has sociability been instrumentalized for repressive ends? Such questioning should favour a better understanding of the link between sociability and marginality.
*an analysis of the Franco-British relationships during the Enlightenment period, at a time when in France Anglophobia was matched by Anglomania, while on the other side of the Channel Francophobia and Francophilia similarly informed the perception of the foreigner.
In the long run, the conference and the workshops that took place prior to it aim at questioning the often assumed superiority of the French model of sociability. The notion is an adequate tool to assess the validity of various claims and commonly accepted beliefs in the field of the relationships between the two nations. The archaeology of knowledge that it induces leads ultimately to a reinterpretation of the present.
The conference will welcome papers from specialists of various research fields, such as history, the history of art and architecture, of medicine, urban studies, gender studies and literature working on British or French documentary sources.
Individual papers given in French or in English should not exceed 25 minutes; a selection will be published. Please send a 250-300 word abstract and a brief biography by 10 July 2011 to the conference organizers:
- Professor Annick Cossic <annick.cossic@univ-brest.fr>
- Professor Norbert Col <norcol@univ-ubs.fr>.
(posted 30 June 2011)


ESSE has opened a FaceBook page.
This will have no effect upon the ESSE website, which will continue exactly as it is.
The new FaceBook page is an additional link between ESSE members. It can be used to post information that cannot be fitted into the existing columns of the ESSE website.



XXIII SEDERI Conference: Formatting Early Modern Culture: Manuscript, Print, Film, Hypertext
Seville, Spain  -  14-16 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 18 December 2011
SEDERI
Sociedad Hispano-Portuguesa de Estudios Renacentistas Ingleses
Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies
Sociedade Espanhola e Portuguesa de Estudos Renascentistas Ingleses
The Conference aims to centre on topics related to the formatting and circulation of Early Modern English texts. But contributions on other aspects of the culture, language and literature of the Renaissance period are welcome as well.
The following plenary speakers have already confirmed their attendance:
Katherine Duncan-Jones (Oxford University)
Peter Holland (University of Notre Dame)
Deborah Payne Fisk (American University, Washington DC)
Zachary Lesser (University of Pennsylvania)
Henry Woudhuysen (University College, London)
The Organising Committee welcomes proposals for papers (20' presentation + 10' discussion) or round-table seminars. Contributors must submit the following information:
About the paper or round-table:
- Full title
- A two-hundred word abstract
About the contributor(s):
- Full name
- Postal address and electronic mail address
- Institutional affiliation
Proposals must be sent before 18 December 2011 to <sederi23@us.es>.
Please notice that English is the official language of the Conference.
For further information, please check on the Conference webpage, or write to the email or postal addresses below:
Juan A. Prieto Pablos
XXIII SEDERI Conference
Departamento de Literatura Inglesa y Norteamericana
Universidad de Sevilla
41004 Sevilla (Spain)
<sederi23@us.es>
http://congresos.us.es/sederi23
(posted 5 October 2011)



Theatre on screen/ cinema on stage in and across English and French-speaking Cultures
Paris, France  -  15-16 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 2 December 2011
The research centers CRIDAF from Paris 13 University,  PASSAGES XX-XXI from Lyon 2 University, RADAC, The New York University in Paris, and the festival Théâtres au Cinéma from Bobigny sharing a common expertise in the fields of drama, cinema, transmodalisation and intercultural exchanges within and across English and French-speaking cultures,  plan to publish a series of two books dedicated to the many relationships between drama and cinema within and across English and French-speaking cultures.
These publications will be based on an international colloquium held over 2 days in Paris on March 15-16, 2012, and 2 days in Lyons in March 2013. The theme of the 2012 forthcoming conference is "Theatre on screen within and across English and French-speaking cultures". The theme of the 2013 conference is "Cinema on stage within and across English and French-speaking cultures".
Theatre and cinema have been known to maintain reciprocal distance, each evincing their own idiosyncrasis (the actor's bodily presence in drama, the varieties and edition of shots in the cinema, for instance). Profitable art being the only one to survive in Western society, economic priorities have often opposed theatre and cinema in the run for subsidies as well as in their appeal to audiences, drawing a line between theatre and film fans. However, since the 1990ies, theatre and cinema have nurtured sustainable interaction.
Whilst understanding the specificity of both these art forms, it seems relevant to examine the points where theatre and cinema intersect into fruitful and considerate exchange. New forms of communication are seen to emerge from the traditional cross-over between the two arts (actors, directors and designers equally working in cinema and in theatre, or the age-old screen adaptations of theatre plays). Each art form tends to encroach on the other's specific writing techniques, be it videocameras and subtitles entering the stage, or blockbusters adapted into drama productions or musicals -- English and French-speaking screen and stage productions evidently delighting in back and forth transposition. Are we witnessing the emergence of new dramatic and cinematographic forms from the dialogues and transfers between these two art forms?
Last but not least, do the history and the results of these hybridizations equally compare in the French and English-speaking cultural spheres ? How do English and French-speaking cultures -- also usually viewed in conflicting terms – integrate into their own artistic traditions such borders-free changes? Can a conversation between these arts be said to prefigure a potential dialogue between peoples?
Papers proposals for the first part of the colloquium on March 15 and 16 in Paris will specifically deal with the question of "Theatre on screen within and across English and French-speaking Cultures". A second call for papers will be issued in 2012 for the second part of the colloquium: "Cinema on stage within and across English and French-speaking Cultures".
Papers may be given in French or English. Please, send your proposals together with a short bio-bibliography before December 2nd, 2012 to both:
- Agathe Torti <agathetorti@yahoo.fr>
- and Christine Kiehl <Christine.Kiehl@univ-lyon2.fr>.
An answer will be given by December 17th. The scientific committee will select a number of papers after each conference for ensuing publication.
(posted 19 September 2011)


ESSE has opened a FaceBook page.
This will have no effect upon the ESSE website, which will continue exactly as it is.
The new FaceBook page is an additional link between ESSE members. It can be used to post information that cannot be fitted into the existing columns of the ESSE website.



33rd Annual Conference of GERAS: New aspects of english for specific purposes: objectives, domains, approaches and tools of tomorrow
Université Stendhal, Grenoble, France  -  15-17 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 15 January 2012
 
The 33rd annual GERAS conference will explore the future evolution of ESP studies. The official endorsement of the discipline by the French national commission on education and training and the recognition of the sector as one of the most dynamic areas of recruitment in English Studies in France have given fresh impetus to ESP researchers and teachers, creating a favourable context for new insights and advances in the field.
 On the basis of the four epistemological axes which structure research in GERAS -- language and discourse, didactics, culture and ICT -- the 2012 conference will study how the multiple and profound transformations which mark our era and environment influence this field of study both as an object of research and as a teaching practice.
Language and discourse
Language and discourse represent the cornerstone of ESP studies and include linguistics, discourse analysis, terminology, corpus analysis, etc. In the forward-looking framework of this conference, two divergent phenomena are of particular interest: the rise of English as a professional lingua franca and the shifting dynamics of its status with regard to varieties of specialised English on the one hand and, on the other, the emergence of new forms of specialised discourse within such traditional ESP domains as economics, law, science, etc. In the same perspective, studies are also invited with regard to relatively unexplored subject-domains such as architecture, astronomy, metrology and cognitive psychology, to name but a few.
Didactics
Since a major concern in ESP studies is the teaching and learning of specialised varieties of English, transformations occurring in other professional sectors of activity inevitably redefine ESP teaching theories and pedagogic practices. Studies in this field consider issues specific to ESP itself, but also its status with regard to the rise of CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) or CBE (Content Based Instruction). Other lines of enquiry in this context concern the proliferation of teaching aids -- whether authentic documents, fiction, films or documentaries –-- or resources, both formal and informal, along with the all-important correlated questions which arise with regard to the evolution of teacher / learner roles in these new contexts.
Culture
The globalisation of professional communities and the rise of English as a lingua franca have prompted a paradigm shift in ESP studies with regard to the notion of culture which is no longer closely associated with that of the major target language countries such as Great Britain and the United States, or even the broader Anglosphere. What are the consequences of this evolution and the resulting cultural and intercultural stakes with regard to ESP teaching? In the same vein, what are the distinctions between professional, disciplinary and specialised cultures? And, from a more French perspective, what is the place and relevance of "Civilisation" courses in the professional curricula of today and tomorrow?
ICT
Those working in the ESP field have always manifested great interest in ICT and the ergonomics of man/machine interfaces both in the area of research and teaching. What is the contribution of new ICT tools or the new popular social networks and how do they influence online teaching and learning? Other questions arise as to how such heavily technology-dependent disciplines as terminology and specialised translation studies, for example, have evolved in view of recent technological advances.
 
The organisers of the 33rd annual GERAS conference in Grenoble welcome submissions thematically related to these new aspects of ESP but are also open to any other proposals relevant to ESP studies. Proposals in English or French - 300 words maximum + key words - must be addressed to both:
- <Shaeda.Isani@u-grenoble3.fr>
- and <Elisabeth.Lavault@u-grenoble3.fr>.
Deadline for proposals: 15th January, 2012. Notification: 30th January, 2012.
A selection of papers will be published in the peer-reviewed journals ASp, la revue du GERAS or ILCEA on line.
(posted 3 October 2011)



Writing Slavery after Beloved: Literature, Historiography, Criticism
Université de Nantes, France  -  16-17 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 1 November 2011
The keynote speakers will be:
- Dr. Judith Misrahi-Barak, Associate Professor at the University of Montepellier III, France
- Pr Saidiya Hartman (Columbia University)
Can Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) be considered as a watershed in the contemporary representations of slavery and the slave trade, not only in the literary field, but also in historiography and Cultural Studies? This Symposium will attempt to assess whether this major text, together with its reception, represents a possible paradigm shift in the remembering and rewriting of slavery. After two decades and more, the time may be right to re-read these two decades of post slavery writing in the transatlantic as a body of work which, however non-homogeneous, shares certain trends and characteristics, and has impacted massively on transatlantic postmodern cultures.
The novel engages -- to use Paul Gilroy’s phrase from The Black Atlantic (1993) -- "a counter-culture of modernity," in which the triangular trade and the commodification of Africans represented the dark side of the European and Euro-American rhetoric of Enlightenment and Progress, and displaced the discourse of the nation. It also spells out the dire need for genuinely coming to terms with a past that continues to haunt the present.
The emphasis on "re-reading" and "re-writing" could lead us to probe the different, yet complementary ways in which literature, historiography, and criticism reinscribe the past within the framework of the present; how they dialogue with their object, as well as with each other; how they foreground textuality in various forms.
As a "science of the particular," literature plays in a different key from either a historical essay or a political pamphlet. Novel or poem can supplement, through the imagination, a lack of historical documents from the enslaved, and therefore often silenced, part of the population. They can also offer alternatives to the time coordinates and teleology of classical historical narrative. Contemporary historiography has taken up the challenge and brought history closer to lived experience, vernacular forms of expression, and non-written documents. The recent republishing of 19th century texts about slavery has made accessible to a broader public more varied materials, and entailed new re-readings of the questions. All in all, the interplay between different regimes of writing has contributed to blurring generic lines -- between "fiction" and "non-fiction," poetry and prose, etc. The key prefix here is "trans-," as in transatlantic, or transdisciplinary.
Organized in partnership with CAAR (Collegium for African American Research), this Symposium aims at confronting and stimulating European research first and foremost in the field of African American Studies but also in Postcolonial Studies, particularly in the context of fiction and historiography written in and about the Caribbean, Canada, South Africa, or the Indian Ocean. In these areas, fiction related to slavery has found a new lease of life in the past twenty years. What are the conditions that have led to the so far unarchived (hi)stories of slavery and indentureship being pushed into existence? And what are the modalities of such an emergence?
Therefore, the different reception histories and responses to Beloved and later literature and criticism about slavery in various European countries will be a proper subject of inquiry. The workshop will also focus on the ground-breaking advances that the "post-Beloved" literature of slavery has initiated in the field of novel and literary writing in general, and of writing historical trauma in particular; it could address the legacy of criticism of post slavery writing in the sense of critical gains for other fields (memory, trauma, representation of history in general), but also in terms of its problems (traumakitsch; popular fiction or film); its pros (its pathbreaking advances to give faces and voices to the enslaved, to retrieve the history of the enslaved from abjection, to counter national limitations of history, history from below etc., all massively stimulated by slave trade and slavery historiography) as well as its cons (the "iconisation," and thus containment of history in "safe data"... in very problematic museum installations and popular culture and the media). Since textual strategies are often context-specific, what are the hopes and challenges that the new forms of writing / rewriting slavery attempt to meet, in many languages, across the Atlantic?

Please send a 1-page abstract and biographical sketch before November 1st, 2011 to the local organizing committee:
- Michel FEITH: <Michel.Feith@univ-nantes.fr>
- Ambre IVOL: <Ambre.Ivol@univ-nantes.fr>
- Xavier LEMOINE : <Xavier.Lemoine@univ-nantes.fr>
- Françoise LE JEUNE : <Francoise.Le-Jeune@univ-nantes.fr>
Scientific Committee:
- Sabine BROECK, University of Bremen, Germany: <broeck@uni-bremen.de
- Giulia FABI, University of Ferrara, Italy: <fbg@unife.it>
- Claudine RAYNAUD, University Montpellier 3, France: <claudine.raynaud@univ-montp3.fr>
(posted 17 June 2011, updated 20 October 2011)



The Déjà-vu and the Authentic in Anglophone Literature and Culture: Contacts, Frictions, Clashes
University of Strasbourg, France  -  16-17 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 15 November 2011
This international conference, organised by the University of Strasbourg's Research Group in Anglophone Literature and Culture (EA 2325 SEARCH), is a follow up to its successful March 2010 conference "Reprise, recycling, recuperating: the déjà-vu and the authentic in Anglophone literature and culture."
The 16-17 March 2012 conference will focus on dissonance and discordance. The musical metaphor can provide a way to apprehend contacts, frictions, clashes in representations of Anglophone literature and culture. Is it not the dynamics of disharmony that provides the impetus to build culture? Are not frictions and clashes inherent in historical change? For a new authenticity to emerge from the déjà-vu, are not chafing, jarring and resistance inevitable?
We welcome papers in the domains of literature, civilisation, history of art, cultural history and expect a broad range of theoretical and conceptual approaches.
We will favour papers in English. Papers will be published.
Please contact:
- Jean-Jacques Chardin <chardin@unistra.fr>,
- Christian Auer (<auer@unistra.fr>,
- or Anne Bandry-Scubbi <bandry@unistra.fr>.     
(posted 5 September 2011)


ESSE has opened a FaceBook page.
This will have no effect upon the ESSE website, which will continue exactly as it is.
The new FaceBook page is an additional link between ESSE members. It can be used to post information that cannot be fitted into the existing columns of the ESSE website.



Moving Modernisms Postgraduate Conference
Oxford, UK  -  21 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 1 November 2011
In addition to the Moving Modernisms Conference held in Oxford (21-24 March 2012), a tie-in Postgraduate Day Conference will take place on 21 March, giving graduates the opportunity to present and collaborate with their peers. This day conference will be free of charge to those attending the main conference, but it is also a stand-alone event aiming to explore the theme of Moving Modernisms and what this might mean from a postgraduate perspective.
Papers are invited from postgraduates and possible topics may include (but are not limited to):
- Centrality of speed, motion, travel and transport in Modernist texts
- Emotion and the representation of mental and emotional lability
- Moving image and the moving body
- Modernist focus on shifting temporalities and emergent geographies
- Impact of theory
- Current trends and future directions of Modernism
Abstract submissions should include the paper title and be no more than 200 words in length. Please include a brief CV.
The deadline for submissions is 1 November 2011. Please email to: <info@movingmodernisms.org>.
(posted 9 September 2011)



The I-Postcolonial
Université Lille 3, France  -  22-23 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 30 June 2011
Please send a 200-word proposal to Salhia Ben-Messahel at <salhia.benmessahel@univ-lille3.fr>.
Papers will be submitted for publication at the end of 2012.
Announced guest writers: Tim Winton (Australia) & Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez (Mexico)

"The I-postcolonial" is part of the research project, "Lieux et Figures du Déplacement" (Place and Displacement) initiated in 2009 by CECILLE, research centre in human sciences and languages, Université Charles-de-Gaulle Lille 3. The aim conference is to investigate the ways in which colonialism or imperialism has generated a post-colonial condition. If on one hand the term "postcolonial" can simply translate as "after colonialism" -- it can, on the other hand, also express the paradox of migrations that stand for "the explosion of the imperial world outside its own borders." (Stuart Hall) It can also suggest an "after-colonialism" or a "postcolony" (Achille Mbembe) surviving and re-enacting colonialism through renewal and postcolonial transformations (Bill Ashcroft). Where, in fact, does "postcolonial" stand on the conceptual grid?
The authors of The Empire Writes Back have highlighted some of the major traits of the "post-colonial" terminology arguing that the deliberate use of the term, spelt with a hyphen, is a means to investigate the culture which is affected by imperial practices from the moment of colonisation to the present. Homi K. Bhabha insists on the idea of a Third Space, an in-between space, as the space of a transnational culture encroached upon by hybridity. Taking into account ideas such as Otherness, the Self and the Other, Identity and Difference, can the "I-postcolonial" simply translate as the "I who is not I"? Is the term "postcolonial" used to unify and identify but also to discard? Do the various fields of postcolonial studies form a space in which to counter cultural barriers, a space to examine the various practices that compel some to remain outside (beyond the frontier), others to endure categorisations (class, race, gender) distinctions, discriminations and stigmatisations partly stemming from the colonial past, from social hierarchies and distorted reality? Would the awareness of multiculturalism and the implementation of multicultural policies be associated with colonial memories?
"The I-postcolonial" shall thus tackle sensitive issues such as "race", immigration and racialisation, hybridity of identities, gender, colour and class dominations in the postcolony, in other words, the sustaining of colonial thought and imagination. Taking into account the former British dominions (Australia, Canada and New Zealand, Barbados, New Guinea, Jamaica) which still retain a constitutional link with the British Monarchy, can we duly say that these places are "post-colonial" rather than "postcolonial" in terms of their respective histories and international economic relations? Could such countries (ex New Territories) encapsulate an extension of the centre? Could their respective development and social and political practice simply show a transfer or displacement from the original metropolis? How can and how do we place Indigenous peoples on the map of settler societies?
What can "postcoloniality" mean when structural conflicts prevail? Is the "I-postcolonial" a means to negotiate between a past which is not resolved and a present which is yet to be fully experienced?
(posted 4 March 2011)



Crossed perspectives on representations of political leaders in French and British caricature from the late 18th to the 21st century
Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest, France  -  22-23 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 15 September 2011
Organised by: HCTI EA 4249, with CECILLE EA 4074  (Lille 3),  GRHIS EA 3831 (Rouen) and the School of History, Queen Mary University (London)
From the late 18th and the early 19th century, European caricature mainly flourished in the United Kingdom and in France. Various national traditions drew inspiration from British and French pioneers. Whereas cartooning was largely limited to social satire until the 1780s, the French Revolution followed by the Napoleonic Wars encouraged caricaturists on both sides of the Channel to turn to political matters. From now on, in spite of significant censorship of the French press until 1881, major cartoonists were to focus on events involving political leaders. These topical comments of political and military events represent a source for historians specializing in representations. A combination of attraction and repulsion has characterized the complex relationship between Britain and France. Successive periods of tension can be found in the history of the relations between these two nation-states.
This international conference aims to add the representation of British and French leaders by caricaturists to the existing historiography of this relationship, from the late 18th to the 21st century. In our view, "leader" means only leading public figures, mainly queens and kings, presidents and prime ministers.
Papers could offer a cartoonist's vision of leaders of both nations or its representation in a publication, or the comparison between representations of a political event in British and French graphic satire. Alternatively, papers could deal with the British and French interpretations of particular events. Papers could also bring out the specific representations of power in both countries and emphasize the devices that characterize British and French graphic satire.
Proposals for 20 mn papers, can consider the whole period. However, we should be particularly interested in research focusing on such turning points as the French Revolution, the 1848 revolutionary movements, the clashes involved in the colonization process, the World Wars and the perception of Europe in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Proposals for papers should be emailed by 15 September 2011 to:
- Gaïd Girard <gaid.girard@univ-brest.fr>,
- Pascal Dupuy <pascaldupuy@hotmail.com>
- Jean-Claude Gardes <gardes@univ-brest.fr>
- Colin Jones <c.d.h.jones@qmul.ac.uk>
- and Gilbert Millat <gilbert.millat@univ-lille3.fr>.
(posted 8 June 2011)



Shakespeare and Memory: 2012 Conference of the Société Française Shakespeare
Paris, France  -  22-24 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 30 September 2011
Shakespeare and his contemporaries invent new styles, interpretations or imaginary models by tapping the most ancient sources of collective memory, those most frequently imitated, in literature, history, legend, mythology, iconography… Simultaneously, an unprecedented crisis in learning and representations questions the validity of creative methods based on such acquired knowledge, saturated with references to the past Europe was built on, thus shaking its constitutive cult and culture of memory. Montaigne, although he had no objection himself to repeating and borrowing, denounced its oppressive weight: "There's more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things, and more books upon books than upon any other subject. We do but enter-glose our selves. All swarms with commentaries; of Authors there is great penury. Is not the chiefest and most famous knowledge of our ages to know how to understand the wise?"
In their age of paradoxes, Giordano Bruno, a philosopher who gave much thought to the technical workings of Artes memoriae, chose to break with the stifled memory of "the wise", heirs and commentators of Aristotle, in favour of a liberating logic, and invent an infinite universe of many worlds. His provocative style challenged all literary inheritance with satires of conventional rhetoric, a good indication that memory itself stood at the centre of the crisis. With the advent of printing, the Artes memoriae that used to store and  safeguard knowledge had lost much of their urgency, perhaps their relevance. Memory was now required in the service of new acquisitions, casting doubt on the very notion of inheritance -- a crisis affecting the values of humanism, religious unity, political governments around Europe, moving away from the clerical basis of learning, having tapped dry and subverted heavy predecessors like the inescapable Petrarch. In the manner of Janus, an Elizabethan icon, memory then looks at the past to decipher an undecided, unreadable future, perhaps invent a new memory or new history: the tale of Troy's woes will provide a founding legend, and a fake heroic memory, to all the nations of Europe. New rules of writing and dramaturgy will be drawn from Aristotle's Poetics and Horace's Ars poetica in numerous essays and treatises.  Ovid's more archaic myth of Acteon will add to the voluptas dolendi inherited from Petrarch, the better to express the pleasurable discontent of mannerist waverings, an epitome of the poet’s delight  in subverting and corrupting the most revered literary models. Plutarch supplies material for a baroque rewriting of Antony and Cleopatra's tragic love, spiced up with a touch of Horace’s reluctant admiration for the "renzied Queen". The more recent Plantagenet saga suggests keys to the still unresolved threat of an open succession. Machiavelli combines the lessons of Livy and Tacitus with what he has learnt at various Italian courts to evolve a thoroughly modern theory of power that will serve as basis to portrayals of "politic", i.e. Machiavellian, monarchs in reconstructions like Shakespeare’s Henry IV: the kind of usurping but efficient ruler Essex might turn into if he did succeed in his bid for Elizabeth’s throne. Memory also invites itself as an obsessive fear, the voice of a guilty conscience that haunts the stage of Richard III, Macbeth, Hamlet in ghostly shape.
Translations from the Latin, Greek, Italian and French arrive upon cue to freshen up the faded, blurred memories of influential texts, imbuing them with new dynamics:  "the world is a theatre" to Epictetus, whose Manual is translated in 1567, long before his metaphor becomes a free for all cliché on the Elizabethan stage, in the service of wholly different ends. The discovery of paintings in Nero’s buried Domus Aurea fires imaginings of the "grottesche" whose discontinuities will lead Montaigne to call them an emblem of his own writing. Translations of the Bible appear central to the Reformation programme, suffused with a will to "re-memorize" this founding text under different lights. Myths of pre-lapsarian times, edens and other golden ages of humanity are endlessly revisited, to stress either the "fall into time" caused by Adam's "sin", or the violent birth of history in a new "iron age", in which  memory is torn between idealizations of the past, distrust of the present, anxiety and even terror of the future.
The fields to explore are vast and many: the workings of memory and its cult in Shakespeare's days; the woven memory of old texts into any new one, of another’s text into one’s own; the memory of self born from rehearsed Petrarchan laments, or the Psalmist's descant on David's doleful "I"; the study of innovative links between memory and history, memory and knowledge, science, religion, writing, memory of self and autobiography in the first tales of conversions, memory and the history of memory itself; the geography of memory through the use of "loci", i.e. the imaginary location of memorised objects; or early medical enquiries into the exact location of memory in the brain…
No doubt other areas of research will spring to mind, for instance the remembrance of Shakespeare by his contemporaries, like the admirative yet unquiet tribute to his work of Jonson: the thought that it rests on "little Latine and lesse Greeke" is as good, or as bad, to him, as no memory to speak of. On the other hand our own contemporaries might well need, to paraphrase Charles Mauron's psychocriticism, to track an "obsessive metaphor" in themselves: has Shakespeare's absolute conquest of global memory reached the heights of a "personal myth" where he stands immune from any interpretative criteria according to conservative anglophone criticism? Or has he so penetrated the imagination of English-speaking writers that a number of them depend on him to illuminate their own "personal myths"?
Please send your proposals (title and 1/2 page abstract) by 30 September 2011 to : <contact@societefrancaiseshakespeare.org>.
Conference website: http://www.societefrancaiseshakespeare.org/document.php?id=1663#tocfrom5
(posted 17 June 2011)


ESSE has opened a FaceBook page.
This will have no effect upon the ESSE website, which will continue exactly as it is.
The new FaceBook page is an additional link between ESSE members. It can be used to post information that cannot be fitted into the existing columns of the ESSE website.



Visual Texts, Textual Pictures
Paris Sorbonne University, France  -  22-24 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 1 November 2011
Organized by Research Centre VALE at Paris Sorbonne University.
This conference will explore forms of hybridization and intersemioticity in the literature and arts of English-speaking countries. We will focus on pictorial and other visual effects in literary works, and on the presence of text or graphic signs in the visual and performing arts (painting, photography, drama, cinema).
From the Middle Ages to the avant-garde today, writers and artists have addressed the issue of the visual, both in plastic and literary terms. Thus, from runes to Blake's "illuminated poems", from Herbert to cummings, from calligrams to ekphrastic practices in fiction, from Sterne's graphic innovations to Danielewski’s experimental forms, from Dos Passos's collages to "stain" effects in William Gass or Blake Butler's texts, from the incarnated icon of medieval drama to video projections on contemporary stages, aesthetic creation has thrived on such intersemiotic dynamics. If the linear trajectory of reading is redefined or disoriented by these visual effects in literary texts, a new type of temporality or narrativity also emerges from the presence of writing within the space of visual works (re Basquiat’s graffiti technique, Cy Twombly’' playing with verbal inscriptions, Walker Evans or Lee Friedlander's photographs of letters or printed messages, etc). The charged encounter between semiotic systems endows our writing and reading/viewing practices with renewed energy and blurs meaning the better to reactivate it.
The conference will investigate the modes of reading and interpretation that these artistic practices call for. While drawing upon contemporary debates in this field, we will both examine the effect produced by intersemiotic objects and attempt to contribute to its/their theoretical exploration.
Organizing committee: Elisabeth Angel-Perez, Pascal Aquien, Françoise Sammarcelli
Please send paper proposals (of about 250 words, in French or in English) together with a short CV before November 1, 2011to:
- Elisabeth Angel-Perez <eangelperez@wanadoo.fr>,
- Pascal Aquien <pascal.aquien@orange.fr>,
- and Françoise Sammarcelli <frasamm@club-internet.fr>.
(posted 14 September 2011)



Higher Education in the UK and the USA since Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan: Converging Models?
University Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3, Paris, France  -  23 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 15 July 2011
Conference venue: Maison de la recherche de la Sorbonne Nouvelle,  3, 4 rue des Irlandais, 75005 Paris, France
This conference will address the similarities and differences in higher education between the United Kingdom and the United States over the last thirty years. It will attempt to ascertain to what extent the British and American systems of higher education have been converging since the 1980s, and whether they may now be referred to as a particular social, economic, institutional, and ideological "model".
A generation ago, the higher education systems in the United Kingdom and the United States were dissimilar in a number of ways. From funding and fees to participation and dropout rates, there was a cleavage between the two countries. However, the landscape of higher education and the student experience have changed considerably on both sides of the Atlantic over the past three decades; much has altered since Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1979 and Ronald Reagan President of the United States in 1981. On the one hand, the financial cost for students to go to university has increased considerably, whilst an ever greater emphasis has been laid on individual responsibility, quality, league tables and market forces. On the other hand, there have been social policy changes regarding inclusivity, diversity and affirmative action. More fundamentally, the essential role and purpose of higher education have been increasingly debated in relation to its economic benefit to the individual and the country, rather than the part it plays in personal self-fulfilment and self-betterment. Do the higher education systems in the United Kingdom and the United States now mirror each other and constitute a specific model?
Papers will deal with issues linked to the recent evolution of higher education, for example, the role fulfilled by higher education and its purpose for the individual and society as a whole, or any of the topics mentioned in this non-exhaustive list:
- The economics of higher education: the funding of higher education, public funding, competition for funds, sponsorship, private sector participation, links to business & industry, market principles, marketing practices, budgets, budget cuts, department closures, international and national rankings, league tables, dependency on international students, assessment of teaching staff, the funding of research and development;
- The issues of access and inequalities: the socio-economic make up of students, social mix, students from minorities or disadvantaged backgrounds, race issues, gender issues, disability issues, attempts to diversify student profiles and social engineering, affirmative action, widening access, social justice, social mobility, contextual data, outreach work, reproduction of inequalities, residential segregation, elitism, exclusionary practices, the Russell Group and the Ivy League, the degree gap, participation rates, regional variations;
- The student experience: stratification of the student experience, types of degrees on offer, quantity and quality of teaching received, student/staff ratio, place of residence and accommodation, dependency on parents, grants and scholarships, student debt, studies/paid-work balance, tuition fees, student protests, student unions, socialising, on/off campus life, the role of alumni and networks, post-graduate employment, dropout rates, gap years.
Papers will deal with higher education in the UK or in the USA, although comparative papers would be particularly welcome.
Papers may deal with a particular period, or the entire three decades under analysis (1979-2012).
Papers should last approximately 20 minutes and be given in English, with a view to a selection of full papers being published in a book.
Please send proposals of around 200 words with a short bio-bibliography before 15 July 2011.
Contact: Sarah Pickard: <sarah.pickard@univ-paris3.fr>
Conference webpage: http://www.univ-paris3.fr/conf-higher-ed
(posted 30 March 2011)



Race, ethnicity and publishing
Aix-en-Provence, France  -  23-24 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 31 March 2011
Since the 1980s, the development of ethnic and post-colonial studies has induced scholars to examine texts from the margins, that had previously been either neglected or forgotten; it has also revived our readings of what we had come to consider "classic" literature. Scholarship in Book History or Print Culture in Anglophone countries has also contributed to renewingapproaches in literary sudies and the history of literature. Yet ethnic and minority authors have only recently been made the focus of Book History, as a recent article by Leon Jackson on the timidly growing alliance between book historians and scholars of African American cultures of print has underlined ("The Talking Book and the Talking Book Historian", Book History, vol. 13, 2010, p. 251-308). In 2001 Graham Huggan published his important study of The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins, followed in 2007 by Sarah Brouillette's Postcolonial Writers in the Global Literary Marketplace. For the United States, of particular note was the publication in 2006 of John K. Young's Black Writers, White Publishers: Marketplace Politics in Twentieth-Century African American Literature.
We propose to contribute to this developing field, by further exploring the relations between center(s) and margins, through the analysis of the role played by racial and ethnic factors in the process of publication. This conference will focus on the conditions and circumstances of publication, in the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland, for so-called ethnic and racial as well as postcolonial authors, and strive to shed some light on their relations with their editors and publishers. We will also examine the emergence of "ethnic" publishers in publishing fields largely dominated by "non-ethnic" groups.
How do these authors and publishers negotiate between the market, assimilation and cultural resistance? To what extent do racial prejudice, discrimination, and multiculturalism, help or hinder the publication and promotion of these authors? How does one work within niche markets, or faced with an absence of market of any kind? Are writers necessarily "exploited", or do they, in turn, understand and use the market?
These are just some of the questions that such a subject raises. We welcome papers on fiction and non-fiction, the canon and more confidential works, from the XVIIIth to the XXIth century, and combinations of paratextual, historical, economic and sociological approaches. Below is a list of suggested topics:
* the promotion of American and British authors of racial and ethnic origins
* author/ editor/ publisher relations
* distribution of books
* contribution of "external"agents, i.e. abolitionist societies, patrons...
* censorship and self-censorship...
The papers will be delivered in English or in French. Abstracts (approx. 400 words) and a brief resumé should be sent before March 31, 2011 to both conference organisers:
<Cecile.Cottenet@univ-provence.fr>
and <Sophie.Vallas@univ-provence.fr>
Conference website: http://gsite.univ-provence.fr/gsite/document.php?pagendx=1356&project=lerma
(posted 24 February 2011)



3rd Belgrade International Meeting of English Phoneticians (BIMEP 2012)
Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, Serbia  -  23-24 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 31 December 2011
The aim of the event is to bring together researchers who investigate various aspects of English phonetics and English pronunciation both from the theoretical and pedagogical viewpoints. Papers addressing comparative issues between English and another language are most welcome.
The official language of the conference is English.
The keynote speakers are:
- Professor Alan Cruttenden, Emeritus Professor of Phonetics, University of Manchester and Fellow of the Phonetics Laboratory, University of Oxford, UK
- and Dr. Patricia Ashby, Principal Lecturer in Phonetics and National Teaching Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, University of Westminster, UK.
Each paper will be allotted 30 minutes (20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion).
A selection of papers will be published after the conference.
Abstract Submission Guidelines
An abstract of up to 300 words should contain the following information:
(1) Title of the paper
(2) Name of the author(s)
(3) Affiliation of the author(s)
(4) E-mail address
(5) Postal address
(6) Contact phone number
Submissions should be sent by e-mail (as Word attachments) to <bimep.conference@gmail.com>.
Important dates
- Submission of abstracts: December 31st, 2011               
- Notification of acceptance: January 31st, 2012   
Conference fee
The conference fee is 60 Euros, and it includes:
- conference pack
- coffee break refreshments
Accommodation
Hotel reservations will be made by the organizers upon request. Prices will range from 35 to 80 Euros per night (single or double room, breakfast included).
We look forward to your participation.
Please contact the Organizing Committee at: <bimep.conference@gmail.com>.
(posted 14 July 2011)


ESSE has opened a FaceBook page.
This will have no effect upon the ESSE website, which will continue exactly as it is.
The new FaceBook page is an additional link between ESSE members. It can be used to post information that cannot be fitted into the existing columns of the ESSE website.



Outside His Jurisfiction: Interrogating James Joyce's Non-Fiction
University of York, UK  -  23-25 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 18 November 2011
Kevin Barry's James Joyce: Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing contains over fifty pieces ranging in topic from the literary theorizing of 'James Clarence Mangan' and 'Realism and Idealism in English Literature' to the differing political interventions of 'The Shade of Parnell' and 'Politics and Cattle Disease' and in genre from short book review to spoken lecture. These disparate writings, drawn mainly from the first half of Joyce’s career, have always had a troubled place within the dominant strains of Joyce criticism. Although they are frequently referred to in commentaries on Joyce, the question has always been precisely what to make of them. Are they genuine expressions of Joyce's intellectual and emotional attitudes or part of a developing and deliberately fashioned public persona? Is there any value, regardless of the intent of the pieces, in attempting to read Joyce's fictional writings through these non-fictional writings? If so, is it legitimate to describe Ulysses and Finnegans Wake with reference to writing that precedes them by several decades?
Such questions haunt every discussion of Joyce's non-fiction writing. The tremendous usefulness of these works as a source of pertinent and pithy quotation, and at times as a quasi-genetic source for later works, only aggravates the problem. "Outside his jurisfiction" seeks to bring these issues into focus, to interrogate the problematic boundary between Joyce's 'thoughts' political and aesthetic and his writings, to ask what is at stake in the prefix 'non-' to ask, indeed, to what the designation 'non-fiction' can reasonably be made to refer. Perhaps most importantly, this conference aims to consider the status of Joyce's -- and by extension any artist's -- non-fictional writings in relation to a much wider creative oeuvre; how can we appropriately connect, or, if necessary, separate, an artist's life and opinions and his works?
We welcome abstracts of no more than 500 words for papers addressing any aspect of Joyce's non-fictional writings, whether in conjunction with his fictional works, or in their own right. We especially welcome papers that problematize or stretch the definitive boundaries of the term 'non-fiction'.
Conference organizers: James Fraser, Katherine Ebury, Derek Attridge
Website: http://www.jamesjoycenonfiction.com/
Contact: jamesjoyce.nonfiction@gmail.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/JoyceNonFiction
(posted 15 October 2011)



Exploring the language of the popular in Anglo-American Newspapers, 1833-1988
University of Cardiff, UK  -  28 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 15 September 2011
As part of the series of research seminars which will contribute to the AHRC Research Network we are inviting interested scholars to submit proposals of 300 words for a seminar to be held at the University of Cardiff on 28 March 2012 entitled 'The social semiotics of popular journalism: a long view'. It aims to bring together scholars from media and journalism
studies, social sciences, linguistics and English to consider the important of semiotics as a tool for exploring the content and context of Anglo-American newspapers between 1833 and 1988. There is no charge for the event and there will be a number of keynote speakers to be announced at a later date.
The dates 1833-1988 frame the research network project as they are key dates in the development of popular discourse within Anglo-American newspapers. 1833 sees the first development of the Penny Press and 1988 witnesses the peak in circulation of Murdoch's British-based Sun. This long view will reinforce how important historical context is to the understanding of contemporary newspapers. Although this project will certainly seek to address some of the wider implications of the discourse of newspaper language it will proceed from a thorough textual exploration in the first instance.
Proposals are invited which explore the ways in which popular newspapers during this period in either the USA or Britain have attempted to structure the language of their product to match particular aspects of the social experience of their readers: how these newspapers have functioned as social semiotic. This might include the structuring (within the confines of commercial appeal) of themes such as, for example, social class, national identity, political partisanship, gender, domestic duty, recreational identities, conflicts between group identifications such as trade union membership and individualist consumerist aspirations. Explorations of the sociopolitical significance of representations of the everyday will also be particularly welcome. The proposals should be empirically-grounded and might draw upon textual analysis, discourse analysis, the political economy of newspapers, ethnography or combinations of these and/or other methods, to say something concrete about the nature of life in the societies represented by popular newspapers during this period.
We plan to publish the best of the papers presented on the day in a special edition of the international, peer-reviewed journal Social Semiotics.
Please send your proposals or any questions you may have by the 15 September 2011 to the Research Assistant for the project Clare Burke: <Clare.Burke@sheffield.ac.uk>.
Seminar organizers: Professor Martin Conboy, University of Sheffield and Dr David Machin, University of Cardiff.
For further details of the project please visit the website of the Centre for the Study of Journalism and History:
http://www.shef.ac.uk/journalismhistory
(posted 11 September 2011)



Collapse / Catastrophe / Change: conference of the International Association for Journalism Studies / American Comparative Literature Association
Session Theme: Literary Journalism and Catastrophe
Brown University, Providence, RI, USA  -  29 March - 1 April 2012
Deadline 15 November 2011
Paper abstracts are invited for an International Association for Literary Journalism Studies session on Literary Journalism and Catastrophe at the American Comparative Literature Association annual conference at Brown University, Providence, RI from March 29th to April 1st, 2012.
In keeping with the conference theme, this session will consider the complex relationship between literary journalism and crisis. Literary journalism -- "journalism as literature" -- has a longstanding relationship with the catastrophic. From The Storm, Daniel Defoe's report of the hurricane which devastated much of southern and central England and Wales in 1703, to Stephanie Nolen's 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa, and, more recently, Into the Forbidden Zone, William T. Vollmann's account of his journey through the evacuated area around the Fukishima power plant just weeks after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster of March 2011, literary journalists have often been attracted to scenes of catastrophe and collapse for their material. But, unlike their counterparts in the mainstream news media, literary journalists find the truth of their subjects less in the raw, spectacular facts of catastrophe than in the lived experiences of those who suffer its often traumatic consequences as well as in the cultural understanding such stories may yield. As Mark Kramer has noted, "Literary journalists write mostly about routine events," and this focus remains even when the everyday is disrupted by the most calamitous of events. This seminar seeks to investigate from a comparative perspective the diverse ways in which literary journalism, as a genre, has responded to collapse in all of its forms -- environmental, political, historical, economic, personal, and even the current collapse of journalism itself.  We are particularly interested in papers that discuss literary journalism across cultures and welcome all research methodologies and scholarly approaches.
If interested, please e-mail IALJS contact, Rob Alexander at <ralexander@brocku.ca.>.
The submission deadline for paper abstracts is November 15th via the ACLA website:
http://acla.org/acla2012/?page_id=45.
Submissions by graduate students are encouraged.
(posted 31 October 2011)



Multicultural Spoken English?: ALOES 2012 16th conference on Spoken English
Université Paris 13, campus de Villetaneuse, France  -  30-31 March 2012
Deadline for proposals: 25 January 2012
Our guest speaker, Paul Kerswill, Professor of sociolinguistics at Lancaster University, is one of the leading researchers in the field of 'dialect levelling'. A specialist of social dialectology, he focuses on the way spoken English evolves over time, with a specific interest in the role played by young people, the influence of varied speech communities and major conurbations. His present research leads him to question the multicultural status of English such as spoken in London.
Some young speakers are adopting prosodic and phonetic characteristics in their speech which were previously associated with varieties of English considered as more "peripheral". This may be due to a number of complex developments: the acknowledgement that there are varieties rather than norms, the rise of “englishes” (according to the spelling theorised by Ashcroft et al.), the loss of prestige of RP together with the fact that it is ideologically questioned and subjected to economic competition to promote other pronunciation models. To what extent, then, is it possible to refer to a variety of multicultural spoken English in conurbations?
This theme has been selected at least for the first day of the conference. There is, however, a possibility to make proposals dealing with other topics. Each talk will last thirty minutes, followed by ten minutes for discussion. Posters will also be considered.
Deadline submission : 25 January 2012
Anonymous abstracts of one 300-word page together with another page giving name and affiliation should be sent to:
<chmigette@wanadoo.fr>.
Contact persons:
- Nicolas Ballier <nicolas.ballier@univ-paris-diderot.fr>
- Christiane Migette <chmigette@wanadoo.fr>
Organising committee: Viviane Arigne, Nicolas Ballier, Pierre Fournier, Christiane Migette.
Scientific committee: Viviane Arigne (Paris XIII Villetaneuse), Nicolas Ballier (Paris 7 Diderot), Phil Carr (Montpellier), Mark Gray (Paris Est Créteil), Sophie Herment (Aix-Marseille), Christiane Migette (Paris XIII Villetaneuse), Susan Moore (Limoges), Jennifer Vince (Paris 3 Sorbonne nouvelle).
(posted 9 January 2012)


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