SAMLA 2009 Session: Teaching Language and Literature
Open Topic
We welcome papers that deal with any and all issues related to the teaching of language and literature. Proposals may be related to issues such as the language of gender, comics as literature, or teaching new media, but this is not required. Send your inspiring ideas!
By May 1st, please submit proposals of no more than 150 words by email – preferred – to or by post to University of South Carolina, Arts Institute, Attention: Rachel Luria, 1212 Greene Street/228 Sumwalt, Columbia, SC 29208
Local/Global Shakespeares: 4th British Shakespeare Association Conference
King’s College London & Shakespeare’s Globe
11 – 13 September 2009
Seminar: Asian Shakespeares in Europe
From Ariane Mnouchkine's controversial "Orientalised" of Richard II in 1981 to Kenneth Branagh's Japanese-inflected As You Like It in 2006, from Yukio Ninagawa's Kabuki-Macbeth at the Edinburgh Festival in 1985 to Eugenio Barba's and Ong Keng Sen's adaptations of Hamlet with Euro-Asian casts at the Kronborg castle's Hamlet Sommer festival (2006; 2002), and from the Kathakali King Lear at the London Globe in 1999 to David Tse's bilingual King Lear at the RSC Complete Works festival in 2006, there is a rich history of interactions between Shakespeare performance and Asian idioms in Europe.
The recent influx of people of Asian descent into Great Britain and Western Europe has fuelled cross-cultural blending, imposition, and appropriation. Whether "made in Europe" or "imported from Asia," these performances have compelled Anglo-European audiences to negotiate the unfamiliar and foreign forms of the familiar and "local" canon that is Shakespeare.
Papers on critical issues raised by Asian-themed Shakespearean performance in Europe are invited. What resources are available in critical theory that we might bring to bear on the connections and disjuncture between Asian Shakespeares in Europe and more traditionally-defined national Shakespeares around the world? Papers may address but should not be limited to questions such as: Does watching bilingual or multilingual Shakespeares–through subtitles or surtitles–overcome or reinforce cultural boundaries? Are such encounters with otherness (other Asia, other Shakespeares) legitimising local reading positions or the operation of cultural imperialism?
Please send your proposal to: Alexander Huang (). Proposals should be submitted by 31 May 2009.
Shakespeare et l’Ailleurs / Shakespeare and Elsewhere
Ed. Muriel CUNIN and Pascale DROUET
What does “Elsewhere” mean? It refers to an ambivalent form of space. It can hold out the promise of another life, of an escape to “The Azure”, of an invitation to the voyage when the routine drudgery of life is dull, drab or even unbearable. But it can also be synonymous with want, wandering, loss and exile, or with a form of menacing emptiness and bring out the fear of the unknown. Be it read in a positive or in a negative way (it will be worth wondering if the multiple forms of Elsewhere may allow the notion to escape this polarity), it is always a physical or spatiotemporal projection towards the unfamiliar. Hence the following questions: can Elsewhere be located anywhere? Is it a utopia (or a dystopia)? Is it a fantasy, an illusion, a delusion? Can it be mapped or is it to remain uncharted? How can it be represented? How can it be staged?
Suggested topics:
- Elsewhere and the distancing, travelling, discovering, conquering and territorialising process, that is to say, to use Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s terms, the dynamics of the smooth space to be subjugated; Elsewhere as the promise of new worlds and new spaces; Elsewhere as a form of encounter with another territory, but also with the Other, which is reminiscent of the dialectics described as follows by Richard Marienstras: “Moving away from what is near, moving close to what is far off, inverts the usual relationship of man with his social and natural environment ”.
- Elsewhere in its relation to exile and banishment, to what is “outside”, to unmappable territories – “ces contrées d’en dehors des cartes ” –, in a deterritorialising process; and, more radically, Elsewhere as “the undiscovered country” of Death, a country that cannot be imagined or represented. Which means Elsewhere as the space of exclusion, exclusion from society and the natural order .
- Elsewhere as a form of dream, as an escape to imaginary buildings and landscapes. Elsewhere as part of theatrical illusion, as a place for ephemeral creation and, more broadly speaking, as artistic space. Papers may focus for instance on perspective as a passage to another space, just like the stage described by Serlio, which becomes a place of wonder: “within a small space could be seen palaces aligned in perspective, with great temples and divers houses near and far, fine, spacious open places decorated with many buildings, long straight streets, crossed by side streets, triumphal arches, marvellous high columns, pyramids, obelisks and a thousand other singular artefacts .”
- Elsewhere as a reflection of Bonnefoy’s Hinterland. Elsewhere as opposed to here and now, as a mental place, a place for quest, a “country of higher essence ” where projection and reminiscence interact; the “unlocatable elsewhere” as opposed to the “perishable here .” How can they be linked? How can they be reconciled?
- Elsewhere as a form of withdrawal (which can also be a form of opening) into inner spaces, which may result in switching off through madness, melancholy, meditation or prayer. Hence the following question: how is it possible to avoid autism or schizophrenia? How is it possible to reconcile inner and outer space, reality and imagination?
Completed contributions, either in French or in English, with note on contributors (200 words) and abstract (200 words), should be sent by attached file (.doc or .rtf) to and before 30th APRIL 2010.
For the style-sheet specific to the Cahiers Shakespeare en devenir please see
On February 20th 2009 we are pleased to announce a Call for Papers to be included in the first issue of our magazine 452ºF.
This is the first call of our magazine, open to everyone holding a degree and willing to take part in our recently launched project.
The procedure for the reception and publishing, always subject to the regulation that can be found in the “Evaluation and Peer Review system”, “Style-sheet” and “Legal notice” sections, is the following:
- Deadline for paper submission (full text): April 23rd 2009, and those received afterwards will not be taken into consideration.
- Originals should be submitted to the following email address:
- The number of articles to be published is estimated in 12 to 16. 40% of the articles chosen will be written by doctoral students; while the number of papers written by members of the editorial board will never exceed a 20% of the articles published.
- Papers must be sent full-text in PDF or DOC format, conforming to the “Style-sheet” and “Legal notice”.
- The monographic topic for the first issue is “The figure and works of Edgar Allan Poe”; this will include 4-6 articles; subtopics of particular relevance include:
a. Biographical aspects
b. Influences
c. Ethical-aesthetic approaches
d. Themes, myths, motives, archetypes, etc.
-The Editorial Board is committed to creating a Bibliography on Edgar Allan Poe, which will be published as an Appendix to the Monographic section.
- The rest of the articles will be included in the Miscellany section. The contents and approach in these papers must be included between the margins of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature, but otherwise is unlimited.
- Papers should be sent to the following email address: ; the email subject must be clear as to whether the paper qualifies for the Monographic or Miscellany sections of the magazine. It must also include the paper’s title and the author’s name.
5. CONTACT INFORMATION
In order to answer this request or for any other general enquiries you are welcome to contact us at
We also invite you to visit our webpage:
April 24, 2009 (Atlanta, Georgia)
The James Weldon Johnson Institute of Emory University presents the symposium, A Keeping of Records: The Art and Life of Alice Walker. When: April 24, 8am to 5:30pm
Where: Emory Conference Center and Hotel
Web:
A landmark event in the world of arts and letters, the symposium and eponymous exhibition commemorate the arrival of the Alice Walker archive to the African American Collections of Emory’s Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL), and the opening of the Walker archive to researchers and to the public. The cosponsors for the symposium are the Hightower Fund of EmoryUniversity, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
‘CELEBRATING KATHERINE MANSFIELD’
Menton, France, Friday 25 September 2009
A Symposium organised by the Katherine Mansfield Societyto celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship
The year 2009 sees the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship, offered annually to enable a New Zealand writer to work at the Villa Isola Bella in Menton, once the home of Katherine Mansfield. During a week of celebrations in Menton from 21-26 September 2009 to mark this anniversary, the Katherine Mansfield Society will be holding a Symposium on Friday 25 September.
The Symposium will be opened by H.E. Sarah Dennis,
New Zealand Ambassador to France
and Richard Cathie, Chair, Winn-Manson Menton Trust
Keynote speakers (both former Menton Fellows):
Vincent O’Sullivan
C.K. Stead
• Gerri Kimber, (Deputy-Chair, Katherine Mansfield Society), will present a talk on Katherine Mansfield’s reputation in France.
• Amelia McBride, playwright, will perform her play ‘Something Childish but Very Natural’, including adaptations of Katherine’s stories, on the subject of growing up and learning to love.
We now invite 200 word abstracts on ANY aspect of Katherine Mansfield studies for 15 minute papers to be presented at the Symposium. Papers on Mansfield in relation to French literature or related to the Menton Fellowship will be particularly welcome.
Please send your abstracts to the Symposium organisers: Professor Janet Wilson, Dr Delia da Sousa Correa and Dr Gerri Kimber:
Closing date for submissions: 14 June 2009
For further details and updates, please visit our website:
The Katherine Mansfield Society gratefully acknowledges the support of:
New Zealand Embassy Paris
The Winn-Manson Menton Trust
Mairie de Menton
New Clear Forms is an international 2-day conference to be held at the University of Glasgow on 11th and 12th September 2009. It aims to explore the poetic responses to national and international affairs of this era, in a bid to further understand the deep and complex relations between propaganda and private consciousness, rebellion and art, nation and self.
We are currently inviting proposals for 20-minute papers that reflect on these themes. Topics may include but are by no means limited to:
War
Schools, groups and movements
Anthologies
Capitalism and consumerism
Adolescence, youth and counter-culture
The avant-garde
Links between poetry and art
Communism
Transatlantic concerns
Nuclear power and apocalypse
Eco-poetics
Nostalgia
Idealism
Lyric
Epic
Elegy
Please email a 250-word abstract (in Word format) to: , by Friday 1st May 2009.
Keynote Speakers include: Yusef Komunyakaa, Prof. Adam Piette, Prof. Michael Schmidt and Prof. Geoff Ward.
More information is available on our website:
MMLA
"Finding Form in Contemporary Innovative Poetry." Many innovative poets have begun to re-incorporate, redevelop, or find new forms based on techniques such as counting. The participants will explore the variety of new forms, single author explorations of innovative forms, or the new directions in contemporary poetry signaled by combining innovative techniques with traditional forms. William Allegrezza, Indiana University Northwest, .
The theme of this year's issue is Consuming Cultures. We are accepting submissions of articles, essays, creative work, reviews, and art that explore the ideologies, politics, and cultures of consumption fairly broadly. The deadline for submissions is June 15, 2009. Questions and submissions can be sent to .
disClosure is an annual thematic publication dedicated to investigating and stimulating interest in new directions in contemporary social theory. By encouraging submissions from a variety of disciplinary, geographical, and theoretical perspective and genres, the journal seeks to expand the nature of what is studied by the academy and how it is studied. In an effort to construct new approaches to form and content, we encourage submissions that employ innovative writing styles as well as formal scholarly work. The journal annually publishers articles, art, creative writing, interviews, and book reviews.
Conference: Renaissance Society of America conference
Venice, Italy, 8-10 April 2010
Why has human society consistently incorporated drama into its sense of self and community? Why do people want to watch other people "playing out" scenarios in history and fiction. Why are people compelled to live out stories and explain themselves and their relations to other people, places, and objects in dramatic ways? Where do we draw the line in historiography, theater history, art and literary studies between "drama" and the "dramatic" - between official play and the merely playful?
This panel invites papers that discuss the "dramatic" in early modern life. Domestic dramas, political dramas, re-presentations of history, manipulations and farcical narratives. How is drama used (intentionally and unintentionally) to create, alter, and negate personal and communal identity in urban, regional, rural, or national settings? Papers that speak across space and time and that cross disciplinary lines are especially encouraged.
Please send 200-word abstracts in the body of an email plus 1-2 page cv to by May 1.
The Harvard Celtic Department cordially invites proposals for papers on topics which relate directly to Celtic studies (Celtic languages and literatures in any phase; cultural, historical or social science topics; theoretical perspectives, etc.) for their 29th Annual Celtic Colloquium, to take place at HarvardUniversity, October 9-11, 2009. Papers concerning interdisciplinary research with a Celtic focus are also invited. Attendance is free.
Presentations should be no longer than twenty minutes. There will be a short discussion period after each paper. Papers given at the Colloquium may later be submitted for consideration by the editorial committee for publication in the Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium.
Potential presenters should send a 200-250 word abstract, plus a brief biographical sketch. We encourage online responses, but submissions may also be sent by e-mail to , faxed, or posted to the departmental address.
Further information and online submission form available at our Website:
Closing date for proposals: May 15, 2009.
We are now accepting submissions for a collection of stories, essays, and poems for a proposed book on comparative American spatial concepts, partially titled “Stories the Land Holds.” The editors are looking for texts variously addressing “stories in the land.” What are the stories the land tells? Vine Deloria has warned us of problems that result from a perspective that is not fundamentally spatial, and such has been the case for current problems that range from ecological disaster to fanatical environmentalism and bundled mortgages. We believe that these complex and problematic American events can be understood more fully from a Native American perspective. However, cultural amnesia after 1776 has obscured how fundamental Native American ideology is to who we are as Americans, and how vital this philosophy can be for redirecting the disastrous turn of events in American history by recovering and listening to the stories.
Are there truly American “stories” that have been lost or forgotten in colonial efforts to redefine the continent as a “New” or empty world and reshape these lands of TurtleIsland with stories and perspectives from other places? Take, for example, the Diné who at one time performed 500 ceremonies but today only a handful of ceremonies remain. Beneath the current political and ideological structures that cover the surface of America, there is the land itself, and in the land the stories embedded there by Native voices that speak to us about who we are in relation to the natural surroundings that hold us. The natural sciences developed by Native Americans over the millennia across America included their reciprocal relationship with natural environments. This is a spatial and local view where both land and individual are visible.
A working structure of our book includes stories of the creation and stories of the encounter, from Emperor Charles’ and Spanish demands in the 1500s for vast acquisitions of land and rent from the Indians to a Susquahannough’s trading of stories in the 1600s with a Swedish Minister from “New Sweden” in Pennsylvania, and lastly to a view of the land as exorbitantly priced real estate with family homes no longer being local possessions but parts of the vast acquisitions of bundled mortgages by unknown international groups.
Please query by email first, or send abstracts, or completed manuscripts of up to 6,000 words to any of the editors: Anna Lee Walters at -- Catherine Rainwater at -- Cristine Soliz at or .
Abstracts or manuscripts should be accompanied by a short biographical paragraph. Several presses have expressed interest, however no contracts can be made until the texts are selected. We will begin reviewing immediately and plan to complete our selections by July 31.
All quiet on the wrong side of the tracks?
Inquiries into the Interrelation of the Other and the City today Workshop, Berlin 2-3 June 2009
Cities are considered key sites for the investigation of processes of inclusion and exclusion of the respective society and their social, spatial, symbolic, economic or political manifestations. Today’s debates around globalization, transnationalism and increasing diversity of Western cities suggest changed conditions for the construction of those boundaries within society and in urban space.
Yet when examining processes of negotiation of belonging, othering, and the construction of a culturally and ethnically ‘Other’, the city is oftentimes reduced to a mere backdrop for this inquiry. It serves as popular research site and provides descriptive ornament, but its impact on the processes in question often remains unclear.
This workshop aims at exploring the interrelation between representations of the city and of those labeled as culturally and ethnically different today by discussing previous and contemporary concepts from various fields of social research dealing with this very interrelation. The wide spectrum of urban thought and theory includes classical conceptualizations of the city as organism as developed by the early ChicagoSchool and more recent ones such as the Integration Machine (Häußermann).