Conference Call for Papers
Call for Papers
Art & Power in Movement: An International Conference Rethinking the Black Power and Black Arts Movements
An international conference on the Black Power and Black Arts Movements
University of Massachusetts Amherst
November 18-20, 2010
As the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies celebrates the fortieth anniversary of its presence in the academy we wish to connect our commemoration with the emerging scholarship on African American culture and politics in the 1960s and 1970s. The Black Power movement and its cultural twin, the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s, fundamentally changed how people in the United States understood culture, education, community, politics, and even their own identities in short, the humanities and fine arts in the broadest sense. The profound and continuing political impact can be seen in the many ways that images, formulations, and rhetoric of Black Power and Black Arts were recalled and deployed positively and negatively in the 2008 presidential campaign from Barack Obama?s "Yes, we can" to rightwing characterizations of Obama as a "stealth black nationalist." Black Arts and Black Power were consciousness-raising movements that envisioned an alternative master narrative of the United States that is still struggling to be born.
These movements also significantly inspired the establishment of new academic fields, such as Black Studies, Women's Studies, Latina/o Studies, Asian American Studies, and Ethnic Studies, and influenced already established fields. The founding and growth of an enduring public arts sector, also, owe much to Black Arts and Black Power in that the reshaping of public support of cultural and educational endeavors engendered heated debates about what culture truly is, what it might do, and what it should do. The two movements did much to widen public acceptance of the ideas that popular culture can be 'serious' and 'high' culture popular. Despite these contributions and influences (and recent work by scholars rethinking the movements), the legacy of Black Arts/Black Power remains greatly misunderstood and underappreciated.
This interdisciplinary conference will bring together new scholarship on Black Power and Black Arts as well as contributions by veterans of those movements. The organizing committee seeks papers dealing with, but not limited to
- Regional expressions of Black Arts and Black Power
- The Origins of Black Arts and Black Power
- Black Arts and Literary and Artistic Genres
- The ideologies and political practices of Black Power
- The Intersection of Politics and Art in Black Power and Black Arts
- The political and cultural legacies of Black Power and Black Arts
One-page abstracts and brief bios to blackarts@afroam.umass.edu by April 17, 2010.
Call for Papers
Poetry of the Americas
5th Annual Graduate Student Comparative Poetics Symposium
Department of Comparative Literature
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Princeton, NJ
On Saturday, April 17, 2010, the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton University will host a symposium in comparative poetics titled "Poetry of the Americas." Graduate students at any stage in their work are welcome to submit proposals for a twenty-minute paper presentation.
In addition to two panels, the symposium will feature a keynote lecture given by Marjorie Perloff (Professor Emerita, Stanford University; Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Southern California), poetry readings by Kenneth Goldsmith (University of Pennsylvania, poet and founder of Ubu Web) and Roger Santiváñez (Haverford College, poet and founding member of Movimiento Kloaka), and a roundtable discussion in which scholars, poet-translators, and editors will address the possibility of a "trans-American poetics."
Is it possible to theorize a trans-American poetics? The poetry of the Americas shares many elements with European poetry, but nevertheless, is it possible to account for the development of a particularly American poetics from Canada to the Caribbean to the Southern Cone? If so, what would its dominant features be? If not, at what points do regional poetics diverge? What are the particularities of language in the Americas, and what makes a poem an American poem? Poetry of the Americas proposes a multidisciplinary discussion of shifts in literary trends and the way ideas circulated through the hemisphere during the twentieth century. We wish to explore how poets express and interpret the idea of "America" and "the Americas," as lands and nations, in conjunction with political and cultural changes.
We are pleased to invite papers that offer questions, challenges, elaborations, and interpretations of this year's theme. We are interested in papers that work with poetry in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French, as well as other languages. We are especially interested in proposals that take a comparative or interdisciplinary approach.
Topics may include but are not confined to the following:
-
The idea of "America," "the Americas," and "lo > americano" as a transnational term
- Transnationalism, transculturalism, "heterogeneous formations"
- Concepts of "regional" poetics
- Relation between formal innovation and development of an "American" poetry
- Modernism, modernismo, modernismo brasileiro
- The local & the international in American poetics
- Appropriation, imitation, antropofagia; originality, authorship, intertextuality
- Mestizaje/méitssage, hybridity/hybridez, créolité
- Relationship to non-American avant-gardes
- Memory and social ritual; memory and posdictaduras (postdictatorships)
- Poetry, landscape, geography
- Poetry and temporality
- American poetry & gender; poetry & race; performance of the "American self"
- Translation, mis-translation, collaboration
- Socio-politics of poetry publication, circulation, and reception
- The American long poem
- The American prose poem
- Exile, migration, diaspora
- The rise of the demotic register
- "Nation-language"
- The American poet as autobiographer
- New technologies and the composition and promulgation of poetry
- The politics of trends and tendencies
- Conception of the American by non-American poets
Paper proposals should include a title, 250-word abstract, brief biography (including department affiliation and areas of interest) and contact information. Please include at least one close reading in your paper and send us attachments of the poems before the symposium. Papers will be pre-circulated to moderators in order for them to prepare responses in advance. Audio-visual equipment is available upon request.
If you are interested in moderating a panel, please submit a curriculum vitae and a brief description of your interest in the symposium by the proposal deadline.
Deadline for proposals: February 19, 2010
Please send proposals via email attachment, as well as any questions, to poetryoftheamericas@gmail.com.
Thank you for your interest.
Ella Brians (Comparative Literature), Sergio Delgado (Spanish and > Portuguese), Rachel Galvin (Comparative Literature), Alejandra Josiowicz (Spanish and Portuguese), Evan Kindley (English), Jens Klenner (Comparative Literature), Greg Londe (English), Kathryn Stergiopoulos (Comparative Literature)
Call For Papers: Romance Fiction and American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom?
Last April, Princeton University hosted a groundbreaking two-day conference on popular romance fiction and American culture. Gathering scholars, authors, editors, and bloggers, this interdisciplinary gathering featured panels on romance and history (both political and literary), romance and religion, romance and sexuality, and romance and race; each explored the ways that popular romance fiction has reflected, and also helped shape, American culture from the late 18th century to the present.
Conference organizers William Gleason (Princeton) and Eric Selinger (DePaul) now invite proposals for a collection of essays that will build on the work of the conference: Romance Fiction and American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom? We welcome proposals from academic scholars from any field—American literature, popular culture, religion, women's and gender studies, African American Studies, or any other relevant discipline—as well as from authors, editors, and other members of the romance community who wish to reflect on their practice in light of the volume's concerns.
We are eager to consider proposals or abstracts on the relationships between popular romance fiction and
- the history of reading in America, from Pamela to the present
- American cultures of sexuality, masculinity, and femininity
- American religious cultures, in Christian and other traditions
- Race, ethnicity, and exogamous desire
- "High" culture: literary fiction, poetry, visual art, etc.
- Other popular genres: mystery / detective fiction, Science Fiction and Fantasy, non-romance bestsellers, chick-lit
- Other popular media: film, comics, music, gaming
- The culture of sport (football, baseball, NASCAR, etc.)
- American political / military culture, from the early Republic to the present
- American psychological / therapeutic / self-help culture
We also hope for papers on the romance industry in America and the diverse community of romance readers, authors, and reviewers, both as they are and as they are represented in the media:
- Romance sub-genres—Western, Gothic, Regency, Medieval, Paranormal (vampire, were, empath, etc.), Futuristic/time travel, Multi-cultural, Erotic, Gay/lesbian, etc.—and their shifting appeal to readers
- American romance and other traditions: comparative studies, texts in translation, transnational encounters
- Romance publishing: major presses, series and lines, the rise in e-publishing
- Representations of American romance writers, readers, bloggers, book groups, conventions, etc.
Detailed abstract or draft essay and a short CV are due by January 4, 2010. Final essays will be due in June, 2010.
**For inquiries, more information, or a deadline extension request, contact:
William Gleason, bgleason@princeton.edu
Eric Selinger, eselinge@depaul.edu
**The deadline falls very soon, but anyone with questions about a deadline extension is more than welcome to contact Bill Gleason directly at bgleason@princeton.edu.
Call for Papers
Faulkner and Morrison
A Conference Sponsored by the Center for Faulkner Studies
Southeast Missouri State University
Cape Girardeau, Missouri
October 28-30, 2010
This "Faulkner and Morrison" conference invites proposals for twenty-minute papers on any topic related to William Faulkner and/or Toni Morrison. All critical approaches, including theoretical and pedagogical, are welcomed. We are particularly interested in inter-textual approaches and papers treating such topics as race, gender, class, history, humor, and technique. Proposals for organized panels are also encouraged.
Expanded versions of the papers will be considered for possible publication in a collection of essays to be published by Southeast Missouri State University Press.
E-mail a 250-word abstract by May 31, 2010, to: cfs@semo.edu
Inquiries should be directed to Robert Hamblin at rhamblin@semo.edu or (573)651-2628, or Christopher Rieger at crieger@semo.edu or (573) 651-2620.
FAULKNER AND MORRISON UNDERGRADUATE WRITING CONTEST:Undergraduate students from any institution are encouraged to submit papers for this conference. These papers (15-20 minutes) may be on Faulkner, Morrison, or both. The authors of the top three undergraduate submissions will receive cash prizes respectively of $100, $75, and $50; a waiver of the conference registration fee; and an invitation to read the winning entries at the conference (winners must participate in the conference to qualify for the cash award). Contest submissions must be received by the Center for Faulkner Studies by August 1, 2010. Undergraduate submissions not awarded cash prizes will be considered for inclusion among the presentations at the conference.
Toni Morrison Society
tmsociety@bucknell.edu
African American Life Writing
Call for Papers Deadline Extended
Auto/Biography Studies invites submissions for a special issue focusing on African American life writing. We are interested in essays that focus on the contemporary issues of identity that complicate the categories "African American" and "life writing," particularly where these intersect with discussions of genre or discipline. We would like especially to see essays addressing neglected texts, authors, or forms, including life writing in new or neglected media. Essays that advance new approaches to African American life writing, emphasize new critical approaches, discuss lesser known authors, or that address larger generic issues within African American life writing are welcome.
Auto/Biography Studies is a journal of scholarship devoted to autobiography, biography, diaries, letters and relations between life writing and other discourse. Contributions should follow MLA style and be no more than 25-30 pages with apparatus.
Auto/Biography Studies is published biannually by the English Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Manuscripts should be e-mailed to the guest editor Stacy Boyd sboyd@westga.edu by January 31, 2010.
24th Annual MELUS Conference
April 8-11, 2010
Theme: Ethnic Transformation in the Self and the City
The University of Scranton Scranton, PA
See the link above for details. Note the December 21st deadline for a 250 word abstract.