Calls for contributions to books and special issues of journals

M@king It New In English Language Teaching
A special issue of ELOPE Vol. 14, No. 1 (2017)
Deadline for proposals: 10 January 2016

English Language Teaching is a dynamic, extensive and varied research discipline, underpinned by one fundamental question: how best to meet the needs of English learners, especially in our increasingly globalised and digitised world. This single question encompasses a host of related and inter-related issues. Please read the full cfp address here.

This special issue aims to bring together scholars, researchers and practitioners from all levels of the education system to report on and review the latest in English Language Teaching, as well as to explore potential future developments in the field.

Submissions are welcome from all subject areas of English Language Teaching, such as:

  • Teacher Training and Education;
  • Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language;
  • Teaching Methodology;
  • Teaching Literatures in English;
  • Language Teaching and Translation;
  • Developments in the E-Classroom;
  • Psychology in Language Learning;
  • and other related fields.

A selection of papers will be published in the spring 2017 (Vol. 14, No. 1) special issue of ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries, a double-blind, peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes original research articles, studies and essays addressing issues of English language, literature, teaching and translation. The volume will be edited by guest editors Melita Kukovec, Kirsten Hempkin and Katja Težak.

Papers of between 5000 and 8000 words in English should be submitted through the ELOPE online paper submission system. To ensure a blind review, the submitted file should not contain the author’s name or other personal data. For formatting and documentation, please see the sample paper in the attachment and Author Guidelines on the ELOPE website.

The submission deadline is 10 January 2017.

(posted 7 November 2016)


Polish science fiction and fantasy literature
Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies is looking for submissions
Deadline for proposals: 15 January 2017

crossroadsWhile science fiction and fantasy are inarguably international genres, they have not developed in a uniform manner across the globe. The literary output of any nation is always shaped by many factors, including the country’s history, politics, and culture. This is certainly true as far as Polish science fiction and fantasy literature are concerned, since their present condition—though, undoubtedly, determined also by the achievements of foreign writers (but to what extent?)—has been affected by the nation’s difficult yet rich past, which has been reflected in the writers’ attempts at re-creating the country’s history, in the multiple references to its socio-political reality, and in the return to Slavic mythology and traditions. However, beyond the borders of Poland few of the country’s science fiction and fantasy writers have gained literary and scholarly recognition (which is, of course, due to the number of available translations). While foreign readers might be acquainted with the works of Stanisław Lem and Andrzej Sapkowski, they might know little about other noteworthy Polish writers. Which is not surprising, since not many critical publications on Polish sf and fantasy are available in English. Our work will, hopefully, satisfy that demand.

While papers dealing with the works of Lem and Sapkowski are welcome, we strongly encourage scholars to submit works related to any of the following topics:

  • historical development of sf and fantasy in Poland,
  • critical assessment of the present condition of Polish sf and fantasy,
  • past and present trends in Polish sf and fantasy,
  • success and failure of Polish sf and fantasy,
  • the role of fandom and popular magazines in the development of Polish sf and fantasy,
  • Polish sf and fantasy in translation,
  • comparative analysis of Polish and American/English sf and fantasy,
  • reception of American/English sf and fantasy in Poland,
  • reception of American/English literary criticism on sf and fantasy in Poland,
  • religious, gender, racial, social, political, etc. dimensions of Polish sf and fantasy,
  • critical analysis of the works of Jacek Dukaj, Elżbieta Cherezińska, Janusz A. Zajdel, Jerzy Żuławski, Marek Oramus, Marek S. Huberath, Maja Lidia Kossakowska, Andrzej Pilipiuk, Jacek Piekara, Robert M. Wegner, Anna Kańtoch, Anna Brzezińska, and other Polish writers of sf and fantasy.

Schedule

  • January 15, 2017 – deadline for submitting abstracts (200-300 words)
  • January 30, 2017 – notice of acceptance
  • April 30, 2017 – deadline for submitting full papers (guidelines for authors will be provided)

After the papers receive a positive review, we will proceed with editing, proofreading, and publishing.
Please send your questions and submission to: crossroads.sfandfantasy@gmail.com

The theme issue will be guest-edited by Weronika Łaszkiewicz, Mariusz M. Leś, and Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun who are part of the research team “Wymiary Fantastyki” established at the University of Białystok. You can visit them at: http://fantastyka.uwb.edu.pl/

Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies is a peer-reviewed electronic quarterly published by the Department of English at the University of Białystok. The journal welcomes contributions on all aspects of literary and cultural studies (including recent developments in cyberculture), linguistics (both theoretical and applied), and intercultural communication. The aim of the journal is to provide a forum for interdisciplinary research, inquiry and debate within the area of English studies through the exchange, crisscrossing and intersecting of opinions and  diverse views. The electronic version of Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies is its primary (referential) version. The journal has received 6 points in the listing of scholarly journals issued by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. For details about the journal visit: http://www.crossroads.uwb.edu.pl/

(posted 17 October 2016)


The Routledge Companion to Women and the Ideology of Political Exclusion
To be publishesd in 2017-18
Deadline for proposals: 15 January 2017

We are seeking contributions for The Routledge Companion to Women and the Ideology of Political Exclusion, edited by Tatiana Tsakiropoulou-Summers (The University of Alabama, USA) and Katerina Kitsi-Mitakou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), to be published by Routledge in 2017-18.

The Companion aims to address the issue of women’s political exclusion throughout the centuries and across cultures and societies from an inter- and multidisciplinary perspective. Taking as a point of reference the earliest configurations of democracy in classical Athens, in which women were not allowed to participate actively in its design and practices, and moving on to the modern times, the book will examine how exclusions of women are created within the very same discourses of inclusion, as well as how ancient biases are recycled, questioned, or cancelled in modern societies. Despite women’s increasing participation in politics today and their open access to political life, there are still insurmountable barriers to gender equality and in many cases formal political equality veils continued exclusion or oppression. The essays will explore the idea of different types of women’s ‘political exclusion’ in a variety of contexts: in relation to civic rights, national belongings, identity politics, socio-economic human rights, etc., and will raise issues about the nature of democratic politics or the (in)stability of the term democracy. We are particularly interested in contributions that consider how gender exclusion intersects with a number of other parameters such as race, class, ethnicity, age, sexuality, disability, etc., which complicate women’s assimilation to a state imperative.

We especially welcome proposals for essays that focus 1) on countries around the globe which constitute paradigmatic cases as far as women and civil/social rights are concerned (for ex. Scandinavia, Australia, etc.), 2) on comparing diverse models of exclusion/inclusion in different countries/societies/cultures, and 3) on the inherent contradictions and ambiguities of the latest debates about women’s exclusion (such as, the clash between state policies of inclusion and socio-cultural and functional constraints that put limits on women’s individual and collective agency [for ex. the case of burkini], the pressure put on women that belong to ethnic minorities, refugee or immigrant groups that have been affected by Exclusion Acts, the latest American elections, etc.).

Please send a 500-word proposal and a short biographical note by email attachment to both Katerina Kitsi-Mitakou (katkit@enl.auth.gr) and Tatiana Tsakiropoulou-Summers (tsummers@ua.edu) by January 15, 2017.

(posted 31 October 2016)


The Subject of Criticism
A volume in an edited collection
Deadline for proposals: 15 January 2017

We are told that the humanities are suffering a downturn. Even as critical thinking, analysis, and compassionate assessment—the backbones of the humanities education—are in high demand now more than ever, the world of the academy outside of science and technology continues to experience cuts, downsizing, and general devaluation. Digital Humanities has been one proposed remedy, yet their increasing popularity has paradoxical implications for the humanities at large: rather than challenging the scientistic epistemology, they perpetuate it by subjecting the arts to the empiricist’s analytical toolkit.

This critical collection is one move toward regeneration that does not attempt to redress the arts and humanities, but rather strives to revitalize them in their acute responsiveness to the social conditions that shape our lives. In particular, we are concerned with re-injecting subjective experience into academic and critical writing about the arts, since it is here that such writing has both its locus and its effect.  Our gambit is that insisting that academic and critical writers inhabit, avow, and reveal their “I” will do far more to re-energize the humanities than further inhibiting the place of lived experience in critical writing.

We seek authors who will write both from within their particular area of specialization—whether in literature, philosophy, history, the arts, or other fields in the humanities—and from within their own personal story.  Most broadly, we are looking for the narratives that are both originary to, and that stem from, the critical experience: to bring together categories that tend to be held apart (the personal and the professional, the historical and the topical, the popular and the academic), to make manifest the stories that are so often repressed by academic and critical writing, and to reveal the urgency of our own personal investments in the humanities.

Possible forms of narrative might include:

  • A personal story and how it has influenced or intertwines with scholarly or critical subject of choice
  • A story of an encounter with a subject of critical inquiry: what it was like to read a particular text, view a particular work of art at a particular time, work on a particular historical problem, etc.
  • An experience teaching a particular text, subject, or cultural object
  • A narrative about why a seemingly obscure academic subject is relevant to one’s own life and contemporary life more broadly
  • A comparison between a personal event or story and a work of literature, art, historical writing, etc
  • A comparative assessment of “high” and “low/popular” forms of particular personal and scholarly investment (for example, “Haiku and Twitter”)
  • A theoretical reflection on the state of criticism or the humanities today

Please send abstracts of approximately 250 words to Alison Annunziata (annunziata06@gmail.com) and Emma Lieber (elieber14@gmail.com) by January 15, 2017.

(posted 10 December 2016)


The Animalizing Literature
Cfp for an edited volume of collected critical essays
Deadline for submissions: 31 January 2017

Submissions are sought from scholars, research aspirants and animal advocates

The rise and expansion of Animal Studies over the past decades can be seen in the explosion of various articles, journals, books, conferences, organizations, courses all over the academic world. With the publication of Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation in 1975 and Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights in 1983, there has been a burgeoning interest in nonhuman animals among academics, animal advocates, and the general public. Interested scholars recognize the lack of scholarly attention given to nonhuman animals and to the relationships between human and nonhuman, especially in the light of the pervasiveness of animal representations, symbols, and stories, as well as the actual presence of animals in human societies and cultures.

Animals abound in literary and cultural texts, either they are animals-as-constructed or animals-as-such. However, we can approach any literary text from a theoretical lens where the representation of nonhuman animals are main operative analytic frame. In literature nonhuman animals are given titular role, they carry symbolic function, they speak human language and so on. But these create problematics and bear the politics of representation.

Proposals for articles on topics relevant to this collective volume may include, but are not limited to:

  • HAS or CAS or Anthrozoology
  • Animals and Animality Studies
  • Animal Studies and Ecocriticism
  • Animal ethics and Literature
  • Darwinism and Literary Animals
  • Posthumanism and Literary Animals
  • Womanimalia (woman = animal)
  • Animal alterity in Literature
  • Postcolonial animal
  • Politics of Animal representation
  • Anthropomorphism
  • Meat eating, fishing and farming in Literature
  • Pets and zoo animals in Literature

Contributors have liberty to choose literary texts for their case study, but the papers must theorize the major presence of nonhuman animals in the selected texts. Papers should be around 3000 words following the latest MLA style sheet and must have abstract of 250 words with keywords, relevant end notes, references and authors’ bio-note.

There is NO publication fee. Each contributor will be provided one complimentary copy in April, 2017.

Papers will be scrutinized thoroughly and checked for potential unethical practices. Selected papers will be collected in a book (with ISBN) to be published by a reputed publisher in India.
Submission Deadline: 31st January, 2017.
Submit to: studiesanimal@gmail.com

(posted 12 December 2016)


Sound/Theatre: Sound in Performance
Issue # 16 of Critical Stages/Scènes critiques (December 2017)
Deadline for proposals: 1 February 2017

http://www.critical-stages.org
International Association of Theatre Critics / Association internationale des critiques de théâtre
a/s Jean-Pierre Han, 27, rue Beaunier, 75014 Paris,France
http://www.aict-iatc.org
ISSN 2409-7411

Special Issue Editor: Johannes Birringer (DAP-Lab)

Overview

Inspired by recent productions in theatre and dance as well as by scholarly attention given to an acoustic/sonic turn in recent years that is closely linked to the growth in scenographic and design studies, this special issue of Critical Stages (number 16, December 2017) will focus on sonification/musicalization of the stage environment, generative sonic processes, theatre aurality, music theatre/opera, digital performance and sound design.

Looking at a widening arena of composed theatre as well as interactive and sonic installation art, we encourage vigorous debate on emerging concepts of rhythmic spaces, resonant dramaturgies, audiophonic scenographies, vibrational theatres, multisensory atmospheres in performance.

Many creative processes today (enhanced by diverse technologies and ever-changing techniques) gather momentum, in which audible, but also tactile, haptic and/or visible dynamics, actions, atmospheres and traces are recreated, without that theories of affect and perception have yet fully defined or explored the contours sound affords for the spectators/listeners, especially if interactions unfold within the area of the non-verbal and beyond alignment with signs, narrative threads.

We are also interested in hearing from practitioners who work in collaborative production on such contouring.

This issue invites a broad range of interdisciplinary perspectives drawn from compositional processes and production aesthetics as well as from investigations into the perception of the interplay of analogue/digital, instrumental/vocal, and musical or noise-sound, or various manifestations of sound design and sonic scenographies.

Key Themes:

The issue will approach the role of sound in performance/performance of sound with the following general headings in mind:

  • Practices
  • Sonic Design/Sonic Scenography
  • Vocabularies
  • Experiences
  • Acoustic Ecologies
  • Aesthetics and Politics

Length of papers: maximum 4000 words
Proposals:   1 February 2017
First drafts: 1 August 2017
Publication date: December 2017
All proposals, submissions and enquiries should be sent to:
Johannes.Birringer@brunel.ac.uk

(posted 22 November 2016)


Psychopharmacology and British Literature: 1650 to 1900
An edited volume to be published by Palgrave
Deadline for abstract submissions: 1 February 2017

Natalie Roxburgh, Jennifer Henke
Contact email: natalie.roxburgh@uni-siegen.de, j.henke@uni-bremen.de

Psychopharmacology and British Literature, 1650 to 1900, an edited volume to be submitted for consideration in the series Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science, and Medicine, is now inviting submissions. This volume’s aim is to bring together multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives on plant-based and/or chemical psychoactive substances that were new to contemporaries. Essays will investigate the time period of 1650 to 1900, the period in which psychoactive drug use, which had always been a part of cultural practice, became intensified partly because of colonial exploration and bio-prospecting but also because of the rise of pharmacological sciences and the advent of synthetic organic chemistry in the eighteenth century.

Rather than focusing on biographies of writers who used drugs as many scholarly inquiries already have done, papers in this volume will emphasize 1) the literary representations of drugs in British literature and 2) the contexts in which they were sold, used, and understood to work on the human brain and body.
We welcome contributions on psychoactive substances ranging from, but not limited to: new types of alcohol, opium, morphine, cannabis, coca, laudanum, tobacco, coffee, tea, chocolate, and sugar.

Possible angles include:

  • the aesthetics of intoxication
  • new approaches to psychopharmacological medicine in literature
  • literature and the history of addiction
  • new contexts for the biochemistry of drugs as represented in literature
  • social attitudes towards drug use as represented in literature

Please submit a 500-word proposal to natalie.roxburgh@uni-siegen.de and j.henke@uni-bremen.de by 1 February 2017.

Acknowledgement of accepted proposals will be given by 1 March 2017. For those invited to contribute to the volume, completed essays of 5000-6000 words will be due by 1 September 2017. Please follow MLA style for in-text documentation and bibliography.

(posted 6 January 2017)


Staging (inter)generational conflicts, crises and discord
Book proposal and call for abstracts:
Deadline for submissions: February 15, 2017

Editor: Dr Katarzyna Bronk, Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland
contact email: kbronk@wa.amu.edu.pl

Samuel Johnson wrote in The Rambler: “This one generation is always the scorn and wonder of the other, and the notions of the old and young are like liquor store of different gravity and texture which never can unite” (in Ottaway 2016: 2.35). His comments, from 1750, were connected to the changing perception of ageing as well as the new dynamics and power play developing between members of the ‘new’ and the ‘old’ generations. This is in contrast to the ideal/idealised situation where “intergenerational relations are best characterized as relationships of reciprocity, differently balanced on both sides at different stages of life according to need” (Thane 2000: 12). Johnson was alluding to a crisis in intergenerational relationships, a concern that he was not alone in. Daniel Defoe likewise noticed that “There is nothing on Earth more shocking, and withal more common, in but too many Famillies, than to see Age and Grey Hairs derided, and ill use” (Protestant monastery). Both writers were openly hinting at intergenerational conflict and this is despite a more empathic attitude towards one’s elders that is said to have developed in the eighteenth century. Naturally, intergenerational contention is not limited to the past as, even quite recently, Brexit revealed the deep-running ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’ divide, juxtaposing young(er) and the old(er) people, millennials and baby boomers, sons/daughters and the parents, and the newer and older immigrants (Brexit saw various forms of hierarchisation of immigrants), etc.

Literature has proved to be an effective medium for presenting, analysing and often offering ways of resolving real or fictional conflicts between age and youth, the “old” and the “new”. Drama, in its textual or performative form, proved even more forceful and imaginative, and theatre has additionally allowed for an almost three-dimensional exploration of various intergenerational dynamics, most often reified as crises and conflicts running additionally along intersectional lines of age, gender, race, class or religion. British drama has always been very sensitive to sociopolitical transformations, often allegorising public or national crises as private conflicts between family members. Thus, for example, youth conquers old(er) age in Renaissance family-themed plots; younger and more progressive characters triumph in Restoration political heroic tragedies or libertine comedies; the aged, more experienced heroes/heroines reclaim the virtue and dispense punishment in eighteenth-century sentimental and affective drama; the Angry Young (Wo)Men blame the earlier generations for ruining their chances for happiness; Oedipal (and Jocastian) crises tear families from the inside; cultural and sexual revolutions embold and enfranchise daughters and sons who question the rules of normativity of their parents’ generations; and, more recently, sons and daughters reject the cultural and religious values cherished by their parents and choose more traditional but also extremist ways of living

We wish to propose a book on these and various other ways and means of presenting, dramatising and staging (inter)generational crises, struggles and conflicts (and their possible solutions) in British theatre and drama across centuries. We invite abstracts (max 500 words) on various shades of staged and dramatised conflicts between the old and the young (age vs youth), the new and the old, etc. Interested authors are kindly asked to send their abstracts by 15th February 2017 to dr Katarzyna Bronk (kbronk@wa.amu.edu.pl and bbronkk@gmail.com). If accepted by the editors, selected abstracts will be collated into a thematic collection and proposed to a publisher. Upon acceptance by the publisher, the authors will be asked to write full versions of their papers. The book’s tentative title is: Dramatic Intergenerationality: Staging conflicts, crises and generational discord.

(posted 23 December 2016)


The Green World in Contemporary Poetry and Philosophy: Mapping Nature in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
Deadline for proposals: 1 March 2017

A volume edited by Leonor M. Martínez Serrano and Cristina M. Gámez-Fernández
Email addresses: l52masel@uco.es and cristina.gamez@uco.es

Deadline for abstract submissions: 1 March 2017.
Notification of acceptance: 31 March 2017.
Submission of full chapters: 1 October 2017.

Since the very cradle of civilization, Nature has been one of the secular concerns of poetry and philosophy. In a classic like Walden; or Life in the Woods (1854), Henry David Thoreau said: ‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately’. The woods would make him whole again; solitude and Nature would reactivate a claritas of mind in him that had apparently been overshadowed by human commerce. About a century later, Ezra Pound sang in The Cantos: ‘Learn of the green world what can be thy place / In scaled invention or true artistry’ (81/541), aware as he was of the fact that the world is a subtle ecology of vast dimensions that needs our attention and respect. The green world was particularly pervasive in European Romantic poetry, which looked at Earth from a pristine standpoint, but its presence has continued unabated in 20th- and 21st-century literature, particularly in poetry and in prose writings concerned with understanding the natural world as opposed to the man-made world. At a time of worrying environmental degradation at a global scale, it is a matter of the utmost urgency to go back to poetry and philosophy to see how these most ancient modes of thinking (or instruments of mental production, as Northrop Frye puts it) are responding to one of the contemporary wicked problems that human societies are facing worldwide. Finding a solution to these global problems requires huge doses of creativity, cooperation and solidarity at a planetary level. Poetry and philosophy never give up on their call to shed some sort of temporary light on Nature and the human condition. In its forceful and disinterested search for truth, poetry remains intact and pure amid the dissonance of our ferociously post-capitalist world and/or denounces violence against it intensely through its verse, on occasions twisted and/or damaged too. Aware of how central Nature is to their epistemological enterprise, contemporary poets still feel there is something indecipherable at the core of the green world that must be tackled with intellectual and artistic alertness. Similarly, contemporary philosophers appear to address this century-old concern with how humans interact with the natural world, as well as the environmental crisis we are going through. Over 2500 years ago, the Pre-Socratic philosophers themselves were naturalists and ecologists avant la lettre, at a time when there was no point in drawing a clear-cut boundary between poetry, philosophy and ecology. The ultimate lesson is crystal clear: life is but an interdependent continuum of subtle modulations and so, by understanding Nature, humans will understand themselves, and by understanding themselves, they will understand their place within the larger scheme of things. In this sense, both poetry and philosophy represent powerful inquisitive tools to map the green world and render it comprehensible to the human mind.

We seek contributions that explore how contemporary poetry and philosophy address Nature and human beings’ relationship with the natural world. Both theoretical and practical approaches, as well as different critical stances are welcome. The following themes (or other pertinent topics related to the object under scrutiny) are of interest to the volume:

  • representations of the green world in contemporary poetry written in English in the postcolonial world (in the UK, Ireland, USA, Canada, South Africa, India, Australia, etc.);
  • poems & poets dwelling on the lessons of the green world;
  • Nature as a polyphonic place and poetry for multiple voices;
  • poets as literary critics fathoming Nature in their prose (non-fiction) writings;
  • the green world as an idyllic place (home) vs. the green world as a hostile, alien place (other);
  • new forms of pastoral;
  • walking and hiking, mountains and trees, rivers and oceans, etc. in 20th- and 21st-century poetry;
  • overlapping between Literary Criticism and Nature;
  • the insights of contemporary Philosophy: philosophical approaches to Nature and ecological thinking;
  • Nature as locus or luogo d?incontro for interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity;
  • anthropocentrism vs. biocentrism;
  • Nature as nonhuman entity vs. Nature as cultural construct;
  • portraits of environmental Armageddon: global warming, climate change, political and societal implications thereof;
  • the natural world as commodity to be exploited in post-capitalist societies and neoliberal economies.

Prospective authors are invited to submit abstract proposals consisting of a title and a 500-word summary by 1 March 2017. Proposals should also include the following information: author’s name, institutional affiliation, email address, and a 250-word CV. Authors will be notified of their paper proposal acceptance by 31 March 2017. Full chapters (5000-7000 words) will be expected by 1 October 2017. Both abstracts and full chapters must conform to the latest MLA style sheet guidelines and be sent as Word files to l52masel@uco.es and cristina.gamez@uco.es. Selected essays will be compiled in book format and the volume will be published by a prestigious international publisher still to determine in 2018.

(posted 20 December 2016)


Authorial Literary Translation
A special issue of Poli-Femo
Deadline for proposals: 10 March 2017

The study of any national literary system cannot exclude a comparative approach and an investigation into the function of translations. Our aim in this monographic issue is to study works translated by leading writers in international literary cultures (not exclusively European), and then analyse the role of these translations in the formation of supranational literary canons.
The leading writers of various literary traditions have in fact very often translated foreign works themselves by turning, on occasions, to translation as a fundamental practice for personal enrichment to creative and stylistic ends.
However widespread this practice may be, it has nevertheless been underrated and, despite the importance given to this phenomenon by a variety of scholars, up to now only a few isolated studies have been carried out on the subject.
Research has shown that there is a European (and not only) community of writers who, through the means of translation, now often share certain tones, structures, symbols and images. We will investigate how the practice of translation is echoed in the works of these writers, and we will try to define the network of interferences that have influenced their works and their national literary tradition.
In this sense, authorial translations have also shown themselves to be a useful way of enriching the literary target language, as it often acts as a response to a need for renewal, and this particular confrontation with the foreigner represents a phenomenon of fundamental importance which has led to interaction between literary traditions.
It is therefore our intention to analyse the practice of translation also as an essential step in the creative process.
Why and when does a writer decide to translate? Which authors or works do they choose to translate and why? What are the dynamics that arise between the writer and the translator? And, above all, how much remains of the translation in the writer’s subsequent work? What are its effects on the canon, culture and receiving language?
It is only by finding an answer to these questions that we will be able to explain the real connections between the individual national systems.
The topics that may be presented will take into consideration:

  • Translation of poetry. In order to understand how forms, styles, signs and meanings of one nation’s literature have influenced, through authorial translations, the different national poetical traditions. Studies may take into consideration, amongst others, Baudelaire, Chateaubriand, George, Leopardi, Mallarmé, Fenoglio, Montale, Nerval, Ungaretti, Goethe, Rilke, George.
  • Translations and the avantgarde. Avantgarde writers have often turned to translating to overcome a technical impasse or to unearth a resource in the foreign work that can be used to renew their own literary tradition. Contributors could study the role that translating played for the authors of some important avantgarde movements (within a European context, but without necessarily being limited to it, we can think of the avantgarde in 1930’s Italy, or the “Generación del 27” in Spain with Guillén, Salinas and Alonso).
  • Translations and minority languages. Contributors could look at the role that the translation of works originally written in minority languages plays for authors of national literatures, as a resource for enriching national literary languages.
  • Translation and migration. A possible area of research could be contemporaneity, with reference to migrant authors, who are now an essential element of international literary culture.
  • Translations and images. Other potential areas of research could be the way some literary images travel from one nation to another through the translations of writer-translators, analysing their work also from the point of view of language reception and the effects of “the merging of horizons” on the receiving culture.
  • Novels translated by novelists. Contributors may wish to analyse the dynamics of interference and influence that the practice of translation has had on the communication of forms and structures typical of the tradition of the European novel (M. Yourcenar, reread in the light of translations by V. Woolf and H. James, as well as the effects Gide’s translations, from Goethe to Conrad, had on the French writer-translator’s own works). It is not expected, however, that contributors will limit their investigation only to the European literary tradition.
  • Theorists, writers, translators. In some cases theoretical reflections on translating have constantly accompanied the translations and “own” works of writer-translators. Contributors could look at the theoretical works of these authors, with the main focus on contemporaneity (Y. Bonnefoy, translator of Shakespeare, Petrarch and Leopardi; J. Risset, translator of Dante) or the past, in order to understand, through these reflections, further aspects inherent in authorial translation.
  • Authorial translations and the publishing market. We will also look at some of the dynamics of the market linked to the translations of writer-translators. We will analyse, for example, the reasons behind the creation of collections such as Poeti stranieri tradotti da poeti italiani (“Foreign poets translated by Italian poets”) (Scheiwiller), and Scrittori tradotti da scrittori (“Writers translated by writers”) (Einaudi). We will also analyse publishing promotions in a context of works translated by writers.

Other proposals for study on the subject put forward by those intending to collaborate in the publication will be scrupulously examined by the Scientific Committee, in order to widen the field of exploration undertaken in this issue of the Journal. Proposals for contributions will be accepted in Italian, English and French.
To this end, the Editorial Board propose the following deadlines, with an essential preliminary step being the sending, to redazione.polifemo@iulm.it of an abstract (min. 10/max. 20 lines) and a short curriculum vitae of the proposer, by and absolutely no later than 10th March 2017. Authors will receive confirmation from the Editorial Board of acceptance of their contributions by 20th March 2017. Contributions shall be delivered on 5th July 2017. All contributions will be subject to a double blind peer review. The issue, edited by Prof. Paolo Proietti and Dr. Francesco Laurenti, will be published in December 2017.

(posted 7 February 2017)


Media and Emotions. The New Frontiers of Affect in Digital Culture
A special issue of Open Cultural Studies / De Gruyter Open
Deadline for proposals: 30 March 2017

Editors: Professor Toby Miller (UC Riverside, USA), Dr. Anna Malinowska (University of Silesia, Poland)

The intervention of digitalism and the new media into “a whole way of life” (Williams 1960) has had a significant effect on human emotions and the ways we express and experience feelings in daily interaction . The focus of this special issue is the new media and emotion, analyzed in relation to changing life environments and human emotional interactions. We invite papers that will re-examine the relationship between new media forms, media-ridden realities, and emotional structures (interactions, reactions, affordances etc.) with respect to cultural processes examined from a myriad of scholarly perspectives and methodological approaches.
Suggested topics include:  Feelings and the (post)-Anthropocene: emotional interactions between human beings, the natural environment, and non-human technologies; Changes of emotional practice / perception: new sensory dimensions and bodily reactions (non-contact interactions etc. Emotions as objects expressed in new technologies. Affective experiences with the new media; Technologies of emotions / emotions in technologies; Emotional labor and the service industries, from goldmining on-line games to virtual sex work; The commodification and governance of feelings; The relationship between affect theory, phenomenology, and the psy-function (psychoanalysis, psychology, and psychopharmacology; How media-effects models construct the relationship between new media and emotions; The use of feelings discourse in journalism, political communication, and social conflicts

Proposals of 500 words followed by a short bio, listing qualifications and publications, should be submitted to izabella.penier@degruyteropen.com by 30 March 2017.

(posted 20 January 2017)


Desire and the ‘Expressive Eye’ in Thomas Hardy
FATHOM, the electronic journal of the French association for Thomas Hardy Studies
New extended deadline for proposals: 15 April 2017

FATHOM (French Association for Thomas Hardy Studies, http://fathomhardy.fr/) seeks essay submissions on “Desire and the ‘Expressive Eye’ in Thomas Hardy”.
The selected essays will be published in FATHOM, the electronic journal of the French association: http://fathom.revues.org/

Essays can also be examined with a view to publication in The Hardy Review, the American paper journal edited by Rosemarie Morgan and published by the Thomas Hardy Association (http://thethomashardyassociation.org/).

Proposals of 300 words with a short bio are due by 15 April 2017 (new extended deadline). Final papers are due by June 30 2017.
The FATHOM stylesheet is available at : http://fathom.revues.org/482
Please send the submissions to:
– Isabelle Gadoin isabelle.gadoin@univ-poitiers.fr
– Annie Ramel annie.ramel@gmail.com

Thomas Hardy has inspired critics with an interest in the visual arts: many of his texts can be read as “iconotexts”, i.e. as texts with a powerful “painting effect”, even in the absence of any direct reference to painting (L. Louvel). His style, with its characteristic “verbal-visual effects” (J. B. Bullen), owes much to Ruskin and Turner. Desire is another theme which has found its way into major criticism of Hardy’s work—the first item in the series being J. Hillis Miller’s Distance and Desire.

This publication will explore the relation between desire and the gaze in Hardy’s work. In Under the Greenwood Tree for instance, desire is kindled by the sight of a woman, “Miss Fancy Day”, framed within the quadrangolo of her window: the “window of fantasy” (Lacan) opens onto a world of dreamings and yearnings. But the gaze in Hardy’s fiction can also have a lethal power. The “evil eye” looking at Mrs Yeobright through a window-pane in The Return of the Native causes her to meet her doom on the heath: she has been “overlooked” by her daughter-in-law, just as Gertrude is “overlooked” by Rhoda Brown in “The Withered Arm”. Is the eye, then, an “expressive eye” (J. B. Bullen), which makes manifest the “positive, dynamic and productive dimension of desire” (J. Thomas)? Or is it felt as a menace, like the “oval pond” in Far from the Madding Crowd, which glitters “like a dead man’s eye”? Is it full of voracity, intent on devouring whoever comes under its spell?

We will welcome proposals opening new directions in Hardy criticism, linking the desiring subject and the power of the gaze. Studies can focus on the stories told by Hardy, but also on the writing process: on the power of the written word, which is “to make you hear, to make you feel—[…] before all, to make you see!” (Joseph Conrad, Preface to The Nigger of the Narcissus). And how does Hardy the writer manage to turn to good account the power of the gaze in his texts? We welcome essays on any of Hardy’s writings (novels, short-stories, poems, etc.).

BULLEN, J. B.. The Expressive Eye, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.
LACAN, Jacques. The Seminar, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, translated by Alan Sheridan, Penguin Books, 1979.
LOUVEL, Liliane. Poetics of the Iconotext, edited by Karen Jacobs, translated by Laurence Petit, Farnham: Ashgate 2011.
MILLER, Joseph Hillis. Thomas Hardy: Distance and Desire, London: Oxford University Press, 1970.
THOMAS, Jane. Thomas Hardy and Desire: Conceptions of the Self, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

(posted 6 January 2017, updated 14 March 2017)


Literature and Psychology: Writing, Trauma and The Self
An edited volume
Deadline for proposals: 31 March 2017

Centuries ago, Aristotle fashioned a term that brought literature and psychology face to face: catharsis (psychological or mental purification of the feelings). From that time onwards, literature and human psyche have been correlated either by various writers, philosophers, critics, or by means of several techniques or movements. Not only was it tragedy that combined the elements of psychology with literary production, it was also novel, poetry, short story and even some psychoanalytical theories that brought psyche and literature together. There has always been a mutual partnership of the two: psychology of men and literature of men.  It was Sigmund Freud, for instance, who introduced Oedipus complex from what Sophocles held as the plot of Oedipus the King. It was Samuel Richardson who carried the earlier features of sentimental novel and the early flashes of psychological novel through his Pamela. It was Henry James who borrowed the stream of consciousness technique from psychology and introduced it to be used in literature, and then was subtly employed by James Joyce in Ulysses and by Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway. Charles Dickens, with his famous industrial novel Great Expectations, reflected the well-established norms of psychological realism. George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion was named after the mythological figure of Greek Pygmalion, and the name was also adapted into the Pygmalion effect to emphasize the observable phenomena related to the psychology and performance of men. Similarly, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita became a focal work that impacted the birth of Lolita complex. Friedrich Nietzsche’s ubermensch (just as it is employed by Bernard Shaw in Superman), MartinEsslin’s theatre of the absurd (employed by Samuel Beckett in Waiting for Godot), Antonin Artaud’s theatre of cruelty (employed by Edward Bond in Saved) and etc. all could be tackled in terms of interrelation of human psyche and literariness.

Psychology has also some observable impacts on the writer’s writing skill. Causing extreme changes in mood, bipolar disorder is addressed by many critics to be the central origin behind creativity. Such writers and critics as John Ruskin, Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allan Poe, Alan Garner, Hams Christian Anderson and Sherman Alexei among others are known to have bipolar disorder that impacted their literary creativity. Feminist urges also produced the female creativity within some genres of literature. It was Emily Dickenson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Virginia Woolf, George Eliot, and Bronte Sisters that embraced the psychology of the power of female creativity on the way to writing. For that reason, psychology and literature live in each other’s pockets.

This proposal suggests a forum of differing ideas on the link between literature and psychology, psychology of writing, traumatic literature, the construction of the Self within literature, the psychology of characterization, psychoanalytical approaches, and the psychology of literary creativity.

The topics of interest include but not limited to the following titles:

  • Psychology of Literature
  • Literature of Psychology
  • Psychology and literary genres
  • Psychological theories and movements
  • Traumatic literature
  • Literature and psyche
  • Auto/biography and  psyche
  • Psychoanalytical approaches
  • The psychology of Self and Literature
  • The Psychology of Writing
  • Trauma and Writing
  • The Self and Writing
  • Psychology and  Creativity

Submission ProcedureResearchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before March 31, 2017, a chapter proposal of 1,000 to 2,000 words clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors will be notified by April 30, 2017 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by October 30, 2017, and all interested authors must consult the guidelines for manuscript submissions at http://www.cambridgescholars.com/t/AuthorFormsGuidelines prior to submission. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.
Note: There are no submission or acceptance fees for manuscripts submitted to this book publication, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. All manuscripts are accepted based on a double-blind peer review editorial process.

Publisher: This book is scheduled to be published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit http://www.cambridgescholars.com/. This publication is anticipated to be released in 2018.

Important Dates

  • March 31, 2017: Proposal Submission Deadline
  • April 30, 2017: Notification of Acceptance
  • October 30, 2017: Full Chapter Submission
  • December 30, 2017: Review Results Returned
  • January 30, 2018: Final Acceptance Notification
  • February 15, 2018: Final Chapter Submission
  • April 15, 2018:Manuscript delivery date

Inquiries
Editor’s Name: Önder Çakırtaş
Editor’s Affiliation: PhD, Assistant Professor, Bingol University (Turkey), Department of English Language and Literature

Editor’s Contact Information
Bingöl Üniversitesi
Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi
Oda No:D2-8 12000 Bingöl/TÜRKİYE
callforliteraturepapers@gmail.com
cakirtasonder@gmail.com

(posted 7 February 2017)


Before and after Beat exploded: Essential studies on ruth weiss
Deadline for proopsals: 12 April 2017

ruth weiss has worked for almost seven decades – and at 88 continues to work – with a plurality of artistic forms: she has authored around twenty poetry books, performed and recorded Jazz & Poetry, written more than ten plays, exhibited her water-color haiku paintings, acted in films and even written and directed one. As such, weiss embodies the artistic confluence of the 1950s and 1960s bohemia, breaking down, as Randy Roark writes, “the barriers between word, film, song, painting, and theatre”. Despite her extensive poetry career and very active participation in the West Coast buzzing artistic community since the early 1950s, weiss has remained an essentially overlooked figure in poetry history. This neglect might be representative – or shall we say a consequence – of the overshadowing of female artists within the Beat Generation as “a marginalized group within an always already marginalized bohemia” (Ronna C. Johnson).

Following her re-discovery in the course of Brenda Knight’s Women of the Beat Generation (1996), weiss’s work has benefitted from a boost in Beat-related academic and cultural activities in the last decades. Nevertheless, twenty years after the publication of Knight’s groundbreaking anthology, and despite the rekindled interest in the movement in general and in the work of women in particular, the Beat Generation academic niche is still lacking in terms of monographs and individual studies dealing with the work of female poets. Our book taps directly into this lacuna by providing up- to-date, comprehensive, critical analyses around one of the most prolific members of the so-called “Beat women”: ruth weiss.

The collection of essays aims to include studies on all areas of weiss’s body of work – poetry, film, theater, performance or painting – as well as contrastive or comparative studies between ruth weiss’s poetics and aesthetics and that of other poets and artists, both inside and outside the scope of the Beat Generation. In order to respond to the existing cross-pollination between art forms in weiss’s oeuvre, this collection maintains a multidisciplinary approach that the editors consider not only essential when dealing with weiss’s poetry, but also a methodological necessity in the postmodern 21st century. As the first collection on the every-day trendier ruth weiss, this collection will be one of a kind, becoming a mandatory reading for all of those interested in the Beat

Generation in general and “Beat women” in particular. With this in mind, the scope of this collection addresses:

  • detailed analyses of individual collections of poetry, as well as the position of ruth weiss as a Jazz & Poetry artist. In this regard, we are interested in historical accounts documenting the early years of innovation of Jazz & Poetry and weiss’s involvement in it, as well as her further development of the genre until today.
  • weiss’s personal biography and its effect on her poetic and artistic vision.
  • weiss’s involvement with the visual arts and the visual aspect in her In this regard, the collection explores both weiss’s involvement with visual arts such as painting or film and the influence of visual aesthetics in her poetry.
  • weiss’s use of poetic language in written and oral forms. Attention is paid in this respect to the performance aspect of weiss’s poetry, as well as to the way the poet plays with, bends and re-invents
  • weiss’s involvement in the Underground Film (The Brink, Ron Rice’s Flower Thief and Steven Arnold’s films), other audiovisual projects (ruth weiss meets her Prometheus [2007], Las Cuevas de Albion [2002]) – and the connections between these and weiss’s poetry.
  • weiss and the Beat Generation legacy: aesthetics, vision, and the issue of synchronicity.
  • weiss and literary genre. This includes essays paying attention to the mixture of genres in weiss’s oeuvre (lyric and narrative poem, travel journal, haiku, theatrical play, etc.)
  • adaptations of weiss’s work: Gerhard Samuel’s “Fortieth Day” – composed from weiss’s Desert Journal – and theatrical adaptations of her plays.
  • weiss’s collaborations and artistic network, which includes such diverse artists as novelist Jack Kerouac, poets Madeline Gleason, Philip Lamantia, Bob Kaufman, Anne Waldman, the painters Sutter Marin and Paul Blake, actor Taylor Mead, director Steven Arnold, a number of musicians (e.g., Sonny Wayne k.a. Sonny Nelson, Boo Pleasant, Doug Lynner), legendary stripper and comedian Carol Doda, etc.

Essays will be due December 31, 2017 and should be between 5000 and 6000 words in length. Interested contributors should send an abstract of 250–500 words with a short bio or their CV by April 12, 2017 to one of the editors,
Estíbaliz Encarnación Pinedo: estibaliz.encarnacion@um.es
Thomas Antonic: thomas.antonic@univie.ac.at

(posted 8 March 2017)


Shakespeare and Africa
Anniversary Issue (10 Years) of the e-journal Shakespeare en devenir 2017
Deadline for completed articles: late April 2017

http://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr

This issue would like to explore the relationship between Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, that of Shakespeare but also his contemporaries, and the representation of Africa, or, from a contextual viewpoint, the perception of the African continent in early modern England. The issue will also discuss 19th-21st c. re-writings, appropriations and adaptations of Shakespeare by African and African-American writers, stage directors and film directors.

Proposals may discuss, among other issues:

  1. The perception of the African continent in early modern England (in history, cartography, or history of ideas); the appropriation, discussion or rejection of foreign texts on/from Africa, as that of Leo Africanus (translated in 1600 as A Geographical Historie of Africa).
  2. Africa and African culture represented in drama by Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
  3. Rewritings of Shakespeare and his contemporaries by black writers: appropriations and distortions of the canonical texts, changes of focus and viewpoints, prequels and sequels, as, for example, Aimé Césaire’s Une Tempête, Djanet’s Sears’ Harlem Duet, Toni Morrison’s Desdemona, etc. Or more sporadic or indirect appropriations of Shakespearean elements by, for example, South-African writers like John M. Coetzee, Geoffrey Haresnape or Nadine Gordimer.
  4. 19th-21st century performances of early modern plays or their later rewritings in Africa, in French-speaking, Arabic-speaking, English-speaking, Portuguese-speaking countries; screen adaptations such as Alexander Abela’s Makifebo or Youssef Chahine’s Alexandria Trilogy.
  5. Performances (outside of Africa) by African-American companies. For example, Orson Welles’ 1936 voodoo Macbeth at the Federal Theatre; Brett Bailey’s transposition of Verdi’s Macbeth to the Congo and the Congolese regime; Toni Morrison’s Desdemona with Malian singer Rokia Traoré; work by the African-American Shakespeare Company in San Francisco, etc.

Completed papers, in English or in French, should be sent by late April 2017 along with an abstract, a contributor’s bio and a list of keywords, to Yan Brailowsky and Pascale Drouet: yan.brailowsky@u-paris10.fr, pascale.drouet@univ-poitiers.fr

Selected References

  • Andrea, Bernadette, “The Ghost of Leo Africanus from the English to the Irish Renaissance”, in P.C. Ingham & M. Warren (eds.), Postcolonial Moves: Medieval through Modern, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, p. 195-215.
  • Banham, Martin, Mooneeram, Roshni, Plastow, Jane, “Shakespeare and Africa”, in S. Wells & S. Stanton (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage, Cambridge, CUP, 2002, p. 284-299.
  • Brookes, Kristen, “Inhaling the Alien: Race and Tobacco in Early Modern England”, in B. Sebek & S. Deng, Global Traffic: Discourses and Practices in English Literature and Culture from 1550 to 1700, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p. 157-178.
  • Cimitile, Anna Maria, “Shakespeare and Literary Africa: Encounters by Dissonance in Coetzee, Soyinka, Gordimer”, Ranam: Recherches Anglaises et Nord-Américaines, 2014, vol. 47, p. 245-264.
  • Darragi, Rafik, “The Tunisian Stage: Shakespeare’s Part in Question”, Critical Survey, 2007, vol. 19 issue 3, p. 95-106.
  • Fensome, Rebecca, “Giving place to Shakespeare in Africa: Geoffrey Haresnape’s African Tales from Shakespeare”, in G. Bradshaw, T. Bishop, L. Wright (eds.), The Shakespearean International Yearbook 9: Special Section, South African Shakespeare in the Twentieth Century, Farnham, Asgathe, 2009, p. 171-191.
  • Gouws, John, “Shakespeare, Webster and the Moriturus Lyric in Renaissance England”, Shakespeare in Southern Africa, 1989, 3, p. 45-57.
  • Guarracino, Serena, “Africa as Voices and Vibes: Musical Routes in Toni Morrison’s Marget Garner and Desdemona”, Research in African Literature, 2015 Winter, vol. 46 (4), p. 56-71.
  • Lebdai, Benaouda, “Traces of Shakespeare’s Tragedies in Africa”, in Eric C. Brown & Estelle Rivier (eds.), Shakespeare in Performance, Newcastle, CSP, 2013, p. 182-193.
  • Mafe, Diana Adesola, “From Ogun to Othello: (Re)Acquainting Yoruba Myth and Shakespeare’s Moor”, Research in African Literatures, Fall 2004, vol. 35, issue 3, p. 46-61.
  • Malère, Kaf, “Un Hamlet africain”, Horizons Maghrébins: Le Droit à la Mémoire, 2005, 53, p. 163-171.
  • Plastow, Jane (ed. And introd.), Shakespeare In and Out of Africa, Woodbridge, Currey, 2013.
  • Roux, Daniel, “Shakespeare and Tragedy in South Africa: From Black Hamlet to A Dream Deferred”, Shakespeare in Southern Africa, 2015, vol. 27, p. 1-14.
  • Seeff, Adele, “Titus Andronicus: South Africa’s Shakespeare”, Borrowers and Lenders, 2008 Fall-2009 Winter, 4 (1), no pagination.
  • Sher, Antony, Doran, Gregory, Woza Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus in South Africa, London, Bloomsbury, 1997.
  • Ungerer, Gustav, “The Presence of Africans in Elizabethan England and the Performance of Titus Andronicus at Burley-on-the-Hill, 1595-96”, Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, 2008, vol. 21, p. 19-55.
  • Voss, Tony, “South Africa in Shakespeare’s ‘wide and universal theatre’”, Shakespeare in Southern Africa, 2015, vol. 27, p. 61-69.
  • Wilkinson, Jane, Africa: Rivista Trimestrale di Studi e Documentazione dell’Instituto Italo-Africano, 1999 June, 54 (2), p. 193-229, 230.
  • Willan, Brian, “Whose Shakespeare? Early Black South African Engagement with Shakespeare”, Shakespeare in Southern Africa, 2012, vol. 24, p. 3-24.
  • Woods, Peneloppe, “The Two Gentlemen of Zimbabwe & Their Diaspora Audience at Shakespeare’s Globe”, in J. Plastow (ed.), Shakespeare In and Out of Africa, Woodbridge, James Currey, 2013, p. 13-27.

(posted 1 August 2016)


The Politics of Location: Feminist and Queer Spaces within Global Contexts
A special issue of Gramma/Γράμμα: Journal of Theory and Criticism (2018)
Deadline for proposals: 15 March 2017

For this special issue of Gramma/Γράμμα: Journal of Theory and Criticism (2018) we invite you to submit papers focusing on what Adrienne Rich termed “the politics of location.” Papers may examine theoretical, literary, and, more broadly, artistic explorations of various kinds of location (for example, in addition to location, allocation, dislocation, relocation). How do cultural, economic, historical, and political legacies, as well as material conditions, inform or produce the movement of bodies across various spaces (for example, textual, media, geographical, temporal, embodied, relational)? How does such movement shape the definition, recognition, viability, and value of those bodies? How have changing conceptions of space produced and reshaped understandings of gender, sex, sexuality, ethnicity, race, disability, and class? Relatedly, in what ways does the body become the site where individual, local and global intersections take place?

Contributions may analyze works from any time period or engage with readings across times and cultures. Topics may include the following:

  • digital embodiments and cybersexualities
  • new media spaces as counter-geographies
  • the globalization of erotic spaces
  • race and class questioning within and against feminist and queer geography
  • postcolonial locations and bodies
  • decoloniality
  • feminist politics in local/global frameworks
  • transnational activism and body rights
  • human trafficking
  • migrations
  • refugee crises

Proposals (500 words) and a short/abbreviated curriculum vitae should be sent to Margaret Breen (Margaret.Breen@uconn.edu) and Katerina Kitsi-Mitakou (katkit@enl.auth.gr) by March 15, 2017 (drafts will be due by August 1, 2017).

Gramma/Γράμμα: Journal of Theory and Criticism is an international journal, published in English and Greek once a year by the School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in collaboration with the Publications Department of the university. It welcomes articles and book reviews from a wide range of areas within the theory and criticism of literature and culture. Of particular interest to the journal are articles with an interdisciplinary approach. Each individual issue has guest editors and is devoted to a subject of recent cultural interest, with book reviews relevant to the topic. All manuscripts are subject to blind peer review and will be commented on by at least two independent experts.

For more information about the journal, visit http://www.enl.auth.gr/gramma/index.html .

(posted 3 September 2016)


Africa’s Informal Transport Workers: Reconfiguring the margins
An edited volume
Deadline for proposals: 10 April 2017

With its micro-level approach towards one of the most pressing urban agenda in Africa today – that of public transport – this collection of field-based studies is a timely and nuanced contribution to a literature preoccupied with the neoliberal urban restructuring of public transport systems in Africa, while maintaining a weird silence on the vested interests, agency, politics, and struggles for survival and respectability of its criminalised workforce. The book tackles the overriding question: What might a micro-level analysis of the politics of informal transport in urbanizing Africa tell us about the precarious existence and social agency of its informal workforce, especially their lifeworlds, fears, and aspirations?

This edited volume is the first full-length study of the micropolitics of informal public transport in contemporary urban Africa, with attention to its dynamic, relational, predatory, and apparently chaotic functioning. By mapping, analysing, and comparing the experiences of informal transport workers across the African continent, this book sheds light on the daily challenges facing marginalised urban groups as they negotiate the contours of city life, expand horizons of possibility, and define hopes for a better future. Such grounded insights into the mobile practice of daily and nightly life in the city open the window for a more informed and effective policy response to Africa’s informal public transport sector, which is changing fundamentally and rapidly in light of neoliberal planning visions.

The book enhances our rather tenuous grasp of the entangled layers of relations between ‘formal’ (state) and ‘informal’ (non-state) urban actors, especially in those marginalised and transgressive public spaces (i.e. motor-parks, bus stops, and junctions) where practices of governance are exercised and contested on a daily basis. In this way, the book critically engages with the overriding theme of the UN Habitat III’s ‘New Urban Agenda,’ which underscores the need for more inclusive cities and urban reformations that leaves no one behind. The book also advances our understanding of public spaces in Africa as essentially a multiplicity of publics and counter-publics, rather than a single public (Weber, 1978) or two opposing publics (Ekeh, 1975). Lastly, the book sheds light on the ramifications of urban renewal or transformation for the livelihoods of informal workers, and, crucially, how those workers are responding to ‘modernizing’ interventions that impinge on their opportunities in, visions of, and rights to, the city.

Theorising city space as a complex social construct (Lefebvre, 1996) and spatial practices as tactical in nature (de Certeau, 1984), the chapters in this edited volume will bring into critical conversation interconnected themes like violence, extortion, poverty and inequality, power, legality, gender, identity, gang culture, unions, patronage politics, and social networks. Foregrounding crisis as context and possibility (Vigh, 2008; Cooper and Pratten, 2015), the book interrogates the interplay between agency and social forces, advancing our understanding of the multiple ways in which informal urban workers navigate precarious urban roads to survive and make the most of their time. In foregrounding the micro-level dynamics and predatory politics of informal public transport, this book challenges much ‘aesthetic’ framing of Africa’s informal sector.

Researchers are invited to submit on or before April 10, 2017 a chapter proposal (1 page) explaining the thematic concerns and approach of proposed contribution to the edited volume. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by May 15, 2017. Full chapters will be sent out for review by August 15. The edited volume is expected to come out by the end of 2017. We are planning to publish the book either with University of Pennsylvania Press, Cambridge/Oxford University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, or Routledge (Cities and Society Series).

We invite researchers to send chapter proposals to Daniel Agbiboa, University of Pennsylvania: danielagbiboa@gmail.com
Deadline: April 10, 2017
Subject Categories: Urban Sociology; Urban Geography; Urban Politics

(posted 20 February 2017)


Intersemiotic Translation and New Forms of Textuality
Second Issue of Comparatismi
Deadline for the submission of articles: April 15th, 2017

Comparatismi is the digital periodical of the Board of Literary Criticism and Compared Literature.

Intertextuality, interculturality, intermediality, interactivity, intersemiosis: literary theory and media studies have started long ago to explore the more and more wide and labyrinthine continent of relationships between texts, cultures, media, processes of production/reception, complex systems of signs. The new technologies of information (the digital, the net), the economic globalization and the pandemic phenomena of remediation of messages have exponentially accelerated the processes of osmosis between cultures and semiospheres, making more and more urgent a reflection on how substantially the social dimension of every message (inter-) reshapes the structure of the message itself (intra-).
If we are used to take for granted that movies and television series have assimilated forms and contents peculiar to literary narrative, or that literature (poetic or narrative) has takes possession the descriptivity of figurative arts and photography, it is not so obvious that at present literature is unceasingly and deeply remodeled by the new forms of mimesis and by the new imaginary peculiar to audiovisual media and to the internet (in its social version), on a background of irreversible cognitive and epistemological metamorphosis of the contemporary man. While the author becomes virtual and the reader becomes a prosumer, the text more and more looks like an “emergent” system, marked out by difference, organization and connectivity: its general qualities cannot be explained by the laws ruling its single components, but they show new levels of evolution of the system resulting from not-linear interactions between the components themselves (so as in the videogames, the world wide web, the digital markets etc.).
The second issue of “Comparatismi“, the official digital periodical of the Board of Literary Criticism and Compared Literature, aims at hosting contributes : a) representing as widely as possible the current reflection on intersemiotic translation and on the new forms of textuality; b) analyzing actual examples of intersemiotic translation (from the novel to the film, from the videogame to the television series, from the television series to the novel etc.) and of new hybrid texts.
Contributes, in the form of articles ready for publication and inclusive of an abstract, should be submitted within 31st March 2017, following the instructions available on this website (see Online submissions). The texts selected to be submitted to peer review will be notified within 15th May 2017. The articles reviewed should be submitted within 31st July 2017. The articles accepted after reviewing will be published in November 2017. Submissions in languages other than Italian (preferably English, otherwise French) are encouraged and appreciated.
For further information, please write to Francesco Laurenti (francesco.laurenti@iulm.it) or to Stefano Ballerio (stefano.ballerio@unimi.it).
You can read the call for papers and submit your proposals here:
http://www.ledijournals.com/ojs/index.php/comparatismi/announcement/view/26

(posted 18 January 2017)


50 Years + – The Age of New French Theory (1966-1970)
An edited volume
Deadline for proposals: 30 April 2017

Editor: Laurent Milesi (Cardiff University)

In 1966, at Johns Hopkins University, a major international conference brought together for the first time in the United States, and was intended to celebrate, some of the most illustrious representatives of ‘Parisian structuralism’, practitioners of a controversial nouvelle critique (Barthes, Todorov, etc. – cf. Picard’s 1965 Nouvelle critique ou nouvelle imposture) alongside other influential intellectuals such as Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida and René Girard, among others. Published four years later as The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man, the colloquium’s original title, the volume of proceedings was reedited in 1972 under a new name: The Structuralist Controversy, with a preface that took stock of ‘The Space Between’, when what was perceived as the ‘turn towards post-structuralism’ had effectively been consummated and landed in America.

Half a century after the first trilogy of books by one of the major protagonists in these ‘original scenes’ was published, Jacques Derrida’s L’Écriture et la diffférence, De la grammatologie and La Voix et le phénomène, this year’s issue of Word and Text invites original contributions to another ‘space between’: the years 1966-1970, when arguably most of the works ‘responsible’ for such a long-lasting intellectual sea-change appeared in quick succession, on either side of the May ’68 events – to name a few others: Lacan’s Écrits (1966), Foucault’s Les Mots et les Choses (1966) and L’Archéologie du savoir (1969), Macherey’s Pour une théorie de la production (1966), Barthes’s ‘The Death of the Author’ (1967) and S/Z (1970), Deleuze’s Différence et répétition (1968) and Logique du sens (1969), Tel Quel’s Théorie d’ensemble (1968), Goux’s Numismatiques (1968), Baudrillard’s Le Système des objets: La consommation des signes (1968), Kristeva’s Séméiôtiké: Recherches pour une sémanalyse (1969), Blanchot’s L’Entretien infini (1969), etc., but also Hélène Cixous’s first novels: Le Prénom de Dieu (1967), Dedans (1969), Le Troisième Corps and Les Commencements (1970).

The following is a non-exhaustive list of possible topics and approaches on which we are seeking submissions:

  • new historical, critical (etc.) perspectives on the ‘turn towards post-structuralism’ or the ‘sense of an ending’ (to appropriate the title of Frank Kermode’s famous 1967 study on the theory of fiction);
  • new evaluations of the impact of these thinkers and novel ideas or concepts on literary studies, criticism, philosophy, psychoanalysis and other humanistic disciplines;
  • the ‘age’ of these books (and others): how they have fared during this half-century and what they can still teach us today;
  • contributions on then notorious figures and works no longer fashionable nowadays or, conversely, revaluations of personalities, books, essays, etc. that became influential later but were relatively unknown or ignored at the time;
  • the resistance of ‘classical’ structuralism to the critical tensions of this ‘nouvelle critique’;
  • the role of the discovery and publication of the ‘other Saussure’ of the anagrams (the Geneva linguist’s Anagram Notebooks was serialized by Jean Starobinski between 1964 and 1971) on the years 1966-1970 and beyond;
  • May ’68 and its immediate or longer-term intellectual legacy;
  • the relation of the afore-mentioned thinkers and works to their contemporaries: Lévi-Strauss (who remained a structuralist anthropologist), Althusser (Marxism), Levinas (phenomenology, ethics), Sartre (existentialism), etc. as well as to then current thinking beyond the French borders; e.g. the Adorno († 1969) of Negative Dialectics (1966) and Aesthetic Theory (1970).

The deadline for abstract submissions is 30 April 2017 and acceptance (or rejection) will be notified around 15 May 2017. Selected contributors are then expected to send their full article by 15 September 2017. All submitted articles will be blind refereed except when invited. Accepted articles will be returned for post-review revisions by 15 October and are expected back in their final version by 30 October.

Please send your abstract to the editor of the volume, Milesi@cardiff.ac.uk, and to the journal’s e-mail address, wordandtext2011@gmail.com.

(posted 30 January 2017)


Global Fantastika
A special edition of Fantastika Journal
Deadline for articles: 30 April 2017

“Fantastika”, coined by John Clute, is an umbrella term which incorporates the genres of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, but can also include alternative histories, steampunk, young adult fiction, or any other imaginative space.

The third annual Fantastika conference focused on productions of Fantastika globally, as well as considering themes of contact across nations and borders within Fantastika. We are now seeking to supplement extended conference papers with other work in order to publish a special edition of Fantastika Journal which represents the diversity of Fantastika publications globally.

We welcome articles on Fantastika as they occur in any medium and form. Some suggested topics are:

  • Fantastika genres that are specific to a nation or culture (e.g. contemporary mythologies, magical realism, anime, etc.)
  • the representation of national or cultural ideologies in Fantastika
  • the production and development of Fantastika in non-English-speaking countries (English translation required for all non-English components)
  • fictional and real empires
  • globalization, industrialization, development and the future
  • global networks, mobilities, migrations
  • borders, defence of borders, crossing borders, and occupations
  • (post)colonial texts and readings
  • notions of the ‘other’

If you would like to submit an article for publication with Fantastika Journal, please send a 5000-7000 word article, with an abstract and a bionote in separate word documents, to editors@fantastikajournal.com. Please use MLA referencing style. All articles will undergo peer review following submission. Articles are due April 30, 2017.

We will also be including reviews of fiction or non-fiction works released in 2016 and 2017. Please contact us under the subject line “reviews” if you are interested in reviewing a film or book that considers any of the above themes.

Visit http://www.fantastikajournal.com for details of the journal and annual conferences.

(posted 21 February 2017)


2017 International Poetry Competition
The shortlisted poems will be published in a collected volume
Deadline for submissions: 1 May 2017

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
Oscar Wilde

A competition organised by Interdisciplinary Research Foundation

Life and poetry walk hand in hand. Life is inextricably filled with poetry, while poetry inevitably fills life. Poetry, the textual avalanche of emotions, contains our inner peaks and valleys: joys, elation, sadness and woes. Poetry carries a sparkle – the flicker of hope, the fire of unknown, the textual suspense. It may be disturbing, it may be blissfully euphoric, but it always embraces the world and the self. The thrill of poetic creation. We hope it will last.

We invite submissions of one unpublished poem (max. 2 pages long) by 1 May 2017

Entry fee: 25 EUR
First prize: 250 EUR
Second prize: 100 EUR
Third prize: 50 EUR

All the shortlisted poems will be published in a collected volume.

We are planning to invite the winners to read their poems at the International Conference on Poetry Studies on 27 May 2017 in London

Enquiries email address: poetrylife@irf-network.org

(posted 4 March 2017)


Re-writing Women as Victims: From Theory to Practice
Contribution sare invited
Deadine for proposals: 24 May 2017

Eds.: M. J. Gámez Fuentes, S. Núñez Puente and E. Gómez Nicolau

This proposed edited collection of interdisciplinary essays aims to critically analyse scientific approaches, political strategies, civil society initiatives and modes of representation that aim at dismantling the conventional narratives that sustain the present configuration of women in contexts of violence.

It would appear that, in the fight to eradicate violence against women, hegemonic narratives, mediated via institutional proposals and popular discourses, although geared towards gender equality, have succumbed to moral reductionism and legal discourses. Thus the entire problematic of inequality has been reduced to the categories of the victim and the victimiser/criminal. In the current panorama of revising frameworks of political and cultural understanding, it becomes therefore indispensable to search for modes of resignifying the woman-victim scheme in order to update narratives about experienced violence from a new theoretical perspective. This would enable us both to revise current institutional approaches and to explore modes of ascribing political value to the act of spectatorship.

It is on these grounds that we are interested in initiatives and narratives that make new spaces possible in which to name, self-identify, and resignify the female political subject as a social agent in situations of violence.

This area of inquiry requires a critical re-examination of both its foundations and its specialized academic production. A number of novel approaches —including epistemological, methodological, and analytical ones, especially emerging from feminist critical theory— have recently aimed to do so (J. Butler & A. Athanasiou, 2013, Dispossession. The Performative in the Political; J. Butler et al., eds., 2016, Vulnerability in Resistance). Therefore, we are looking for proposals that transcend the pair abuser-victim and explore the complex relations between gender and violence, and individual and collective accountability. In order to do that, the book initially comprehends four areas of enquiry:

  • EPISTEMOLOGIES: new theoretical and methodological approaches
  • POLITICS: innovative proposals from institutional politics and/or social policy
  • ACTIVISM: transformative initiatives from associations and/or civil society
  • CULTURAL PRODUCTION: analysis of case studies deconstructing hegemonic narratives

Proposal topics may include, but are not restricted to:

  • Critical theoretical approaches on victimology and gender
  • Research methodologies tackling women’s agency in contexts of violence
  • Women’s resistances and responses to violence
  • Worldwide public policies challenging the concept of women-victim
  • Critical evaluation of secondary victimization of women as victims through public policies, media and cultural and social discourses
  • Counter-hegemonic media narratives of women as victims
  • Film and television innovative approaches to women as political agents in context of violence
  • On-line activism and Social Network Sites discussing hegemonic recognition of women as victims
  • Feminist and grassroots activism re-writing women as victims
  • Emancipatory social projects and practices of women challenging violence

We will market the book for an international audience (the volume will be in English language). Routledge has indicated interest as part of the Gender & Sexuality series, and we will continue to consider other reputable academic publishers. Please circulate the CFP widely with graduate students, faculty, and independent scholars who work on any transformative aspect of women and violence from Sociology, Film & Media Studies, Politics, Social Policy, Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Social Movement Studies, etc…

Submission guidelines:

  • A 500-600 words abstract in English with 4-5 references should be sent to Drs. María José Gámez Fuentes (Univ. Jaume I, Castellón, Spain) at gamezf@uji.es, Sonia Núñez Puente (Univ. Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain) at puente@urjc.es, and Emma Gómez Nicolau (Univ. Jaume I) at enicolau@uji.es by May 24th 2017. Please state in which of the four areas (Epistemologies, Politics, Activism or Cultural Production) you envisage your contribution to fit in.
  • Please include a title, name, e-mail address, and affiliation if applicable, plus a two pages CV.

If accepted, the final draft version of your chapter, approximately 6,000 words, would most likely be due by May 10th 2018. Decisions about the final shape of the project will be made once the publisher has reviewed and agreed upon accepted full chapter proposals. Feel free to write to us with any questions you might have. We look forward to reading your submissions.

(posted 3 March 2017)


B(l)ack Futures – Flat Time in Black Performance
Special Issue of Open Cultural Studies
Deadline for proposals: 31 May 2017

Editors: Dr Nicole Hodges Persley, (University of Kansas, Department of Theatre) & Dr Baron Kelly (University of Louisville, Department of Theatre)

This special issue plays against African American theater scholar Harry Elam’s discussion of playing the past in the present in the work of August Wilson (Elam 2005) and current discourses of new materialism and post-humanity to explore the specificity and malleability of time and futurity in Black performance.  Riffing off of the past, imperfect and future tenses of black life captured in transnational and intersectional representations of black performance, the works in this special issue will move back and forth across time to flatten past and present performances and forms of black expression that foreshadow and shape black futures the 21st century. We seek to interrogate the theme of new materialism as it relates to political economy, embodiment, resistance, rage, bio-politics, improvisation, resistance, and post-humanity as manifest in transnational black performance. This volume explores black life in the 21st century in flat-time, or in perpetual suspension, without promise of release or relief, to understand how the present has been materially and psychically shaped by the past. We see flat time as a conditional structure of perpetual present that makes future projections of black performance contingent and vulnerable to perpetual looping of past experiences of anti-black violence and trauma.

Article submissions may speak to the following themes:

  • How do engagements with “new materialism” and “post-humanity” shape our understanding of black performance transnationally?”
  • How do “alternate facts” and the rise of the so called “alt right” affect the past, present, and future of black performance?
  • What does improvised strategies of resistance offer to black artists and scholars as a devise to manipulate time in performance?
  • How do “freedom” and “rage” fuse to become a revised thematic in black performance at this historical conjuncture?
  • How does the rise of the so-called alt-right leadership in the United States impact the legibility and audibility of black life?
  • How do non-binary genders, people of color, and those who self-identify as anything other than heterosexual, able to manifest futures in a present that loops to the past?
  • How does (under)commons democracy shape black performance in the 21st century?
  • What are the ethical and political ramifications of new materialism in the analysis of black performance?
  • In what ways does white cis-het male patriarchy affirm “alt-histories” and “alt-facts” that seek to arrest the expression of black futures?
  • How does blackness become a sanctuary that can cover the trauma of intersectional living and quests for liberation?
  • What role does the media play in underscoring and disseminating arrested perspectives black performance?
  • What possibilities for freedom are imagined and improvised within constraints of perpetual black trauma?
  • How are histories of blackness inherited through intergenerational practice?

The deadline for submission of proposals is 31 May 2017. Please send the proposals to the Managing Editor izabella.penier@degruyteropen.com. The authors of the accepted proposals will be notified by 31 June 2017. The deadline for submitting full articles will be 30 September 2017

(posted 28 February 2017)


Nationalism  in Contemporary Literature and Culture
A monograph or a special issue at De Gruyter Open
Deadline for proposals: 30 June 2017

Editors: Izabella Penier University of Central Lancashire & Magda Rekść University of Lodz.

A year ago died Benedict Anderson, the author of Imagined Communities, arguably the most influential study of nationalism. Anderson saw nationalism as an integrative imaginative process that allows us to “[conceive] . . . a deep, horizontal comradeship” with unknown people who share the same beliefs and values. On the other hand, however, he was not blind to the uglier underside of nationalism. He was aware of the fact that it can take the pathological form of the hatred of the Other. In the current political climate, we can see a resurgence of the ideology of nationalism all over the world. Since contemporary nationalism spawn intolerance, authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism and give rise to totalizing notions of identity (nationalistic, ethnic, religious or imperial), we think this is the right moment to broach the subject of nationalism and commemorate at the same time the great work of Benedict Anderson.

We welcome papers on contemporary literary and cultural texts that engage in revaluation nationalisms; contemporary notions of citizenship, national identity and belonging; notions of cultural identity, gender, ethnicity, religion and nationhood; concepts of masculinity, sexuality and nationalism, the relationship between sex, violence and the notion of national belonging; the role of literature, culture and art in building/deconstructing national/ethnic identities;  narratives of collective memories and other related topics.

Please submit full papers to Izabella Penier at IPenier@uclan.ac.uk. The deadline for submissions is 30.06.2017. Please use MLA stylesheet.

(posted 30 January 2017)


Popular Mediations of Science – Critical Perspectives on Science and its Contexts
A special issue of Open Cultural Studies / De Gruyter Open
Deadline for proposals: 30 June 2017

Editors: Dr Maureen Burns & Dr Adam Dodd (The University of Queensland)

This issue provides a collection of critical cultural perspectives on popularising science. Many cultural studies scholars use science studies, science and technology studies and feminist science studies in our work. This issue offers critical cultural studies, communication and media studies perspectives specifically on the dissemination of science. Instead of exploring the ways that science is communicated to the general public, this issue will explore how mediation is intrinsic to the core practices of science, and the ways in which popular genres feed back into scientific institutions and disciplines.

Using popular media artefacts and methods from critical cultural studies and associated disciplines, articles will explore issues around scientific disciplines, institutions and publics.

Topics may include, but are not limited to: critiques of classical humanism in the sciences; the construction and maintenance of scientific publics; how the visual mediates scientific practice; aestheticisation within science and of scientific objects of inquiry; science as performative; science experts and celebrities; popular and unpopular science and scientists; science PR and advocacy; depopularising ‘abnormal’ science.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE:  June 30, 2017 Please submit full papers to Izabella Penier at  izabella.penier@degruyteropen.com  

For details and guidelines see the journal website:   https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/culture

(posted 30 January 2017)


Towards Common European English?
The ESSE Messenger, Summer 2017 issue
Deadline for proposals: 1 May 2017

The ESSE Messenger invites submissions for its Summer 2017 section of professional articles on the topic: Towards Common European English?

In recent decades a surge of studies have focused on English as it appears around the globe, giving rise to a plethora of new terms to describe various “types” of English (Global English, English as an International Language, New Englishes, …). The greatest effort has, however, gone into the description of English as it appears in what Kachru (1985) calls the Outer Circle, i.e. countries where English has an official status without being the mother tongue of the inhabitants. The question that this issue of the Messenger wishes to address is whether similar descriptions are possible for English in Europe. Is there, in other words, something like Euro-English? Does English have or need a special status in the countries of Europe?

The deadline for submissions is 1 May 2017.
The issue is due out on 1 July 2017.

(posted 23 January 2017)


Materiality, Objects and Objecthood
A special issue of Open Cultural Studies / De Gruyter Open
Deadline for proposals: 31 May 2017

Editors: Professor Erick Felinto (State University of Rio de Janeiro)

After a comprehensive deconstruction of the central place occupied by human actors in social life, it became necessary not only to investigate the role of things and objects in the social sciences (media, nature, animals, machines etc), but also to highlight the issues that the strong tradition of hermeneutics of the humanities have often obscured. Spurred by the impact of new digital technologies, the field of media studies cleverly learned to appropriate the epistemological principles and major theoretical issues that have come to characterize the contemporary cultural scene. The main goal of this special issue is not only to explore the place of human actors in a world enriched by the life of polymorphic objects, but also to investigate more deeply the role of objecthood and materiality in the development of cultural processes.

Suggested topics include: In what ways does technological materiality inform cultural worlds and determine forms of cognition? ŸWhat new models of historical research of techniques and culture are emerging within the current epistemological paradigms? How are the material dimensions of experience combined with the intangible dimensions of culture? What does it mean to purport an “object-oriented” philosophy, a “materialist feminism” or an “actor-network theory”? In what sense does the category of the human is reconfigured in light of our new relations with objects and nonhuman entities? How important is the legacy of the genealogy and archeology of knowledge (Nietzsche, Foucault) to a perspectivization of the impacts of “new” digital culture?

Complete proposals should be submitted to izabella.penier@degruyteropen.com  by May, 31 2017.

(posted 20 January 2017)


On Uses of Black Camp
A pecial Issue of Open Cultural Studies / De Gruyter Open
Deadline for proposal: 31 May 2017

Editors: Dr Anna Pochmara, Dr Justyna Wierzchowska

Andrew Ross, in his now classic text “Uses of Camp,” points to Prince and Michael Jackson and their polysexual identities as emblematic of camp aesthetics yet completely neglects the significance of the race factor in their campiness. In turn, he fails to consider the connection between camp and race. Moreover, the focus on racial authenticity in black culture has led to the privileging of texts explicitly embedded in historical discourses, such as slave narratives, and to the marginalization of, especially nineteenth-century, fiction, and particularly texts parading non-black, white-looking, or racially indefinite characters (cf. Maria Giulia Fabi, Passing and the Rise of the African American Novel, 2001).  On Uses of Black Camp, a 2017 special issue of Open Cultural Studies, aims to fill in this lack in critical discourses of both camp and black cultures, to help us better understand the reasons for such scarcity of texts on blackness and campiness.

The call for papers encourages essays that address such topics as: Performances of racial passing and excesses of mulatta melodramas; Blues and the politics of non-normativity, or “The race problem had at last been solved through Art plus Gladys Bentley,” to misquote Langston; Black English and “the will to adorn,” to quote from Zora; Superflies and Foxy Browns, or Blaxploitation (and anti-Blaxploitation);  Black dandies, sweetbacks, and processes of citification;  Diva gangstas – to paraphrase A. Ross – and swagger queens, or the glamorous campiness of hip-hop culture;  From Sun Ra to the Electric Lady, or black to the extraterrestrial funkadelic Afrofuture, to signify on Mark Dery;  Signifyin’ and “camping the dirty dozens,” to borrow from M.B. Ross; o Symbolic gayness of camp and symbolic whiteness of homosexuality;  Race perfomativity and race plasticity; Gender performativity, Wilde sexuality, and black camp;  Posthumanism and alleged postraciality.

Please, send complete papers to Izabella.penier@degruyteropen.com by May, 31 2017.

(posted 20 January 2017)


Migration and Translation
A special Issue of Open Cultural Studies / De Gruyter Deadline for proposals: 31 May 2017

Editor: Dr. Hab. Ewa Kołodziejczyk (Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences)

Migration and translation are distant but closely related phenomena that understand migration discursively as mobility of texts, international transfer of knowledge and transformation in the field of cultural literacy.  The migrant’s hybrid status opens up new research areas in relation to: 1). Central European émigré literature before the collapse of communism, 2). writings of post-socialist Central European migrants abroad, 3). literary writings of migrants residing in Central Europe.

This special issue will focus on the ways in which migrant literatures manage to capture and explore new cultural territories through translation. Suggested topics may include: creation of ethnic enclaves and myths, as alternative structures in which literature is both a channel for and a reflection of communication in the diaspora and beyond; re-narrating native cultures in confrontation with the host country; auto-translations and problems they pose; inscriptions of migrant experiences; translations of migrants’ writings, Central European literature abroad and foreign literature in Central Europe;  eco-translatology.

The special issue also wishes to to take a closer look at forced migrants, called by Mary Gallagher “naked migrants,”  and bring research on Central European post-socialist émigré literature with the literary output of arrivals in Central Europe in a common framework of transculturation.

Complete papers should be submitted to izabella.penier@degruyteropen.com by 31 May 2017.

(posted 20 January 2017)


The Life of Others: Narratives of Vulnerability
A special issue of Canada & Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies (Spring 2018 issue)
Deeadline for submissions: 1 June 2017

Guest Editor: Eva Darias-Beautell

In her Levinasian discussion of the functioning of ethical obligations in the face of global and local forms of precarity, Judith Butler links the production of vulnerability with a situation of “up againstness” or “unwilled adjacency,” of one’s involvement in a relation of proximity that has not been chosen (134). Vulnerability in those cases arises from the realization that “one’s life is also the life of others”, and that “the bounded and living appearance of the body is the condition of being exposed to the other, exposed to solicitation, seduction, passion, injury, exposed in ways that sustain us but also in ways that can destroy us” (141). Itself the site of production of various forms of violence and vulnerability, this adjacency also triggers the affective and creative engagements necessary for action (134).
These seem crucial issues in Canada, where contemporary debates over citizenship and social justice often take place within complex transnational, transcultural, and (post)colonial contexts as well as beside the historical experiences of settlement and migration, with their contested forms of national or cultural belonging. Additionally, Canada’s humanitarian tradition, itself marked by convoluted narratives, is increasingly challenged by new conditions of global violence, environmental threats, social and political unrest. Canadian literatures do not merely reflect on these conditions but engage with them, exploring the aesthetic possibilities of what could be thought of as a reconnection between the text and the world. How does cultural production articulate and propose strategies of resistance to the massive production of vulnerability? Are the examples of resilience offered by Canadian literature, film, performance and visual arts able to reactivate ethical responsibility and political activism?
This special issue invites contributors to offer a critical examination of Canadian cultural production with an emphasis on the discursive modes that deconstruct the hegemonic structures that produce vulnerability. We also wish to invite research articles that interpret the present condition of (un)willed adjacency in its real and metaphoric possibilities as a site of production of violence and vulnerability, but also (potentially) of lucid creativity, exposing, soliciting, seducing “in ways that sustain us but also in ways that can destroy us.”
Possible areas of interest include (but are not limited to): urban poverty, the medicalized body, indigenous activism, colonial violence, migration and war narratives, ecological vulnerability, the posthuman seduction, emotional precarity, sexuality and (trans)narrative desire, gender and agency, technological liquidity, queer creativities, precarious labour, (non)narratives of resistance, narrative ethics and the post-truth moment. Comparatist and interdisciplinary approaches are most welcome.
All submissions to Canada & Beyond must be original, unpublished work. Articles, between 6,000 and 7500 words in length, including endnotes and works cited, should follow current MLA bibliographic format.
Submissions should be uploaded to Canada & Beyond’s online submissions system (OJS) by the deadline of June the 1st, 2017. They will be peer-reviewed for the Spring 2018 issue.

Work Cited: Butler, Judith. 2012. “Precarious Life, Vulnerability, and the Ethics of Cohabitation.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 26.2: 134-151.

(posted 9 February 2017)


The Pre-Raphaelites and Antiquity
Special Issue of Open Cultural Studies
Deadline for proposals: 30 Jun 2017

Editor: Dr Richard Warren (Royal Holloway, University of London).

The focus of this special issue will be on how the British artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood received and transformed antiquity. The issue aims to explore the diversity of Pre-Raphaelite receptions of the ancient world particularly, but not limited to, the legacy of the civilisations of ancient Egypt, the Middle East, ancient Greece, ancient Rome and ancient Britain. This special collection of studies will seek to break new ground in elaborating how the Pre-Raphaelites used the ancient to express their ideals and fears, and their reactions to the contemporary Victorian society in which they lived. Building on the many existing studies of the art of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the collection will ideally enrich this literature through a series of case studies on individual artists and on individual themes (such as gender and nationalism).

Suggested topics for articles for the collection could include:

  • John Ruskin’s relationship with antiquity and the impact of this upon the Pre-Raphaelites;
  • studies of individual artists and their relationship with classical antiquity (Possible subjects might include Frederic Leighton, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, John William Waterhouse, and Edward Burne-Jones);
  • the roles of ancient Britain and ancient Rome in defining the Victorian national and imperial ideal;
  • the Pre-Raphaelite uses of antiquity in articulating Victorian ideas about gender;
  • the relationship between the articulation of the ancient in Victorian poetry and Pre-Raphaelite painting, the impact of Pre-Raphaelite receptions of antiquity on later Victorian art and criticism (Possible subjects might include Oscar Wilde’s art criticism and Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations).

Submission deadline: June 30, 2017 via the online submission system: http://www.editorialmanager.com/culture.

(posted 28 February 2017)


Women’s work: an ongoing (r)evolution (19th-21st centuries)?
Deadline for proposals: 15 July 2017

Following our international workshop on 16th/17th June this year organised by CRINI (EA1162) at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Cultures of the University of Nantes (France) we are interested in receiving articles with a view to publication on the theme of changes in women’s work in a historical and European context, from an agrarian-based economy through the upheaval of the industrial revolution and later of the digital revolution has affected women’s employment and work opportunities since the 19th century.

The issues raised, for women and more specifically mothers, are multifaceted and complex. In the context of the (work) landscape and environment, one might consider first of all the issue of travel to and from work/commuting, the shift in the relationship between home and work, the restructuration of families’ and women’s lives around these changes and over those three centuries.

What impact have these changes had on the use and perception of production tools, which started as specific and traditional/iconic items (such as the spinning wheel or the weaving loom) and have, in some cases, become dematerialised or virtual.

Other possible thematics could include the way in which women, at various times in history, have claimed or reclaimed ownership of these tools through arts and crafts activities and working from home; the possession (or lack of possession) of tools and the control (or lack of control) over working conditions and hours.

Last but not least, there are some interesting comparisons to be made between different working environments, in the context of globalisation, growing competition, flexibility or lack thereof begging the question whether the workplace has become more or less woman- and even more so, mother-friendly.

Articles in English between 6,000 and 10,000 words together with a 300-word abstract and a short biographical note should be sent to martine.stirling@univ-nantes.fr and delphine.sangu@univ-nantes.fr by July 15th, 2017 for publication early 2018.

Publications in French

BUSSY GENEVOIS Danièle, «Propos féminins sur le travail (1860-1933)», Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 40-2, 2010, p.117-134.

FINDING Susan et KOBER-SMITH Anémone (dir.), Politiques familiales et politiques d’emploi “genrées” au Royaume-Uni et en Europe, Observatoire de la société britannique, No 14, juin 2013.

KNITTEL Fabien et RAGGI Pascal (dirs.), Genre et Techniques. XIXe – XXIe siècle, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, collection « Histoire », 2012.

PERROT, Michelle, Mélancolie ouvrière : « Je suis entrée comme apprentie, j’avais alors douze ans », Lucie Baud, 1908, Paris, Grasset, coll. « Héroïnes », 2012.

Publications in English

GLOVER Judith and KIRTON Jill, Women, Employment and Organizations, London, Routledge, 2006.

GLUCKSMANN Miriam, Cottons and Casuals: the Gendered organization of Labour in Time and Space, Durham, Sociologypress, 2000.

HAKIM Catherine, Key Issues in Women’s Work: Female Diversity and the polarization of women’s employment, London, Routledge, 2004.

PFAU-EFFINGER Birgit , FLAQUER Lluis and JENSEN Per, Formal and Informal Work: the Hiddden work regime in Europe, London, Routledge, 2012.

Publications in Spanish

BORDERÍAS MONDEJAR Cristina (ed.), Género y políticas del trabajo en la España contemporánea 1836-1936, Icaria Editorial, Universitat de Barcelona, 2007.

CARRASCO Cristina, (ed.), Tiempos, trabajos y flexibilidad: una cuestión de género, Serie Estudios n°. 78, Madrid, Instituto de la Mujer, 2003.

ORTEGA María Teresa (ed.), Jornaleras, campesinas y agricultoras. La historia agraria desde una perspectiva de género, Zaragoza, SEHA, Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 2015.

MUÑOZ ABELEDO Luisa, Género, trabajo y niveles de vida en la industria conservera de Galicia, 1870-1970, Icaria Editorial, Universitat de Barcelona, 2010.

(posted 18 January 2017)


Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf
Volume 10 of Katherine Mansfield Studies
Deadline for submissions: 31 August 2017

The Katherine Mansfield Society is pleased to announce its Call for Papers for volume 10 of Katherine Mansfield Studies, as well as its annual essay prize. Our theme for this year is Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf.  Alongside the permanent editors, Professor Todd Martin and Dr Gerri Kimber, the volume will be guest-edited by Professor Christine Froula of Northwestern University, USA, who is also Chair of the specialist judging panel for the essay prize. The other judges are: Professor Christine Reynier, Stuart N. Clarke, and Dr Kathryn Simpson.

The deadline for submissions is 31 August 2017. All details can be found by going to the following web pages of the Katherine Mansfield Society, where PDFs of the CFPs can be downloaded:

General CFP for Volume 10: http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/yearbook-katherine-mansfield-studies/
Essay Prize CFP: http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/essay-prize/

All essays submitted for publication will be considered for the Essay Prize, unless we are advised alternatively. (Contributors whose essays are subsequently selected for publication must be members of the Katherine Mansfield Society.)

(posted 2 February)


Permanently valid calls for papers

“Ecocritical Theory and Practice” book series

“Ecocritical Theory and Practice” (Lexington Books, imprint of Rowman & Littlefield) highlights innovative scholarship at the interface of literary/cultural studies and the environment, seeking to foster an ongoing dialogue between academics and environmental activists. Works that explore environmental issues through literatures, oral traditions, and cultural/media practices around the world are welcome. The series features books by established ecocritics that examine the intersection of theory and practice, including both monographs and edited volumes. Proposals are invited in the range of topics covered by ecocriticism, including but not limited to works informed by cross-cultural and transnational approaches; postcolonial studies; ecofeminism; ecospirituality, ecotheology, and religious studies; film/media and visual cultural studies; environmental aesthetics and arts; ecopoetics; and animal studies.

http://rowman.com/Action/SERIES/LEX/ETAP#

Contact person: Julia Tofantšuk, Tallinn University, Estonia jul@tlu.ee

(posted 23 December 2016)


The Journal of Cultural Mediation

The Journal of Cultural Mediation of the SSML Fondazione Villaggio dei Ragazzi “don Salvatore d’Angelo” focuses on the role of culture in perceiving and translating reality. The aim of this Journal is to promote research in communication, especially by investigating language, languages, cultural models, mediation and interculturality, welcoming contributions focussing on cultural mediation in modern society.
In particular manuscripts should concern:
– The role of the cultural mediator
– Linguistic/cultural mediation teaching methodologies
– Cultural mediation and identity
– Linguistic mediation in specialized discourse
– Analysis of text translations
– Quality interpreting – Interpreting as cultural mediation
– Professionalization and professional issues of interpreters
– Interdisciplinarity within Interpreting Studies
– Teaching methodologies in interpreter training
– Research on any aspect of interpreting in any research paradigm (including cognitive science, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, discourse analysis, pragmatics, anthropology, semiotics, comparative cultural studies, cross-cultural communication, etc.)

All papers submitted to The Journal of Cultural Mediation should be original, neither having been previously published nor being considered elsewhere at the time of submission.
Papers can be written in Italian, English, French, Spanish or German, they should not exceed 6000 words and should be preceded by an abstract of 200-250 words. If the language of the paper is not English, please include a translation of the abstract in English as well. At the head of your abstract please indicate the title of the proposal, the name of the author/s, affiliation and email address. Please include five to six keywords.
The editor will select contributions for each issue and notify authors of acceptance or otherwise according to the dates below.
Authors wishing to contribute to the Journal of Cultural Mediation are welcome to submit their abstracts as email attachments to:
jcm.ssmlmaddaloni@yahoo.it

For further information, contributors are encouraged to read the guidelines of the journal, given on our website: http://www.ssmlmaddaloni.it/rivista.asp

(posted 16 February 2012)


The Brontës and the Idea of Influence
A thematic dossier in the “Writers, writings” section of LISA e-journal

In March 2007, Stevie Davies, Patricia Duncker and Michele Roberts gathered around Patsy Stoneman at Haworth in Yorkshire to talk about the influence that the Brontës had had on their evolutions as authors, and more generally, about the source of inspiration that the most famous family of writers in England could represent. Patsy Stoneman had already tackled the topic by publishing a book entitled The Brontë Influence in 2004 with the help of Charmian Knight. The issue of LISA e-journal “Re-Writing Jane Eyre: Jane Eyre, Past and Present” is further evidence of Charlotte Brontë’s influence on the writers of the following decades or centuries. So far, these studies have been quite limited and this field of research, “the Brontë influence”, offers a wide range of possible developments.
Moreover, if the four authors’ poetry and novels have already been the object of numerous studies, there is much left to write about the influences which were exerted on the Brontës, whether religious, literary, philosophical or cultural. Taking account of the context of  a work is often a good way of understanding the issues underlying a text: the path taken by the Brontës, their journeys, their stays abroad, the books they read, etc. could prove to be very enlightening. Besides these external factors, one could also consider the interactions between the three sisters, who wrote in the same room and who read passages from their works aloud.
A final aspect to identify and study could be the influences which are exerted within the Brontës’ works themselves. How can one account for the progress of the heroes and heroines? How is the influence that characters have on one another expressed? What role does nature play in the destiny of characters? Which other elements intervene in the novels?

This dossier devoted to the Brontës intends to analyse the works through the perspective of influence and three different fields of research can thus be considered:
–    influences on the Brontës
–    the idea of influence in the Brontës’ works
–    the Brontë influence on the writers of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
Please send your proposals (one A4 page maximum) to Dr. Élise Ouvrard ouvrard_elise@hotmail.com.
Accepted articles will be published in the thematic dossier “The Brontës and the Idea of Influence” on the website of LISA e-journal:
http://lisa.revues.org/index424.html

(posted 10 January 2008, updated 3 November 2010)


Controversy: Literary Studies and Ethics
JLT-Journal of Literary Theory online

Submissions are continuously accepted.
Are literary scholars and critics supposed to voice their view on normative questions within their academic writings? How far should world views, political opinions and evaluations enter into the scholarly and critical work with literary texts? Is it even possible to exclude such judgements from literary studies? How and why do different traditions of literary studies treat these problems divergently?
Submissions are expected to refer to previous contributions to this controversy by Peter J. Rabinowitz and Marshall W. Gregory, which can be found at http://www.jltonline.de/index.php/articles/article/view/254/775 and at http://www.jltonline.de/index.php/articles/article/view/287/879
Please contact the editorial office for further details at jlt@phil.uni-goettingen.de.

(posted 10 February 2011)