Call for Papers :Thematic focus of the issue: #Evolutionary Aesthetics – #Aesthetic #Evolutions: Posthumanist Explorations with #Darwin-#TRANSPOSITIONES- new interdisciplinary biannual #peer-reviewed journal

 

Interdisciplinary Research Project “Non-Anthropocentric Cultural Subjectivity”

Coordinator: Prof. Paweł Piszczatowski

TRANSPOSITIONES

Zeitschrift für transdisziplinäre und intermediale Kulturforschung /

Journal for Transdisciplinary and Intermedial Culture Studies

ISSN 2749-4128 (print), 2749-4136 (online)

https://transpositiones.uw.edu.pl/en

Vol. 4, No. 1 (2025)

In the humanistic discourse of the 21st century, primarily where it tests its own limits and seeks a transdisciplinary opening, the work of Charles Darwin is an important point of reference. It is enough to mention Jane Bennett’s book Vibrant Matter (2010) which  is fundamental for posthumanist research, and in which the author discusses in detail Darwin’s concept of the “small agency” of

worms or the monograph by Polish researcher Justyna Schollenberger Stworzenia Darwina. O granicy człowiek–zwierzę (2020).

In the context of the planned issue, the book Wozu Kunst? Ästhetik nach Darwin by the German comparatist Winfried Menninghaus (2011; English translation Aesthetics after Darwin: The Multiple Origins and Functions of the Arts, 2019) seems to be of particular importance.

According to Menninghaus Darwin was the first to explain the parallels between human and animal arts of singing and self-adornment using a general evolutionary model of aesthetic representation. Menninghaus presents Darwin’s reflections as an essential approach to a theory of arts that, in addition

to music, also includes rhetoric, poetry, and the visual arts. Menninghaus reads Darwin’s remarks against the background of today’s knowledge in archeology and evolutionary biology as well as in the light of philosophical and empirical aesthetics and complements Darwin’s analysis by examining the role of gaming behavior, technology, and symbolic practices in the hypothetical transformation of sexual courtship practices into human arts.

Based also on other concepts of evolutionary aesthetics, evolutionary musicology, Darwinian literary studies, and new-materialistic reading methods we will try to consider the possibilities for understanding human artifacts that may result from their diffractive view through the prism of Darwinian concepts. 

Proposals comprising a 250-word abstract in English or German and a brief

biographical note should be sent to: transpositiones@uw.edu.pl by April 30,

2024.

A decision will be made regarding the final selection by May 10.

Deadline for submitting completed manuscripts: September 30, 2024.

The issue is expected to be published in spring 2025.

Publication language: English and German.

TRANSPOSITIONES is a new interdisciplinary biannual peer-reviewed journal

correlated with the topics of the project “Non-Anthropocentric Cultural Subjectivity” realized as part of the Research Excellence Initiative at the University

of Warsaw primarily oriented towards interdisciplinary publications addressing

issues of posthumanist theories of the late anthropocene. It is published by the

German publishing house Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (imprint of BRILL

Deutschland GmbH).

More information: https://transpositiones.uw.edu.pl/en

Call For Papers: Cute #Ecologies: a critical-creative Symposium 7th June 2024 Online (Zoom)

 Hosted by AWW-STRUCK, this day of lightning talks and presentations on critical research and creative practice features a roundtable conversation between invited speakers (confirmed):

• Miranda Lowe (principal curator of Crustacea at the Natural History Museum London).
• Claire Catterall (curator of Cute at Somerset House, London)
• Hugh Warwick (author of Beauty in the Beast and spokesperson for The British Hedgehog Preservation Society)

Encountering cute forms of nature, from bunnies and hedgehogs to monkeys and deer, is an everyday experience for most of us. They appear on tea towels, cakes and images gone viral on social media. The cute nonhuman might even be our companion animal. The apparently simple, benign nature of cuteness means it goes unexamined, especially in the context of the environmental crisis where the aesthetic is likely to appear irrelevant, if not irreverent. This symposium challenges such thinking by asking: Can cuteness prompt care-giving behaviour for environments? What power dynamics exist in the ‘cutification’ of flora and fauna? What fate for ‘uncute’ species? 

Recent developments in cute studies demonstrate the power of cute to increase pro-social and pro-environmental behaviours. Conservation charities know as much, employing the cutest species to drive public donation. However, the bias toward charismatic megafauna is also known to be a problem. Anthropomorphism and domestication emerge again and again in our encounters with the nonhuman. And perhaps ourselves. As cute studies scholar Joshua Paul Dale recently suggested, Homo sapiens may well have emerged because women preferred cuddlier companions to cavemen. 

We welcome papers that address topics through critical research and/or through creative practice (poetry, film, performance, music, visual artwork). Topics or areas of research may include:

• Animal studies and plant studies
• Childhood culture and children’s geography
• Charismatic megafauna 
• Domestication and scale
• Conservation science and political ecology
• Popular culture, Disney studies, anime and manga studies
• Commodification, material objects and waste
• Technology, cyborgs and artificial intelligence 

Possible formats include: 5-minute lightning talks, 20-minute presentations.

Please submit abstracts and/or short proposals (300 words max), telling us whether you’d like to give a lightning talk or presentation to awwstruck.info@gmail.com by 19 April 2024. Please include a short bio (100 words max). If you are a creative practitioner, please include two samples of your work.

This event is organised by Dr Isabel Galleymore (University of Birmingham) and Caroline Harris (Royal Holloway, University of London) who founded AWW-STRUCK in 2021. This symposium is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation.

Attachments

aww-struck-cute-ecologies-cfp-2-240419.pdf

Call for Applicants : Workshop on Women and Crime Fiction - June- 2024

 Ever since the genre established itself in the Anglophone world in the mid-nineteenth century, crime fiction and discussions of crime fiction have tended to underemphasize the role women play in it, unless they are victims or femme fatales. Yet women, as authors, major characters, and audience members, have been a part of the genre since the very beginning. Indeed, it has been about a century since one could have feasibly considered crime and detective fiction (written or otherwise) as a “male-dominated genre,” and scholarship has followed suit: from Kathleen Gregory Klein’s The Woman Detective to Sally R. Munt’s Murder by the Book?, from Priscilla L. Walton and Manina Jones’ Detective Agency to Gill Plain’s Twentieth Century Crime Fiction – the study of femininity and crime fiction has proved to be extremely fertile ground for analysis and debate.

Quite often, however, these studies and debates remain within clearly defined historical boundaries, with the result that the female detectives and authors of the nineteenth century only rarely come into scholarly contact with their peers from the “Golden Age of Detective Fiction,” the femmes fatales of the hardboiled mode, the feminist sleuths of the 1970s and 1980s, or the multimedial third- and fourth-wave-feminist contributions produced since the turn of the millennium. Additionally, the investigation of the contents of genre fiction are rarely combined with a study of female recipients.

Studies have shown that women seem to be the main audience for true-crime books (Vicary and Fraley 82). This interest holds true across various media; true crime is the most popular podcast subject in the US (Stocking et al.) and the audience for these highly popular podcasts consists mostly of women (Stocking et al., Greer 154–155). Women are also active as producers of such fare. For example, the genre-defining podcast Serial, hosted, written, and produced by Sarah Koenig, became the first podcast to win a Peabody Award in 2015. Further examples include the podcasts Drunk Women Solving Crime or My Favorite Murder, both hosted by women.

This workshop seeks to counteract the prevailing scholarly compartmentalisation and to bridge the aforementioned historical and disciplinary gaps by convening scholars to present and discuss their work on femininity and crime literature, film, television, videogaming, podcasting, fan fiction, etc., from any historical period. Not only does this approach serve to facilitate a more holistic approach to the long and varied history of crime fiction; it also allows for interdisciplinary and diachronic takes on the topic, bringing together perspectives from different branches of the humanities and social sciences.

Keynote: Dr. Kerstin-Anja Münderlein (University of Bamberg): “‘She’s a woman, and women act in a silly way’: Policing and (Re-)Negotiating Acceptable Femininity from the Golden Age to Syd Moore” 

Papers: We invite abstracts for 20-minute papers in English covering texts from all kinds of media (literature, film, television, podcasting, videogaming, etc.), discussing topics such as:

• Female characters and stereotypes in crime fiction
• The femme fatale
• Women as audience for crime fiction
• Women as producers of crime fiction
• Intersectional approaches to issues of race, class, and nationality
• The rise of female-led podcasts
• The (physical) female voice of podcasts
• The fetishisation of the female victim
• Historical comparisons, from the 19th century to the 21st
• The ethics of true-crime fiction
• The reception of crime fiction by female authors
• Gender-bending in fan fiction
• etc.

Bibliography

Greer, Amanda. “Murder, She Spoke: The Female Voice’s Ethics of Evocation and Spacialisation in the True Crime Podcast.” Sound Studies, vol. 3, no. 2, 2017, pp. 152–164, https://doi.org/10.1080/20551940.2018.1456891.

Klein, Kathleen Gregory. The Woman Detective: Gender and Genre. U of Illinois P, 1995.

Munt, Sally R. Murder by the Book? Feminism and the Crime Novel. Routledge, 1994.

Plain, Gill. Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction: Gender, Sexuality and the Body. Routledge, 2001.

Stocking, Galen, et al. “A Profile of the Top-Ranked Podcasts in the U.S.” Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project, 15 June 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2023/06/15/a-profile-of-the-top-ranked-podcasts-in-the-u-s/.

Vicary, Amanda M., and R. Chris Fraley. “Captured by True Crime: Why Are Women Drawn to Tales of Rape, Murder, and Serial Killers?” Social Psychological and Personality Science, vol. 1, no. 1, 2010, pp. 81–86, https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550609355486.

Walton, Priscilla L., and Manina Jones. Detective Agency: Women Rewriting the Hard-Boiled Tradition. U of California P, 1999.

Contact Information

Please send your 250-300-word abstracts to alan.mattli@es.uzh.ch and olivia.tjon-a-meeuw@es.uzh.ch in a PDF file. Please also send a separate bionote of about 100 words. The deadline for abstracts is May 1st, 2024.

Contact Email

alan.mattli@es.uzh.ch

Attachments

Call for Papers

CFP: International Conference on #Bengal and its Neighbors: From Early Modern to Contemporary South Asia -Oct 2024.

 The aim of this panel is to initiate a broader dialogue with regards to the Bengal region, as it evolved from the early modern era — then, a region being ruled a motley of Sultanates with periodic eruption of Mughal expeditions against the independent Sultans — to an important resource extraction zone during the colonial era. Eventually, the region evolved into a contested terrain during the anti-colonial movement in the Twentieth Century that pitted two distinct nationalist projects against one another, as the post-colonial future of the region’s heterogeneous ethnic, linguistic and religious communities were being decided. Fast forward to the Partition, Bengal’s religious fault-lines became exposed, as the Muslim majority regions became part of Pakistan, while the Hindu dominated Western regions became part of India. 

However, this flared up communal fragmentation does not fully encapsulate the efforts undertaken by political forces, including the left-leaning ones, to oppose communalism’s impact on the widening gap between Hindus and Muslims. Interestingly, an echo of this anti-communal nation-building imperative can be traced in the movement leading up to the creation of Bangladesh, and, subsequently, the inscribing of the principles of nationalism, socialism, democracy, and secularism in its founding constitution draw up in 1972 following its break-up from Pakistan in 1971. The country experiences coups and countercoups in the late 1970s and early 1980s that had shacked its attempt to build a new society out of the ruins of Partition. 

Moreover, the wider Bengal region has experienced further tensions due to the acceleration of the climate crisis, onset of neoliberal globalization, and new forms of social divides along caste, class, ethnicity, and religious lines in the recent years. Therefore, it would be more than useful to interrogate the region from a broad historical perspective so that dialogues can be initiated to understand the wider implications of today’s crises as well as the traces of the past in the Bengal region’s turbulent present. 

With an aim to investigating the various traditions of resistance, in literary writing, oral and public culture, plastic and visual arts, to dominant ideologies of nation, class, religion, and gender, the esteemed panelists seek to engage with the following questions in order to understand the complex changes in the region from a broader perspective: 

• How can we address the influences of various cultural forces — Arab, Persian, Indic, and European — in a primarily agrarian region?
• How can we reconceptualize the major changes that occurred in the region as it transitioned from the colonial era to the postcolonial present? What are some of the major outcomes of this transition including the Permanent Settlement, the Bengal famine of 1943 and the creation of the successor three nation-states of British India impacted the region? 
• How is the region shaped by political changes such as the solidification of Hindu nationalism in India, the India-China rivalry to extend regional influence, as well as the ethnic tensions in the bordering countries such as Myanmar? 
• How can the region’s longue durée shifts be addressed from an interdisciplinary angle? What are the stakes of bringing scholars together who explore the Bengal and its neighboring region from a range of disciplinary angles including anthropology, history, literature and religion among others?      

Contact Information

Please submit abstracts of 250-300 words and a brief bio to the organizers, Auritro Majumder, Assistant Professor of English, University of Houston, amajumder@uh.edu &  Asif Iqbal, Visiting Assistant Professor of English, Oberlin College, aiqbal@oberlin.edu by 30 March, 2024. 

Contact Email: aiqbal@oberlin.edu

CFP: International Conference on Understanding Authoritarianism/Fascism in South Asia -Nov 2024

 We are proposing a panel on “Understanding Authoritarianism/Fascism in South Asia” at the 52nd Annual Conference on South Asia, organized by the South Asia Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  

While South Asia, a diverse and dynamic region, has witnessed various forms of governance throughout its history, in recent times, concerns have been raised about the rise of populism and/or authoritarianism. This panel seeks to explore the nature of fascism/authoritarianism in this region. Is the nature of fascism/authoritarianism the same in this region compared to Western/European counterparts? In response to Ramin Jahanbegloo's question "Is there an Indian fascism?" Ashis Nandy argues, “Indian civilization, which has no direct experience of that particular version [European] of authoritarianism and has always worked with ill-defined, open ended concept of evil, finds it more difficult to deal with various modern versions of authoritarianism” (Nandy 2006). 

This panel invites theoretical and/or empirical research that critically examines the features (distinct or otherwise) of authoritarianism/fascism in the South Asian context and beyond. We aim to identify and analyze historical antecedents contributing to the emergence of authoritarianism and to explore the socio-cultural factors influencing the development and sustenance of authoritarian regimes. Simultaneously we plan to investigate the role of technology, media, civil society, developmentalist narratives, nationalist discourse, discourse of national security and so on in shaping and reinforcing authoritarian tendencies. 

We invite 200–300 word abstracts with a short bio (100 words) on topics including but not limited to: 

• Authoritarianism/Fascism in South Asia (Any historical moment to now) 
• Biopolitics
• Manufacturing the consent 
• Nation-building and Authoritarianism 
• Extra-judicial killings 
• Resisting Authoritarianism (past or present) 
• Silencing the narratives
• Radical Alternatives 
• Democracy and Populism
• Anti-Authoritarian Political Thoughts in South Asia
• Secular/religious authoritarianism
• Vote Rigging to "Dummy" election (in the context of Bangladesh)
• Politics of Propaganda

Please send your abstract and short bio along with any questions, to zehsan@wisc.edu 

Submissions are due by March 28, 2024.

Accepted papers will be notified by April 05, 2024.

Contact Information

Zunayed Ehsan, Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.  

Contact Email

zehsan@wisc.edu

CFP: Listening in Many Tongues: Multilingual Interpretive Communities and Acts of Translation in Early Modern South Asia -Oct-2024

 Recent scholarship on South Asia has exemplified the importance of drawing on multilingual sources as well as multi-disciplinary approaches - reading, listening, and visualising the vernacular and the cosmopolitan in conversation, rather than through hierarchical relationships. The overlapping and multidirectional networks of patronage and production have led not only to the creation of new genres of text and performance but also to the articulation of pre-existing traditions within new intellectual milieux and expanding communities of contact and exchange. What has emerged, following the scholarship of Francesca Orsini, Aditya Behl, and Barry Flood, amongst others, is the understanding of translation as a process of transformation and constant reinterpretation, a “dynamic form of production” (Flood 2007, 107) which translates and reinterprets aesthetic categories of, for instance, music and literature in new and constantly shifting contexts.

Undoubtedly, and building upon the pioneering work of Sheldon Pollock, a focus on ideas and modes of translation across “cosmopolitan” and “vernacular” language models has proliferated scholarship on early modern South Asia. In particular, Francesca Orsini’s scholarly intervention has encouraged us to investigate the ‘multilingual locals’ implied in areas of such contact and exchange. While using this emphasis on translation as a jumping-off point, this conference invites papers on the multivalent methods of translation in medieval and early modern South Asia - methods by which various interpretive communities sought equivalences, reinterpretations, and transcreations between and across literary and performative genres.

This conference will seek to place scholars working across fields, languages, and geographies on ideas of translation in conversation, such as those concentrating on Ismaili and Sufi studies in Persian and South Asian vernaculars, or Jain and Apabhramsa texts in translation, or across Arabic, Malayalam, and sites in South India. Given the scholarly remit of the South Asian Studies Unit here at the IIS, we particularly invite papers focusing on Ismaili and other Shi'i-related contexts in South Asia.

We invite abstracts of 250-300 words by the 19th of April, 2024, emailed to SASconference@iis.ac.uk along with a short (ca. 100 words) bio. Speakers will also be invited to contribute to a subsequent edited volume, to be published with the IIS South Asia Studies Series.

Contributions are invited on topics including (but not limited to):

·     Processes of vernacularisation, translation, and reinterpretation

·     Multilingual literary communities

·     Cross-cultural encounters

·     Music, poetry, and devotion in South Asian Islam

·     Isma’ili, Shi’i, and Quranic studies in South Asia

·     Vernacular devotional expression within mystical communities in South Asia

·     Networks of literary circulation

·     Poetic translation and reinterpretation

·     Hindu-Muslim philosophical encounters

A small number of stipends are available for scholars with limited access to institutional funding.

 

Conference convenors:

Dr William Hofmann, Research Associate in South Asian Studies (IIS), 

Ayesha Sheth (University of Pennsylvania), and 

Hussain Jasani, Head - South Asian Studies Unit (IIS)

Venue: Hybrid (The Aga Khan Centre, London + Online)

Dates: October 21-22, 2024

Contact Information

William Rees Hofmann (Institute of Ismaili Studies)

Ayesha Sheth (Upenn)

Hussain Jasani (Institute of Ismaili Studies)

SASconference@iis.ac.uk

Contact Email

SASconference@iis.ac.uk

URL

https://www.iis.ac.uk/news/2024/march/listening-in-many-tongues-call-for-papers/

CFP: ICSSR Sponsored Three International Conference Appropriate Teaching Methodologies in Interdisciplinary Contexts: Mapping Sociolinguistic Diversity (Hybrid Mode)-DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY-May 2024.

Conference Theme:

Teaching methodologies and methods have a significant impact on the learning outcomes of students. The current language learning theories, formulated within the monolingual context of English as a Native /Second/Foreign Language lack adequate consideration for diversity language education and sociolinguistic dimensions related to digital-divide, resources & infrastructure, access, classroom size, bi-literacy, bilingualism, multilingualism, rural-urban divide, teacher-student ratio, medium of instruction,among others. The present conference aims to highlight these challenges faced by ESL and content subject learners in the current educational system. The intricate sociolinguistic dynamics that exist within classroom interactions are influenced not only by pedagogic variables but also by broader social and cultural aspects that are ingrained in institutional and environmental settings.

This conference aspires to encourage various stakeholders to rethink Appropriate Methodology, not simply in terms of best practices but also by taking into account the dynamics of diversity education based on equitable opportunities. Some of the primary questions that immediately crop up here are: Can appropriate teaching methodology provide greater access to equitable opportunity of learning? If yes, how can we make such teaching practices socially relevant and inclusive? How can these practices prompt cross-cultural communication in a multicultural setting? Also, how can the class be shaped as learner-centred to cater to the diverse communicative needs beyond the classroom? .

The objectives of the conference would be twofold: firstly, it would aim to focus on developing critical thinking skills and promote cultural exchange by setting a discourse around it and refocusing our attention towards inclusivity, sustainability and social justice. Secondly, it would try to put forth recommendations to various stakeholders-policy makers, textbook writers, material designers administrators, educators to incorporate necessary methodological changes that would help bridge learning gaps taking into consideration the multiplicity and complexity of classroom interaction and methodology of content subjects as well. The conference seeks to rethink how English can be taught in diverse ESL settings, encompassing socially, linguistically, and economically disadvantaged populations against the backdrop of learning crisises and overdetermined contexts (NEP, 2020; WDR, 2018; GEMR, 2021 and SDG4, 2015).

Keywords: Teaching methodologies, ESL learners, Sociolinguistic Diversity, Inclusivity, Cross-cultural communication

CONFERENCE THEMES INCLUDES BUT NOT LIMITED TO :

1. Sociolinguistic Competence in the ESL Classroom: Agenda for future research

2. International English in its Sociolinguistic contexts

3. Diversity and Translanguaging in Language Education: Methodological challenges

4. Constructivist Approaches to Teaching

5. Review of curricula: Syllabus and Materials Designing, Appropriate Methodology and Assessment: Primary, Secondary & Tertiary Education Levels(PSTL)

6. Methodology in a Technological Environment

7. Advances in AI Technology and Methodology

8. Technology-based Strategies and Diverse Methodological Practices

9. Open Education Resources, Selection & Adaptationand Methodology

10. Mainstreaming ESL Teaching Methodology for Equity Concerns

11. Literacy Education for Marginalized EBLs’ (Emergent Bilingual Learners) Social, Cultural and Academic Inequities

12. Teacher Education for Inclusive Pedagogy (PSTL)

13. Policy Perspectives, Practice and ELT Planning: Methodological Challenges

14. Cross-cultural and Methodological Options in Second language pedagogy

15. Teaching Literature and Appropriate Pedagogy (PSTL)

16. Instructional Methodology of Language / Literature Teaching (PSTL)

17. Appropriate Pedagogical Strategies and Second Language Pedagogy: Speaking and Writing

18. Age/Grade Appropriate Pedagogy: Literature and Language Perspectives (PSTL)

19. Making Sense of Methodologies: BANA vs. TESEP

20. NEP (2020) and Appropriate Teaching Methodologies (PSTL)

21. Indian Knowledge System, Teaching of Indian Languages and English language: NEP 2020

22. Diverse Contexts of Methodology , Communication Strategies and Institutional Practices

23. Indian College Teachers’ / Learners’ Beliefs about Pedagogy (PSTL)

24. Methodological Constraints, Capacity Building and Teacher Development (PSTL)

25. Language Diversity into Content-based Instruction (CBI) Methodology- Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts, Sciences, Medicine, Agriculture, Law, Engineering and Tech, Commerce & Management, Foreign Languages, Modern Indian Languages: Policy and Practices (PSTL)

26. Writing Across the Curriculum (content based approaches)

27. Teaching and ‘otherness’

28. Teaching and Spaces

29. Teaching Language as ‘affirmative sabotage’

30. Disability Studies: Language Learning & Teaching/ Teacher Education

31. CELTA/ DELTA Methodology

32. TESOL/TESL Methodology

33. Assessment and Methodology

34. Learning Crisis, Learning Deficits and Methodology

35. Methodology for Environment Education and Language Instruction

36. ESP: English for Business/ EAP/EST

PS: Participants are advised to stick to the themes given above for 

Abstract submission.

Abstract Submisson Deadline: March 27, 2024

Last Date for Registration : April 12, 2024.

Conference e-mail Id: ic.appmethodologyamueng24@gmail.com

For More details: https://www.amu.ac.in/department/english/seminar-conference-workshop