This interdisciplinary conference aims at the reconstruction of processes of reception in Germany and German-speaking countries from the 18th to the 21st centuries. This project is not restricted to Gibbon's major work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but should also take into account his studies on literature, his autobiographical texts and letters. This call for papers is addressed to scholars working in fields such as history of literature, art, culture, politics, religion, law and translation. In all of these fields, Gibbon's thinking and writing have left traces that transcend the disciplinary frame of the current order of discourse. The manifold variety of these traces and both the historical and topical relevance of Gibbon in a German context will be documented both on this conference and a volume of essays that will take the conference as a starting-point.
We would like to address not only texts but also possible repercussions of Gibbon in the visual as well as performing arts as well as in other media. Gender dimensions and the importance of translation processes from the first German translations starting in 1779 to recent years could receive special attention. The frequency of translations of Gibbon into German as well as the stylistic and scholarly echoes make the German reception of Gibbon a paradigmatic case for the consideration of cultural transfer in the European enlightenment.

We would like to invite scholars to contribute to this project. Deadline for proposals is 31 October 2011. Please send suggestions for topics with brief explanations to:

PD Dr. Cord-Friedrich Berghahn, Institut für Germanistik, TU Braunschweig, Bienroder Weg
80, D-38106 Braunschweig (Email: c.berghahn@tu-bs.de).
PD Dr. Till Kinzel, Englisches Seminar, TU Braunschweig, Bienroder Weg 80, D-38106
Braunschweig
<t.kinzel@tu-bs.de>

(posted 7 October 2011)

A one-day conference organised by the linguistic section of CRIDAF (EA453, Université Paris 13, PRES Sorbonne Paris Cité)
Deadline for submissions: 18 March 2012

• abstracts should be anonymous and be sent in pdf format. They should not exceed two A4 pages including references and tables.
• please send your submission to : <viviane.arigneATorange.fr >and <christiane.migetteATuniv-paris13.fr>
• please mention in the title of your message ‘JE 12 octobre 2012’
• your e-mail should state your name, the title of your paper, geographical address, affiliation and e-mail address

Notifications of acceptance: 15 June 2012
The aim of this one-day conference is to conduct an inquiry into the heterogeneity and variety of linguistic theories and linguistic theorization, by assessing the results of linguistic research as well as various theoretical frameworks, whether in English or general linguistics.

Contemporary linguistic research is diverse and uses a great variety of concepts and terms, which pertain to its fields of study (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics), to its various theoretical trends (Guillaume(s psycho-mechanics, generativist, enunciativist, cognitivist trends, etc.) or sub-trends (trace theory, binding theory, construction grammars, cognitive grammars, etc.). Other labels are used to refer to methods or working practices, such as field linguistics, corpus linguistics, automatic treatment of natural languages. All this leads to a proliferation of theoretical terms as well as theoretical discourses and to the consequent fragmentation of knowledge.

The discussions will try to analyse and possibly confront metalinguistic theoretical discourses so as to evaluate their descriptive and explanatory power. The issue can be approached from various angles.

• Some theoretical or descriptive stances sometimes translate rather easily into another theoretical framework. One may try to see how one particular stance is better adapted to the empirical phenomena one is endeavouring to analyse.
• One may also study the theoretical frameworks English linguistics has given itself in France in the second half of the 20th century. Insofar as enunciativist theories acknowledge some kind of underlying cognitive basis, can some of their results be related to some of the propositions put forward by those grammars which call themselves cognitive?
• Does one type of theorization make up for the shortcomings of another, for example, by giving explicit definitions, or clarifying its levels of description? Conversely, does one theoretical presentation which is given as new succeed in escaping repetition and theoretical psittacism? Does it actually break new ground?
• Translating one theory into another sometimes implies abandoning certain theoretical concepts, stances or ways of reasoning which are shown to be no longer crucial or necessary. What should the linguist discard and what should he retain?

Papers may focus on one particular linguistic phenomenon seen through different approaches, thorough analysis of an argument, or the definition of concepts. The suggested list is by no means exhaustive. All papers should deal with English linguistics, or contrastive linguistics including the study of English.

(posted 6 February 2012)

Arguably, most of the problems plaguing our societies today: pollution, substance abuse, obesity or even the Global Financial Crisis, can be directly traced to the various destructive habits of excess and intemperance. In this context, the question of how to deal with the excesses of modern life becomes one of the most relevant intellectual challenges today.

The other dimension of the problem is the price developed societies have to pay for life in prosperity and comfort. Is material wellbeing inadvertently linked to decadence and ultimately self-annihilation? Is the consumption from the cornucopia of modern civilizational achievements ultimately detrimental or even self-annihilating?

The questions concerning excess are still far from being settled. On the one hand, we have a well-established discourse of moderation that deems all forms of intense consumption objectionable and destructive. Figures as diverse as Zygmunt Bauman and Benedict XVI go out of their ways to castigate the pernicious intemperance of modern society, as do intellectuals from Jürgen Habermas to Slavoj Žižek.

On the other hand, however, modern capitalism depends critically on consumption that is both constant and instant, on the endlessly escalating flow of supply and demand. After all, explosive consumerism brought the Industrial Revolution to a new level and helped to pay for our much-cherished modern luxuries. They include not only strictly material benefits, but also less tangible but more significant achievements such as liberal democracy, longer lifespans, universal education, and emancipation of women and sexual minorities. Famously, in the days immediately following the 9/11 attack on America, President George W. Bush appealed to Americans not to curtail their consumer appetites and go shopping. Hence, self-limitation appeared far more dangerous to American prosperity than terrorism.

The dilemmas of excess versus moderation are also highly relevant to the advanced Asian cultures of China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. One cannot fail to notice the brewing contradiction between the native Asian traditions that put strong emphasis on moderation and disavowal of material aspirations such as Confucianism, Buddhism or Daoism, with the immoderation brought forth by the forces of global capitalism and consumer society. Southeast Asia, the cradle of various doctrines of self-control, has already become the world's biggest market for luxury products and the seat of the most spectacular expressions of capitalist self-indulgence. Consumerist excess empowers Asian societies, but simultaneously weakens the ancient institutions that underpinned them.

Bearing all this in mind, we would like to investigate various cultural dimensions of excess, intemperance and overabundance, and examine how the discourses of excess have been articulated, how they have interacted and clashed. We would like to investigate their cultural manifestations in literature, film and art as well as philosophy and cultural criticism. We are interested in how the approaches to excess and overabundance have developed at different ends of Eurasia. We are also looking for overlaps and fields of conflict. We would like to investigate how the philosophies of excess have been expressed and counterbalanced, and how the era of colonial excess (and hence oppression, dominance, humiliation) has affected contemporary post-colonial cultures.

We hope that the conference will provide a forum for interdisciplinary dialogue on the various cultural as well as literary dimensions of excess, intemperance and overabundance. We are interested in how the notion of excess is framed differently in various national and cultural traditions, how the ideas of excess evolved historically, and the determining forces behind those changes.

The conference debates will revolve around, but not be limited to, the following problems: excess of food, alcohol and drugs; excessive consumption of commodities; excess and proliferation of ideas, concepts and theories; excess of life in the ontological, the biopolitical, and the posthuman; excess of information and images; excess of environmental pollution; sexual intemperance; excess of tolerance (of youth, multiculturalism, fundamentalism etc.). We invite a wide range of voices -- historical, critical and theoretical -- that will address the above-mentioned aspects of excess.

Please send us an abstract of your paper (not exceeding 300 words), including the title, professional affiliation, e-mail address, phone number, and audio-video requirements by 30 April 2012 to <excessconference@gmail.com>.

The language of the conference will be English. The time allotted for individual papers will be twenty minutes.

(posted 9 February 2012)

This event is open to members of the Finnish Society for the Study of English (FINSSE) and to all others with an interest in participating.

The initial inspiration for our conference theme has been the joint FINSSE-5/NAES conference held in 2010 (Oulu University), where the focus was on "English in the North." Our own event in the FINSSE series promises a rather different orientation: given the major ongoing shift in interest in the "East," the status of English as a language used in business, education, cultural exchange, and technological innovation has changed immeasurably. Hence, although the FINSSE-6 conference programme at the UEF will, as usual, provide a forum for presentations and discussions across the full range of topics relevant to our sphere of teaching and research, participants are encouraged to consider ways in which their presentations might also be focused to match the conference theme. Plenary speakers have been invited to speak on topics that will engage both with the main lines of English Studies in Finland – English Linguistics, Literary and Cultural Studies, and Translation Studies – and also, where possible, with the general theme itself. Presentations of 30 minutes will be invited both for focused groups (workshops) and for sessions with more general content, as well as for Posters.  The modest conference fee (TBA) will be the same for all participants.

• Dr Claire Chambers (School of Cultural Studies, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK): "Contemporary Anglophone Literatures in ‘the East’: Reification, Religiosity, Retail"
• Professor Michael Cronin (Centre for Translation and Textual Studies, Dublin City University, Ireland): "Re-Orienting English: Translation and New Global Orders"
• Professor Geoff Hall (Division of English, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, The University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China): "English in China/China in English"

Proposals are invited on linguistic, applied linguistic, literary or cultural topics in any area of English Studies, although papers focusing on “English in the East” will be particularly welcome. The deadline for proposals will be Friday, 18 May 2012, and everyone will be informed of the status of their proposals by Thursday, 31 May 2012 at the latest.

• Individual papers. Abstracts of a maximum of 300 words.
• Workshops on a chosen topic. Session organizers should submit a brief, 250-word statement describing the workshop topic, and either include or invite abstracts of a maximum of 300 words for each paper. 
• Poster presentations. Abstracts of a maximum of 300 words.

<finsse2012@gmail.com>

(posted 14 February 2012)

We would like to invite everybody interested and involved in Scotland, in the country's culture, history and politics, and in how it has been perceived and represented particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, to participate in the first conference on this subject ever to take place in Poland. We would also like to draw attention to the interdisciplinary nature of the conference and to create a forum for discussion and future cooperation between different European centres concerned with the following subjects:

• Scotland today:
• Scottish literature in Europe:
• Scotland's languages:

Dr Margery Palmer McCulloch (Senior honorary research fellow in Scottish literature, University of Glasgow)
Prof. dr hab. Piotr Stalmaszczyk (University of Łódź)

Abstracts: Please write your abstracts (250 words max.) in the registration form provided on the conference website:

Prof. dr hab. Jerzy Jarniewicz
Dr hab. Aniela Korzeniowska
Dr Izabela Szymańska

(posted 6 January 2012)

Throughout the 18th century, George Frederick Handel was the dominant musical figure in England. Although born in Germany, Handel soon became the official 'national composer.' His unflinching domination over the English musical scene of the period was multifaceted: while it can be explained in terms of the support granted him by the nation’s elite as well as by his obvious commercial astuteness and consequent success, it eventually led to his style becoming the absolute reference other English composers had both to emulate and to measure up to. His contribution as both a major Italian opera composer and then the 'founding father' of the English oratorio, associated as it was with the symbolic image of the organ and his own performance as a dazzling keyboard player and improviser, made of him the prototype of the pre-romantic 'natural genius.'
After his death, his first biographer, John Mainwaring (Memoirs of the Life of the Late G.F.Handel, 1760) contributed greatly to the fashioning of that image, which led to a lasting cult of the composer’s figure and works. A large body of publications – books, articles, poems – was devoted to Handel both in his lifetime and for decades after his death. The Great Handel Commemoration organised at Westminster Abbey and the Pantheon of 1784, and followed by similar events in the following years, presented Handel as the very embodiment of the national character and used his work and image in an ideological patriotic construct to celebrate the greatness of the British nation. The music festivals organised in the provinces in the 18th century as well as the great musical and patriotic celebrations staged in the newly-built Town-Halls in the 19th century testified to the fact that the influence of Handel lasted well beyond his own demise and even after his own music had become stylistically old-fashioned and his works had ceased being performed in their original form.

- stylistic echoes to, and borrowings from Handel's compositions in other composers' works, aesthetic filiation, adaptations and translations of Handel's works in the foreign repertory (Smith, Crotch, Meyerbeer, Sullivan, etc.);
- ideological and political issues, in particular, the question of national identity;
- aesthetic trends (e.g. the musical sublime, generic issues such as that of the oratorio);
- the making up of the 'natural genius' persona, in particular through the writing of biographies of Handel (John Mainwaring, William Coxe, etc.).
- the writing of the 'history of Handelian Music' (e.g. John Hawkins's and Charles Burney's historiographical stances, etc.);
- iconographic and sculptural representations of Handel (Thomas Hudson, Louis-François Roubiliac, etc…);
- the influence on Handel in the 'rise of musical classics' and the 'classical' canon (e.g. the Concert of Antient Music);
- literary uses of the Handelian topos; Handel in books (Samuel Butler, Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies, etc.) and films (Norman Walker, The Great Mr. Handel, 1942, Gérard Corbiau, Farinelli, 1994, etc.);
- the critical reaction against Handel (e.g. Charles Avison's Essay on Musical Expression, 1752, or  John Newton Messiah. Fifty Expository Discourses on the series of Scriptural Passages Which form the Subject of the celebrated Oratorio of Handel, 1786);
- the modern-day rediscovery of the repertoire and performance issues accruing to it.
- 'staging' and recording Handel's operas and oratorios today;
- 'Handel Societies' around the world and their ideologies;
- parodies of Handel’s works and stylistic devices;
- re-orchestrations of Handel;
- Handel as a ‘queer’ icon.

This list is not limitative, of course, and all proposals shall be examined with interest. The conference is not restricted to specialists of Handel and musicologists but intended to be interdisciplinary. Its very point is to look beyond the composer’s life and works into the way he gradually became 'more' than a musician and composer, a tutelary figure for both other musicians and the broader public and contributed therefore to a new definition of the very role of the artist in society at large. It is hoped that the conference will attract musicologists, historians, specialists of English studies as well as of aesthetics, literature, films, etc.

- Prof. Pierre Dubois (Département d’anglais, UFR Lettres et Langues, Université François Rabelais, 3 rue des Tanneurs, F-37000 Tours; Tel. 00.33.(0)4.70.43.68.95); e-mail: <pierre.dubois85@univ-tours.fr>

- Prof. Pierre Degott (UFR de Lettres et langues, Université de Metz, Île du Saulcy, F-57045 Metz Cedex 1; Tel. 00.33.(0)3.87.38.97.51; Mobile: 00.33.(0)6.71.47.90.38); e-mail: <degott@univ-metz.fr>

(posted 6 March 2011)

In the wake of the previous SEAC conferences on Ruins and Nothingness, we would like to turn to reconstruction, to think about a new energy -- that of indignation and rebellion. 'Outrage' is a feeling of anger that has given birth to rebellions on most continents over the  past years, inviting us to examine the rebellious forces at work in 20th and 21st century British  literature. 

How do British writers rebel against their predecessors, how do they transform narrative strategies, experiment with style or give rise to new literary forms? By pushing the limits of the text, they seek to question these limits, which leads to a 'textual crisis'. What are the devices used to denounce a certain literary order?

This year's conference invites us to discuss the motives of this formal outrage and thereby question the readers' reaction. Readers can indeed embrace the cause or be shocked, outraged, but they can also resist this rebellion against British literary heritage. 

The conference also aims at defining the causes served by those paper upheavals. Whether it concerns a single character or a whole text, this subversion of a social, religious, political or sexual order stages an extra-textual indignation within a fictitious world. We wish to examine the different modes of indignation, from outraged cry to subtle complaint. Our interrogation is a broad one, one that includes notions of satire, parody, caricature and humour, which are amongst the most formidable weapons to stimulate reaction'.

Unlike resentment and bitterness, outrage and revolt suggest a broad and timeless posture. But to what end? Is it, as in the case of Nemesis, to re-establish one’s own rights? This invites us, then, to envisage the risks of outrage and of the subversion of norms: the dangers of moral indignation or ideological activism may then act as a threat to the literary text. They may impinge on the expression of a violent and sensitive emotion, and lessen the humorous and subversive dimensions of the texts. 

Should outrage create trouble and possibly lead to horror and discomfort, to ugliness and instability? Is there an aesthetics of outrage? What are the issues at stake as far as reception is concerned? Malaise, laughter, tears: isn’t the reaction of the reader conditioned by the author against whom he/she can, in turn, rebel?  

The angles suggested here are, of course, non-exhaustive. We welcome proposals for papers of 300-500 words. They should be sent, together with a short CV indicating your institution and three recent publications by April 2nd, 2012, to <f.amselle@free.fr>. 

(posted 20 February 2012)

An international symposium organized by the Research Institute on the English, German and Romanic speaking Worlds (IMAGER, PRES Université Paris-Est)

As a legal concept that appeared in the 19th century and originated in international law, extraterritoriality (or exterritoriality) initially established the principle according to which a person is not necessarily subject to the laws of the territory on which he or she is located. However, as George Steiner has shown (Extraterritorial, Papers on Literature and the Language Revolution, 1971), the concept can be enlarged and transposed within the cultural field. Applied to languages, literatures and civilizations, it suggests that, under the effects of the political upheavals of the 20th century and of contemporary globalization, the political territory has lost its old unifying and defining powers in cultural matters.

In Europe and elsewhere, the nationalist movements of the 19th century brought the territoriality of cultures to its climax. In the wake of ideas revolving around the national 'genius' and Herder's philosophy, the equation "a nation = a language = a culture" became a model. A particular conception of historiography and philology has subsequently strongly promoted this approach, enabling it to become dominant, even hegemonic. If territoriality remains a crucial principle in the political field nowadays, the idea of an autochthony of languages, literatures and civilizations is now disputed.

History shows that actors of intellectual and cultural life have always been tempted to cross and to transgress territorial borders. In addition, wars, colonisations, decolonisations and other recent political, social and economic transformations have encouraged reconfigurations of the territorial framework, triggering off waves of migration and the rise of the phenomena of exile and diaspora. In turn, these phenomena have generated a massive displacement of cultural events and expressions, which has resulted in the weakening and destabilization of their territorial roots.

Cultural confrontations, forms of hybridization and/or métissage resulting from these displacements often create dynamism, innovation and diversification (cf. Edouard Glissant, Poétique de la relation, 1990). However, one must be careful not to present an overly idyllic picture of this “deterritorialisation” (Gilles Deleuze), or of the "third space" (Homi K. Bhabha), because the transfer or export of cultural norms outside the territory also generates power struggles and levelling phenomena. From this point of view, 'territorialisation' can appear as a means of protection and of preservation. Thus Régis Debray has recently warned against the abandonment of the concept of border which, in his opinion, needs rehabilitating (Eloge des frontières, 2010).

Between a '(re)-territorialisation' of nationalist type and a standardizing globalization without borders, how can the extraterritoriality of languages, literatures and civilizations be placed? What are its infra- or supranational expressions? What are the historical models, what is the genesis of this phenomenon? What are the stakes for the contemporary world? Is a cartography or a typology possible beyond or through the diversity of linguistic and cultural areas?

IMAGER being a transdisciplinary research group, the issues will be discussed along various disciplinary axes (literature, history, linguistics, sociology, etc.), by privileging trans-area perspectives. The language-cultures concerned will be German, English, Arabic, Spanish, French and Italian.

- topicality and limits of extraterritoriality
- between 'deterritorialisation' and `reterritorialisation': what territory, what new challenge?
- identity and imaginary constructions of extraterritoriality
- waves of migration and diaspora communities
- literatures of  exile, migrant and postcolonial literatures
- multilingual societies and communities, language contact, colonial and postcolonial languages
- cultural transfers, circulation of texts and knowledge, translation
- cosmopolitanism, internationalism, postnationalism
- beyond extraterritoriality: literatures, languages and cultures without territory ?

Approaches and theoretical reflections which focus on contemporary problems while replacing them in historical perspective will be particularly welcome. Proposals for papers, in the form of a summary of approximately 250 words, should be sent before March 1st, 2012 together with a bio-bibliographical note, to:

A printed collection of selected papers will be published, each paper proposal being first submitted to independent referees.

(posted 15 November 2012)

The aim of this conference is to examine the phenomenon of mad narrators in fiction. While several conferences have been held recently which have focussed on mad characters: mad scientists, gender and madness, madness and confinement, etc., this conference takes as its theme the idea of the mad narrator. Narratorial madness is part of the wider concept of narrative unreliability, defined by Wayne Booth. Narratorial madness arouses suspicion, creating instability and a discrepancy between the literary voice of the narrator and that of the "underlying author". It thus seems important to investigate what it is that sets madness apart from other types of unreliability, such as a child’s viewpoint, intellectual impairment, illiteracy, dysnarration, manipulation or falsehood. The conference will therefore set out to explore the narrative manifestations of insanity and to determine what the "effects of madness" are. It will look at the question of whether there is such a thing as a stylistics of madness, which would imply that there are recurrent markers and codified ways of expressing insanity.

In order to delineate as accurately as possible the notion of narratorial madness, it is important to distinguish between an unambiguous, immediately visible kind of madness, and another kind of madness, a madness that is only hinted at as a possibility within the text. The first kind is expressed in a variety of ways and its symptoms lend themselves to a critical and clinical depiction of those mad narrators who destabilize the link between reality and representation. Obvious examples can be found in Beckett’s narratives, which almost always bear the mark of madness, but they are also present in novels such as The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs or One Flew over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. In this context, the link between the narrator’s madness and literary genre can also be explored; the Fantastic and the Gothic seem to be two particularly popular “literary asylums”. Such texts form a contrast with those where madness is only suspected, occurring as a possibility within the text, worming its way in and creating an intimate crack within a seemingly sane discourse: The Island of Dr Moreau, for example, presents the reader with a witness-narrator, Prendick, who is supposed to be telling the objective story of a mad scientist, but it seems probable that the character’s madness is there as a screen to hide another more surreptitious and dissident instance of madness -- that of the narrator himself. Numerous texts can thus be read in two ways, with either a "trusting" or a "suspicious" approach: in Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" or Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, the veiled hint of an unrestrained madness, that cannot be readily assessed or contained, compels the reader to account for his own interpretations and for what he projects onto the text. Over the years, the critical reactions to these works have been varied, and often conflicting, and a diachronic study of these divergent readings would be fruitful.

However madness can also stem from an intradiegetic narrator: and in this case it would be interesting to examine how and why madness can undermine the premises of the master narrative, by analysing the nature and the range of the discrepancies which are created when the mad narrator is confined within the dominant apparatus, but voices a minority counter-narrative; examples are Mr. Dick in David Coperfield or Euchrid in And the Ass Saw the Angel by Nick Cave. Finally, it is worth considering whether madness can take over the narrating voice in third-person narratives and if so, what the resulting textual effects are, and the range of the epistemological disruptions which this generates.

Papers dealing with films are also welcome. The prototype of the figure of the "mad narrator" is to be found in The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (Wiene, 1919), where the narrator's insanity invades and distorts the profilmic space -- a later example is The Tenant (Roman Polanski, 1976). Following the conceptual framework established by François Jost and André Gaudreault, discussions might tackle the difference between showing and telling in film, as well as the different levels of narration, from embedded narrators to the "mega-narrator" or "grand imagier" whose presence is often perceptible only through formal deviations from the norm of "conventional" story-telling; such deviations can sometimes be interpreted as symptoms of insanity, undermining the continuity of the narration and, as a result, the stability of the represented world. Speakers may also like to consider whether the expression of narrative madness is exclusively linked to the use of specific stylistic devices (ocularisation, voice-overs, flashbacks), by looking at such films as The Curse of Frankenstein (Terence Fisher, 1957), Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock, 1964), or Sisters (Brian De Palma, 1973). Certain genres (the thriller, the horror movie) are, perhaps, more likely to contain mad narrators and, consequently, to develop formal experimentation as a means of representing insanity. Guy Maddin's films (Brand Upon the Brain, 2006) seem to support such a view, but other examples can be found in Victor Ferenz's analyses of films like Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000), Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999) or American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000).

Papers will deal with English-language literature, comparative literature and English-language films.
300-word abstracts, in French or in English, should be sent, together with a brief CV by March 31st 2012 to:

(posted 17 January 2012)

The Department of Philology, University of Ploieşti, in collaboration with the School of English Communication and Philosophy -- Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University, United Kingdom and the Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, Bern University, Switzerland, invite you to the international conference ETHOS/ PATHOS/ LOGOS: The Sense and Place of Persuasiveness in Linguistic, Literary and Philosophical Discourse

In Rhetoric, Aristotle defined the act of persuasion as the interaction between three elements: ethos (the image of the self built by the orator to inspire trustworthiness and credibility), pathos (the arousing of emotions in one’s audience), and logos (referring both to discourse and reason). While these notions have remained conceptual cornerstones in major intellectual endeavours of western thought, ethos in particular developed in a distinctly different direction (from the individual to the collective or national) in the nineteenth century, from Hegel's understanding of the German word for 'ethics', Sittlichkeit, as what binds the members of a community to a place. Similarly, with the advent of Heideggerian ontology and its rediscovery of pre-Socratic heritage, logos, hitherto restricted to 'logic' and reason, and classically opposed to muthos (fable, fiction, therefore untruth) by philosophy against poetry, was given a more existential dimension as what the Being-in-the-world inhabits ('Language is the house of Being' in Heidegger's 'Letter on Humanism') by the German philosopher, for whom 'Poetically Man Dwells'.

While linguists (Austin and, later, various pragmatist schools), sociologists (Bourdieu: his notion of 'habitus' and his critique of a purely linguistic performative in Austinian theories) and rhetoric- or discourse-focused critics (Amossy) mediating between them, have endeavoured to analyze discursive exchanges in oral as well as written situations within this broadly post-Aristotelian framework, no conference has yet explicitly tried to re-address this conceptual triad in the light of more ‘modern’ philosophical re-orientations.

The aim of this conference is to investigate how a post-Hegelian construction of ethos as indissociable from a sense of place, coupled with a more extended and generous notion of logos no longer opposed to 'fiction' or synonymous with persuasive truth, can be brought to bear on how both rational ideas and emotions (pathoi) are expressed, both in the public sphere (e.g. political discourses) and literary texts pertaining to different generic conventions. If 'literature is the right to say everything/ anything' (Derrida, ‘This Strange Institution called Literature’), how can this right be exercised with an 'ethical' sense of place and with an awareness of the 'cultural pathologies' of a given audience? More generally, how can one construct a different concept (and pragmatic operation) of 'persuasion' across linguistic and literary genres?

We welcome individual paper presentations, panels and posters that explore topics in the following areas, but are not limited to:

• Ethics and rhetoric of discussion and argumentation
• Techniques of (per)suasion from consensus to coercion
• Alternative constructions of implication, implicature (Grice), ‘implicitness’ (implied narrator, implied author) in linguistic and literary discourses
• Citation as a ‘parasitic’ act or as an act of hospitality
• Comparative approaches between ‘face-to-face’ encounters in oral discursive situations and narrative or dramatic polylogues
• The status of confessional and testimonial narratives: fiction and/ or truth?
• The affective role and discursive construction of loci memoriae (Nora’s lieux de mémoire)

(posted 5 December 2011)

"Fredome all solace to man giffis, He levys at es that frely levys!"*

(*"Freedom all solace to man gives: He lives at ease that freely lives!" From Barbour's The Brus)

The notion of "freedom" has long been associated with a number of key perceptions deemed fundamental to an understanding of Scotland and the Scots. Thus Scottish history is explained from the Pictish resistance to the Romans through the Wars of Independence against English dominance, the Jacobite uprisings, to the birth of the Labour and Trade Union movements. Key Scottish texts have the concept of liberty at their core -- from the Declaration of Arbroath through the poems of Barbour, Burns and MacDiarmid to the writings of Janice Galloway and Irvine Welsh. Scottish thinkers have written extensively on the freedom of the individual, on economic freedoms, and Scottish theology has historically regarded as fundamental the freedom of the individual before her or his deity. This Conference aims to examine the question of "freedom" in its broadest terms, regarding concepts such as artistic, intellectual and political independence as crucial factors towards an understanding of Scotland's selfimage.

‐ The literary call to freedom: Scottish poetry, theatre and prose.
‐ Nationalism and Unionism: Independent and Free?
‐ Women in Scotland: Freedom curtailed?
‐ The Scottish Enlightenment.
‐ Freedom of Speech – the languages of Scotland.
‐ Land of the Free: Emigration and Immigration.
‐ Historical and political echoes of freedom of speech and thought in Scotland.
‐ Ecological freedom in contemporary Scotland.
‐ From the Covenanters to the Wee Frees -- Religious Independence in Scotland.
‐ Working Class liberation: Trade Union and Socialist thought and activity in Scotland.
‐ Independent writing: Thoughts on the Scottish literary system.
‐ Gay Liberation? Sexual and gender politics in Scotland.
‐ Freeing Scotland's banks: Economics in Scotland.

Abstracts (approx. 250 words) should be submitted by e‐mail as file attachments in MS WORD to both <dclark@udc.es> and <rjarazo@udc.es>.

These should include: 1) name and affiliation, 2) email address, 3) title of paper, 4) abstract, 5) multimedia requirements, 6) short professional bio‐data, 7) postal address.

(posted 25 January 2012)

The conferencee is organized by the Department of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and The Department of English Langauge and Literature, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey.

In Dickens's bicentenary year we wish to invite proposals for papers on crucial thresholds, moments of transition, and life cycles as these are represented, questioned or complicated in Dickens’s writings. We invite contributions that explore these topics, including but not limited to papers which focus on the following:

1) Births (birth rituals; births of boys vs. birth of girls; legitimacy and illegitimacy; birth and class identity vs. innate identity);
2) Marriages (marriage and money; marriage and love; sadistic and masochistic marriages; marriage and theatrical performance);
3) Deaths (death by murder; death by drowning or 'accident'); funerals and theatrical performance; death and gender and social class).

Michael Hollington
Catherine Waters

- Valerie Kennedy <kennedy@bilkent.edu.tr>
- and Katerina Kitsi <katkit@enl.auth.gr>.

(posted 24 November 2011)

The 5th International Conference of SELICUP (Sociedad Española de Estudios Literarios de Cultura Popular [Spanish Society for the Literary Study of Popular Culture]) will approach the study of popular culture from multidisciplinary perspectives. The conference will be held in Toledo, Spain, and will consist of plenary sessions, roundtables and parallel sessions of papers. Among others, the following thematic areas will be prioritised at the conference:

- Theory and methods of analysis of the popular
- Popular culture and the new identities in the 21st century
- Theoretical frameworks for the study of popular culture
- Popular culture and popular ideology: analysis and problems
- Popular artistic manifestations: film, TV, painting, photography, music and the media
- Functions of popular literature and cultural studies
- Anthropology and sociology of the popular
- Intercultural analysis through the arts: literature, music and other cultural products
- Popular culture in the Global Age
- Interactions of Spanish literature with other European literatures
- Popular culture and language learning/teaching.

Papers will be orally presented in no more than 20 minutes. To present a paper, speakers will send a title and a summary of around 300 words, which will be evaluated by the Scientific Committee.

Roundtable proposals will consist of a brief description of the goals to be achieved as well a summary (300 words) of its participants’ interventions (minimum of 3 speakers).

- Eduardo de Gregorio-Godeo: <Eduardo.Gregorio@uclm.es>
- María Mar Ramón-Torrijos: <Mariamar.Ramon@uclm.es>

(posted 17 February 2012)