CALL FOR PAPERS: FRANKENSTEIN: FRIEND OR FOE?(FANTASY, HORROR, AND SCIENCE FICTION)

CALL FOR PAPERS:

 Conference of The Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (NEPCA)

University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts

27 and 28 October 2017

Proposals by 1 June 2017

Michael A. Torregrossa

Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area Chair

cfp.NEPCAFantastic@gmail.com

Formed in 2008, the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2017, and we seek proposals from scholars of all levels for papers that explore any aspect of the intermedia traditions of the fantastic (including, but not limited to, elements of fairy tale, fantasy, gothic, horror, legend, mythology, and science fiction) and how creative artists have altered our preconceptions of these subtraditions by producing innovative works in diverse countries, media, and time periods and for audiences at all levels.

In anticipation of the two hundredth anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 2018, we are especially hoping for proposals that address aspects of the Frankenstein tradition and the fantastic. Our focus for this year is "Frankenstein: Friend or Foe?". We seek papers that will explore the reception of the creature (and its surrogates) in Shelley's novel and in related texts.

Please see our website NEPCA Fantastic (https://nepcafantastic.blogspot.com) for further details and ideas. Presentations will be limited to 15-20 minutes in length (depending on final panel size).

If you are interested in proposing a paper, please address inquiries and send your biography and paper abstract (each of 250 words) to the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area Chair at cfp.nepcafantastic@gmail.com, noting “Frankenstein Proposal 2017” in your subject line. Do also submit your information into NEPCA’s official Paper Proposal Form accessible from https://nepca.blog/2017-conference/. Be sure to select "The Fantastic" as your designated area.

Please submit inquiries and/or proposals for complete panels directly to the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area Chair at cfp.nepcafantastic@gmail.com.

The Northeast Popular/American Culture Association (a.k.a. NEPCA) was founded in 1974 as a professional organization for scholars living in New England and New York. It is a community of scholars interested in advancing research and promoting interest in the disciplines of popular and/or American culture. NEPCA’s membership consists of university and college faculty members, emeriti faculty, secondary school teachers, museum specialists, graduate students, independent scholars, and interested members of the general public. NEPCA is an independently funded affiliate of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association. Membership is open to all interested parties, regardless of profession, rank, or residency. NEPCA holds an annual conference that invites scholars from around the globe to participate. In an effort to keep costs low, it meets on college campuses throughout the region.

Membership in NEPCA is required for participation and annual dues are included in conference registration fees. Further details are available at https://nepca.blog/membership-information/.

Contact Info: 

Michael A Torregrossa

Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area Chair

Contact Email: cfp.NEPCAFantastic@gmail.com

URL: https://nepcafantastic.blogspot.com

Memory and the Making of Knowledge in the Early Modern World, September 18-22, 2017--Germany

Call for Papers

Memory and the Making of Knowledge in the Early Modern World, September 18-22, 2017--Germany

Memory is now established as a dynamic and vital field of study in the humanities and social sciences. It is no longer disputed that how, why, and what individuals, communities, and societies remember is essential to under-standing their pasts and presents. A good deal of this work has understandably concentrated on contemporary history: the emergence of social history in the middle decades of the twentieth century shifted the spotlight to focus on ordinary people, and developments in medicine, psychology, and sociology produced a more sophisticated understanding of the functioning of individual and social memory. This has led to new techniques of oral history opening up a wide vista of perspectives on the recent past. But people living before the twentieth century also remembered, and this summer school aims to explore memory in the early modern period, one from which there are obviously no living witnesses, but which nevertheless left numerous traces of the politics and poetics of memory in its art, literature, and history.

Between 1500 and 1800, remembrance of the past was crucial for creating knowledge in a wide range of personal, social, and political projects, and vital contributions were made to the theory and practice of memory. Actors from across the social spectrum used both old and new media to encode, manipulate, transmit, and deploy memories. The development of the Renaissance ars memoria played an important role in new ideas about memory in early modern elite culture; at the same time, the traumas and crises of the period produced what may be termed an ars oblivia, in which legally prescribed ‘forgetting’ played a vital role in social and cultural reconstruction.

Memory and the Making of Knowledge in the Early Modern World will bring together senior scholars and junior researchers whose work addresses memory in early modern literature and history. It aims to consolidate recent advances in these fields and develop new avenues of inquiry through an intensive programme of skills training, collections-oriented excursions, and – above all – productive intellectual exchange on research topics and techniques. The Summer School will also explore how studies of memory and early modernity might shape one another in the future.

Junior (postgraduate and postdoctoral) scholars whose research touches on any aspect of memory in the early modern world are invited to participate in the Summer School. Participants will be expected to give a short (no longer than 20 mins) presentation on their research. Particular topics of interest might include (the following list is by no means exhaustive):

• Collective, individual, communicative, and cultural memory
• Memory in art, sculpture, architecture
• Memory in literature, drama, poetry
• Alternative sources of memory: material culture and cheap print
• Early modern oral history: memoirs, testi-mony, legal sources
• Mnemonic techniques and institutions: ars memoria, museums, libraries
• Places of memory/lieux de mémoire
• Memory and identity formation/elaboration: class/rank, nation, empire, religion, sex/gender, race/ethnicity
• Memory and its function for the formation of knowledge
• Relation of memory, historical knowledge and historiography
• Memory and politics: Reformation, the ‘general crisis’ of the seventeenth century, Enlightenment, war, local/regional/urban politics, imperial expansion and trade
• Memory and (early) modernity: print media, early industrialisation
• Mediating and remediating memory: recycling and reusing memories
• Space/place and memory: town, country, nation, empire, private/public spaces.

The Summer School will be conducted in English. With generous support from the VolkswagenStiftung, we can provide return transport to Göttingen, accommodation, and breakfast/lunches for participants. Child care is available for up to four children and is provided on a first come, first served basis.

Prospective participants are requested to send the following to the organisers, Andrew Wells and Claudia Nickel, at memory2017@uni-goettingen.de by 31 May 2017:

• 1 Page CV
• Brief letter of motivation
• 250-word abstract of your research

We particularly welcome applications from all individuals from under-represented groups or who may have special requirements (including, but not limited to, physical or mental disability). Such applicants are encouraged to specify any such requirements in their letter of motivation.

Further information will be available shortly at the website of the Göttingen Graduate School of the Humanities (Graduiertenschule für Geisteswissenschaften Göttingen): https://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/summer-school-memory/562570.html

Contact Info: 

Organization:

Dr. Claudia Nickel, Dr. Andrew Wells

Graduiertenschule für Geisteswissenschaften Göttingen (GSGG), Universität Göttingen, Friedländer Weg 2, 37085 Göttingen, Germany

Contact Email: 

memory2017@uni-goettingen.de

URL: 

https://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/summer-school-memory/562570.html

Conference on Technologies of Frankenstein: 1818-2018 - 7-9 March 2018, New Jersey, United States

Call for Papers

Technologies of Frankenstein: 1818-2018 

7-9 March 2018, Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, New Jersey USA)

Co-sponsors: Stevens Institute of Technology and IEEE History Center

The 200th anniversary year of the first edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus has drawn worldwide interest in revisiting the novel’s themes. What were those themes and what is their value to us in the early twenty-first century? Mary Shelley was rather vague as to how Victor, a young medical student, managed to reanimate a person cobbled together from parts of corpses. The imagination of the novel’s readership outfitted Victor’s laboratory with the chemical and electrical technologies that brought the creature to life. Subsequent theatrical and cinematic versions of Frankenstein have been, like the creature, patched together from the novel and from contemporary popular press as well as public demonstrations of medical, chemical, and electrical research. Mary Shelley’s contemporaries arguably exploited her novel to their own purposes, including George Canning (leader of the British House of Commons in 1824) who drew an analogy between the prospect of freeing West Indian slaves and Victor’s “monster” who is left in the world with no master to curtail his criminal instincts. Some of Mary Shelley’s biographers characterize the story of Victor Frankenstein’s reanimation experiment as a cautionary tale against techno-science run amok while others emphasize Victor’s irresponsible behavior toward his subject. In what ways might our tools of science and communication serve as an “elixir of life” since the age of Frankenstein? Topic areas include and are not limited to items on the list below. For more information about the conference and to register please visit http://frankenstein2018.org.

Themes 

• Branding “Frankenstein” (Food, Comics, Gaming, Music, Theater, Film)
• Computational and Naval Technology (Mapping, Navigation, The Idea of the Journey)
• Digital Humanities and GeoHumanities (Applications, Pedagogy, Library/Information Technology)
• Engineering Technologies: Past/Present/Future (Chemical, Electrical, Biomedical)
• Future Technologies and Labor Concerns
• How might industrialized nations develop low-cost solutions to provide maternal and pediatric care in regions with limited medical facilities?
• How are our ideas of the “Monstrous” or “Other” changing since the publication of Frankenstein?
• Is the pharmaceutical industry using human consumers as experiments for profit?
• What ethical and legal issues will emerge in the age of advanced or “aware” artificial intelligence?
• What does it mean to be human?
• What is the responsibility of government in world-wide health care?
• Who is responsible for the outcomes of techno-science?
• Who should have access to advanced human enhancement technologies and why?

Deadline: 

Submit inquires and/or abstracts of 300 words with brief cv by 15 October 2017 to Michael Geselowitz (m.geselowitz@ieee.org) and Robin Hammerman (rhammerm@stevens.edu).

We are dedicated to a harassment-free conference experience for everyone.

Contact Info: 

Michael Geselowitz (IEEE History Center) and Robin Hammerman (Stevens Institute of Technology, College of Arts and Letters)

Contact Email: 

rhammerm@stevens.edu

URL: http://frankenstein2018.org

ADVANCED ACADEMIA FELLOWSHIP PROGRAMME 2018-19 FOR INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARS (SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES)

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS 

2018/2019 ADVANCED ACADEMIA FELLOWSHIP PROGRAMME 

FOR INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARS (SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES)

With the support of a donor within the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft and the Fritz-Thyssen Foundation

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS 

The Centre for Advanced Study Sofia (CAS Sofia) announces a Call for Applications for its 2018/2019 In-Residence Advanced Academia Fellowships for fundamental research in the fields of the humanities and the social sciences. 

OBJECTIVE

CAS Sofia is an independent Institute with international and multidisciplinary profile. Located in Sofia, Bulgaria, it promotes high-level scholarship in the social sciences and the humanities. In addition to supporting focus-group research, CAS Sofia invites outstanding scholars to pursue their individual research projects during in-residence periods of up to five months. The invited Fellows participate in the intellectual life and the scholarly community of the Centre (Bulgarian and foreign fellows) while working on projects of their own choice. Fellows receive adequate material and intellectual support and can profit from the Centre's wide international networks, international seminar- and guest-lecturer programme. CAS Sofia assists Fellows in all practical matters concerning travel, residence and research in Sofia.

FORMAT

CAS Sofia provides in-residence fellowships of two- to five- month duration to post-doctoral non-Bulgarian researchers. Junior as well as Senior scholars are invited to apply. 

    The selected Fellows are entitled to: 

    A monthly stipend of 700 euro* (liable to 10% income tax) to cover living expenses related to the stay in Sofia. 

    Accommodation in Sofia, comprising living quarters and working space. The Fellows will also have free access to the CAS library and electronic resources/databases. 

    Travel allowance (up to 400 euro);

    Research expenses (up to 250 Euro).

DURATION AND CONDITIONS

Candidates may apply for two periods: 

    1 March 2018 - 31 July 2018 (Summer semester)

    1 October 2018 - 28 February 2019 (Winter semester)

N.B. The final invitation for fellowship depends on the ranking of the application and the preferred period. Availability for both periods is an advantage for the applicant. Please, indicate in the application form whether you prefer one or either period.

The selected Fellows shall take part in the regular Fellow seminars and the other scientific events organized by the Centre (workshops, conferences, lectures, etc.) and present their project in lectures or seminars. The results of their work shall be summarized in a paper (in English), to be published in the electronic CAS Working Paper Series. 

ELIGIBILITY

Candidates must:

    Be non-Bulgarian citizens; 

    Have completed a PhD in the fields of the humanities and the social sciences; 

    International research experience (participation in projects and refereed conferences) and publications in peer-reviewed academic editions are strong advantages. 

WORKING LANGUAGE

As an international academic institution CAS conducts most of its work in English, which is also the language of the fellow seminars. Therefore, a good command of English is required.

APPLICATION

Please carefully consider the former two documents when preparing your application. They can be downloaded also from www.cas.bg. 

For Junior scholars (up to 8 years after PhD defense**) only: two letters of recommendation by scholars familiar with the applicant’s academic work should be emailed to CAS by the referees. 

All application documents should be presented in English and sent by e-mail to dimov@cas.bg with a subject entry “Advanced Academia Fellowships.” 

Deadline for applications: May 31, 2017

SELECTION CRITERIA

High quality of the candidate's academic portfolio and publications, participation in international research; 

Innovative fundamental research proposal with significant contribution; 

Interdisciplinary and/or comparative approaches are an advantage.

SELECTION PROCEDURE

The selection will be carried out by the international Academic Council of CAS based on evaluation of the potential of the candidate relative to his/her career stage and the quality of the proposed project. Short-listed candidates will be invited for an on-line interview. The results will be announced in November 2017 by e-mail and at the website of the institute: http://www.cas.bg/. Members of the CAS Academic Council do not disclose to candidates their assessment reports.

The Academic Council reserves the right, in cases of candidatures with equal assessment, to give preferentiality to candidates who have not been CAS Fellows during the preceding 5 years or have already been granted two CAS fellowships. 

CONTACT PERSON AND MAILING ADDRESS

Mr. Dimiter Dimov, e-mail: dimov@cas.bg 

Centre for Advanced Study Sofia; Sofia 1000, 7-B, Stefan Karadja Str, 

tel.: + 359 2 9803704 / fax: + 359 2 9803662 

-------------------------------------------

* The amount is consistent with the prices in Bulgaria and is sufficient to cover the living costs of the fellows. 

**  Extensions to this period may be allowed in case of eligible career breaks which must be properly documented (maternity leave, long-term illness leave, national service, etc.).

Contact Info: 

Dimiter Dimov

Centre for Advanced Study Sofia; Sofia 1000, 7-B, Stefan Karadja Str, 

tel.: + 359 2 9803704 / fax: + 359 2 9803662

Contact Email: 

dimov@cas.bg

URL: 

http://cas.bg/

International Conference on REVOLUTION, REFORMATION AND RE-FORMATION: Perspectives on Conflict and Change in History

Call For Abstracts: 

Hosted by the Institute of Historical Research, University of London

Deadline for registration: 31st May 2017

Both Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses and the October Revolution provoked political, religious, and cultural upheavals at home that reverberated temporally and spatially, evolving into global forces. sixteenth-century Europe and twentieth-century Russia provide insertion points that will allow us to explore the broader themes of revolution and re-formation throughout history. Today, as extremism and radical movements from across the political spectrum receive increasing attention, reflections on the significance of moments of accelerated change in both the short and the long term become greatly relevant and pressing. We are inviting papers considering moments and mechanisms of change in multiple contexts - political, economic, religious, cultural, spatial and material. The conference will take place at the Institute of Historical Research on Thursday 8th June 2017.

The plenary speaker will be Professor Stephen Smith, University of Oxford. Professor Smith's research interests are in the history of modern Russia and China and comparative communism, with a current focus on the 'politics of the supernatural' - how ordinary people deployed religious and magical beliefs and practices as a way of dealing with and putting meaning on the turbulent and often traumatic changes that overtook their lives. In January 2017 he published his latest book, Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928 with Oxford University Press.

The keynote will be delivered by Dr. Daphne Halikiopoulou, Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at Reading. Dr. Halikiopoulou's research looks at radical nationalism, the politics of exclusion, and the cultural and economic determinants of far-right support. She has written books on patterns of secularisation in Greece and the Republic of Ireland, and most recently co-authored The Golden Dawn's 'Nationalist Solution': Explaining the Rise of the Far Right in Greece (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

Regiester here

Contact Info: 

For more informaton please contact the History Lab committee at ihrhistorylab@gmail.com or message us on twitter @IHRHistoryLAB. Queries can be addressed to Grace Redhead our Conference Convenor, or David Tiedemann our Publicity Officer. 

Contact Email: ihrhistorylab@gmail.com

URL: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/revolution-reformation-and-re-formation-history-lab-annual-postgraduate-conference-2017-t...

Workshop on New Directions in the Study of Populism: Arizona State University United States

Call For Abstracts:-

We invite proposals for a paper to be presented at a workshop on “New Directions in the Study of Populism.” The conference will take place March 15 thru March 17, 2018, at the West and Thunderbird campuses of Arizona State University (from Thursday early evening to Saturday early afternoon).

There is now a renewed academic interest in the study of populism, and a surge of empirical explorations and normative evaluations of populism. The purpose of this conference is to explore the "scope and methods" of populism studies as an interdisciplinary area of studies, and identify shared assumptions as well as normative, theoretical, methodological, and political areas or agreement and disagreement.  

We plan to assemble a small group of 20 scholars who are doing cutting-edge work on populism.  We are interested in putting together a mix of more experienced scholars and young scholars, and would like to bring people from different disciplines, different theoretical orientations, and who apply different methodological toolkits.

We have two keynote addresses as part of the conference. On Thursday night, Thomas Frank will give an opening lecture to a broader audience than the conference participants. On Friday night, Theda Skocpol will give a keynote presentation to a smaller group of mainly the conference attendees. Other confirmed participants include Paris Aslanidis (Yale), Jack Bratich (Rutgers), Benjamin McKean (OSU), David Meyer (UC Irvine), and Benjamin Moffitt (Stockholm University).

Participants are expected to contribute a chapter, based on their workshop presentation, to an edited volume. By accepting this invitation you are agreeing to submit a chapter.  We intend that the edited volume would serve as the entry point for scholars and graduate students who are interested in doing research on populism.

Hotel Information:

Hotel rooms are available at a conference rate of $85 (+tax) in the Thunderbird Executive Inn, which is located at the Conference site. There is no registration fee and we will provide meals for registered participants during the conference. It is worth mentioning that Arizona weather is usually particularly nice around March and participants may choose to extend their stay to enjoy the sun (or attend the baseball spring training).

Submission Instructions:

If you are interested in participating in the conference (and are willing to contribute a chapter), please submit a detailed proposal describing the paper you intend to write and present at the conference, situating it in the context of your broader work, and a CV, to one of the organizers (see contact information below). The deadline for submitting a proposal is: July 1, 2017. Acceptance notification expected by August 1st.

Contact Info: 

For questions, contact a member of the organizing committee:

Carol Mueller: carol.mueller@asu.edu

Majia Nadesan: majia@asu.edu

Amit Ron: amit.ron@asu.edu

International Conference :Victim Narratives in Transnational Contexts, January 25- 27, 2018, Austria

Call For Abstracts:

The figure of the victim seems to be virtually unparalleled in its power to polarise contemporary societies. The discursively produced and judicially fixed victim status is highly desirable for individuals and groups because it accords moral superiority and guarantees legal rights and claims. Victims are considered to be essentially ‘good’; they stand on the right side of history and must receive special treatment. This desire for a victim status both at the collective and at the individual level has been cri­ti­cised by, among others, Esther Benbassa, Jean-Michel Chaumont, Peter Novick, and, most recently, Daniele Giglioli. They argue that the current ‘victim cult’ defends victims against any form of criticism and makes them virtually unassailable: Victims are perceived as objects and relieved of any commitment to individual responsibility. They are forever reduced to events in the past, which rules out any perspec­tive on viable future and renders it prac­ti­cally unnecessary. Lastly, and importantly, victims, in particular victims of war and violence in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, are always associated with the perpetrators and rarely seen as autonomous subjects.

The figure of the victim both constructs and destabilises national and regional historical narratives. These complex processes inspire international as well as transnational competition among victims and induce a revision of national cultures of memory. The reorganisation of Europe after 1989, the increasing globa­li­sa­tion of the world, and the emergence of new media technologies that facilitate the rapid gene­ration of images of victims and perpetrators alike, call for a transnational perspective on victim narra­tives.

The objective of this conference is to identify and analyse conceptualisations of ‘victimhood,’ in par­ti­cular with regard to cultural studies and memory research. It also aims at a critical discussion of vic­tim­hood/victim status in fictional texts (prose, poetry, theatre) as well as in other media (film, photography, etc.). The con­ference invites participants to discuss recent texts (post-1989) that challenge entrenched victim narratives and attempt to transcend the logic of retaliation and atonement without negating or relativising the victims’ suffering. The conference welcomes submissions from a broad range of discip­lines such as film, literary, and cultural studies, and is particularly interested in transnational and trans­cultural aspects.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• New conceptualisations of victim narratives: What could replace victim narratives?
• Victim narratives in national memory discourses and their transformation through transnational and transcultural perspectives
• A critique of self-victimisation and the subversive potential of self-victimisation
• Competition but also solidarity among victim groups and ensuing consequences
• Victim narratives and generational narratives
• Victim narratives and gender
• Victim narratives in postcolonial contexts
• Victim narratives in the context of mémoires croisées, entangled history, etc.
• The commercialisation of memory culture

The conference languages will be German and English. Please send abstracts in English or German (300–500 words) to Christof.Diem@uibk.ac.at along with a short biographical note and a list of publications by May 30^th, 2017. Presenters will be notified whether or not their abstracts have been accepted by June 30^th, 2017. Where possible, we will provide funding for travel and accommodation.

Organisation: Research Centre Cultures in Contact [Kulturen in Kontakt], Faculty of Humanities 2 (Language and Literature), University of Innsbruck [http://www.uibk.ac.at/kik/] 

Contact Email: Christof.Diem@uibk.ac.at