THE OSCHOLARS

___________

 

Vol.  IV                                                                                                                                              No.  3

issue no 34: March  2007

 

 

Being Talked About : Calls for Papers

 

« 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.  With the growth of our family of journals, it seems good to us that this should be published on a subsite of its own, with attention drawn to conferences or journals particularly seeking papers or articles on Wilde, Shaw, Lee, Whistler and Moore within the pages of their own specific journals.  Readers opinions are welcome on this; if no great objection is taken, we will make the move later this summer.

 

Calls 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.  Those without deadline have the month of entry printed and will remain posted for three months.  Those with expired deadlines are included as we received them too late for the last issue of THE OSCHOLARS, and 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, now edited by Dr Florina Tufescu.

All details should be checked for changes with the organisers, not with THE OSCHOLARS.

 Please mention THE OSCHOLARS if you are applying.  Readers who give papers may publish their abstracts in THE OSCHOLARS. 

Click    for the main pages of this issue of THE OSCHOLARS

To hub page |To THE OSCHOLARS home page

For the Table of Contents for this page, click 

Click   for quick access to any of these calls.

Calls in bold have a specific reference to Wilde.

Table of Contents

1.  Expositions

14.  Children’s Literature (2)

27.  Literary Scholarship (3 Calls)

2.  Venice 1890-1912

15.  Red Light Literature

28.  Victorian Emotions

3.  Queer Space & Time

16.  Currents

29.  Symbiosis                      

4.  Irish Literature & Film

17.  Ragged London

30.  Male Beauty

5.  Sex

18.  The Playboy of the Western World

31.  Americans in Munich

6.  Gay, Lesbian Studies

19.  Lesbian Image

32.  British Studies (2)

7.  Utopian Studies

20.  Irishness

33.  Art History (2)

8.  Literary Tourism & 19thc Culture

21.  British Studies (1)

34.  Ruskinian Theatre

9.  Edith Wharton

22.  Decadence

35.  Victorian Art Criticism 

10.  Æstheticism

23.  Kipling

36.  George Gissing 

11.  Children’s Literature

24.  Art History (Scotland)

37.   Thomas Hardy

12.  Power

25.  Literary London

38.  Victorian Women & The Occult                                   

13.  Queer Theatre

26. High / Low Culture

39.  Ford Madox Ford             

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2007

No date specified

 

I.      Expositions: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities

 

The Center for Liberal Education at Villanova University is pleased to announce a new journal in the humanities entitled Expositions: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities. 

 

Because of the interdisciplinary nature of Victorian studies, and the breadth of humanity covered by the significant voices of the nineteenth century, the editors are particularly interested in receiving manuscripts on nineteenth century texts, and on the issues which stirred controversy and debate in the Victorian age.  The call for papers follows below.  For more information, including the essays and authors to be featured in the first issue, please visit the website at http://www.equinoxpub.com/journals/main.asp?jref=61

 

***CALL FOR PAPERS***

 

Expositions is an academic forum for interdisciplinary studies.  We publish scholarship that is grounded in the individual academic disciplines but engaged in a broader investigation of our common humanity.  The journal will be published twice yearly.  Our first issue, ‘Ecce Homo: Revealing Human Nature through the Humanities,’ will feature such distinguished contributors as Rémi Brague (Sorbonne, Paris), Eva Brann (St.  John’s College, Annapolis), Timothy Fuller (Colorado College), and Katherine Tillman (Notre Dame).

 

We are now accepting manuscripts for the Fall 2007 issue of Expositions. As will be our practice every fall, this issue will be open submission: we seek essays on a wide range of topics and from emerging as well as established scholars.  We are interested in work that demonstrates how a specific academic discipline can speak to the living concerns of a wider audience of teachers and scholars.  We are especially interested in addressing such concerns through interdisciplinary exchanges in which two or more scholars address a common question.  Most of the scholarship we publish consists of careful interpretation of significant texts in the Western tradition, but we welcome the opportunity to place this work in conversation with studies of non-Western texts, of art, and of modern society, as well as with original works of poetry.

 

Manuscripts should be sent to: Peter Busch, Managing Editor, Expositions, Villanova Center for Liberal Education Rm.  104, SAC Villanova University Villanova, PA 19085

 

email inquiries should be sent to peter.busch@villanova.edu

 

 

March

 

II.   Colloquium: ‘International Art and Artists in Venice, 1890-1912’

 

Scholars (MA or above) who are working on international art and artists in Venice at the turn of the twentieth century are invited to submit proposals for a colloquium to be held on November 10, 2007.  American and international scholars are invited to submit proposals.  Funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art and co-sponsored by the TFAA and WCMA, the colloquium is in preparation for the 2009 exhibition, ‘Prendergast in Italy.’ Participants will receive travel expenses and an honorarium.  Proposals should be no more than 200 words including your lecture abstract and a brief statement of your qualifications.  Email to Nancy Mowll Mathews, Eugénie Prendergast Senior Curator of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Art, WCMA (nmathews@williams.edu) by 1st March, 2007.

 

 

III. Queer Space and Time

 

Gay and Lesbian Caucus Panel, South Central Modern Language Association (SCMLA) November 1-3, 2007 in Memphis, TN Papers are now accepted for Gay and Lesbian Caucus panel at SCMLA in Memphis, 1st-3rd November 2007. 

 

All proposals will be considered.  Papers addressing the issues of ‘queer space’ and/or ‘queer time’ as expressed through literature, poetry, drama, film or theory are especially encouraged.  Please submit a brief abstract (no more than 300 words) that includes a title.  With your abstract, please provide your name, institution (if relevant), position, email address and phone number.  If your paper is accepted, you must become an SCMLA member by March, 2007.  More information about membership and the conference is available at the SCMLA website: http://www.ou.edu/scmla/

 

Deadline for all proposals: 1st March, 2007

 

Please email your abstract to Alla Ivanchikova at the following address: ivanchikova@yahoo.com.  Abstracts may also be mailed to the following address:

 

Alla Ivanchikova 533 Telfer Street, Winnipeg, MB, R3G 2Y4, Canada

 

 

IV. Irish Literature and Film

 

I am looking for panellists for the RMMLA Irish Literature and Film panel for this year's conference in Calgary, Alberta.  The conference is October 4-6.  Call for Papers deadline is 1st March.  Peter Soliunas pps87@aol.com

 

 

V.      English Language Notes: SEX

 

Volume 45.2 of the new ELN (Fall/Winter 2007) seeks to make a radical intervention in the discourses of both spatiality and sexuality studies. Contributors will explore gay, lesbian, bisexual, and queer definitions of space not only in relation to the built environment but in response to a range of boundaries and sites.

 

We invite analyses of conceptual, geographical, discursive, virtual, and metaphoric understandings of queer space, welcoming in particular interdisciplinary essays that move beyond extant work on the topic that deals primarily with male experience. Contributors may consider, for example, any of the following: how homosexual desire inverts or complicates the logic of inside/outside; how representations of queer space intercede in the relations between visibility and power; how erotic connections construct a queer counter-public; how spaces such as streets, sex clubs, tearooms, and parks complicate notions of public and private; how the meaning of interior design and domestic space shifts when considered in relation to the ideologies and institutions of sexuality; how intimate physical contact with geographical spaces offers refuge from the perceived tyranny of heterosexuality; and how the mapping of a gay, lesbian, or bisexual subculture onto local, national, and international communities potentially reframes the categories of sex, gender, sexuality, nationality, and race. This ELN issue welcomes considerations of queer space that provide more than strictly sexual definitions of the term, and move beyond arguments that disclaim ‘queer’ either as excessively capacious or exclusionary (as it seeks to embrace readings of the ways women and lesbians occupy these spaces).

 

By broadening the conceptual framework of spatiality and sexuality studies beyond the parameters that typically have defined it for the past decade, we aim to examine how the obsessions, anxieties, and taboos that characterize what we might call amoral sensual spaces come to be linked with gay and lesbian sensibilities. The editors solicit original work that seeks to challenge heteronormative understandings of ‘space’ while problematizing the term ‘queer.’

 

Position papers, notes, and essays of no longer than 20 manuscript pages are invited on this subject from scholars in all fields of literary and cultural studies; the editors would be delighted to consider together two or more related contributions engaging one another on particular themes to be published as topical clusters. Book reviews on queer space topics are also welcome.

 

Please send contributions and/or proposals to The Editors, English Language Notes, University of Colorado at Boulder, 226 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0226. Deadline for final submissions is 1st March 2007. Specific inquires regarding volume 45.2 may be directed to the issue editor, Jane Garrity, via e-mail garrity@buffmail.Colorado.EDU.

 

 

VI.  Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Caucus Seminar

 

Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association (RMMLA) 4th-6th October, 2007 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Papers are welcomed on any aspect of the GLBTQ experience as expressed through literature, film and/or theory.  All proposals will be considered.  Please submit abstracts of 300 words and be sure to include a title.  On your abstract, please include your name, institutional affiliation (if applicable), email address, office phone number, and whether you will need any AV equipment for your presentation.  The deadline for abstracts is 1st March 2007. 

 

 

VII.                       Utopian Studies

 

The 8th international conference of the Utopian Studies Society will be held at the University of Plymouth, July 12th to 14th, 2007.  The conference will examine a range of topics related to utopia and utopianisms, its historical articulation and contemporary realisation.  Keynote speakers are Dr Esther Leslie (Birkbeck) and Lalit Kishor Bhati (Auroville, India).

 

Proposals are invited for papers and strands on the following broad themes and other areas of utopian studies:

 

Histories of Utopia; Theories of Utopia; Politics of Utopia; Utopia and Literature; Arts of Utopia; Contemporary Utopias, Eco-villages and Intentional Communities; Aesthetics of Utopia; Landscapes of Utopia; Utopian architectures; Environmental Utopias.

 

Proposals may be for individual papers of 20 minutes, which if accepted will be grouped with others of relevant interest as far as practicality allows; or for strands of 3, 4, 6 or 8 papers with a nominated chair and respondent. 

 

Abstracts should be 250 words (max.), submitted by e-mail as file attachments in word (only) to mfmiles@plymouth.ac.uk <mailto:mfmiles@plymouth.ac.uk , and should include (in this order): name and affiliation, e-mail address, title of paper, abstract, 3 keywords if possible on one side of A4 in a typeface no smaller than 10. 

 

Abstracts will be refereed by two members of a steering group constituted by the organisers and committee of the Utopian Studies Society.  The aim is to be inclusive.

 

Deadline for abstracts: Thursday 1st March, 2007.  Responses by 5th April, 2007 Deadline for registration at standard fee: May 28th 2007

 

 

 

VIII.                     LITERARY TOURISM & NINETEENTH-CENTURY CULTURE

 

An International One-Day Conference to be held on Friday, 8th June 2007. 

Institute for English Studies, University of London, England.    

 

This conference aims to consider in a panoramic and synthetic fashion the emergence of nineteenth-century interest in literary sites, and the development of literary genres associated with this interest.  Literary tourism, the visiting of places associated with writers and their writings, becomes a cultural commonplace over the course of the nineteenth century.  This period saw the invention of 'Wordsworth's Lake District', 'The Land of Burns', 'Dickens's London' and 'Hardy's Wessex', among other imagined territories (together with the retrospective reification of 'Shakespeare's Stratford'), and with them emerged the practice of preserving and displaying the houses of dead writers.  Literary tourism made over the landscapes of the nation variously as source, ground, glossary, and appendix to the literary canon, and has continued to do so.  Attending to the traces of its emergence and refinement can provide unusually intimate glimpses of the history of reading, revealing how nineteenth-century readers imbued real places with emotional associations derived from imaginative texts.  It allows us to examine the ways in which nineteenth-century literary modes, perhaps most especially biography and fictional realism, seem to have produced a new relation between reader and text, soliciting the reader to locate and visit the locations of the book as a supplementary reading practice.      

 

Confirmed speakers include: Alison Booth (University of Virginia), Simon Bainbridge (Lancaster University & Wordsworth Centre), Juliet John (University of Liverpool and Gladstone Centre for Victorian Studies), Pamela Corpron Parker (Whitworth College), Nicola J Watson (Open University).

   

We welcome offers of individual papers or paper panels from both new and established scholars from the disciplines of literature, cultural geography, cultural history, heritage and tourism studies.    Topics may include (but are not confined to):  changing views on the relations between texts and landscapes; literary tourism and the idea of nation (both within Britain and beyond); literary pilgrimage and transatlantic cultural affairs; the literary canon, travel and the colonial subject; the cult of the writer's grave, the writer's birthplace, the writer's desk; the text and the souvenir; literary tourism and its relationships to novelistic realism; the writer as tourist and/or tourist guide; the invention of 'literary London'; the development of genres associated with literary tourism, ranging from plaques, memorials, and monuments, to the periodical essay, to relics, souvenirs and guidebooks, to literary maps and 'rambles', to personal accounts of 'pilgrimages', and to the forerunners of the illustrated coffee-table book.                                             

 

Abstracts of no more than 300 words together with short speaker biographies and full contact details to be sent electronically by 1st March 2007 to the organiser at the following address:  Dr Nicola J Watson ( n.j.watson@open.ac.England).

 
Organised by the Literature Department of the Open University and the Institute of English Studies, University of London.

 

 

IX. Edith Wharton and Illness

 

MLA 2007, Chicago.

Deadline 10th March 2007

This panel, sponsored by the Edith Wharton Society, wants to explore the significant role illness (and health) played in Wharton's life, context, and works.  All approaches to this topic are welcome.  Please send abstracts (about 500 words) and short CV's by March 10th to Hildegard Hoeller (hilhllr@aol.com) or at 29 Gail Court, Staten Island NY 10306. 

 

 

X.   Victorian Aestheticism/Realism

 

A proposed special session at the 2007 M/MLA Annual Convention to be held 8-11 November at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel, Cleveland, OH.  The conference's informal theme is ‘revisiting realisms.’

This panel is interested in papers that consider the relationship between aestheticism and realism in 19th-C British literature, art, and culture.  Especially welcome are interdisciplinary and expansive considerations of the terms ‘aestheticism’ and ‘realism.’ Topics may include but are not limited to:

 

-definitions of authenticity in the arts (broadly defined); -the relationship among morality, beauty, and representation; -modes of realist representation in visual, literary, and performing arts; -aesthetic legacies/revisions; -Decadence and its relationship to realism; -the impact of individual aesthetic perspectives (e.g.  Arnold, Ruskin, Pater, Eliot, Wilde) over various forms of representation; -specific strategies, texts, authors, artists that complicate Victorian aestheticism and/or realism.  --gender, representation, aestheticism

 

1-2 page abstracts (no more than 400 words) with brief cvs attached as word documents to megan-alter@uiowa.edu by 11th March.

 

 

XI.   Past Pleasures: Nostalgia and Children's Literature

 

Children's Literature Discussion Circle, South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA) Conference 9th-11th November, 2007 Atlanta, Georgia

 

In order to examine children's literature through the lens of nostalgia, possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following options:

 

*Updating comics, cartoons, or toys for a new generation of children *Children's literature and/or cultural objects as souvenirs *Nostalgic longing for aspects of childhood *Recapturing or re-imagining childhood *Historical toys/books translated into new mediums *Selective cultural memory and amnesia *Ascribing value to collected objects, children's museums, the role of the collector

 

Please submit questions, one-page abstracts, or eight-page papers by 13th March, 2007 to Julie A.  Sinn at julie.sinn@gmail.com.

 

 

XII.                        GENDER: POWER AND AUTHORITY

 

EXTENDED DEADLINE: 14th March 2007

 

eSharp is an award-winning online journal for postgraduates in the fields of arts, humanities, social sciences and education.  It is peer-reviewed, based at the University of Glasgow and aims to provide a critical but supportive entry into the world of academic publishing. 

 

The first eight issues are currently online at www.sharp.arts.gla.ac.uk and we are now looking for submissions for the ninth edition to be launched in Spring 2007.  We welcome papers from postgraduates working in all areas of the social sciences, arts, humanities and education. 

 

The theme of the ninth edition is 'Gender: Power and Authority'.  Following the AHRC sponsored conference Return to Gender, held at the University of Glasgow in November 2006, this issue will look at ways in which gender has been marginalised/reversed/empowered in past, present and even future society.  Have gender distinctions become obsolete in modern society? How does one gender gain power over another? Is there such a thing as a dominant gender?

 

Topics may include but are not limited to:

 

v            
Masculinity and Femininity

v             Politics of Gender

v             Sex and Power

v             Androgyny/Transgender

v             (Gendered) Relationships/Marriage/Partnerships

v             Image, Identity and the Body

v             Discrimination

v             Language and Gender

v             Gender and the Media

v             Gender and Society

 

Articles of a maximum of 4,500-5,000 words must be submitted by 14th March 2007 (extended deadline).  Please ensure that you accompany your submission with an abstract of 200-250 words and a list of 3-5 keywords for meta tagging.  For a full list of guidelines and our style sheet please see www.sharp.arts.gla.ac.uk/styleguide.php.

 

Please send your article (both abstract and full paper) to sharp@arts.gla.ac.uk.  Informal inquiries in advance are welcome to the same address.

 

v             Johanna M.  E.  Green, Lead Editor, Issue 9 eSharp: www.sharp.arts.gla.ac.uk

 

 

XIII.                      Alternatives Within the Mainstream II: Queer Theatre in Postwar Britain

 

Critics had been invited to write chapters for a critical study of contemporary British post-war queer theatre.  The focus is on bi, trans, gay, lesbian identities as represented on the British stage.  Keeping in mind that queer identities are fluid and always in a state of flux, defying definitions and binary oppositions, articles were invited which examine these identities as represented in British drama since 1950.  A few of the topics which have been covered: Lesbian theatre Black lesbian theatre [Black in this anthology includes Asian] Gay theatre Black gay theatre Transexuals, transvestites and other identities represented in British theatre, and more Individual chapters on dramatists, gay and lesbian theatre companies as well as a historical trajectory of gay, lesbian and theatres of other sexualities have been written.  I now need a critic to undertake to write a chapter on some early British lesbian plays.  The deadline for submission is 15th March 2007.  Send proposals asap.  Each chapter will be 6000-8000 words in length.  Please send a proposal of 500 words with your biographical details.  Additionally, short entries on the following plays are invited.

 

Entries of 2-3000 words on: Debby Klein: Coming Soon; Catherine Kilcoyne: Julie; Sandra Freeman: Supporting Roles; Sue Frumin: The Housetrample; Cheryl Moch: Cinderella any other plays by British women.  Please submit proposal first.

 

Please send a proposal of 500 words with your biographical details to

 

Dr.  Dimple Godiwala, BA, MA (Bom), DPhil (Oxon) DimpleGodiwala@aol.com

 

 

XIV.                    Current Approaches to Children's Literature

 

SCMLA, November 1-3, 2007, Memphis, Tennessee

 

Description: The Children's Literature Session of South Central MLA (SCMLA), welcomes proposals for papers examining contemporary or ‘current’ and innovative approaches to children's and adolescent literature.  Methods might include concepts such as abjection, postcolonialism, multiculturalism, feminisms or other applicable treatments.  Deadline: 16th March, 2007

 

Please submit your abstracts to Session Chair: Susan Louise Stewart Department of Literature and Languages Texas A&M University-Commerce Commerce, TX 75429 or your abstract to susan_stewart@tamu-commerce.edu

 

For conference information, visit http://www.ou.edu/scmla/

 

Susan Louise Stewart Assistant Professor of English Department of Literature and Languages Texas A&M University-Commerce Commerce, TX 75429 903/468-8624

 

 

 

XV.                       Red Light Literature

 

The Associated Graduate Students in English (AGSE) at CSUN will hold its annual graduate student conference on Saturday, April 28th, 2007 in Jerome Richfield Hall Room 319.  This year's conference title is ‘Red Light Literature: Confronting Taboos.’

 

 We are looking for papers that explore the theme of taboos and their incarnations and transformations including, but not limited to: dissections, deconstructions, blurrings, violations, regulations, disruptions, and/or transgressions.  Papers may or may not consider taboos in terms of genre, culture, gender, geography, sexuality, disability, race, class, religion and/or politics.  Creative writing, Literature, and Rhetoric & Composition submissions related to this theme are all welcome.  You may also submit papers individually or as a panel.  Please send your drafts or abstracts to csunagse@yahoo.com by 16th March. 

 

The conference will go from 9:00 AM until 4:30 PM.  Each presenter will have approximately 10 minutes of speaking time, so please plan your submissions and proposals accordingly.  The full conference registration fee is $20.00, and includes a copy of the published proceedings for presenters, a continental breakfast, and a delicious lunch.  Admission is $5.00 for those who wish to attend the keynote address only. 

 

Please feel free to contact cynthia.glucksman@csun.edu or esabaiz@csun.edu with any questions.  You can also visit us at http://www.csun.edu/~agse/ for information and updates.  We look forward to receiving your submissions and seeing you at the conference.

 

 

XVI.                    Currents

 

South Central Modern Language Association (SCMLA) , 2007 Conference in Memphis, Tennessee,  1st-3rd November.

 

The Literature and Politics Panel welcomes 500 word abstracts/proposals for its 2007 Conference in Memphis, Tennessee.  The theme of the conference is ‘Currents.’

 

Paper topics for the panel are open; however, I am particularly interested in essays dealing with the following themes:

 

v             Queer, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transsexual, or Intersexual Politics in Literature

v             Marxist & Neo-Marxist Politics in Literature

v             Ambiguous and Contradicting Politics in Literature

v             The Politics of Community Building in Literature

 

Please email abstract/proposals (no attachments please) to fenton_JP@hotmail.com by 16th March, 2007.

 

Anyone may propose a paper, but all presenters must join SCMLA by 14th May, 2007 to be included in the program.

 

Joshua Fenton, Dept.  of English, UC-Riverside

 

 

XVII.            Ragged London: The Spectacle of Crime and Degeneracy in the Victorian Capital

 

Special session at the Modern Language Association, Chicago 2007

 

From the sensational ‘Newgate Novels’ of the early Victorian period to the spectacle of the ‘Ripper Murders’ during the so-called ‘Autumn of Terror’ (1888), the Victorian middle-class was deeply fascinated by the seeming degeneracy and pervasive criminality of London's lower class.  Narrative, journalistic, and investigative accounts of London's ‘low life’ and rookeries were, in fact, part of the mainstay of middle-class popular culture.  But what other function, beside lurid entertainment, did slum narratives provide? What were the discursive intersections of Victorian culture and class that seemingly necessitated the production and consumption of slum narratives and tales of urban degeneracy, crime, and decay?

 

Please send a brief abstract via email or regular mail by 20th March, 2007 to

 

Kevin R.  Swafford, Department of English, Bradley University, Peoria Illinois 61625 or

swafford@bradley.edu

 

 

XVIII.               The Playboy of the Western World

 

Special Session at MLA 2007, Chicago: Centenary of J.  M.  Synge's The Playboy of the Western World

 

2007 marks the centenary of the Abbey Theatre premier of J. M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World.  Please send abstracts for papers exploring the play in relation to topics that include (but are not limited to): Irish nationalism, religious and anti-colonial politics in turn-of-the-century Ireland; the play's use of various genres and theatrical modes ;  fictional narration, confessional rhetoric, metatheatricality, historiography; the relationship of theatrical and literary genre to the politics of identity; production histories; the critical debates and audience reactions the play stimulated.

 

Please submit 250-word abstracts and a CV by 20th March, 2007 to Erin Post (erin.post_at_duke.edu).

 

 Erin Post Ph.D.  Candidate Program in Literature Duke University Bell Tower 3, Box 90670 Durham, NC 27708 erin.post_at_duke.edu

 

XIX.                    The Lesbian Image

 

A special volume of The Journal of Lesbian Studies entitled ‘The Lesbian Image in International Popular Culture’ is seeking essays that explore a wide variety of lesbian images in a global context.  No more essays on the United States or Spain are needed.  Projects dealing with any other nations/cultures will be considered, but submissions that look at lesbian images in India, Africa, and China are of particular interest.  The concept of ‘lesbian’ increasingly has been theorized, debated, and studied in the last four decades.  Images marked as ‘lesbian’ create desire in men and women alike, sell commercial products and services, and stir up controversy on many levels.  Despite enormous international interest in the idea and image of lesbian, however, I believe that most people have only a limited understanding of what it is to be lesbian in a global context.  In part, this limited perspective is due to the unavailability of images of the broad diversity of real women-centered women.  Submissions may address the lesbian image as it appears in literature, art, film, music, television, Internet, the news media, marketing, or any other venue of International Popular Culture.  Essays may concentrate on one particular culture or be comparative in nature.  Although no one specific theoretical approach is preferred, essays should critically and carefully examine the images discussed, including a commentary on the cultural or national context in which they appear, as well as discussion of related issues (e.g.  intended audience, reception, political or commercial agenda, and the implications thereof).  Send one-page overview to Sara E. Cooper at scooper@csuchico.edu by 20th March 2007.  Essays of 10-15 pages (including bibliography) as Microsoft Word attachment will be due by 31st August, 2007.

 

 

XX.                      Varieties of Irishness

 

 The International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures invites you to attend the 2007 conference at University College Dublin.  The Conference theme is designed to highlight the diversity which has always been at the heart of Irish writing and to accommodate the widespread interests of IASIL delegates. 

 

The Conference activities will take place on the extensive campus of University College Dublin located at Belfield, Dublin, 4, four miles from the city centre.  The conference activities will chiefly take place in the Global Irish Institute Building near the entrance to campus; the closing dinner will be held in the O’Reilly Hall.  Accommodation choices will include five-star student accommodation in the Glenomena Residences and the Montrose Hotel beside the campus, which will be offering a special rate to delegates.

 

Registration will take place on the afternoon of Monday, 16th July 2007.  The conference will open with a welcoming address by President Hugh Brady at 4.30 p.m.  and the keynote address by Professor Declan Kiberd, ‘Joyce’s Homer, Homer’s Joyce’, at 5.00 p.m.  These will be followed by a reception to welcome delegates.  The panels will begin at 9.00 a.m.  on Tuesday, 17th July. 

 

The first call for papers resulted in over 170 proposals of great diversity and interest.  A second and final call for papers is now being issued, with a deadline of 20th March, 2007. 

 

No further call for papers will be issued. 

 

Speakers must be members of IASIL for 2007 in order to present an accepted paper at the conference; or have become a member no later than 30th April 2007. 

 

Proposals for papers of twenty minutes’ duration (approx.  2,800 words) are welcome on any aspect of the literatures of Ireland, especially those on the conference theme.  Please include the following information with your proposal:

 

.  A 300 word description of your paper; .  The full title of your paper; .  Your name, postal address and e-mail address; .  Your institutional affiliation and position (e.g.  Professor, Lecturer, Postgraduate Student, etc.); .  Any AV requirements you might have; .  Your IASIL membership status (i.e.  present member, membership to be renewed, membership application submitted/to be submitted).

 

Most participants in the conference will submit individual papers and be allocated to panels by the conference organisers. 

 

We are also offering participants the opportunity to form their own panels.  Panel proposals are being accepted from:

 

.  Groups of 3 or 4 people who wish to deliver papers around one theme; .  Individuals who will issue their own calls for papers for the conference.

 

For details on how to submit a panel proposal, please see

 

All paper and panel speakers must be current members of IASIL or have joined by 30th April, 2007. 

 

All speakers must pay the conference registration fee in advance.  Registration details will be posted online at the end of March 2007.

 

All speakers are responsible for their own registration, travel and visa arrangements, and accommodation.  We will provide relevant information on this site. 

 

If you are making your submission by e-mail, please do so the conference organiser, Professor Anthony Roche, at avroche@eircom.net.  Please send your proposal in plain text in the body of your e-mail and as an attachment in a Word document.  E-mailed confirmation of receipt of all e-mails will be sent within 10 working days. 

 

If you are making your submission by post, please do so to:

 

Professor Anthony Roche, School of English and Drama, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin, 4, Ireland. 

 

Organising panel: Dr.  John Brannigan; Professor Andrew Carpenter; Professor Anne Fogarty; Professor Gerardine Meaney. 

 

IASIL 2007 is hosted by the School of English and Drama and the Global Irish Institute at University College Dublin.

 

 

XXI.                    First Annual British Scholar Conference. 

 

The conference will be held in Austin, Texas from Friday 2nd November to Saturday 3rd November on the campus of the University of Texas.  The conference focuses on eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century British history.  The British Scholar Conference exists to highlight the importance of British history from varied perspectives.  Whether focusing on the study of economics, empires, identities, or politics, the British influence on modern society cannot be underestimated.  In order to understand Britain’s vast contribution to our world we must study its history.  Thus, British history is the cornerstone of the British Scholar Conference.  Both established scholars and graduate students are welcome to apply and present at the conference.

 

The first annual British Scholar Conference is unique in that the finest papers presented will be included in the very first issue of the British Scholar journal.  Although papers presented at subsequent conferences may be published within the journal, their inclusion will be decided through the peer- review process.  The papers that are published in the inaugural issue of British Scholar will be narrowed down by the Editorial Advisory Board and voted on via a secret ballot by all those attending the conference on Saturday 3rd November.

 

Submissions of individual papers should include an abstract of 150-300 words as well as a few descriptive keywords.  Panels, which are expected to consist of three to five papers, should be submitted by the person willing to serve as both chair and respondent.  In addition to abstracts for each individual paper, the panel chair should also include a brief 100-150 word introduction describing the panel’s main theme.  The conference does not discriminate between panels and individual submissions and papers.

 

All submissions for inclusion in the inaugural British Scholar Conference must be received by Sunday, 25th March, 2007.  Decisions on inclusion will be made by 1st June, 2007.  Submissions should be made electronically to conference@britishscholar.org.  Updates regarding the conference will be periodically posted to this website.  It is hoped that participants will be able to call upon their departments for hotel and transportation expenses.

 

brebenne@mail.utexas.edu

 

 

XXII.                 Decadence, Deviance, and Debauchery: A Celebration of Difference

 

Annual Graduate Students in English Association Conference

University of North Texas, Department of English Saturday, 28th April, 2007

 

The Graduate Students in English Association at the University of North Texas is seeking papers and panel topics for our interdisciplinary conference that present a variety of interpretations and criticisms examining cultural deviations, be they literary, linguistic, historical, or philosophical.  We are also accepting creative pieces dealing with the conference topic. Paper presentations should take approximately twenty minutes, including question and answer.

 

Our keynote speaker will be Brian Christopher Williams, award-winning playwright and author of Anita Bryant Died for Your Sins.

 

First-time presenters are encouraged to submit their work.

 

Topics could possibly include (but are not limited to) the following: • Excessive consumption: culinary, cultural, sexual, and material • Atheism and/or religious upheavals • The transgressive nature of the creative act • The interpretive act as creative • Homosexuality and Queer Theory • Cultural diversification • Changing models of masculinity • Narrative Transvestism • Transforming social discontent and deviance into art • Challenging government • Radical forms of artistic expression • The revisionary nature of history • Paradigm shifts • The changing nature of visual culture

 

Please submit paper abstracts and panel proposals via email attachment by Monday, 26th March, 2007 to the following email address: unt.gsea@gmail.com.

 

Paper abstracts should be 250-500 words in length.  Panel proposals should consist of a panel topic and three paper abstracts.  Panel proposals, which include the moderator's own abstract, will be considered.

 

Please include along with your proposal your email address, telephone number, and institutional affiliation.

 

Contributors will be notified by email no later than Monday, 2nd April 2007

 

Contributors interested in being considered for the $150 Best Paper Prize must submit their final, conference-ready draft to the above email address by Saturday, 21st April 2007.

 

 

XXIII.               KIPLING CONFERENCE

 

7th- 8th September 2007, University of Kent, UK

 

It is now 100 years since Rudyard Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907, ‘in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author’.  The University of Kent, sponsored by the Kipling Society, is hosting an international conference on Kipling’s work; our keynote speakers are the political commentator and critic Christopher Hitchens and the postcolonial critic Professor Benita Parry of Warwick University.  It is the intention of this conference to encourage new approaches to Kipling scholarship, and to foster dialogues between two different kinds of Kipling’s readers in the twenty-first century who are too often separate: on the one hand, experts and enthusiasts of Kipling’s life and writings, and on the other, the increasingly influential exponents of postcolonial criticism.  Such dialogue will be enabled by panel discussions, whose planned topics include but are not limited to

 

v             Kipling and crime /Kipling and journalism /Nation and Empire

v             The uncanny and the gothic /Kipling and knowledge /Kipling and Travel

v             Crossing cultures / trans-nationalism /Kipling and psychoanalysis

v             The Jungle Books /Kipling and War /Kipling and modernity

v             Kipling and film /Kipling as poet /Kipling’s literary descendants

 

 Send your proposals of 150-300 words for 20 minute papers to english@kent.ac.uk by 28th March 2007.  Please enter ‘Kipling Conference 2007’ in your email subject field. 

 

Conference Organizers: Dr Jan Montefiore and Dr Kaori Nagai School of English, University of Kent.

 

 

XXIV.               Journal of the Scottish Society for Art History Volume 12, 2007

 

Glasgow: Art, Architecture and Design

Following our successful special Dundee edition, the 2007 edition of the Journal of the Scottish Society for Art History will focus on the city of Glasgow.

 

The main sections of the Journal will be based on papers given at two day-long symposia held by the SSAH in conjunction with the History of Art Department, University of Glasgow.  However, we welcome submissions on or around these subject areas, as well as from art historians working in Glasgow, or those pursuing research elsewhere on aspects of art, design or architecture in Glasgow.

 

We will also be presenting short pieces detailing projects around the city, from the Mackintosh Tearooms Project at Glasgow Museums, the Whistler Etchings Catalogue Raisonné project at University of Glasgow, to the development of the Riverside, the new Museum of Transport.

 

Please contact the editor to discuss suitability for inclusion.

 

1) Revisiting Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style

This one-day symposium, part of the city-wide festival devoted to Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style, presented an opportunity to revisit academic approaches to a landmark phase in architecture and design.  Through a combination of formal papers and poster presentations, participants addressed a diversity of themes and approaches, reconsidering the status and significance of Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style in the wider context of recent developments in art, architecture and design history.

 

2) Glasgow 1918-1980: What Happened?

Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style are well known to art and design historians.  Equally, the emergence of ‘New Image Glasgow’ in the 1980s ushered in a high-profile period when the visual arts in Glasgow achieved national and international prominence. 

 

But what happened in the period between 1918 and 1980? How can art in Glasgow be international (and of international significance) between 1880 and the First World War, yet provincial in the 1920s and 30s? Can we understand the art of this period in isolation to Glasgow’s economic collapse in the inter-war period?

 

Please send notifications of interest (with, if possible, a 250-300 word abstract) by 23 February 2007 to:

Dr Ailsa Boyd, History of Art Department, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QH

Email: a.boyd@whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk.  Tel: 0141 330 4097 Fax: 0141 330 3513

 

The final deadline for submission of papers is 31st March 2007.  Papers should normally be 3000-4500 words plus notes etc, though shorter pieces will be considered. 

Please contact Ailsa Boyd if you have any queries at all.

 

 

XXV.                  Literary London

 

The 6th Annual Literary London conference will be hosted by the Department of English University of Westminster, London, at their 309 Regent Street building.  (http://www.wmin.ac.England/page-42)

 

v             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 2007 aims to:   

v             Read literary and dramatic texts in their historical and social context and in relation to theoretical approaches to the study of the metropolis.  

v             Investigate the changing cultural and historical geography of London.  

v             Consider the social, political, and spiritual fears, hopes, and perceptions that have inspired representations of London.  

v             Trace different traditions of representing London and examine how the pluralism of London society is reflected in London literature and drama.  

v             Celebrate the contribution London and Londoners have made to English literature.  

 

Proposals 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 pre-Roman times to the present day. 

 

While proposals on all topics and periods of London literature are encouraged, given the historical associations of Westminster's Regent Campus and the immediate area as a whole, this year we would especially welcome paper or panel proposals on the theme of the theatre and performance. Questions that might be addressed are: How has London been represented in theatre and performance from the middle ages to the present day? What role has the physical fabric of theatres, theatre companies and their associated institutions played in the life of London?  How has London's theatrical life figured in theatrical and non-theatrical writing - as something useful and instructive, or as something dangerous and corrupting? Is there a sense in which literary and other texts suggest that London is a site of performance or itself in some way a type of performance? What role have different theatrical traditions (including such 'marginal' ones as clowning, street theatre, pantomime) played in the life of London? We welcome papers about the theatre and performance from central London to the suburbs and the streets.   Though the main focus of the conference will be on literary, dramatic and performance texts, we actively encourage interdisciplinary contributions relating film, architecture, geography, theories of urban space, etc., to literary/dramatic representations of London. Papers from postgraduate students are welcome for consideration.  

Abstracts of 200 words for 20-minute papers by 28th February 2007 to:  contact@literarylondon.org or the postal address below.   Proposals for panels of three speakers are also welcome.   EXTENDED TO 31st MARCH

Dr Lawrence Phillips (University of Northampton) and Dr Brycchan Carey (Kingston University),  Literary London Organising Committee  Department of English  School of Arts, University of Northampton, Avenue Campus, St Georges Avenue, Northampton, NN2 6JD Telephone:  FAX  E-mail: contact@literarylondon.org  Web site: www.literarylondon.org  

The Annual Literary London conference is mutually supportive of the e-journal of the same name.

 

 

XXVI.               High & Low / Culture

 

The Midwest Modern Language Association is soliciting essay submissions for the Fall 2007 issue of the Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association.  The topic for this issue will be ‘High & Low / Culture.’  The deadline for submissions is 31st March, 2007.

 

To ensure that the Journal is accessible to the broad membership, essays should be written in English and, when text in other language is quoted, translations in English should be provided.  Submissions should not exceed 8,000 words.

 

Possible topics might include:

 

Bridging ‘The Great Divide’ Camp consumption and queer performativity Art and craft/s Histories of high and low culture Novel to film, film to novel Cultural Studies Rhetoric and poetics The Aesthetic of ordinary life Jazz, hip hop, rock & roll, and literature Feminist Popular Culture Slang, spanglish, and other variants in literature Vulgarity High middle ages, low middle ages Between high and low Filming the canon What's lower than low? Fan cultures Merchant & Ivory, Barnes & Noble, Oprah & Faulkner The wisdom of popular genres Strange bedfellows Cultural and subcultural capital Cultural gatekeeping Contact zones Shifting technologies Cosmopolitanism Issues of access Sensationalism Alternative public spheres

 

Please send three copies of each essay (two formatted for anonymous reading) to:

 

Kevin J.H.  Dettmar, President Midwest Modern Language Association 302 English-Philosophy Building The University of Iowa Iowa City, IA 52242-1408

 

More details are available online at http://www.uiowa.edu/~mmla.

 

Midwest Modern Language Association, 302 English/Philosophy Building, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242-1408.   Tel: 319/335-0331 Fax: 319/335-3123

 

 

XXVII.             Literary Scholarship

 

The Association of Literary Scholars and Critics (ALSC) invites proposals for papers and presentations to be considered for its thirteenth annual conference at the Hotel Allegro in Chicago, 12th–14th October, 2007.  The conference program includes six panels and three seminars. 

 

Please bear in mind that there will be many more submissions than can be accepted, and that the criteria may include not only the merit of the individual submission but the range and variety of a session's contributions.  The pleasure of the conveners is to see how much stimulating and valuable work is being done; the pain is to be able to accommodate only part of it in panel or seminar.

 

Submission form and deadline.  Submissions must reach the convener of the session by 31st March, 2007.  They should be sent to both (1) the convener of the panel or seminar and (2) the Association's office at alsc@bu.edu.  On your e-mail's ‘subject’ line, please give your name and other information in the following form: ‘ALSC 2007, [Name of Session] abstract by [First Name, Last Name].’

 

* If you do not send copies to both the convener and the ALSC, we cannot guarantee that you will receive an e-mail notice ackowledging receipt of your proposal. 

 

* For details regarding submission length, please refer to the individual instructions for each session.

 

* You must be a member of the ALSC in good standing to participate in the conference program as a panelist or seminarian.  ALSC members receive a discount on conference registration. 

 

* For a complete listing of session topics and information about how to join the ALSC, visit our website at www.bu.edu/literary.

 

Seminars

 

The 2007 Conference in Chicago will continue the tradition established in 2004 of offering seminars designed to increase participation of the membership in the conference and giving them another excellent reason to attend.  Modeled on what has worked successfully for such organizations as the Shakespeare Association of America and the Modernist Studies Association, these three seminars will each be led by a distinguished member of the Association.

 

Each seminar will have fifteen (15) guaranteed places, and each person accepted for a seminar will receive an official letter of invitation to the conference and will be listed in its program.  Seminar participants will write brief position papers (2-4 pages maximum, double-spaced), and will circulate their papers to the other participants and read all the papers prior to the conference.  The listing of the titles in the conference program should help participants obtain travel funding for the conference from their home colleges and universities.  Senior scholars are eligible to apply for these seminars, but graduate students and junior faculty especially are encouraged to do so; we hope that senior scholars and others will spread the word and encourage their graduate students and junior colleagues to apply.  The three seminars will run concurrently.  Those admitted as participants in each seminar will participate in the actual discussion, but anyone at the conference is welcome to attend one of the seminars as an auditor-not a participant-provided there is sufficient room.  Details on submission of abstracts are given above and on the topics of the seminars below.

 

Seminar: The Internet, Publishing, and the Future of Literature

 

Convener: John Holbo (National University of Singapore)

 

What role will the Internet play in publishing, scholarly research, cultural journalism, and literary commentary in general? Do bloggers have a role to play in cultural and literary discussion comparable to their developing importance in political reporting and argument? How will e-publishing affect scholarship, university presses, promotion and tenure? What will become of the book? How has it already affected the publication of monographs, journals, and scholarly editions? To what extent has it made literature and critical discussion more available? Has it advanced or undermined fundamental skills in reading and writing? Has it begun to affect how literary writers actually write? This seminar concerns itself with what is to come and, for seminar purposes, participants are encouraged to adopt attitudes that range from cautiously optimistic to wildly utopian, although intelligent Cassandras may apply.  Participants should send proposals or abstracts for 2-4 page papers to Professor John Holbo, Singapore University, Singapore.  (jholbo@mac.com)

 

Seminar: Teaching the Great Books

 

Convener: Bruce Gans (Wright College, Chicago)

 

Brief papers, 2-4 pages long, are requested that focus on the deployment of Great Books-and particular Great Books authors-in the classroom, either in elective courses or as part of a core curriculum.  What approaches might be taken to teaching such courses and what goals can be achieved? Among possible topics one might include such classic authors' focus on the universal and perennial as objects of study and writing, the role of history in studying their work, and the relation of such courses to more narrowly disciplinary courses in reading and writing, including courses with a far smaller literary component.  Other topics might be the role of Great Books in the remediation of cultural illiteracy and critical thinking skills among minority and underserved students, and the role of Great Books in faculty professional development.  Abstracts, proposals, or the papers themselves should be sent to Professor Bruce Gans, Department of English, Wright College, 4300 N.  Narraganett, Chicago, IL 60634.  (bmg1030@hotmail.com)

 

Seminar: Literature and the Visual Arts

 

Convener: Willard Spiegelman (Southern Methodist University)

 

This seminar will focus on the multiple relations among the so-called sister arts.  Please send half-page abstracts or short papers (2-4 pages) that treat ekphrasis in literature, or pursue inter-disciplinary approaches to the study of the visual arts and the literary ones, to Willard Spiegelman, Department of English, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275.  We especially welcome treatments of topics from before the twentieth century.  (wspiegel@smu.edu)

 

Panel : Joseph Conrad

 

Convener: Michael Gorra (Smith College)

 

2007 marks the sesquicentennial of Conrad's December 1857 birth and the hundredth anniversary of the publication of The Secret Agent.  Papers are welcome on any aspect of his work, but the fact of these birthdays suggests it's a good moment to take stock-to ask just how it is that we see ‘our’ Conrad.  Ours, not Leavis' or Zabel's, and maybe not Achebe's either.  For in terms of years we are as far from him as he was from them.  Please send 150-word abstracts to Michael Gorra, English Department, Smith College, Northampton, MA 01060.  (mgorra@smith.edu)

 

Michael Gouin-Hart, Executive Director, Association of Literary Scholars and Critics (ALSC), 650 Beacon Street, Suite 510, Boston, Massachusetts 02215.  Phone: 617-358-1990 / Fax: 617-358-1995.  Email: alsc@bu.edu / Internet: www.bu.edu/literary

 

 

 

April

 

XXVIII.          Victorian Emotions

 

The journal Victorian Studies seeks essays for a special issue on ‘Victorian Emotions.’ Possible topics include -- but are not limited to -- the role of the emotions in Victorian notions of psychology, physiology, science, history, politics, or art.  This special issue will provide a forum for discussing Victorian concerns about the emotions that remain at issue today: What are the political stakes involved in the emotions? What is the relation between the emotions and reason? What is the role of historical specificity in emotional experience? It will also engage questions that arise for intellectual, literary, and social historians of the emotions – as well as for those working in the field of Victorian studies more generally: What are the limits to what we can know about other historical moments? What tools are available to us for reconstructing past understandings or experiences? To what extent do these tools necessarily cross or complicate disciplinary boundaries?

 

Please note that the deadline for submissions has been extended to 1st April, 2007.  Please direct all queries to guest editor Rachel Ablow (rablow@buffalo.edu).  Essays may not exceed 8,000 words.  Please send 2 hard copies of each submission to Rachel Ablow, Department of English, 306 Clemens Hall, University at Buffalo, SUNY, Buffalo, NY 14260.

 

XXIX.               Symbiosis

 

From Dr. Philip Tew:

 

I am contacting you in my capacity as the new joint managing editor of Symbiosis: A Journal of Anglo-American Literary & Cultural Studies. Our website is at http://www.symbiosisonline.org.uk/.

We are organizing our sixth biennial conference at Brunel University in July 2007 in which you may be interested. Submission deadline: Sunday 8th April, 2007.

 

 

XXX.                 Male Beauty

 

We invite abstracts for a collection of essays on male beauty to be published by Cambridge Scholarly Publishing.  Save for the Greeks, Romans and the contemporary art historian, very little has been said about beauty and its relationship to men and masculinities.  To its credit, masculinity studies itself has surely emerged as a field of study and has covered much ground in the last thirty years: we have understood masculinity as a category for analysis and, like femininity, as a social construction; we have supported and also challenged the ‘crisis’ in masculinity; we have studied it both with and without ‘men’; we have considered masculinity's intersection with and its divergence from other social and cultural fields of inquiry, including feminist, queer and most recently, postcolonial studies.  According to Tim Edwards, we have arrived at the ‘third wave’ of masculinity studies with its ‘questions of normativity, performativity and sexuality.’ Our collection of essays argues, however, that our work here is far from over; more to the point, studies of masculine ‘beauty’ continue to be overlooked.  In what ways does male beauty inform, shape, define and redefine our definition of masculinity itself? What does the concept of male beauty do to gender?

 

We are then interested in contemporary critical treatments of ‘masculine’ beauty (twentieth to twenty-first century) in literature, film, television, advertising and art.  Following Bryce Traister, we do not hope to return to ‘heteromasculinity’ or ‘representations of [white, heterosexual] men-produced by men and analyzed for the most part by men-to the center of academic cultural criticism.’ To this end, we invite essays that extend beyond thinking of masculinities and its relationship to beauty in terms of a white, middle-class, heterosexual paradigm only and will instead look to feminist, queer, postcolonial, and/or multicultural critiques of the category.  Topics might include but are not limited to: women performing masculinity, transvestitism, androgyny, racialized representations of male beauty, etc. 

 

We will accept one-page abstracts (and/or full-length essay, if available) until 15th April, 2007.  Please direct submissions and/or questions to both Steven Davis (Indiana University) at stevdavi@indiana.edu and Maglina Lubovich (University of St.  Thomas) at mlubovich@stthomas.edu.

 

 

XXXI.               ‘American Artists in Munich.  Artistic Migration and Cultural Exchange Processes’

 

Deadline: 15th April, 2007

In 2003, a number of institutions in Munich decided to found an informal research group on the history of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.  Current members of the research group are: Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Prof.  Dr.  Walter Grasskamp, Dr.  Birgit Jooss); Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Institut für Kunstgeschichte (Prof.  Dr.  Frank Büttner, Prof.  Dr.  Hubertus Kohle), Institut für Kunstpädagogik (Prof.  Dr.  Wolfgang Kehr); Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (Dr.  Christian Fuhrmeister, Prof.  Dr.  Wolf Tegethoff).  For the upcoming event, Susanne Böller M.A.  (Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus) has been co-opted.

 

Following the two conferences held in 2005 and 2006, respectively - ‘Nationale Identitäten - Internationale Avantgarden.  München als europäisches Zentrum der Künstlerausbildung’ (see http://www.zikg.eu/main/2005/kunstakademie-europa/index.htm for the program and http://www.zeitenblicke.de/2006/2/ for the online publication of the conference proceedings) and ‘Zwischen deutscher Kunst und internationaler Modernität.  Formungen in der Künstlerausbildung 1918 bis 1968’ (http://www.zikg.eu/main/2006/1918-1968/programm.htm; publication forthcoming) -, the research group now announces a third conference, in cooperation with the Terra Foundation for American Art (http://www.terraamericanart.org):

 

‘American Artists in Munich.  Artistic Migration and Cultural Exchange Processes’

 

This international conference aims at exploring the phenomenon of artistic migration and transfer in a case study.  Given the contemporary significance of global migration, this topic is no longer only a field of 19th century studies.  In particular, we wish to investigate the attraction of the self-proclaimed ‘Kunststadt’/’City of the Art(s)’ for American Artists from the mid-19th century to World War I and beyond: Who came, when, and why?

 

Speakers are to look at the general influences on the decision of a place of study, which depended not just on the attractiveness of a city and its art institutions, but also on the students' own cultural background.  What was the significance of the American artistic community in Munich? How did leading compatriots shape the growing American colonies in Bavaria? What, in particular, prompted the Americans to come to Munich: The academy's renown in teaching technical skills, or rather the city's bustling art scene? To what extent did the change in genre (from landscape to history painting) contribute to Munich's attractiveness, as opposed to Düsseldorf, which had basically been the Americans' first choice until the mid-19th century? How influential was, finally, the appeal of Paris as an avant-garde center in debasing the training in Munich as old-fashioned and traditional?

 

Furthermore, it is important to learn more about how the Munich school and its protagonists became known in the United States.  Existing studies of American painters in Munich focus on leading representatives from the peak of the movement in the early 1870s and 1880s, when the realism of the returning artists' paintings caused something of a sensation in the American ‘art world’.  However, to do justice to the complex phenomenon, it must be investigated in its multi-faceted entirety, taking into account the development of styles and genres over more than half a century, experienced by approx.  420 American students - which formed indeed one of the largest groups of non-German-speaking students enrolled at the Academy -, and also by the unknown number of American artists who studied elsewhere in town.  Numerous private schools and studios, whose histories also await research, offered valuable alternatives.

 

Equally important is the study of key figures, such as Frank Duveneck, a leading representative of portrait and landscape painting, and a popular teacher; Karl von Marr, American student, teacher and later even director of the Munich academy; or Hans Hofmann, who ran a successful private school in Munich and later became a leading figure of Abstract Expressionism.  However, the conference will not be limited to representatives of the academy.  There will also be a focus on artists like Marcel Duchamp who worked in Munich before he became a seminal avant-garde figure in the United States, or Grant Wood, who came to Munich in 1928 to visit the museums and to oversee the production of the monumental window he had designed for the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids.

 

Following the holistic approach adopted for the previous conferences, the papers will not only indicate what the artists received in Munich, but also how they in turn fuelled the city's artistic life.  Another interesting topic is the way in which American artists transformed the results of their stay in Munich upon return to their native country; it is precisely this dual or bifocal perspective which seems best suited for an analysis of this give-and-take of cultural exchange.

 

The two and a half day conference will take place in the lecture hall of the Amerika Haus München e.V.  (http://www.amerikahaus.de) from 9th-11th October, 2007.  The official language of the conference will be English.  However, in the exceptional case that scholars propose a paper in German, we will consider providing simultaneous translation.

 

Papers are invited from international scholars in the field.  Please send an abstract of one page (not more than 500 words) in digital form either to:

 

Prof.  Dr.  Hubertus Kohle Institut für Kunstgeschichte Georgenstr.  7 80799 München Germany hubertus.kohle@lrz.uni-muenchen.de

or to

Dr.  Christian Fuhrmeister Projektreferent Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte Meiserstr.  10 80333 München Germany c.fuhrmeister@zikg.eu before 15th April, 2007. 

In early May, all entrants will be notified.

 

 

XXXII.            British Studies

 

Midwest Conference on British Studies 53rd Annual Meeting 28th-30th September 2007 at Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio.  The Midwest Conference on British Studies is proud to announce that its fifty-third annual meeting will be hosted by Wright State University at the Doubletree Suites Hotel in Dayton, Ohio. 

 

The MWCBS seeks papers from scholars in all fields of British Studies, broadly defined to include those who study England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Britain s empire.  We welcome scholars from the broad spectrum of disciplines, including but not limited to history, literature, political science, gender studies and art history.  Proposals for complete sessions are preferred, although proposals for individual papers will be considered.  Especially welcome are:

 

 Cross Disciplinary panels examining two or more approaches to British Studies.  Paper and panel submissions relating to online or technology-based teaching and research in British Studies.  Anglo-American Relations: past and present.  Roundtables examining new trends in British Studies

 

The MWCBS welcomes papers presented by advanced graduate students and will award The Walter l.  Arnstein Prize at its plenary luncheon for the best graduate student paper given at the conference. 

 

Proposals should include a 200-word abstract for each paper and a brief, 1 page c.v.  for each participant, including chairs and commentators.  For full panels, please include a brief 200 word preview of the panel as a whole.  In addition, please place the panel proposal, and its accompanying paper proposals and vitas in one file.  Please make certain that all contact information, particularly email addresses are correct and current.  All proposals should be submitted online by 15th April 2007 to:

 

Phyllis L.  Soybel Program Chair, MWCBS Department of History/Social Sciences College of Lake County 19351 W.  Washington St.  Grayslake, Illinois 60030 Email: psoybel@clcillinois.edu

 

 

XXXIII.          Aurora, The Journal of the History of Art

 

We are currently seeking articles for Vol.  VIII (2007) of Aurora, The Journal of the History of Art to be published in November.  We consider articles utilizing any methodology and covering any art history topic from antiquity to the present.

 

The deadline for submissions is 30th April, 2007.

 

For information on how to submit a manuscript, please visit our website at http://www.aurorajournal.org. 

 

Lilian H.  Zirpolo, Ph.D.  Independent Art Historian Co-Editor/Co-Publisher Aurora, The Journal of the History of Art President WAPACC Organization http://www.aurorajournal.org

 

 

XXXIV.          Ruskinian Theatre Contemporary Issues in Theatre Historiography

 

University of Birmingham, 6th-7th July, 2007 

 

Proposals are invited for papers and respondents for a two day colloquium sponsored by the History Department at Lancaster University, the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts, University of Birmingham, and the  AHRC. 

 

This colloquium is part of the AHRC funded project: Ruskinian Theatre: the Aesthetics of the Nineteenth-Century London Popular Stage, 1870-1900, which seeks to investigate the interrelationships and influences of John  Ruskin’s aesthetic and social theories on the popular London stage in the late nineteenth-century. Our meeting in 2005 focussed on “Ruskin,  Shakespeare, and the Victorian Theatre” and was part of the “Victorian  Life Writing” conference at Lancaster University.

 

In 2006, we met at Lancaster University for a colloquium on the Victorian Theatre and Visual  Culture, and a collection of essays has been developed from this meeting.  In 2007, in our final meeting at the University of Birmingham, we'll be exploring the historiographical issues to arise from this and other  innovative work in theatre history and historiography.  In 2007, our focus is on the re-visionings and rethinkings of theatre  history and historiography.  In the last 20 years, there has been a  significant movement in developing new approaches to theatre history and  historiography which has been labelled "The New Theatre History."  Much of  this work has focused on the theatre of Britain in the nineteenth century, in particular in the first three decades of the century, and its final years, as significant moments of the transition into modernity.

 

The Ruskinian Theatre project takes as its rationale a revision of the standard narratives of theatre and cultural history in this period which  ignore the popular theatre: we challenge the focus of standard theatre  histories on the ‘literary drama’ and an emergent Modernist aesthetic.   In this call for papers we seek offers of original work in theatre history and historiography which seek to examine new standard narratives of  theatre history.  While the focus of the project is on the period 1870- 1901, in this call for papers, we do not preclude work dealing with other national theatre culture or time periods.  We are particularly interested  in new theatre history and historiographical research which attempts to  marry detailed archival work within new theoretical formulations, particularly those emerging after the "linguistic turn" of poststructuralism.  We also interested in the insights derived from cross-  and interdisciplinary work, particularly from scholars whose work is concerned with the relationships between theatre history and cultural  history.   Papers of 30 minutes length are invited which address these themes:

 

• debates over the ‘literary’ and/or ‘legitimate’ drama vs. the  popular and the spectacular

• relationships of practice between literary theatre, Modernist  theatre, and popular and spectacular theatre

• the concept of a ‘National Theatre’ and/or a ‘National Drama’

• studies of the interactions of theatre managements and  contemporary artists

• regional theatre histories

• the self-representation of women theatre practitioners

• the relationship between theatre history and cultural history and  cultural studies

• the use of theatre and performance history by historians of society and culture 

 

Proposals should reach the convenors by 30th April 2007.

 

We particularly  encourage offers of papers from postgraduate students, and expect that  there will be two postgraduate bursaries subsidising attendance. 

 

Further  enquiries, applications for postgraduate bursaries and proposals should be  directed to:  Peter Yeandle, Ruskinian Theatre Research Associate, Department of  History, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YG,  p.yeandle@lancaster.ac.uk 

Website:  http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/centres/ruskin/research/ruskiniantheatre.htm

Convenors: Peter Yeandle  Kate Newey  Jeffrey Richards

 

 

 

May

 

 

XXXV.               Don’t Mind the Gap: Continuities in British Art Criticism, 1880–1914

 

The 96th Annual Conference of the College Art Association will be held 20th to 23rd February 2008 Dallas for the first time in history.

Deadline for proposals for papers: 11th May 2007.

The transition from the Victorian era to twentieth-century modernism has proved difficult to bridge in histories of British art.  Indeed, the study of art before and after 1900 still constitutes two largely distinct fields.  This session seeks a more fluid approach by examining continuities and ruptures in art criticism ca. 1880– 1914.  Commentators such as J. Comyns Carr, Edmund Gosse, D. S. MacColl, George Moore, Claude Phillips, George Bernard Shaw, and Marion Spielmann were involved in it at least by the 1880s, and we seek proposals that connect the roles such writers played in Victorian art to their positions within modernism. How did critics’ changing or unchanging opinions influence artists’   reputations?

 

How did this determine their own standing and that of their publications? In what ways were loyalties between critics and artists tested or maintained as tastes changed? The cochairs intend to develop for publication a collection of papers addressing these and related questions.

 

More details at http://conference.collegeart.org/2008/

 

Martina Droth, Henry Moore Institute, martina@henry-moore.ac.uk and Peter Trippi, Fine Art Connoisseur, peter@fineartconnoisseur.com

 

 

June

 

XXXVI.           THIRD INTERNATIONAL GEORGE GISSING CONFERENCE   "WRITING OTHERNESS:   THE PATHWAYS OF GEORGE GISSING'S IMAGINATION"  

 

LILLE, FRANCE   27th-28th MARCH 2008   (Thursday & Friday following the Easter weekend)    

 

The efforts of scholars in the last half-century have served to confirm George Gissing's ranking among the major writers of fiction of his age. The steady flow in recent years of multifaceted comment on his writings speaks for itself, and the impressive amount of unpublished material made available over the last two decades is providing invaluable new clues to his artistic practices. Interestingly, Gissing's growing pertinence is not merely that of a leading exponent and translator of late Victorian culture. His art is also increasingly regarded as rooted in his recognition of separateness, understood as aesthetic gesture as much as theme. Papers are therefore sought on all aspects of Gissing's contacts and/or confrontations with the Other, on his receptiveness to and negotiation of, ego-threatening novelty, to be defined in a variety of ways: cultural, intellectual, ideological, artistic. Discussions of his (mis-)representation of the defamiliarized self in his fictional constructs and personal writings, are also invited: the venue being Lille in France, Gissing's last homeland, papers on the correlative issue of his reading of Englishness and foreignness will be most welcome.

 

Advisory Committee: Professor Pierre Coustillas (University of Lille 3); Professor Constance Harsh (Colgate University); Dr Christine Huguet (University of Lille 3); Dr Simon J. James (Durham University); Dr Emma Liggins (Manchester Metropolitan University); Dr Diana Maltz (Southern Oregon University); Dr Bouwe Postmus (University of Amsterdam); Dr John Sloan (Harris Manchester College, Oxford).

 

Proposals (200-300 words), together with brief CV, should be sent to Christine Huguet (Conference organiser) at the following address: christine.huguet-meriaux@univ-lille3.fr.

 

Deadline for submission of proposals: 4th June 2007

 

Conference Venue and Enquiries: Maison de la Recherche, Université Charles de Gaulle-Lille 3 (CECILLE Research Centre, University of Lille, with the academic support of IES, University of London). Conference information and registration forms available at: www.evenements.univ-lille3.fr/recherche/colloque-george-gissing. 

 

 

 

XXXVII.        Thomas Hardy

 

Call for Short Position Papers, Questions, Theses, Challenges, Speculations, Provocations, and other Intelligent Contributions for a Masterclass Session on Thomas Hardy's ‘Emma’ Poems

 

Hardy at Yale Conference--June 14-17, 2007 Yale University, New Haven, CT

 

Chair: William W.  Morgan (Illinois State University) Panelists: Rosemarie Morgan (Yale University), Philip Mallett (University of St.  Andrews)

 

The Hardy at Yale Conference Planning Committee are soliciting short papers (under two pages), as well as Questions, Challenges, Speculations, Provocations, and other Intelligent Contributions on the general subject of Thomas Hardy's ‘Emma’ poems for an extended discussion session we're calling a Masterclass to be held from 5:00 to 6:30 PM on Saturday, June 16, 2007.  The session is imagined as an informed, lively, intense, and free-wheeling discussion on at least three dimensions of Hardy's poems associated with his first wife, Emma: * The text of the Emma poems * Biography/authobiography in the Emma poems * The aesthetics of the Emma poems The session chair will select and present the most interesting contributions; the three panelists will respond to them, and the audience will be invited to join in the discussion as well.  While preference will be given to contributions offered by Conference attendees, those who cannot attend are also invited to submit their papers, questions, etc.

 

Send your contributions by 1st June, 2007, to: wwmorgan@ilstu.edu

________________________________________________________

 

Some Ideas for Consideration:

 

I.  The Text of the Emma Poems: When we speak of Hardy's ‘Emma Poems,’ which of the following do we mean?

 

The holograph version of 'Poems of 1912-13' The Satires of Circumstance version of 'Poems of 1912-13' The Collected Poems (1919 ff) version of 'Poems of 1912-13' 'Poems of 1912-13' plus the 150 or so additional Poems that may be associated with Emma

 

II.  The Place of Biography and Autobiography in Reading the Emma Poems:

 

Biography--How useful to an understanding of the poems is what we may know about Hardy's life at the time of writing them? Autobiography--How, if they are, and to what extent are the poems autobiographical?

 

III.  The Aesthetics of the Emma Poems:

 

Is 'Poems of 1912-13' a single, unified work? If so, what are the principles of its structure and unity? In what ways are the individual ‘Emma’ poems alike and different from one another? What technical and thematic features do they have that distinguishes them from others of Hardy's poems?

 

 

October

 

XXXVIII.     Victorian Women and the Occult

 

Special  issue of Women’s Writing

 

Increasingly, contemporary scholarship reveals the strong connection between Victorian women and the world of the nineteenth-century  supernatural.  Women were intrinsically bound to the occult and the  esoteric, from mediums who materialised spirits to the epiphanic  experiences of the new woman, from theosophy to telepathy.  This special  issue of Women’s Writing seeks to address the various ways in which  Victorian women expressed themselves and were constructed by the occult  through a broad range of texts.   

 

Topics may include but are not limited to:  

 

v             Women and Spiritualism 

v             Women authors and the Victorian ghost story 

v             Women as investigators of the supernatural 

v             The representation of the occult on the Victorian stage by actresses  and women playwrights 

v             Crystal gazing and writing 

v             Women and Theosophy 

v             Mesmerism, healing and women practitioners 

v             Women, transcendent experience and madness 

v             Women and secret societies 

 

Please submit papers for consideration between 3000-7000 words to Dr Tatiana Kontou, T.Kontou@sussex.ac.uk, University of Sussex, by 31st October  2007.

 

Contributors should follow the journal’s house style details of which are to be found on the Women’s Writing web site  http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/0999082.asp.

 

 



 

2008

XXXIX.          Ford Madox Ford

Conference in 2008

A conference is planned for 2008 at the Åbo Academy, Turku, Finland, on ‘Ford Madox Ford as Editor: Literary Magazines, Collaboration and Community-Making’; to be organized by Jason Harding.

 

In order to celebrate the centenary of the founding of the English Review this conference will seek to re-examine Ford Madox Ford's impact as editor. The conference will focus specifically on contextualizing Ford's role on the English Review and the transatlantic review in light of his editorial principles and his collaboration with many important writers of the age. The conference will explore Ford's associations with cosmopolitan coteries and expatriate networks in the service of building avant-garde 'communities'. The conference particularly encourages re-assessments of Ford's editorial influence on his collaborators: Conrad, Wells, Henry James, Hardy, Bennett, Galsworthy, Pound, Lewis and Lawrence on the English Review and Joyce, Hemingway, Stein, Rhys, Williams and E. E. Cummings on the transatlantic review. The conference also encourages papers examining the cross-cultural dimensions of Ford's editorship, in terms of literary translation (for example, Constance Garnett's Russian translations), modernist internationalism and expatriate 'community-making'.

 

A volume of IFMFS is planned for 2010 on the theme of Ford as Editor, or Ford and Literary Magazines, to be edited by Jason Harding.

 

For further information on the Conference in 2008 or to offer a paper or essay please contact:
Jason Harding: jasondh90@hotmail.com

 

See also http://www.english.bham.ac.England/fordmadoxford2006/literarycontacts.htm

v      For a note on the Ford Madox Ford Society, click here.

 

 

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