Concourse: January 2024

Amazon

Monday, January 29, 2024

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS on Title Social-Emotional Undercurrents in #ELT Advocacy: Insights and Implications-Edited Volume being prepared for Routledge:

 


Advocacy in English Language Teaching (ELT), as comprehensively defined by Staehr Fenner (2014), is the pursuit of equitable and excellent education for English learners—a principle acknowledged as foundational for progressive educational practices and policies. The recognized necessity of advocacy within ELT professionals’ roles, thoroughly documented by scholars such as Athanases and de Oliveira (2008), and Linville and Whiting (2019), has traditionally been discussed with a strong focus on structural and pedagogical aspects. This emphasis on structural and pedagogical dimensions has laid the groundwork for language educators to ardently advocate for equitable access and the adoption of innovative methodologies, highlighted in the contributions of Linville (2020) and Linville and Pentón Herrera (2022). Such research underscores advocacy’s pivotal role in curriculum development, teaching methodologies, and policy implementation across diverse educational settings, showcasing its transformative power in creating inclusive and dynamic ELT environments. Building on this foundation, a select but growing body of literature has ventured beyond traditional classroom
boundaries to explore advocacy's reach within community organizations (Pentón Herrera, 2019) and among language teacher associations (Pentón Herrera, 2022), thus broadening the understanding and impact of advocacy in the ELT Field.

Despite the robust literature on advocacy in ELT and its advancements, there remains a significant gap in understanding the interplay of social and emotional factors with(in) advocacy eΛorts.
Emotional intelligence, empathy, and social awareness—previously labeled as ‘soft skills’ (Staehr Fenner, 2014)—are pivotal components that inΟuence educators’ ability to advocate eΛectively. Yet, these essential aspects have garnered limited attention in academic discourse. This oversight highlights a critical area for exploration: How do social and emotional elements underpin and impact advocacy eΛorts in ELT? Addressing this question is not just about adding another layer to our comprehension of advocacy; it is about unveiling the human elements that drive advocacy efforts.
Further, this question invites an examination of how social-emotional skills facilitate connections between educators, students, and communities, and how they can be harnessed to champion more
nuanced and impactful advocacy strategies. Ultimately, delving into the social-emotional dimension can lead to a more holistic understanding of advocacy, one that fully embraces the emotional and social dynamics at play, thus enriching the discourse and practice of advocacy in ELT.
Motivated by the opportunity to expand our knowledge and benefit the Field as a whole, we invite contributions for our upcoming edited volume, Social-Emotional Undercurrents in ELT 
Advocacy: Insights and Implications. In this edited collection, we seek to explore the multifaceted social and emotional dimensions of advocacy in ELT, examining how these factors influence, shape,
and energize advocacy efforts. 
This project aims to fill the existing gap by providing a platform for discussions onempathy, emotional resilience, social connectivity, and their roles in ELT advocacy.  

We welcome a range of chapter contributions, including empirical research (i.e., qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods), theoretical explorations, case studies, and reΟective narratives that shed light on the social-emotional aspects of ELT advocacy in diΛerent contexts around the world. 
We highly encourage non-traditional/decolonial methodologies and critical lenses. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
The impact of teachers’ emotional intelligence on shaping advocacy strategies and policies in ELT
Empathy and social-emotional learning in teacher education and its role in curating spaces for equitable ELT practices and fostering advocacy
●Challenges and eΛective practices at the intersection of professional development and advocacy initiatives
The interplay of social-emotional competencies in successful ELT advocacy efforts
Innovative insights and practices bridging social-emotional aspects with ELT advocacy, both in pedagogy and community engagement
The role of social, cultural, and emotional norms in ELT advocacy, including societal influences on advocacy approaches and strategies
Building and leveraging social-emotional support networks to reinforce collaborative advocacy among ELT practitioners, community organizations, and language teacher associations
Personal accounts that traverse the social-emotional landscape of ELT advocacy, documenting challenges and achievements in the field
Contributions of language teacher associations to the development of social-emotional skills, fostering robust networks for advocacy within and beyond educational institutions.

Tentative Timeline
Submission of chapter proposals: July 1st, 2024
Notification of accepted chapter proposals: August 1st, 2024
Submission of full manuscripts: February 1st, 2025
Continuous chapter reviews: February 1st, 2025 through July 1st, 2025
Book submitted to the publisher: August/September 2025
Anticipated publication: Spring/Summer 2026


For More details Contact: 
Editors
Huseyin Uysal, Knox College 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1357474157722645/Huseyin Uysal/100010510111623
Luis Javier Pentón Herrera, Akademia Ekonomiczno-Humanistyczna w Warszawie




CFA: XVII Biennial International Conference on Comparative Literature as Alternative Humanities Ethics, Affect and the Everyday Social organized by Comparative Literature Association of India and University of Delhi-10th-12th September, 2024





Comparative Literature as Alternative Humanities Ethics, Affect and the Everyday Social
In the last few decades, scholars in the Humanities have found it necessary to examine the fundamental underpinnings upon which their disciplines are built. One of the primary questions that animated this re-examination has been regarding the very terms of our engagement with countries and communities that inhabit radically different social and moral life-worlds, living as they do outside the orbit of European Enlightenment values that still regulate both organisation and practice within and outside the academy, across the world. Instead of accepting difference as a defining feature of the human condition, the grand narratives of the Enlightenment were used as colonial and imperial tools to homogenize the diversity of experience, emotion and expression as the high tide of colonial modernity swept the world. The consequent otherness and alienation that characterised human society have deeply impacted literary and cultural production. We witness a disjunction between the objective, scientific discourse with its claim to truth and the everyday social experience of the human subject which Humanities seek to understand. These asymmetries compel us to rethink the Humanities from alternative positions and perspectives to embody and address the plural orders of reality and the differences between them. How can the collection of disciplines we call the Humanities recover the capacity of self-reflection and self-criticism? Much has been written about how stereotypes invade our imagination to contaminate our experience and knowledge.

Comparative Literature’s commitment to alterity and plurality gives it a foundational interest in the non-stereotypical, non-canonized, un-heard narratives of “others” that constitute a radical sense of the literary. Such articulations can only emerge from the confluence of different locations, experiences and identities, demonstrating how our vision of “others” projects our own versions of ourselves onto the outside world.

An alternative view of the Humanities will have to come to terms with the ideas of relationality, plurality and cultural mobility as the defining features of all epochs including that of the pre-modern. Texts, ideas, images, metaphors, themes, modes, genres, tales are all human endeavours and like humans themselves these have the capacity to travel across constructed, eternally given or pre-fixed borders, thereby defying the exclusivist, essentialist ideas of culture and literature. The prevailing inclination towards connected sociologies and connected histories, while a step in the right direction, often reflects the dominant discourses which impose homogeneity and hierarchy, evincing a lack of empathy for the precarious endeavour of encountering alterity and a lack of understanding of the transient and the contingent.

Thus, we propose plurality as a conceptual framework to address this eco-system of interconnectedness and relationality in terms of their manifestations in the languages and literatures of all nations, regions and communities, regardless of their location in the hierarchy of political and economic regimes, or of their internal stratifications. We would like to recover the mutuality of interconnections and interdependence between literatures and cultures across the world. The assertion that we live in a post-human world prompts us, as humans to consider our experience in terms of relationality and plurality. These emerge as conceptual tools for recasting our relations with the other - be it humans, animals or the non- living.

Texts are actualised through their immersion in the shared ideological and affective worlds that constitute the everyday world. From orality to print to the visual media, modes of intersubjective engagement are implicated in structures of power relations within society and our response to them. The very practice of Comparative Literature is an acknowledgement of plurality and a willingness to engage with difference. The discipline emphasises upon relationality, heterogeneity, multivocal perspectives, and direct engagement with alterity that translation offers as a process and a product. Built into the discipline is the interaction between literatures in multiple languages both within the nation and in other countries of the world. Furthermore, it takes orality and performance in its ambit. It reaches out to all other disciplines by asking the existential question : can we open ourselves to the location of the other and view the world from the vantage point of difference that we encounter outside ourselves? Can we frame a dialogic mode of interaction that reading teaches us to our relations with the world, to expand our view of the world outside our own limited subjectivity ? Hence, we propose Comparative Literature as an alternate paradigm - and invite reflections upon the possibilities inherent in the conceptual frame structured by the reciprocal, the relational and the plural. It is our hope that it will help to grasp and address the nature of the crisis that afflicts the Humanities today both in intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary framework.

Sub-themes
Some of the sub-themes in the context of the main theme that can be taken up for discussion are as follows:
  • Interrogating categorial binaries (tradition/modernity, nature/culture, regional/national,
  • east/west etc.)/ Literature after theory/ Shifting paradigms between Literary Studies and Social Sciences/ The Post-human as a paradigm in literary studies.
  • Worlding literature / Historicising canons/ Global and local as contexts of reading. The idea of the classic in modernity: circulation or creativity ?
  • Translation and the encounter with difference. Translating “dialects”/ The oral texts/ Archaic texts.
  • The plural nation: stratification and resistance/ Literary historiography and geopolitics/ Intertextuality and chronotopes.
  • Polyphony/ Polysemy in literature/ Poetry and cosmopolitanism.
  • Interrogating “Minor” literature as category/ Identity theories as critiques of the Humanities / Life-writing from the margins.
  • The performativity of literature/ Screenplay as literature/ Intermediality in literature. South Asian literatures and cultures: relations, reciprocity and ruptures/ Population movements and literature.

Papers are invited from scholars of #Comparative #Literature,
#Translation Studies, #Cultural Studies, #Theatre Studies, #Gender Studies, #Black Studies, #Dalit Studies etc. or on any aspect of literature and culture that will help us understand and practice the Humanities in accordance with the ethical perspectives outlined above.

Abstracts of about 250 words along with a short bio-note of
about 100 words may be submitted to clai2024@admin.du.ac.in

Upon acceptance, participants will be provided with registration details through email. 

The Registration Fee will include workshop kit, certificate, lunch, and refreshments during the three days of the conference. Participants would need to become members of CLAI on receiving their acceptance letters in order to present papers, if they are not already members of CLAI.


IMPORTANT DATES:
Last date of abstract submission: 30th April, 2024 
Selected participants will be notified by: 30th May, 2024 
Last date of registration: 15th July, 2024

REGISTRATION FEE:
Faculty members: Rs.3500/-
Research scholars/students: Rs.2000/- 
International participants: US$ 200

For further information please visit:
Organising Committee, XVII Biennial International Conference.
clai2024@admin.du.ac.in

Sunday, January 28, 2024

CFP: Travel and Accommodation Sponsored #International #Conference on #Historiography and #Hagiography in #Buddhism and Beyond -#University of #Cambridge, United Kingdom, on 8-10 July 2024

 




This international conference aims to bring together scholars working on practices of record-keeping, historiography, and hagiography in the Buddhist tradition and in related cultural fields. Recent years saw a steadily-growing interest in the impact of Buddhism on historiography and hagiography, in tandem with an unprecedented increase in the availability of textual and visual primary sources. Ambitious digitization projects (especially of premodern sources) and the changing landscape of the digital realm offer new opportunities to study premodern and contemporary practices of writing and narration. In this three-days conference, we seek to foster an interdisciplinary discussion on practices of textual and visual recording, storytelling, and memory in Chinese Buddhism and beyond – past, present, and future.



This conference is generously sponsored by the Tzu Chi Foundation (慈濟) and hosted by the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge.

The conference will take place at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, United Kingdom, on 8-10 July 2024 (08/07/2024-10/07/2024). Accommodation and meals will be provided for the duration of the conference. Travel expenses to Cambridge will be covered for conference presenters (please contact organizers for further details).  




We welcome proposals for papers on topics relating to historiography, hagiography, and narration, including but not limited to:

  • Buddhist historiography and record-keeping
  • Historiography and record-keeping in other Chinese religious traditions
  • Narrating lives of extraordinary individuals (e.g. biographies, autobiographies, hagiographies) in textual, oral, visual, and material forms
  • The intersection of Buddhism and literature
  • Book culture and production of texts in the Buddhist tradition (e.g. in print culture, manuscript culture, publishing practices, patronage of textual production, production of temple gazetteers and mountain gazetteers etc.)
  • Uses of visual arts and the performance arts in creating or supporting Buddhist historiography and hagiography


Proposals for papers should include the following information:

  1. Name, affiliation, and title of position at the affiliated institution (independent scholars are also welcome to apply; please note “independent scholar” in your proposal if relevant)
  2. Title
  3. 250 word abstract
  4. Contact information: email, address, and phone number(s)

The deadline for all proposals is Friday, February 23rd, 2024 (23/02/2024). Proposals should be sent as either Word or PDF to the following email address: hist.hagio@gmail.com

For general information and logistical questions, please email the organizing committee at: hist.hagio@gmail.com

Regarding the conference, please contact the primary organizer, Dr Noga Ganany at ng462@cam.ac.uk.

*Proposals must be submitted in English.

Contact Email
hist.hagio@gmail.com

Saturday, January 27, 2024

CALL FOR PAPERS #Palgrave Handbook of #Disability in #Comics and #Graphic #Narratives

 We invite abstracts for articles to be published in a collection showcasing scholarly research related to disability in comics and graphic narratives. This edited volume will highlight insights from both disability studies as well as comics studies.

Centering a disability justice ethos, we especially welcome: submissions by disabled authors/creators; collaborative submissions; work that engages with disability life writing and/or disclosure; work that addresses accommodations and accessibility as they relate to comics pedagogy, form, and/or readership.

The collection envisions a diverse selection of contributors (i.e. a mix of early, mid-, and established scholars from the humanities, comics studies, and disability studies; disability activists; comics creators; comics journalists; and so on) that represent a range of perspectives, methodologies, and communities across the globe. The contents of the collection may be likewise diverse, including essays by individual and collaborative authors, interviews, and/or creative work. Essays in all languages are welcome (to be published in translation).

We encourage examinations of mainstream titles and characters, independent comics, as well as considerations of the ways disability shapes comics form in creative ways. We are especially interested in contributions that explore additional intersections of race, class, sexuality, and gender; and works that challenge ableism in comics theory and/or challenge comics’ ocularcentrism.

 

We especially welcome essays on potential themes and keywords such as:

  • Accessibility

  • Activism

  • Archive

  • Autobiography

  • Coloniality

  • Disability Justice

  • Disability as Method

  • Genre(s)

  • Intersectionality

  • Mental Health/Illness

  • Monstrosity/grotesque

  • Multiculturalism

  • Neurodivergence

  • Pedagogy

  • Sexuality

  • Sound

  • Superheroes and supervillains 

  • Touch

  • Transnationalism

  • Vision

We welcome inquiries by email. Please submit 250-300 word abstracts and 50-word bios by February 28th, 2024. After reviewing submissions, the editors will select contributors and then submit a proposal for publication by Palgrave.


Final essays will be approximately 5,000-10,000 words depending on the topic. We also welcome submissions of scholarship in comics formats between 10 and 20 pages. For questions, or to submit a proposal, contact keyword.disability.comics@gmail.com 

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

Call for Papers for an Ed. Vol., "Contested Memories in Contemporary Asia"

 Preserving contrasting past memories and narratives can be difficult in unreceptive social and political environments where prohibition of commemorative events and vandalism are employed hand in hand to sabotage memorialization efforts. At one level, problems with memorials are not confined to post-conflict societies: memorialization of those who lost wars – such as Japan in the Second World War – is often suppressed in the name of preserving liberal order. On another level, across the Asian region the emergence of ethno-religious nationalism against the backdrop of authoritarian regimes has become alarmingly common.   

The edited collection will probe how policing, obstruction and trivialization of memories play out in the contemporary socio-economic and political landscapes across Asia, using selected case studies. It would attempt to investigate how certain memories are selectively negated by some groups while new memories are sometimes constructed of events that never happened through the distortion and fabrication of history. How certain memories are weaponized and used as tropes in rhetoric against the targeted ‘other’ and abused to serve as justification for calls for genocidal violence, projected as ‘retributive’ in nature will also be explored. More broadly, the proposed book will investigate how both policing and weaponization of memorialization play out, not only affecting everyday lived experiences but also posing a barrier for democracy. We wish to invite scholars to explore the international politics of genocide denial and recognition, such as Turkey’s denial of the Armenian genocide, Pakistan’s denial of the Bangladesh genocide, Myanmar’s denial of genocide against Rohingyas, Indonesia’s denial of the genocidal violence in East Timor and against the communists, Sri Lanka’s and Japan’s denial of their war crimes, India’s denial of the massacres of its religious minorities, such as the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms in Delhi and the 2002 anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat, etc.; apology and reparations; the lack of conviction in cases of mass violence; why and how the guilty escape justice; the challenges before prosecution, the obstacles and hurdles in achieving reconciliation; competitive victimhood; the act of justifying mass violence by describing it as retributive in nature, often accompanied by a deep seated sense of majority victimhood; the forces of resistance, both domestic and foreign, to state narratives of conflict; trivialization of genocide memory; the proliferation of genocide terminology; the phenomenon of blaming the victim; Holocaust inversion; disputes over historical legacies in public spaces; and any other aspect of memory contestation and conflict of narratives.    

Scope of the Edited Volume

In such context, the main objective of the proposed edited volume is to offer insights into contested memories in the Asian region. The prospective contributors will include scholars, academics, research students, activists, and peacebuilders, but will not be limited only to them. Through this book, we would like to initiate a wider thematic debate on memory discourse, local conditions and responses, inspired by the pluralist values, the rule of law and peace and reconciliation efforts.

Chapter proposals of around 300 words with a biographical profile of the author (around 200 words) as a single Word file are invited for the above mentioned envisioned edited volume latest by 1 April 2024. The successful contributors will be invited to submit their full paper between 5,000 - 8,000 words (excluding references) at a later date. The edited volume will be published by an international academic publisher.

Timeline

Year 1

  • Month 1: Preparatory work
  • Month 2: Call for Papers
  • Month 3-4: Review of EOIs
  • Month 5-7: Submission of full papers (first draft)
  • Month 7-10: Editorial feedback
  • Month 10-12: Submission of the second draft

Year 2

  • Month 1-3: Line-editing of manuscripts
  • Month 4-6: Copy-editing of manuscripts
  • Month 7-9: Compiling the final draft
  • Month 10-12: Identifying a potential publisher

Year 3

  • Month 1-4: Line-editing by the publisher
  • Month 5-8: Publication
  • Month 9-12: Book launch and dissemination of findings

 

Bios of Editors

Dr. Navras J. Aafreedi is an Assistant Professor of History at Presidency University, Kolkata, a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, New York, and a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar under its Holocaust Education & Genocide Prevention Program and its Asia Peace Innovators Forum. Besides several papers in peer-reviewed journals, chapters in edited collections published by prestigious international scholarly publishing houses, such as De Gruyter, Routledge, Springer, Indiana University Press, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Lexington, etc., and op-eds in popular media, his numerous publications include a monograph Jews, Judaizing Movements and the Traditions of Israelite Descent in South Asia (New Delhi: Pragati Publications, 2016) and a co-edited collection Conceptualizing Mass Violence: Representations, Recollections, and Reinterpretations (London and New York: Routledge, 2021). He has held visiting fellowships at the universities of Tel Aviv (2006-2007) and Sydney (2015), and at the Woolf Institute, Cambridge, UK (2010). Dr. Aafreedi was a scholar-in-residence at the ISGAP-Oxford Summer Institute on Curriculum Development in Critical Antisemitism Studies at St. John's College, Oxford in 2017. He received the degrees of BA, MA and PhD from the University of Lucknow. He commenced his teaching career at Gautam Buddha University, Greater Noida in 2010 and has been teaching at Presidency University, Kolkata since 2016. His latest publication is a chapter titled "Hitler's Popularity and the Trivialization of the Holocaust in India" in Holocaust vs. Popular Culture: Interrogating Incompatibility and Universalization, edited by Mahitosh Mandal & Priyanka Das (London and New York: Routledge, 2023). His forthcoming publications will be brought out by Brill, Oxford University Press, Routledge, University of Nebraska Press, Wiley-Blackwell, Academic Studies Press, etc.

Dishani Senaratne is a doctoral researcher at the University of Queensland, focusing on the emergence of ethnolinguistic nationalism and its alignment with Sinhala Buddhist nationalism.  She's also the Founder/Project Director of Writing Doves, a non-profit initiative that employs a literature-based approach to enhance young learners' intercultural understanding. Earlier, she taught English at the University of Sabaragamuwa of Sri Lanka. In addition, she’s a Fellow at the Salzburg Global Seminar.  

Chapter Proposal Submission Deadline: 1 April, 2024

Email Addresses for Communication (Please email your proposal to both addresses given below):

Navras.His@PresiUniv.Ac.in

dish3000e@gmail.com

 

 

 

Contact Information

Dr. Navras J. Aafreedi, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Presidency University, Kolkata, India: navras.his@presiuniv.ac.in

Dishani Senaratne, PhD Scholar, School of Political Science & International Studies, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia: dish3000e@gmail.com

Contact Email
navras.his@presiuniv.ac.in

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Call for Papers - Indian #Folklife Journal - ‘#Translating #Texts, Translating #Cultures’-#Indian #Folklife a Quarterly quasi-research #Journal-June 2024



 “Translation is the performative nature of cultural communication” (Homi Bhabha )




The process of translation and the interpretation of any given text are intimately intertwined with the notion of culture. In the past two to three decades, translation has undergone a notable transformation, emerging as a more creative and noticeably active discipline. Translations go beyond mere translation of words and sentence structures; they encapsulate ideologies, values, and ways of life specific to a particular culture. In traditional discussions on translation, the challenges, often labeled as "culture-specific," centre around crucial elements that pose intricate difficulties in conveying them with precision.




Literary translation stands out as a primary means of communication across cultures. It is imperative to acknowledge that literary texts are essentially cultural constructs, where language functions as the medium for cultural expression. Literary texts as such exhibit numerous linguistic nuances, along with reflections of social and cultural aspects of our lives. The translation of a literary text is thus no longer a mere exchange between two languages but a nuanced negotiation between two distinct cultures. The ability of culture to engage in translation is therefore a crucial aspect to be considered at this point. Cultural dynamics predominantly operate through translational activities as the incorporation of new texts is essential for cultural innovation and the recognition of its distinctiveness.  



Translation is a process for folklore ethnographic research as well. The translation of folk literature necessitates an exploration into the thought processes of the narrator, the translator, and the reader. More so in the native contexts. Clearly, these considerations merit discussion within the context of translating both texts and cultures. There appears to be an imminent need to safeguard and reserve a modest space for the translations of folk literature and folklore ethnography in this postcolonial-postmodernist era, where constant innovation arises through the lens of cultural translation. In the new century, there exists an increased understanding of the cultural significance of translated texts, especially on folk literature and folklore ethnography, in relation to their influence on the identity of the receiving culture.


Indian Folklife a Quarterly quasi-research Journal [https://indianfolklore.org/index.php/if] invites original, unpublished research/reflective papers for the forthcoming issue (June 2024). The theme for the papers is on ‘Translating Text, Translating culture’ within the context of folklife in general. The word limit for the papers is 1500-2000. 

Contributions in English should be submitted in MSWord (.docx or.doc) to 

jocicausa@gmail.com [Dr JP Rajendran- Special Editor] 

and 

muthu@indianfolklore.org 

[CC to Dr MD Muthukumaraswamy - Director, NFSC] on or before 31st March 2024. Indian Folklife follows the latest MLA Stylesheet. For article submissions, please follow the guidelines in the website. https://indianfolklore.org/index.php/if/about/submissions 

Contact Information

National Folklore Support Centre (NFSC), having its address at #508, Fifth Floor, Kaveri complex, 96, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Nungambakkam, Chennai- 600034 Tamilnadu India. NFSC is a non governmental, non-profit organisation, registered in Chennai, dedicated to the promotion of Indian Folklore, research, education, training, networking and publications.

Contact Email
jocicausa@gmail.com