Call for Abstracts: “WHO’S IN, WHO’S OUT”: #COMMUNITY AND #DIVERSITY IN #SHAKESPEARE- Annual #Conference #German #Shakespeare Society 2024

 Time and again, Shakespeare demonstrates the frailty and contingency of the many historical and “imagined” communities (Anderson) that feature in his works. Many of his plays revolve around the conflict between individuals and society, depicting the bonds between friends, lovers, family members or even whole nations being put to the test by desire, jealousy, and ambition. If Shakespeare’s communities are unstable to begin with, then discussions of diversity bring to light that very instability even further. His works have been both hailed for showcasing the universality of human nature and critiqued for implicitly reinforcing a Western, Eurocentric world view. Shakespearean drama walks a fine line between incorporating diverse facets of early modern life – including gender and sexuality, race, and religion – and perpetuating insidious mechanisms of marginalisation and othering, as the fates of some of the figureheads of Shakespearean diversity, such as Shylock, Othello and Caliban, show. On Shakespeare’s stage, community and diversity are intimately but uneasily paired and expose the various ways in which “difference”, as Goran Stanivukovic writes in Queer Shakespeare: Desire and Sexuality (2017), is “based on suppression, occlusion and semantic difference of allied vocabulary” (24). Shakespeare thus makes us ponder the question “who’s in, who’s out” (King Lear 5.3.16) both in early modern times and in ours. While the dramatic representations of these conflicts are inevitably bound to the historical contexts that helped produce them, the theatre itself always had and still has the potential to renegotiate them and to newly create communities, just as it is capable of diversifying Shakespeare, and making his works more inclusive for 21st century audiences.

In light of this complex nexus, we invite short papers on how Shakespeare’s works, their performance, and reception engage with community, diversity, and the difficult dynamics between them. Topics may include, but are in no way limited to:

- Representations of inclusion and exclusion in Shakespeare’s works

- Community and diversity in the early modern period

- Shakespeare’s treatment of marriage, friendship, family, and kinship

- Intersectional Shakespeare

- Shakespeare and (trans)national communities

- Diversifying the Shakespearean canon through ‘non-canonical’ readings

- Adapting and appropriating Shakespeare’s works to build more inclusive communities

- Institutional (lack of) diversity and community in Shakespeare studies

- Teaching Shakespeare more ‘diversely’

- Accessible Shakespeare

Our seminar will address these issues with a panel of six papers during the annual conference of the German Shakespeare Association, Shakespeare-Tage, which will take place from 19–21 April 2024 in Bochum, Germany. As critical input for the discussion, we invite papers of no more than 15 minutes that present concrete case studies, concise examples and strong views on the topic. Please send your proposals (abstracts of 300 words) by 01 December 2023 to the seminar convenors:

Dr. Marlene Dirschauer, University of Hamburg: marlene.dirschauer@uni-hamburg.de

Dr. Jonas Kellermann, University of Konstanz: jonas.kellermann@uni-konstanz.de

The Seminar provides a forum for established as well as young scholars to discuss texts and contexts. Participants of the seminar will subsequently be invited to submit extended versions of their papers for publication in Shakespeare Seminar Online (SSO). While we cannot offer travel bursaries, the association will arrange for the accommodation of all participants in a hotel close to the main venues. For more information, please contact Marlene Dirschauer and Jonas Kellermann. For more information about the events and publications also see: https://shakespeare-gesellschaft.de/.

CFA: Travel and Research Grants from the Central European History Society

 The Central European History Society (CEHS) seeks applications from North American doctoral candidates (ABD) and recent PhDs (up to three years after completion of degree) in Central European history for travel and research grants up to $4,000. To be eligible, research projects must demonstrate a clear and significant connection to Central Europe and involve travel outside North America. For the purposes of this grant, “Central Europe” includes the region’s historically German-speaking lands as well as the Habsburg Empire and its successor states. All grant-related travel must be planned to take place between April 1 and December 31, 2024.

Applicants need to be members of the Central European History Society at the time of application. (Membership also includes an individual subscription to the journal Central European History: $27/print edition and $17/digital edition annually for graduate students; $42/print and $32/digital for others.) To become a member, visit https://www.cambridge.org/core/membership/cehs.

Application Procedure:

The following materials are required, and should be combined into one PDF and e-mailed to CEHSGrants@gmail.com:   

• Statement of Purpose (1000-word limit), including a project title, a succinct summary of the project and its scholarly contributions, as well as a cogent explanation of how the research to be funded by the grant fits into the larger research project. If the application is a resubmission, the narrative should indicate in which ways the project has advanced since the previous application.
• Curriculum Vitae (with a clear indication of the applicant’s preferred mail and email addresses)
• Budget Statement, totaling no more than $4,000, which should estimate and itemize costs for all planned expenditures (broken out into categories, e.g. foreign transportation, local transportation, lodging, copying, etc.), in keeping with the planned itinerary.

The application and one (1) letter of reference (which the recommender should e-mail directly to CEHSGrants@gmail.com) must be received by 15 January 2024.  Applicants are advised to give their recommender several weeks’ notice of their need for a letter.

For further information or inquiries about the grants (but not to submit applications), please contact the Executive Director of CEHS, Anthony Steinhoff, at cehsexecutivedirector@gmail.com.

Contact Information

Anthony Steinhoff

Executive Director, Central European History Society

Contact Email

CEHSExecutiveDirector@gmail.com

URL

https://www.centraleuropeanhistory.org/?page_id=122

Call for Papers: Narratives of Land: Place, Space, and Human Identity- January 2024

The land is always stalking people. The land makes people live right. The land looks after us. The land looks after people.

– Mrs Annie Peaches, a 77-year-old member of the Western Apache community of Cibecue (Basso 2000: 41)

A narrative is an orally or verbally disseminated account that captures events, attaches meanings to them, and configures the world around us. So, when we propose “Narratives of Land”, the first query that confronts us is – is it at all possible for a land to speak or communicate? Does land possess any agential faculty to affect us? Is a land always mute or it speaks through its materiality?

There is a sense of co-existential and affective interconnectivity between land and humans regarding our empirical perceptions of it. These multi-sensorial faculties shape or orient human identities, our perceptions, and our sociocultural lifeworlds and also redefine the land itself. David Manuel Navarrete and Michael Redclift, in “The Role of Place in the Margins of Space” have talked of the “human dimension of spatiality” (3). In their theorization, place or land is not static or an inert actor instead it is a living entity with a degree of dynamism, fluidity, and changeability. The materialities of any place confer a sense of belongingness, and rootedness to its people.

South Asia is a colonial cartographic construct that has its own regional diversities, histories, and memories. South Asia is a space where the interaction or ‘intra-action’ between land and human has long been the crux for critical inquiry. Land as a geographical entity has long been discussed by geographers, historians, geologists, ecologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and so on. It has also been the subject of poets, novelists, and also literary critics for many generations. So, to talk about land is to dive into the ocean of multiplicity where there is no terminal point rather any juncture here is a point of departure. The human mind as an isolated entity distinct from its environment since, in the words of Robert Pepperell “a human cannot be separated from its supportive environment … it seems the human is a ‘fuzzy edged’ entity that is profoundly dependent into its surroundings, much as the brain is dependent on the body” (Pepperell 20).

Every human being has their own way of communicating with the land. A diasporic subject often sees the land as not only a physical entity but a ‘topophilic bond’ that transcends the physicality of land. Yi Fu Tuan has used the term “topophilia” (1990) to suggest a sense of attachment or a feeling-link between people and place. Land can be seen as an open ground of action, being and becoming. A land can be a political construct as well. During the partition of India land becomes a defining category of human existence. The sense of belonging to a land informs one’s social, political, and cultural identity. Even, in this age of Anthropocene and Capitalocene, the mutilation and commodification of South Asia has been interrogated by different environmental theorists. Even a post-apocalyptic or a post-war land also speaks a different narrative which is yet to be heard. All these implications can be made to subscribe to the idea of indigeneity.

The conference intends to engage with these multiple concerns emerging out of the land of South Asia. The conference is going to be an interdisciplinary space for scholars of all disciplines to showcase indigeneity contained within the narratives of the land. So, to convey thoughts in language, the conference is ready to set an epistemic dialogue with the land and bring forth an alternative domain of critical explorations.

Abstracts are invited but not limited to the following sub topics/themes:

· Environmental Studies

· Diaspora

· Border Studies

· Human Geography

· Posthuman Studies

· Narratives of War

· Space/Place

· Migration

· Indigenous Epistemes

Abstract Submission: On or before 16th November, 2023

Acceptance of abstract: By 30th November, 2023

Full paper submission: On or before 3rd January, 2024

Seminar dates: 10 th and 11 th January 2024

Seminar will in-person but owing to enough overseas candidates, we'll try to arrange an online session if/when necessary

Send your abstracts to narrativesofland@gmail.com

For further details contract narrativesofland@gmail.com

Send in abstracts of around 300 words along with a bio note of 150 words to the above mail id.

Registration details will be communicated in due course.

Call for Papers Adaptation: Literature, Film, and Culture (Deadline Extended) -February 21-24, 2024

 Proposal submission deadline: Extended to November 14, 2023

Proposals for papers and panels are now being accepted for the 45th annual SWPACA conference. One of the nation’s largest interdisciplinary academic conferences, SWPACA offers nearly 70 subject areas, each typically featuring multiple panels. 

The Adaptation: Literature, Film, and Culture area invites you to submit proposals for presentations that critically engage with the subject of adaptation. While the term “adaptation” most commonly refers to a film based upon or inspired by a novel (or the process of developing such a film), proposals for adaptations involving other media as source texts or final products are also welcome (for example, adaptations that involve art, theater, music, dance, television shows, video games, photographs, or comic books). Topics for paper proposals include, but are not limited to:

· adaptations of classic works.                                

· the process of adaptation.

· contemporary adaptations.                                 

· ethics of adaptation.

· theories of adaptation.                                            

· adaptation and audience engagement.

· source texts with multiple adaptations.               

· adaptation and aesthetics

· adaptations and the film industry.                       

· cross-cultural adaptations. 

· representations of culture in adaptations.          

· adaptations across generations.

All proposals must be submitted through the conference’s database at http://register.southwestpca.org/southwestpca

For details on using the submission database and on the application process in general, please see the Proposal Submission FAQs and Tips page at http://southwestpca.org/conference/faqs-and-tips/. 

Individual proposals for 15-minute papers must include an abstract of approximately 200-500 words. Including a brief bio in the body of the proposal form is encouraged, but not required.  

For information on how to submit a proposal for a roundtable or a multi-paper panel, please view the above FAQs and Tips page.

Contact Information

Amy S. Fatzinger, Ph.D.

Contact Email

fatzinge@email.arizona.edu

URL

http://southwestpca.org/conference/call-for-papers/

Call for Papers: #Folklore and Popular Culture Area -March 2024

The Folklore Area of the Popular Culture Association is currently inviting proposals for the 2024 Popular Culture Association Conference. They are interested in organizing sessions, special panels, and individual papers centered around Folklore Studies. These sessions usually have a duration of 1½ hours and typically feature four papers. Each presentation should be limited to 15 minutes.

The call for proposals is open to various topics related to folklore studies, and they encourage a broad range of ideas. Some possible themes include Folklore in Popular Culture, Folklore and its presence in digital media, the impact of folklore on different cultural forms such as literature, film, and music, as well as exploring the connections between folklore and areas like religion, material culture, gender, children, memory studies, and global, regional, or local influences.

They also welcome proposals discussing the relationship between folklore and other academic fields like fairy tale studies, literary studies, and anthropology.

Themes:

• Folklore in Popular Culture/Folklore as Popular Culture
• Folklore and digital media
• Influence of folklore on other forms of culture (literature, film, music, etc.)
• Folklore and Religion
• Folklore and Material Culture
• The difference between oral and literary sources of tradition
• Folklore and Gender
• Folklore and children
• Uses of folklore
• Folklore and Globalism/Regionalism/Localism
• Illustrators/Illustrations of and in folklore
• Folklore and memory/memory studies
• Symbolism in folklore
• The relationship between folklore and fairy tale studies/literary studies/anthropology

It's important to note that the Folklore Area does not accept proposals from undergraduate students.

To submit an individual paper, you should provide a title and a 100-word abstract. Please make sure to adhere to the submission guidelines provided by the PCA, which can be found at this link: https://pcaaca.org/page/submissionguidelines.

The conference itself is scheduled for March 27-30, 2024, and it will take place in Chicago, Illinois at the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile.

For any inquiries or questions, you can reach out to Kathryn Edney, who serves as the Associate Provost at Regis College, via email at kathryn.edney@regiscollege.edu.

Contact Email

kathryn.edney@regiscollege.edu

URL

https://pcaaca.org/page/submissionguidelines

Call for Papers: Academic Conference on Terminator @40: Origins and Legacies

 An academic conference hosted by The Centre for Film, Television and Screen Studies, Bangor University, Wales 

18 & 19 June 2024 

The Terminator franchise has left an indelible mark on popular culture. In 1984, James Cameron’s dark vision of the future created a cultural shock that continues to resonate to this day not only in cinema but also in literature, art, design, gaming, and critical theory and is even credited with having spawned several aesthetic trends, such as tech-noir. What started as a film has now become a multi-media universe consisting of sequels, a television series, web series, comics, video games, board games, novels and theme park rides. The franchise is also frequently cited in debates related to multinational corporations, robotics, biopolitics, post- and transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and nuclear apocalypse. 

Hosted by the Centre for Film, Television and Screen Studies at Bangor University in North Wales, this symposium proposes to bring together scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds – such as cultural and screen studies; the history of art, design, fashion and architecture; musicology; philosophy; political sciences; computer science and robotics; literature; urban and ecological studies; and race, gender, queer and sexuality studies - to explore The Terminator forty years after its release, explore its origins and legacies and consider its position within wider visual culture.  

We welcome contributions from any perspective such as (but not limited to) the following: 

Terminator and its origins, influences, production, publicity, reception and afterlife 

Terminator and aesthetics  

Terminator and biopolitics, posthumanism and urban planning. 

Terminator and capitalism, neoliberalism, post-industrialism and multinational corporations 

Terminator and design 

Terminator and ecological studies 

Terminator and fandom and ‘cult’ 

Terminator and gender 

Terminator and James Cameron 

Terminator’s multi-media franchise (sequels, television, web series, comic books, video games, board games, novels and theme park rides) 

Terminator and psychoanalysis 

Terminator and race, ethnicity and/or the “Other” 

Terminator and robotics, artificial intelligence, cybernetic organisms, the transhuman and post-human 

Terminator and sci-fi 

Terminator and sexuality 

Terminator and stardom 

Terminator and tech noir, retrofuturism, future noir, and cyberpunk.  

 

We are applying for funding to facilitate postgraduate and unwaged participation. 

 

Please submit an abstract here by 1 March 2024.  

 

For further information, please contact the organisers Professor Nathan Abrams (Bangor University) and Dr Elizabeth Miller (Bangor University) at TerminatorConference@gmail.com 

 

Best,

Contact Email

TerminatorConference@gmail.com

INTERNATIONAL #CONFERENCE ON #MEMORY #STUDIES -DEPARTMENTS OF ENGLISH AND HISTORY LORETO COLLEGE, #KOLKATA- February, 2024)

 

CONCEPT NOTE:

Memory studies is a multidisciplinary field which combines intellectual strands from literature, history, philosophy, psychology and sociology, among others. Henri Bergson’s Matter and Memory (1896), Paul Ricœur’s Memory, History and Forgetting (2004), French historian Pierre Nora’s Realms of Memory (1996) and Jacques Le Goff’s History and Memory (1992) have inspired much research in the area of memory studies. Memory can be both an individual phenomenon as well as societal and collective. Forms of remembering operate as individual and collective representations of the past and they constitute a range of cultural resources for personal, social and historical identities, privileging particular readings of the past and subordinating others. Collective memory can serve as a therapeutic practice for a community and its members, as it comprises an active constructive process during which the members of a community participate in interpreting and processing shared past experiences (particularly traumas) into eventual memory representations, often in such forms as narratives, dramatizations, art, and ritual. Literature thus forms an important medium of cultural memory. The mass media plays a key role in the constitution of memory – and the politics of remembering is intrinsically connected to power.  The act of remembering, whether involving individual, socio-historical or cultural representations of the past, is a process which involves selections, absences and multiple, potentially conflicting accounts. Memories are part of a larger process of dynamic cultural negotiation involving history and literature, which defines memories as narratives, and as fluid and mediated cultural and personal traces of the past. In the modern world, then, memory is an important means of establishing authority or destabilising grand narratives of history and power, of evoking nostalgia and helping to forge personal and national identity.

The conference will seek to address issues such as the following:

How do we represent the past to ourselves and to others? Which of our many pasts do we represent, and when, where, and why do we change those representations? How do those representations shape our actions, identities, and understandings? How do individual-level processes interact with collective ones, and vice versa? What does it mean to think about “memory” in these broad ways? In what ways are we ethically and politically obligated to remember, and what are the consequences of forgetting or failing to meet these obligations?

Keynote Speakers:

Prof. Stef Craps (University of Ghent, Belgium)

Dr. Abhishek Parui (IIT Madras)

Special Plenary Sessions:

Dr. Itay Lotem (University of Westminster, London)

Ms. Roberta Bacic (Founder of Conflict Textiles, Northern Ireland)

We invite paper submissions of 15-20 minutes duration from scholars whose work addresses topics including, but not limited to the following fields:

• Memory and oral history
• Contested histories and memory
• Memory, memorials, the visual arts, archives, installations
• Landscape and memory
• Memory and trauma (slavery, Partition, World Wars, Holocaust, Irish conflict, genocide, apartheid, 9/11, pandemic etc)
• Literature and nostalgia
• Memory and the diaspora
• Memory and the Media
• Collective Memory
• Cultural Memory

 

To submit a proposal, please send abstracts to conferencememorystudies@gmail.com 

Please include the following in one PDF:

• Paper title

• Paper abstract (250-word maximum)

• CV with your full name, institutional affiliation (if applicable), title, and email address

 

Paper presenters will be informed by 15 November, 2023.

 

Conference Convenor: Sukanya Dasgupta

Co-Convenor: Suparna Ghosh

Head of the Organizing Committee: Srijita Chakravarty

 

Following the conference, a selection of papers will be chosen by the organizers for inclusion in a proposed edited volume.