THE OSCHOLARS
___________
Vol. IV |
No. 11 |
Issue no 43: December 2007
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BEING TALKED ABOUT
<< There’s only one thing in the world worse than
being talked about and that is not being talked about >>
A monthly page advertising Conference and Journal Calls, of interest or
potential interest to our readers, and supplementing the notices on our
NOTICEBOARD.
Some readers may not be aware that the
Calls for Papers once e-mailed to and by the
Calls here are posted in a rolling list, in
chronological order of deadline, with the Table of Contents in alphabetical
order of subject, linked directly to each CfP. Calls are removed on
expiry. The list will run five months ahead. Those without deadline
have the month of entry printed and will remain posted for three
months. Those with recently expired deadlines are included when we
received them too late for the last issue of THE
OSCHOLARS, or when we hope that the deadline may be extended, or at
least to alert readers of the conference to which they refer. These Conferences will in turn be listed when
their programmes are published, in our Forthcoming Conferences page, edited by Florina
Tufescu. Information for inclusion
about Conferences after the expiry of Calls for papers should be sent to Dr
Tufescu at @.
All details
should be checked for changes with the organisers, not with THE OSCHOLARS
Please send any Call you want us to include to oscholars@gmail.com and please
mention THE OSCHOLARS if you are
offering a paper.
Readers who
give papers may publish their abstracts in THE
OSCHOLARS.
Click for
quick access to any of these calls.
Calls in bold have a specific reference to Wilde.
Theatre-related calls will be found in our section Click its logo to reach it.
The full Call for papers for NEMLA next April can be found at http://www.nemla.org/convention/cfp07.html
Henry James |
Dress |
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Katherine Mansfield |
Independent Scholarship |
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George Moore |
Life Writing |
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Edith Wharton |
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Oscar
Wilde (1) |
Modern Love |
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Oscar
Wilde (2) |
Modernism
at the fin-de-siècle |
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Æstheticism and/or Decadence |
Neo-Victorian
Literature |
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Anarchism |
The Press |
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Art & Industry |
Victorian Studies |
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British Studies |
Viennese Cafés |
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Crime |
|
|
2007
DECEMBER
|
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) is now widely recognised
not only as one of the most representative figures of the British fin de
siècle, but as one of the most influential Anglophone authors of the
nineteenth century. His texts command a wide readership outside the
Anglo-American context and his plays are regularly performed in the major
European theatres. But the history of his critical reception in the twentieth
century is complex and discontinuous. In Britain Wilde suffered a long period
of comparative neglect and lack of scholarship that followed the scandal of
his conviction for ‘gross indecency’ in 1895; and it is only in the last few
decades that his works have been fully reassessed and reinstated as central
in the literary and dramatic canons of the nineteenth century. While Wilde
was subjected to silence in |
This colloquium, to take place in |
Proposals are therefore invited for papers that
explore any aspect of Wilde’s European reception, from the nineteenth to the
twenty-first century. Contributions might include, but are not limited to
questions of literary influence, performance history, translation, cultural
and intellectual history, censorship, gender, the Wilde myth, etc. |
Please submit 300-word abstracts for 20-minute
papers to Stefano Evangelista (stefano-maria.evangelista@trinity.ox.ac.uk)
by |
Courtauld History of Dress Association,
Courtauld Institute of Art, University of |
|
From feathers to leathers, bones to stones,
jewels and furs and hair, this conference will explore the convergence of
dress and the natural world. From the ermine-lined robes of medieval monarchs
to today's catwalk-strutting feather-clad models, people have long adorned
their bodies with such materials, or their facsimiles. Clothing made from
animal parts or representing other elements of nature has provided some of
the most striking dress through time and across cultures such as the
splendour of a 19th century Siberian salmon skin coat or the aspirational
luxury represented by the 1950s fur-clad movie star. |
|
Papers are solicited that draw on a wide variety
of symbolic, cultural and technical aspects of flora and fauna in dress, from
a diversity of approaches and a spread of historical periods and geographical
areas. Topics may include fur, feathers, skins and other creature components
in dress across cultures; fashion's florals; the use of hair, straw, insects
in dress and accessories; sumptuary laws and their aim of regulating the use
of fur and other animal elements; imitation fur, ivory, jewels, tortoiseshell
and other; precious jewels; moments of significant rebellion against using
animals and their parts in dress; conserving clothing that uses fugitive
materials from the natural world; the renewed enthusiasm of the early 21st
century for furs and skins and the ecological movement and its impact on fashion. |
|
CHODA hopes that this conference will explore
many of these symbolic, cultural, social and technical aspects of the
convergence of dress and the natural world. This conference welcomes
contributions from dress, textile and art historians, conservators,
ethnographers, anthropologists, fashion theorists and social historians.
Preference will be given to papers that include images. |
|
CHODA regrets that it is unable to pay for any
expenses involved in the preparation and presentation of a paper, or for
travel to the conference. Please send a one-page abstract and brief CV by |
|
Sonnet Stanfill, Furniture, Textiles and Fashion
Department V & A South Kensington |
Research Society for Victorian Periodicals
(RSVP) 40th annual conference |
|
“Character” was the term commonly used of the
Victorian press for what today we might call the “brand personality” of
a periodical - its distinctive features as a commodity in the
marketplace. But how was this “character” created? Some periodicals
identified themselves as people (one thinks of Mr Punch, or the less
voluble human figures on many a masthead) or with people (Howitt’s
Journal, Reynolds’s Miscellany, Blackwood’s, or perhaps a reliable
stable of authors, or a named editor). Many sought to improve the
character of readers by offering heroes or heroines for emulation. Some
preferred a recurrent set of textual practices – format, layout, size, range
of departments. Some characters were generated through the targeting of
specific audiences such as grocers or suffragettes, radical workers or young
imperialists. Others were prompted by the occasions on which they expected to
be encountered – for reading en famille on Sundays, over weekday breakfast or
while commuting. And then there is the vital question of how the press in
general (or sections of it) were characterised by those within and
outside it: what metaphors were mobilised and why? |
|
This conference, then, offers a wide and varied
route into the exciting and still only partially explored |
|
|
Third International Conference of the Henry
James Society, 9-13 July 2008 in historic mansions by the sea at Salve Regina
University, Newport, Rhode Island. |
Keynote Speakers: Bill Brown, Edward Carson Waller Distinguished
Service Professor University of Chicago Richard Howard Professor, |
Proposals: We invite papers and panels on any
aspects of James’s work, life, or influence; on Jamesian narrative, cultural,
historical or critical *strands*; on James in Newport/Newport in James; and
on new directions and critical legacies in James studies. |
For paper proposals, maximum 500 word abstract
and brief vitae; for panel proposals, maximum 700 word abstract-summarising
the panel’s rationale and describing each paper-and a brief vitae for each
speaker. Panels will be accepted or rejected as a whole. Proposals must
include titles of papers (and panel if appropriate); presenter’s (and panel
organizer*s) name(s) and institutional affiliation(s); mailing address,
phone, fax and email address; two (2) copies of submitted materials (for
hard-copy proposals). Presentations should be fifteen to twenty minutes long
and in English. Panels should consist of three to four papers and may be
chaired by one of the presenters. |
Deadline for receipt of proposals: |
Susan M. Griffin Dept of English, U of |
2008
The Association for Research in Popular
Fictions are arranging a series of Colloquia on The Supernatural in Popular
Narrative. These will take place in
the |
These are |
Faerie,
Saturday 8th March 2008 |
Menagerie, Saturday 12th April 2008 |
Undead, Saturday 19th
July 2008 |
Magic, Saturday 6th September 2008 |
culminating in the ARPF Annual Conference on The
Supernatural Diagesis in Popular Fiction Saturday
22nd – Sunday 23rd November 2008 |
Faerie.
Topics for this conference might include, but are not limited to,
fantasy and romantic literature, symbolic landscapes, archetypal characters,
entrapment, gypsy lore, youth and beauty, glamour, Renaissance Studies,
Victorian fantasy, Children's Literature, Shakespeare, the Snow Queen, the
feast, stories from other lands and worlds, folklore, Charles Perrault,
genies, temptation, the hidden folk: Dwarves, Elves, Selkies, Pixies,
Brownies, Hobgoblins, Gnomes, Sylphs, Elementals, Leprechauns, Sprites,
amorality, honour, giftgiving, wishes, eroticism, pathways, oaths and
favours, fairy queens, Daoine Sidhe, Arthurian legend, the Wildhunt,
enchantment, Elphame, Changelings, Tir na nog, the Seelie Courts, pathways,
the old faith, illustration, interdiction. Deadline 31st Jan 2008. |
|
Undead.
Topics for this conference
might include, but are not limited to: necromancy, vampires, ghouls, zombies,
Egyptian mythology, ghost stories, Victorian horror fiction, contemporary
gothic, folksong, ancestry and heritage, perpetual youth, decay, thresholds,
romance, special effects, hesitation and anxiety, revenants, spectral
hauntings, poltergeists, séance, mediumship, spirit guides, the afterlife,
the underworld. Deadline 1st June
2008. |
|
Please contact: Nickianne Moody, convenor for
ARPF, Liverpool John Moores University, Dean Walters Building, St James Road,
Liverpool L1 7BR UK. @
Fax: +44 (0)151 643 1980 |
JANUARY
The Mid Atlantic Conference on British Studies
will hold its annual meeting on Saturday, 29th March 2008, at the University
of Maryland, Baltimore County, which is located between Baltimore and
Washington, D. C. close to Baltimore/Washington Thurgood Marshall
International Airport. |
|
Our plenary speaker will be Julia Rudolph,
University of Pennsylvania and 2007-08 Fellow at the Folger Institute, who
will discuss her current research on Common Law and Enlightenment in England,
1689-1750. |
|
The Mid-Atlantic Conference on British Studies
invites both established scholars and graduate students to submit proposals
for panels or individual papers. Thematic, round table, and pedagogical
sessions will receive special consideration. We are particularly
interested in proposals that cross chronological and disciplinary boundaries.
We will also be entertaining specific proposals for one special session
panel: ’Women's Agency in Early Modern Britain: Family, Finance and
Friendship,’ organized by Rosemary O'Day, Professor of History, The Open
University. |
|
Description: Welcome attention has been
given of late to the ways in which early modern women displayed both
ingenuity and resilience in the face of the many obstacles in the way of
their having a fulfilling life. Less attention has been accorded the context
in which their agency was set. This special session will explore the purposes
for which women, married and unmarried, exercised agency and assess the
importance of their agency for family, connection and society. Papers (and a
commentator) from all disciplines and covering all aspects of female agency
will be considered but especially welcome will be those covering patronage,
network building and education. |
|
Finally, the conference will also feature a
panel discussion of Seth Koven's Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in
Victorian London. |
|
All proposals should include a 200 word abstract
and a one-page CV with mailing address, phone number, fax number, and email
address. Applicants should also specifically indicate if they would
like their proposal considered for the special session on ‘Women's Agency.’
Please also indicate if you will need AV support. |
|
Inquiries can be made via email to the program
co-chairs: Philip Stern (stern@american.edu
) or Julie Taddeo @. |
|
Please send proposals, either by mail or
electronically, by 11th January 2008 to: |
|
Philip Stern, Department of History, American
University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC
20016-8038. @ |
A two day conference organised by the Viennese
Café and Fin de siècle Culture Research Project, to be held at the Victoria
and Albert Museum and Royal College of Art, London on 17th and 18th October 2008. |
|
As today, the cafés of fin de siècle Vienna were
an important component of modern city life, an extension of both home and
workplace. Cafés were as much to do with intellectual and social
interaction as with procuring refreshment. This conference will focus
on the complexities of the Viennese café as an urban space in order to better
understand wider questions about Viennese modernism. Through its focus on the
café, the conference aims to redefine our understanding not only of the arts
in Vienna, but also of modernity more generally. The conference encourages a
cross disciplinary approach to subjects and welcomes proposals for papers
from scholars and practitioners in any field. Possible topics include, but
are not restricted to |
|
• The complex inter-relationships between urban
modernity and artistic modernism in relation to the Viennese café. |
|
• The Viennese café as a liminal space: public
and private, ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. |
|
• The café as a site for consumption: coffee and
commerce. |
|
• Contrasts and comparisons between the Viennese
café and the café cultures of other world cities. |
|
• The café as a site for performance. |
|
• The café as a designed space: interrelations
between modern design, society and fashion. |
|
The Viennese Café and Fin-de-siècle Research
Project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and is
based at the Royal College of Art and Birkbeck, University of London. www.rca.ac.uk/viennacafe |
|
We invite abstracts of 400 words to be submitted
electronically to Dr Charlotte Ashby @ |
|
The deadline for submissions is 15th January 2008. |
Edith Wharton Conference in Lenox,
Massachusetts, 26th-28th June 2008 |
The broad theme of this conference, organized by
the Edith Wharton Society, aims to bring historical, cultural, and literary
contexts to Wharton's life and all of her work. Please send abstracts of no
more than 1000 words and a one-page cv to Carol Singley @
by 20th January 2008. |
Possible topics include: |
§
Edith Wharton and women's history and women's studies
|
§
Edith Wharton and women's writing |
§
Edith Wharton in the work of others (her influence on
others, her appearance in the work of others) |
§
Historicizing aspects of Wharton's work |
§
Edith Wharton and popular culture |
§
Edith Wharton and cultural phenomena and practices |
§
Edith Wharton and illness, addiction, etc. |
§
Edith Wharton and publishing |
From Alfred
Drake: I welcome abstracts and full essays for a
proposed volume on Oscar Wilde’s critical essays with an emphasis on how
those texts were received in the author’s own time and how they have impacted
contemporary debates in criticism and theory. I will also consider abstracts
that deal with Wilde’s fiction, poetry, or drama if they suit the
collection’s emphasis. Abstracts should be approximately 500 words long.
Please submit abstracts (or full essays) in MS Word or RTF by email
attachment (or send inline) to Dr. Alfred J. Drake at @ and include in your
email’s subject heading the phrase ‘Wilde Collection’ along with your name.
Please include a CV as a separate attachment, and if you maintain an academic
website, you are welcome to include the address. My preference is for work
that has not yet been published, but I will consider previously published
material. |
The deadline for abstracts is extended to 31st January 2008. I will confirm receipt
promptly. |
GEORGE
MOORE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES George
Moore (1852-1933), Anglo-Irish novelist, journalist, short story writer,
memoirist, autobiographer, art critic, dramatist, and sometime poet and
painter, was a prominent and often notorious figure in many literary and
aesthetic movements at the end of the nineteenth and into the twentieth
centuries. A self-proclaimed enfant terrible of the fin de siècle
(which saw bans imposed on many of his novels, including A Modern Lover, A
Mummer’s Wife, Esther Waters), Moore never ceased to challenge
established literary conventions, styles and subject matter. Although too
much of an individualist to align himself neatly with specific cultural
groupings, Moore was nevertheless associated with most of the key movements
of his time. At the turn of the century he assumed a pivotal role in the
Irish Literary Revival, and in the early twentieth century he continued to
experiment with form and genre, revising many of his earlier writings and
developing new interests in fields such as classical adaptation. |
FEBRUARY
Modernism/Modernity's special issue on
Submissions may treat any aspect of Aestheticism/Decadence and its relation
to modernism and/or the formation of 20th-century ‘modernity.’ The field is
open, but topics such Aestheticism and/ or Decadence and Victorian
visualities, technology, architecture, or science in 19th-century painting,
poetry, literature as they ‘interface’ with related phenomena and art in
modernism are welcome. |
Essays dealing with the Decadent Aesthetes
foremost and their relation to definitions of ‘modernity’ will be
considered. Essays need not make connections with 20th-century
writers if they incorporate some discussion of ‘modernity’ drawing on any of
its many definitions. Essayswill be accepted on topics/authors whose
work dates back to 1860. Indeed, the issue will contain a special ‘archival’
section containing the first translation of Gautier's brief chapter on the
Pre-Raphaelites Millais and Hunt from the 1855 exhibition. |
Send by attachment to: @ and @
or by post to Prof. Cassandra Laity, Department of English, Drew
University, 36 Madison Avenue, Madison, NJ 07940, USA. Deadline 1st February 2008. |
Birkbeck,College University of London,
4th-6th September 2008
The year 2008, as well as being the 120th
anniversary of her birth, celebrates the centenary of Katherine Mansfield¹s
arrival in London in 1908 from New Zealand at the age of nineteen, in order
to pursue a career as a writer. Within three years she would see her first
collection of short stories published In a German Pension meet John
Middleton Murry, her future husband, and go on to forge a career as the
writer of some of the twentieth-century¹s most remarkable short stories. |
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|
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* KM and
Bloomsbury/ Virginia Woolf |
Paper titles, 250-300 word abstracts (for 20
minute papers), and 150 word bio-sketches should be sent to BOTH conference
organisers by Friday
1st February 2008: Dr Gerri Kimber @ and Professor
Janet Wilson @ |
The Durrell School of Corfu will host 'An
Investigation of Modern Love', an international seminar, at its Library and
Study Centre, 18th-23rd May, 2008. Dr. Shere Hite and Professor Joseph Boone,
University of Southern California, will act as moderators. We invite
submissions on all aspects of literature, psychology, cultural history,
sexology, gender studies and sociology relating to 'Modern Love'. We also
hope to receive submissions addressing the work of Lawrence Durrell and those
who influenced him or were influenced by him. Access the CFP Poster in
.pdf here |
|
'Modern literature offers us no Unities,
so I have turned to science and am trying to complete a four-decker novel
whose form is based on the relativity proposition.... The central topic of
the book is an investigation of modern love' |
From this provocation, the May seminar of the
Durrell School of Corfu takes its inspiration to discuss 'Modern Love' as a
notion debated across the Humanities and Social Sciences. What do we mean
when we consider 'modern' and 'love'? What of Early Modern Love? To make the
matter more complicated, this prefatory note originally read 'bisexual love',
and bisexuality is censored from the other epigrams. What then does 'love'
entail, how does it relate to gender, sexual identity, plurality, and what
role does science play in discussing the matter? We aim to draw on expertise in as many areas
as possible in order to elucidate the multiple ways Love and Gender Relations
are experienced, described and understood in the 21st century (and in the
cultural and literary context of key writers and investigators of the past). |
'Durrell later came to realise... that
'modern love' was in itself an impossibility'. Richard Pine, Lawrence Durrell, The Mindscape |
PROVOCATIONS: Moreover, what does science offer in the 21st century, fifty years after the publication of Justine, the first volume of The Alexandria Quartet, in terms of the investigation of modern love? What has changed since Shakespeare (eg, The Sonnets), John Donne, Emily Bronte, Thomas Hardy and George Meredith (Modern Love); since Sade, Freud, Jung and D.H. Lawrence; since the Kinsey reports or Alex Comfort (a poet and correspondent of Durrell's), since Judith Butler, bell hooks, Judith Jack Halberstam, and so forth? What have we learned about monogamy, polygamy,
promiscuity, fidelity and the varieties of sexual experience in Humans and
the Animal Kingdom? Since the Durrell School of Corfu reflects the concerns
of both Durrell brothers, do Zoology or animal studies offer any new
insights? What may be gleaned from Gerald Durrell's work, and that of other
zoologists and conservationists, about the sexual life of primates, about
breeding in captivity, and so forth? |
|
§
Recent research, psychological, biological, zoological and scientific, about
the nature of human and animal love, sexual behaviour and preferences (male
and female), the gap between man and woman; |
§
Fictional and poetic investigations and explorations of Love and 'Modern
Love' in all its aspects; |
§
Modernism, Post-Modernism and 'Modern Love'; |
§
Lawrence Durrell, especially The Alexandria Quartet, concepts of love,
& sexual relations; |
§
Papers on ground-breaking writers such as D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Anais
Nin, Constantine Cavafy, Sade, Olga Broumas, Doris Lessing; |
§
Theoretical and scientific investigations of sexuality: |
§
'Preference' versus 'Identity'; |
§
Eroticism and the Exotic, Intercultural relationships, the 'Female Other' as
sex object/femme fatale; Postcolonial approaches; Masculinities Studies;
Female/feminist perspectives on Love (and Lawrence Durrell); |
§
Pornography, Erotica, Censorship, and Literature; |
§
Film and Modern Love; |
§
Gay and Lesbian studies and/or Queer Theory. |
MODERATORS: |
|
|
Proposals |
Papers |
GRAAT one-day conference – 16th May 2008 |
The term modernity is used to describe a
particular set of historical, cultural, economic and political conditions,
and promotes - in opposition to tradition or community - a linear model of
time and the abstract apparatus of the State. Modernism refers to the
literary and aesthetic representations of, and responses to, those same
historical conditions. Modernity is therefore the historical and
cultural condition which makes modernism both necessary and possible.
The synergy between the two concepts, however, is often resolved into a
contradiction. Modernism often sits, that is, in a highly ambivalent,
critical, subversive, relationship to the process of modernization: except
when, through an enduring commitment to innovation, modernity shades back
towards - in a new contradiction - the tradition of the modern, or indulges
in a scientific or utopian discourse on the future revolution. And
here, certain forms of progressive radicalism appear almost indistinguishable
from elitist nostalgia. |
The organisers invite proposals for
twenty-minute papers on aspects of late-Victorian/Edwardian society which
foreground and explore these tensions. The aim is to encourage an
interdisciplinary approach linking social and intellectual history with
music, architecture, the visual arts, and literature. Colleagues who
work on British civilization may want to consider the many confrontations
between the forces of radicalism and reaction, the ambiguous positions taken
up by some intellectuals in the development and reform of the British State
and constitution, the sometimes paradoxically conservative implications of
popular protest and emerging gender politics; or the many tensions and
contradictions inherent in the status of Britain's empire at this time,
expanding, yet fragile, at once an instrument of social policy innovation and
the locus of pride in the favoured race. For colleagues working in
literary studies the aesthetic movement and end-of-century "decadence"
also provided a variety of opportunities to theorise ambivalence and
subversion, contradiction and paradox. The theme also allows those who
may wish to bring together the historical and the literary, to explore
modernity/modernism through a cultural approach. |
Please send abstracts by 2nd February 2008 to Trevor Harris @ AND Stephanie Prevost @ AND Sebastien Salbayre
@ |
|
|
Neo-Victorian Studies is a new
peer-reviewed, inter-disciplinary e-journal dedicated to contemporary
re-imaginings of the nineteenth century in Literature, the Arts and
Humanities. http://www.neovictorianstudies.com/ |
|
The editors of Neo-Victorian Studies
invite submissions from established and early career researchers and creative
artists for the inaugural issue, to be published April-May 2008, on any topic
related to the exploration of the nineteenth century from a
twentieth/twenty-first century perspective. Contributions on the period's
cultural legacies in non-British contexts, e.g. Asian, African, North and South
American frameworks, are equally welcome. |
|
|
|
Possible topics include (but are not
limited to): * theorising the neo-Victorian novel * intertextual / intervisual
negotiations with the past * cultural traumas and practices of
commemoration * refracting or 'queering' narratives of
nation and empire * tracing patterns of environmental
impact and destruction * the legacies of nineteenth century
sexual politics * the heritage of Victorian social policy * rewriting histories of science and
medicine * the biographical imagination * re-conceptualising children and
childhood * the fascinations of criminality * spectrality, spiritualism, and the
occult *
the space of cultural memory / the sense of place |
Submissions may include: * scholarly theoretical/critical articles of 6000-8000 words (plus bibliography) * short creative pieces (any genre) * polemical pieces * interviews * notices of work in progress * reviews of relevant critical/creative
publications in the field * (for later issues) critical/creative responses
to previous contributions |
Please direct enquiries and send electronic
submissions via email with Word Document attachment to the General Editor Marie-Luise
Kohlke at @.
Please consult the submission guidelines, prior to submission. To be
considered for the inaugural issue, submissions must be received no later
than 10th February 2008. |
18th-20th July 2008,
University of Exeter |
|
Keynote speakers include Elizabeth Prettejohn
(Professor of History of Art, University of Bristol) and Talia Schaffer
(Associate Professor of English, CUNY). This interdisciplinary conference
seeks to examine the nature and representation of artistic labour within the
nineteenth century’s expanding print and visual culture. |
Its focus will be on artistic ‘industry’
in a variety of forms including, but not limited to, the nature of artistic
work as conceptualised by writers and artists, artistry as a profession, and
art as commodity. |
Drawing together contributors from Literature,
Art History, History, Drama and beyond, Artistry and Industry will also
examine the connections and the separations between those artistic milieux
regarded as high-culture (painting, sculpture, literature) and those classed
as ‘art-industry’ - such as pottery-painting, art needlework or engraving –
or even hack-work (such as Grub-Street writing). |
We
seek insights not only into the production, dissemination and consumption of
particular texts or objets d’art, but into the myths and images developing around
such figures as The Painter, The Lady Novelist, The Man of the Theatre, The
Craftswoman, The Poet, The Illustrator and The Muse. We invite abstracts (up
to 300 words) from across the arts and humanities for 15-20 minute papers.
Please submit abstracts, including your name as you would like it to appear,
institutional affiliation, and email address by 15th
February 2008, to artindustry@exeter.ac.uk.
Themes to consider include: Celebrity/obscurity/notoriety/reputation/respectability
Hand-making/mass (re)production/publishing and distribution Interior design/
dress design Designer/Writer/Actor/Musician et al as artist
Fine/decorative/domestic arts Advertising/literature/manuals for
amateur/creative work Professional/amateur status Aesthetics/commerce
Literary/visual representation |
Conference organizers: Dr Sunie
Fletcher, Dr Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi, Sally Anne Huxtable, Dr Patricia
Zakreski. |
University of Portsmouth, England – 14th-16th
July 2008 |
Confirmed keynote speakers: Elisabeth Bronfen,
Linden Peach, Nicole Rafter, Renata Salecl, Mark Seltzer |
Notions of criminality, pathology and
deviance are increasingly central to our understanding of culture. From
stalkers to serial killers, terrorists to ‘school shooters’, violent crime
seems one of the key symptoms of our age. Not surprisingly, the academic study
of crime fiction has been undergoing a resurgence in the 21st Century. Crime
fiction is now established as something approaching a core subject on
literature curricula, as well as an expanding, exciting field of research.
This expansion, however, also means that the generic approach which has
traditionally governed academic approaches to crime fiction now seems too
constrained. |
The organizers of ‘Crime Cultures’ invite
papers and panels which both incorporate and extend beyond established crime
texts and genres, exploring more broadly the intersection between crime and
culture. Contributors are encouraged to consider the significance of crime in
books and films not usually considered ‘crime fiction’, to re-assess
canonical crime texts, to analyse how culture ‘constructs’ crime and
criminals, or to examine how culture produces, shapes, appropriates or mimics
criminal behaviour. |
Possible topics may include, but are not limited
to: figures of crime (iconic investigators and criminals, real or fictional);
figuring crime (how notions of crime are used to understand culture); crime
histories; theories of crime; the ‘aesthetics’ of crime; shifting
demarcations of crime; symptomatic contemporary crimes (e.g. stalking,
terrorism, gun massacre); postcolonial crime; political crimes and
assassinations; ‘True Crime’; war crimes; gun culture. |
Proposals (200-300 words) for 20-minute
presentations are welcome from scholars of any discipline and should be
submitted electronically to the conference organizers Dr Bran Nicol, Dr
Patricia Pulham, and Dr Eugene McNulty, by Friday
29th February 2008 via the conference e-mail address: crimecultures@port.ac.uk
A registration form will become available at about the same time.
Please note AV requirements and indicate if you would like the abstract
to be considered for inclusion in the post-conference publications. |
Contact details: |
Bran Nicol, Senior Lecturer in English
Literature, School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies, University of
Portsmouth, Milldam, Burnaby Road, Portsmouth PO1 3AS, England. E-mail:
@ |
MARCH
Loughborough University 4th-6th September
2008 (to be confirmed) |
Call for Workshop Convenors |
Building on the success of a number of subject
specific conferences over the last two years, the PSA Anarchist Studies
Network is planning a full, independent conference for September 2008. The
conference is open, organised primarily through workshops to allow themes to
emerge from submissions. Our aims are to facilitate communication, stimulate
the development of networks, and develop understandings of anarchism. The
conference is open to everyone with an interest in anarchist studies and
participants are encouraged to present work in progress as well as more
finished contributions. |
This call is for workshop convenors to propose
themes, ideas, and topics for discussion, which can then be developed over
the coming months. We invite proposals from activists, organisers,
researchers, popular educators, students - indeed anyone desiring to
participate in this on-going conversation. In the best anarchist
tradition, the event will be defined by the participants. What would you like
to see happen? What kind of discussions do you think are important? Would you
like to organise a workshop or contribute in other ways? |
The design of workshops and other sessions are
the preserve of their convenors in discussion with the conference organisers.
The aim is to allow convenors the fullest opportunity to tailor sessions to
the specific needs of their subject area, the session and its participants,
and to create a convivial environment in which to present and debate
ideas. Panels can vary from two to twelve papers or presentations
over one to four workshop-sessions in any given subject area relevant to
anarchist studies broadly defined. |
Submission Notes: |
THEMED WORKSHOP PANELS & FACILITATED
DISCUSSIONS |
At this stage we are simply looking for workshop
or panel convenors. If you would like to organise a session at the
conference, please submit a brief description of the panel (300-500 words),
including the name and contact details of the facilitator/convenor. |
Panel proposals will be posted on the ASN
website after the expiry of the deadline as a resource for individuals and
groups to orient themselves. |
We will accept unsolicited paper abstracts and
forward them to appropriate convenors where possible. However you are
encouraged to respond to convenors' individual calls for papers in the first
instance. Please therefore refer to the ASN website regularly. |
DEADLINE: 1st March 2008 |
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENTS |
Proposals toward evening entertainments,
artistic interventions, etc very welcome! |
CONTACT for submissions, proposals,
registration and further details: Ruth Kinna @ or Dave Berry @ |
Edited by Jo Gill, University of Exeter and Mel
Waters, University of Newcastle.
Submissions of articles (8000 words max) and shorter
reflections (up to 2000 words) are invited for a special issue of the journal
Life Writing on the theme of ‘Poetry and Autobiography’. |
This special issue will examine some of the
assumptions about, and crossovers between, the discrete disciplines of life
writing and poetry. While poetry, as a genre which is persistently exercised
by questions about language, form, subjectivity, authority, truth, and
reference, shares much common ground with life writing, the relationship
between the two genres is rarely interrogated. In addition, so-called
‘personal’ poetry is infrequently read with an attentiveness to the kinds of
questions about authenticity and representation with which prose life writing
is often (and productively) met. |
Contributions to this special issue of Life
Writing will ask what, if anything, is distinctive about autobiographical
poetry; what are the conventions and practices which attach to the form and
shape the ways in which it is read? What does it demand of its practitioners
and what does it offer to its readers? How useful are current theories of
life writing – predicated as they often are on a study of prose narrative –
to the study of the poetic text? How, if at all, might scholars of
poetry and autobiography begin to bridge the gaps that separate the two
disciplines in existing critical discourses? Is it necessary to rethink
dominant interpretative frameworks in the light of the insights offered by
poetry? |
We invite papers which consider the
complicated relationship between the two genres, and which address the
hypothesis that poetry might have something valid to contribute to the theory
and practice of life writing. Likewise, we are keen to see scholarship that
asks how theories of life writing might help to expose and understand the
complexity of the poetic ‘I’. |
In common with the Aims and Scope of the
journal, we are interested in work that incorporates an interdisciplinary
perspective and we welcome submissions which broaden the geographical focus
of life writing beyond the US, Canada, Australia, and Europe. |
Work submitted to the Articles section should
follow the journal’s usual style guidelines (see http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/14484528.asp).
Work submitted to the Reflections section carries critically informed
personal narrative linking theory and experience; on this occasion, the
journal is happy to consider poetry in this section. Items in both sections
must be original and unpublished. All submissions undergo an anonymous
peer-review process. |
Initial enquiries may be addressed to j.r.gill@ex.ac.uk or m.j.waters@newcastle.ac.uk.
Please submit completed articles by e-mail attachment to both of the above
addresses, or by post to: |
Jo Gill, Department of English, University
of Exeter, Queen’s Building, Queen’s Drive, Exeter, EX4 4QJ, UK. |
Mel Waters, School of English Literature,
Language and Linguistics, Percy Building, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne,
Newcastle, NE1 7RU, UK. |
Deadline for submissions: 15th March 2008. |
Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association
of the Western United States: 2nd-4th October 2008,
at the University of Washington, Seattle |
|||
CULTURE (Literature, Art,
Theatre, Music, Popular Culture) |
POLITICAL SCIENCE and ECONOMICS |
PEDAGOGY |
IDENTITY POLITICS (Nation, Race, Gender,
Class, Empire) |
Politics in Literature |
Political Economy |
Teaching Victorian Politics (any aspect) |
Women Politicians |
Politics of Professional Writing |
Politics and the Marketplace |
Teaching Social Class |
Politics of Gender and Sexual Orientation |
Politics of Publishing |
Political Nightmares--The Cleveland Street Raid |
|
Politics of Race in the Metropole and Colony |
Labor Unrest and the Novel |
Political Campaign Ephemera |
PERSONAL POLITICS |
Politics of Class |
Sages and Politics |
Land Politics and Ireland |
The Politics of Private Life |
Labor Strikes |
Politics of the Royal Academy |
Land and Wasteland: Politics of Land Use |
Domestic Politics |
Reform Acts |
Political Comedy |
Uses of Statistics in Politics |
Sexual Politics |
Britain and the Struggle for Italian Statehood |
Art World Politics |
Second Career Politicians |
|
Imperial Politics in India, Africa, Caribbean, the Middle East |
Formation of the Civic Orchestra |
Political Pioneers |
URBAN LIFE, TRAVEL
and PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS |
Politics of Imperial Wars |
Politics of Representation |
Failures of Diplomacy |
Misconduct and Malfeasance in the Metropolitan Police |
Politics of Individual Psychology |
Science and Politics |
Political Skullduggery |
Politics of Sewage and Sanitation |
|
Politics of
Spectacles (e.g., Jubilees, Coronations, Durbars) |
Life and Career of Politicians (e.g., Disraeli, Gladstone) |
Politics of Travel (e.g.,Cook's Tours, the Railway, the Omnibus) |
SOCIAL CHANGE |
Politics of
History Writing and Historiography |
The Continent Looks at English Politics |
|
Politics of Family Life |
Politics of Theatre
and Performance |
America Looks at English Politics |
EDUCATION and
SOCIAL SERVICES |
Rearranging the Boroughs |
Politics of the
Music Hall |
|
The London School Board |
Governance of the British Post Office |
Poetry and
Politics |
THE PERIODICAL PRESS |
Politics of London Hospitals |
Politics and Large Public Works |
The Politics of
Literary Form |
Political Cartoons of the Era / Politics and the Press |
Governance and the Universities |
Treatment of Ward Politics in Popular Journals |
The Politics of
Representation |
Politics of Editing the Press / Politics of Advertising |
|
|
e-mail a 300 word abstract and one page CV by 15th March 2008
to julie.codell@asu.edu
Julie Codell, School of Art, MC 1505, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 8528315 |
APRIL
The National Coalition of Independent Scholars
will hold its 2008 Biennial Conference from 24th-26th
October 2008 at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley California.
We welcome participation by all scholars whose research is not supported by
employment in an academic or research institution; this includes adjunct
faculty and graduate students. Presenters need not be members of NCIS. |
|
The Program Committee invites proposals for
individual papers, formal sessions and short panel discussions for either the
practical track on independent scholarship itself; or the scholarly track focusing
on presenters' individual research and findings. |
|
Proposals should consist of an abstract of not
more than 250 words; a brief scholarly biography (50-100 words) including
degrees scholarly fields and no more than two publications; any audio-visual
requirements; and full contact information. Proposals must be submitted as an
email attachment (Word only) no later than 12:00 a.m. 1st April 2008 to
Kendra Leonard Program Chair at @.
Please use your last name as the document title as in Smith.doc. As in
the past only one submission per author will be considered. If you are
interested in serving as a session chair please indicate this in your
submission. |
|
Individual paper presentations are limited to no
more twenty minutes to allow for ten minutes of discussion following the
presentation. Formal sessions of three related papers may be submitted
together for consideration as a whole; please submit the proposals for all
three papers together in one email along with a rationale explaining the
importance of the topic and the grouping of papers. Proposals for one-hour
informal sessions including discussions on work in progress; consideration of
on a particular theme in independent scholarship; or interest group
discussions within a particular area or discipline may also be submitted
under the guidelines above. |
The 7th Annual Literary London conference will
be hosted by the Department of English, School of Arts, Brunel University,
London, at the Uxbridge Campus, 2nd – 4th July 2008. |
‘Uxbridge has cornered the market in liminal architecture’ – Iain
Sinclair, London Orbital (2002 |
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS & CREATIVE WRITERS T.B.A. |
‘When you get to Beckenham, which is the last parish in Kent, the country begins to assume a cockney-like appearance; all is artificial, and you no longer feel any interest in it’ – William
Cobbett, Rural Rides (1830) |
‘… what London attracts with the mirage of its work shining across the counties and the countries, London holds with the glamour of its leisure’ – Ford
Madox Ford, The Soul of London (1905) |
‘The motorway towns were built on the frontier between a tired past and a future without illusions and snobberies’ – J.G.
Ballard, Kingdom Come (2006) |
The majority of Greater London consists of areas
like Uxbridge; places which once had an independent existence but have been
relentlessly consumed by the outward sprawl of the city. As we can see from
Cobbett’s observations, even in the first half of the nineteenth century
there was no longer a simple boundary between City and Country but something
of a twilight zone in which nothing was real. While Cobbett bemoaned the
collapse of traditional rural paternalism into the enforced pauperism of wage
labour, the zone enabled new forms of living. For Ford, it was precisely the
persistence of an almost parodic version of the ‘Country’ in the outer zones
which allowed the masses to partake in the cultured leisure pursuits of the
gentry as London and Country seasons merged into one daily commute. Thus was
the trace of true individualism preserved within modern mass society and, thereby,
the possibility of a fulfilling utopian future was kept tantalisingly open.
But the transition was never completed: Ford talked of romantic suburbanites
doomed to ‘an always tragic death’ and while, less than forty years later,
George Orwell thought that he had found ‘the germs of future England’ along
the arterial roads ‘in Slough, Barnet, Dagenham, Letchworth, Hayes’, this
England has not so much appeared as become part of the landscape of the past.
Sinclair talks of West Drayton in this manner as an historical frontier in
which ‘Bicycle shops are a nostalgic recollection of the days when H.G.
Well’s clerks took to the country roads.’ In Ballard’s Kingdom Come, the
implicit utopian nostalgia of the Cross of St George has become the nostalgia
for an English fascism that never was and the outer London zone simmers with
the threat of millennial meltdown as all the part-digested historical
essences ever consumed by the sprawl threaten to spew forth. There may never
be a better time to identify the constituent elements of London’s outer
zones. This conference welcomes any such attempts as it seeks to map the very
liminality of London. |
Please note that the headline theme of the event
does not exclude other proposals concerning any other aspect relevant to
Literary London themes and contexts, which are most welcome, as are complete
panels (subject to final approval by the conference organizers).
Additionally, while the main focus of the conference will be on literary and
cultural representations of London, the organizers actively encourage
interdisciplinary contributions relating to film, architecture, geography,
theories of urban space, etc.. Papers from postgraduate students are welcome
for consideration. |
Originally founded in the 1960s expansion of Higher
Education in Britain, Brunel’s Uxbridge campus lies four miles and twenty
minutes taxi ride from Heathrow Airport, and is a reasonable journey by
underground to central London (King’s Cross and Piccadilly approx. 50
minutes; Waterloo approx. 55 minutes; Kew Gardens and Tower of London approx.
just over an hour – estimated timings Transport for London). Participants
staying longer can avail themselves of various research libraries including
the British Library, London’s theatre land and all of the city’s historical
and architectural sights, plus its culture. Both Oxford and Cambridge can be
visited easily in a day from Uxbridge. |
London is one of the world’s major cities with a
long and rich literary tradition reflecting both its diversity and its significance
as a cultural and commercial centre. Literary London 2008 aims to: |
§
Read literary and cultural texts in their historical
and social context and in relation to theoretical approaches to the study of
the metropolis; §
Explore the relationship of margins, the central and
spaces between; §
Investigate the changing cultural and historical
geography of London; §
Situate Londoners, the city’s visitors and their
various psychogeographic spaces; §
Consider the social, political, and spiritual fears,
hopes, and perceptions that have inspired representations of London; §
Trace different traditions of representing London and
examine how the pluralism of London society is reflected in London literature
and its cultural narratives; and, §
Celebrate the contribution London and Londoners have
made to English and World literature |
This should be an occasion for productive
dialogue between scholars of literary and material culture. Papers on any of
literary, theoretical, narrative and material aspects of London and its
representation are anticipated. Proposals for comprised panels of three (or
four) speakers are also welcome. |
Proposals of approximately 300 word are invited
for 20-minute papers which consider any period or genre of English literature
about, set in, inspired by, or alluding to central and suburban London and
its environs, from the city’s roots in Roman times to the present day. Add a
brief description (where relevant indicating institutional affiliation and
publications in particular) of the proposer, by email only, to both: Nick
Hubble @
and Philip Tew @ |
Note that your subject line must include the
phrase ‘LITERARY LONDON BRUNEL 2008’ since your message will be initially
retrieved and sorted automatically. If you do not do so it may well be lost
in this process. |
Deadline for submissions: Monday 28th April 2008. Notification of early acceptance can be provided
for those requiring institutional funding, particularly in the case of
international scholars. The conference fee will be posted in due course once
the costing has been finalized. There will be discounted rates for
postgraduate students, the retired, and additional general discounts for
those paying in advance (to be announced). |
Literary London Web site: www.literarylondon.org The Annual Literary London conference is
mutually supportive of the e-journal of the same name. |
For the Table of Contents, click
| To hub page | To THE OSCHOLARS home page
Click
for
the Editorial page of the current issue of THE
OSCHOLARS.