Monday, January 9, 2012

Upcoming Calls for Papers: January Deadlines

We are taking a quick break from the Teaching Seminar material to post a collection of CFPs with deadlines  in January. We hope you have all enjoyed the break, but now it is time to start contemplating your spring projects. Here are just a few CFPs that have come across our desks in the past couple months. All of these are organized by the Abstract Deadline Date (not the conference date). We also have an impressive line up for February and March coming in future posts, so check back! Also, we will be posting the final material on  technology from the Teaching Seminar.

January 10 
EGSA Spring Symposium February 10, 2012 George Washington University 

Call for Papers: Bodies in Space: Emerging Scholarship in Literary and Cultural Studies
[The Panopticon] is a type of location of bodies in space, of distribution of individuals in relation to one another, of hierarchal organization, of disposition of centres and channels of power, of definition of the instruments and modes of power ... – Michel Foucault
The English Graduate Student Association is pleased to announce the call for papers for our second annual graduate student symposium Bodies in Space: Emerging Scholarship in Literary and Cultural Studies to be held Friday, February 10, 2012.
Foucaults reading of the production of docile bodies notwithstanding, the aim of this conference is not to consider the ways that the multiplicity of concentrations in the fields of Literature and Cultural Studies stand in relation to each other, but instead consider how they stand in relation with each other (and the ways that these relationships are always promiscuous and overlapping). Thus, rather than an image of a body pinned to a specific space, the title alludes to the many ways that bodies and spatiality might be productively considered in literary criticism. More generally, we mean to provide a frame large enough to encompass all of the interesting work going on in the GW English department. In this symposium, we hope to foster conversation between presenters and participants across concentrations and even disciplines through the intersections of current graduate student work. We welcome any and all submissions and encourage submissions from previously written course work or works in progress, including dissertation chapters and conference papers.
Submission Guidelines
Abstracts should be submitted, along with your contact information, to gwegsa@gmail.com by 11:59pm on Tuesday, January 10, 2012. Submissions must be 250 words or less and must be submitted as a Microsoft Word document or PDF. Please include 2-3 keywords at the bottom of your submission and include the words “Conference Submission” in the subject line of your email. Conference presentations will be approximately 15 minutes, and panels will be organized after submissions have been accepted.
We also welcome any volunteers who would like to be involved in the organizational / logistical side of the symposium, be it chairing a panel or assisting with lunch.


January 13, 2012
·         5th Global Conference Diasporas: Exploring Critical Issues
Friday 29th June 2012 – Sunday 1st July 2012
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom
Call for Papers:
This inter- and multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the
contemporary experience of Diasporas – communities who conceive of
themselves as a national, ethnic, linguistic or other form of cultural
and political construction of collective membership living outside of
their ‘home lands.’ Diaspora is a concept which is far from being
definitional. Despite problems and limitations in terminology, this
notion may be defined with issues attached to it for a more complete
understanding. Such a term which may have its roots in Greek, is used
customarily to apply to a historical phenomenon that has now passed to
a period that usually supposes that Di­asporas are those who are
settled forever in a country other from where they were born and thus
this term has lost its dimension of irreversibility and of exile.

In order to increase our understanding of Diasporas and their impact
on both the receiving countries and their respective homes left
behind, key issues will be addressed related to Diaspora cultural
expression and interests. In addition, the conference will address the
questions: Do Diasporas continue to exist? Is the global economy,
media and policies sending different messages about diaspora to future
generations?

Papers, workshops, presentations and pre-formed panels are invited on
any of the following themes:

1. Movies and Diasporas

The presence and impact of displaced / globalized populations of
audiences, spectators and producers of new mainstream /Hollywood
/Bollywood cinema are crucial to the emergence of this post-diasporic
cinema, as these narratives from texts to screen constitute a
fundamental challenge for the negotiation of complex diasporic issues

2. Motivational Factors for Research into Diaspora

Factors are numerous including most prominently, artistic and musical
creations, intellectual outputs, and specific religious practices and
which have made a significant international impact.

3. Myths and Symbols: how to meet, and get to know each other through
the use of créative lenses

Diasporas group, re-group and their group myths and symbols change
accordingly. Or Diasporas remain dominated, their myths and symbols
mirror (or rebel) their domination. This manifestation could take in
linguistic, artistic and other creative forms…right down to graffiti
to propaganda. The effects of Diaspora through a creative lens, as
often this is where the true effects of migration and cultural
adjustment expose themselves in a personal and celebratory way. These
could include:
 * Creative Expression as a result of shifting and integrating
cultures. Cross cultural and cross disciplinary practices / cross
cultural collaboration / representing the self and the nation /
connecting history to the future / third space practice
 * Shifting Art Practices and how traditional folk based art forms
(art / music / literature / dance) can accommodate and represent
modern diasporic communities in flux
 * New Languages that represent broken boundaries such as graffiti /
rap / interactive & web based art forms / global design aesthetics /
symbolism / sound & vision / poetry and text / Esperanto

4. Public, Private and Virtual Spaces of Diaspora

The controversial meaning of private/public spaces remain fundamental
arenas in the re/construction of gendered identities in an in-between
space as a Diaspora context nurtures challenges to traditional
socio-cultural behaviors. Virtual Diasporas – This questions a range
of pre conceived notions about physicality, actuality and place (which
in turn open up the discussions around ownership, representation and
nation). Virtual diasporas are not limited to the arts of course but
the shifts toward new technologies within art and design production
are highlighting such issues through various forms of creativity and
the critique that surrounds it.

We anticipate that these and related issues will be of interest to
those working/researching in philosophy, education, ethics, cinematic
/ literature, politics, sociology, history, architecture, photography,
geography, globalization, international relations, refugee studies,
migration studies, urban studies and cultural studies.

5. Novel ways to think about Diaspora due to globalization

In the new global world in which cultures act simultaneously how
should we be thinking about Diaspora?

Some pertinent questions in this area that the conference is
interested in addressing are: What are some of the ways to identity
and define the subject in changing political boundaries where cultural
interactions are amplified? What are the processes of social formation
and reformation of? Diasporas that is unique to a global age? How do
an intensified migration age that is coupled with broader and more
flexible terrains of social structures can give Diaspora communities a
window of opportunity to redefine their social position in both the
country of origin and the host country? How does immigration in an age
where the media and the internet are highly accessible, bring
individuals to deal with multiple levels of traditions and cultures?
What new cross-’ethnoscapes’ and cross-’ideoscapes’ are
emerging in? In what new methods can we capture the web of forces that
influences Diasporas at the same time?
Other aspects of Diaspora that we are interested in having
discussions about are:
* Economics of diaspora
  * Gendered diasporas
* Queer diasporas ‘flexible citizenship’
* Contested diasporic identities
* Invisible diasporas
  * Emerging and changing patterns – is there an ‘American
diaspora’ in China? In Dubai? Etc.
* Stateless or homeless diasporas – diasporas of no return
* Guest workers as diasporans?
* Diasporas created by shifting state boundaries
* Internal (intranational diasporas) – for example, First Nations
or Indigenous/Native migration into urban areas
* Diasporans by adoption or ‘diasporans-in-law’ (partners of
diasporans adopted into diasporic communities, extended diasporas
through family relations, etc.)
 * Overlapping diasporas, entanglement
* Competing claims or multiple claims on diasporans Inter-diasporan
or multi-diasporan realities
The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed
panel proposals. Papers will also be considered on any related theme.
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 13th January 2012. If
an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should
be submitted by Friday 11th May 2012. Abstracts should be submitted
simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word,
WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this
order: a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract,
e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: DIAS5 Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using
footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as
bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is
planned for the end of the year. We acknowledge receipt and answer to
all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us
in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might
be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative
electronic route or resend.

January 15, 2012
·         Medievalists @ Penn (M@P) presents its Fourth Annual Graduate Student Conference
Textual Intercourse: Medieval Appropriations andAppropriation of the Medieval
March 17th-18th, 2012
University of Pennsylvania

Keynote speaker: Prof. Kevin Brownlee
Medieval appropriation of ideas served as a method of transcultural and transhistorical interaction, which led to a burgeoning production of new texts. Whether through an explicit translatio studii maneuver or through unapologetic borrowing, medieval cultural producers positioned themselves in relation to other writers, thinkers, artists, and musicians. This year’s theme of intercourse asks us to probe and complicate the questions of influence, communication, translation, and adaptation across time, space, media, and culture, and it will serve as an entry point into this complex matrix of texts and ideas, broadly defined. Our conference invites submissions concerning one or more formulations of the idea of intercourse and appropriation. We also welcome paper proposals on the concept of medievalism as a post-medieval appropriation of the cultural products of the Middle Ages. As per our group's mission, we welcome a plurality of perspectives from across all fields of study in recognition of the profound interdisciplinarity of our common object of inquiry: the Middle Ages.
Please send 300-word abstracts to pennmedieval@gmail.com by Jan 15, 2012
January 15, 2012 – Video Games As Text
·         University of Wyoming April 12-14, 2012
Possible Topics:
How does the role of first person narrative change in video games?  What does the reader experience while actively undergoing the events of the narrative, vs. passively experiencing them?
What does the ability of choice in a narrative do for the experience of reading the text?  Is the player more connected to the characters by choosing the actions and outcomes of that character?  Or is a specific, single narrative path that allows all players to experience it in a similar way a better kind of narrative?
How is sexuality dealt with in video games?  How is sex depicted, and what happens when controversy arises?  How does this differ from more traditional narrative forms?  What about games with all characters being unrealistically bisexual?
How is feminism handled in video games?  What, if anything, establishes characters like Samus as feminist characters?  Is there a double standard with women with exaggerated female characteristics, like Lara Croft, being attacked as problematic from women, while exaggerated male characteristics in characters, such as Marcus Fenix, are not?
What impact does race have on games?  Why are so many player characters white; what does that do to the narrative?  How could/should race be used?  Why are games like Resident Evil 5 criticized because the villains are black?
What is the difference between reading an evil character and actively playing one?  How does that change the experience of the text?
Why are video games so oriented towards violence?  What about the textual form of video games makes violence such a common choice in game play?  Is this healthy for the medium?  How does this affect games in the larger culture?
Please submit your 200-300 words abstracts before January 15 via www.uwplayology.com.  We will let you know no later than February 15.  Please include contact information, your institutional affiliation, and any audio/visual requirements.  Any questions can be answered by contacting the conference organizers using the website or emailing the conference organizers at uwplayology@gmail.com.
January 16, 2012

·         ZdC Critical Studies Graduate Conference 2012: The Ephemeral Trace
 Call for Papers - USC School of Cinematic Arts, University Park Campus
 Los Angeles, California, April 7, 2012

The sixth annual ZdC graduate student conference will bring together graduate students and scholars from around the country.  The conference is organized around the themes of ephemerality, materiality, and the trace.  The various meanings of ephemera and ephemerality within media studies offer productive cross sections for scholarship, from the study of the impermanence of the moving image to the use of ephemeral material within the archive. We are interested in exploring the various ways media histories and theories use objects as a basis or approach to types of knowledge by outlining ‘ephemeral’ as a category of study and critical methodology. We hope to explore approaches to film and media through the questions that arise when applying the physical to an object of study that is immaterial.  What happens when we rethink types of collections, documents, and objects within media histories? How do we re-animate certain objects, ideas, or figures to play a critical role in structuring visual, aural, and written discourses? How do performance and liveness create certain impossibilities in archiving events, encounters, and occurrences that are beyond representation? How do theories and histories of new media relate to the impermanence of digital archives?

 We are interested in papers that expand upon various film and media histories by examining the notion of objects (both within and around film and media) and their relationship to cinematic and historical archives, as well as those that engage with discourses around the ephemerality of moving image media.  Some areas of inquiry might include, but are not limited to:
> * Discourses on projection
> * Alternative approaches to archival histories
> * Ephemera and collections
> * Theories on documents and documenting
> * Sensual and material histories: affect and feeling discourses
> * Temporality and alternative temporal histories
> * Film and media texts involving memory and traces
> * The digital and the archive

Keynote Speaker: Shelley Stamp, Professor of Film & Digital Media, University of California, Santa Cruz. Shelley Stamp is a leading expert on women and early film culture interested in tracing the contributions women made to early Hollywood as filmmakers, moviegoers, performers, critics and theorists. She has served as a consultant for the National Film Preservation Foundation, Turner Classic Movies and the American Movie Classics cable channel.  Stamp is the author of Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture After the Nickelodeon (Princeton University Press, 2000) and the co-editor of American Cinema's Transitional Era: Audiences, Institutions, Practices, (University of California Press, 2004) with Charlie Keil and "Women and the Silent Screen," a special issue of Film History 18, no. 2 (2006) with Amelie Hastie. Her current book project, a study of early filmmaker Lois Weber, is supported by a Film Scholars Grant from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The conference will also include a workshop panel with representatives of various Los Angeles-based archives. http://zdcusc.org/conference/

300-word abstracts and a short bio should be sent to Luci Marzola and Lara Bradshaw atzdccsusc@gmail.com no later than January 16, 2012.

January 21, 2012
·         Exploring I–Lands: Borders, Identity and Myth
The University of Virginia Department of English Graduate Conference; March 16-18

Borders abide and abound—between disciplines, between languages, between periods, between persons, between genders, between communities, between generations, between the self and the world. They define us in both liberating and limiting ways. This conference will investigate how borders and barriers are made, broken and refashioned, giving special attention to individual and national identities and the mythologies that inform them. Just how impermeable are such borders? Is there an unshakeable human drive to draw them?
 Other possible topics:
·     How much is too much? Where does the line fall between satisfaction and satiety?
·     What is the use of musical boundaries (a/tonality, bar-lines, etc.)?
·     What are the limits of genre? If genres bend and break, are they still useful terms for describing works of art?
·     How do myth and folktales constitute the geographic and cultural boundaries of the nation? Of the self?
·     How do we define the self? The function of the lyric “I”?
·     What is the role of landscapes (physical, emotional, or otherwise) inconstructing identity?
·     What is the nature of linguistic barriers—the task of translation?
·     What is the fate of class or racial boundaries?
·     What is the interpretive significance of paratextual borders (margins,gutters, etc.)
·     How is digitization changing our understanding of all the above? 
Keynote Speaker: Lorna Goodison
Lorna Goodison is a Jamaican poet who teaches creative writing at the University of Michigan. She has published eleven poetry collections; her second, I Am Becoming My Mother, won the 1986 Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas region. Her work often confronts Jamaica’s colonial history and its linguistic and cultural implications, exemplified by the code-switching between Standard English and Creole that occurs in many of her poems. She both celebrates Jamaica’s cultural hybridity and reclaims traumatic aspects of its history by presenting nuanced character-portraits of its marginalized denizens. Her most recently published work is a memoir titled From Harvey River(2008).
Masterclass Speaker: Jahan Ramazani
Jahan Ramazani is the Edgar F. Shannon Professor of English at the University of Virginia. He is the editor of the third edition of the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (2003) and the recipient of the American Comparative Literature Association’s 2011 Harry Levin Prize for his book A Transnational Poetics (2009). His interests include modern and contemporary poetry and postcolonial studies.

This conference is interdisciplinary, and we welcome submissions from a variety of fields including but not limited to: Anthropology, Art and Art History, Psycho/geography, Literature, Mathematics, Music/ology, Philosophy, PoliticalScience, Psychology, Religious Studies, and the sciences. To submit, send an abstract (up to 350 words) for your 15-minute presentation to gesaconference2012@gmail.com by Jan 21, 2012. Please specify your name, institutional affiliation, and any technological needs.
January 31, 2012
·         Geographies of Desire: A Medieval and Early Modern Interdisciplinary Conference University of Maryland, College Park -- April 27-28, 2012

Keynote Speaker: Valerie Traub, Frederick G.L. Huetwell Professor of English and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan

Geography is produced by an invested interest in the world, such that the mapping out of one’s desires is a precondition for mapping out the world. The desire for geographies both literal and figurative results from having outgrown local, national, imperial, and earthbound spaces. And yet, satisfaction often eludes us: the geography of desire pursues a sense of completion but risks corruption in the process. “Geographies of Desire” seeks papers that explore how desires are mapped across spatial planes; how do spaces such as markets, shrines, bedrooms, and courts produce material, spiritual, erotic, and political desires?

How does the geography of desire upset or reinforce the economic, political, erotic, and cosmological centers of our universes? How do literature, the visual arts, travel narratives, histories, religious writings, natural philosophy, and theater imagine these geographies? How and why do we imagine ourselves into the personal, cultural, ecological, and political spaces of others?

The Graduate Field Committee of Medieval and Early Modern Studies and the Department of English at the University of Maryland invite papers for “Geographies of Desire,” a graduate-faculty conference to be held April 27 and April 28, 2012 at the University of Maryland, College Park. This two-day interdisciplinary conference aims to foster insightful and vigorous conversation on this topic through an innovative format that includes graduate paper panels, roundtables, and plenary sessions with local scholars. Participants and attendees can look forward to a seminar led by Ricardo Padrón (University of Virginia), a digital humanities panel with Martin Foys (Drew University), Elizabeth Rodini (Johns Hopkins University), and Ben Tilghman (George Washington University), and plenary sessions with Theresa Coletti (University of Maryland),  Katherine Jansen (Catholic University of America), Frances Gage (Buffalo State College), and Ralph Bauer (University of Maryland), with more panelists to be announced.

In addition to traditional papers, we are soliciting proposals for workshops related to the conference theme. Digital Humanities workshops centered on new research tools, pedagogy tools, or digital archives are especially welcome. We expect this theme to be interpreted broadly, but encourage interested participants to visit the conference website for suggested ideas and topics.

Abstracts of 400-500 words for workshops or 20-minute papers related to the conference theme should be emailed to (fieldcommittee.umd@gmail.com) no later than January 31, 2012.
Please check http://geographiesofdesire.blogspot.com/ for an expanded CFP, registration information, and other conference related updates.

January 31, 2012

·         9th Annual Yale Bouchet Conference on Diversity in Graduate Education

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences – New Haven, Connecticut March 3031, 2012

2012 Call for Proposals

PROPOSAL DEADLINE: Proposals must be postmarked by January 31, 2012

A limited number of proposals will be accepted in each of the following divisions: Humanities, Social Sciences, Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Physical Sciences and Engineering.

 

Determining the Future of Diversity Discussions:

We live during precarious times of political, religious, social and economic unrest. No one can argue that inequities abound. The increased polarization characterizing our own political system is becoming more and more evident. We are constantly being reminded through the media that disparities in wealth, which transcend racial and socioeconomic lines, are widening. Overt, passive, and unconscious discriminatory practices, based on race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and personal ability, are still prevalent in our society. The potential impact on access to and subsequent success at every level of higher education in the U.S. is staggering.

Now more than at any other time in our recent history it is of paramount importance to not only take a more proactive stance but to perhaps re-evaluate and if deemed necessary reframe our approach to diversifying institutions of higher education. In light of recent and possible upcoming state and federal court decisions related to affirmative action in the higher education admissions processes, the following questions arise: How do we begin to set the stage for future conversations about diversity within the context of an uncertain future? What should the nature of these conversations be? How do we shape or position our careers to enable the development of diversity ideals for higher education? Should we?

We invite oral presentations, poster presentations, academic panels and workshops from professional, graduate and undergraduate students, faculty, and administrators, based on your research, teaching or practice perspective, or the conference theme.

Students from diverse backgrounds, particularly women and other underrepresented students are especially encouraged to present their research. While research projects should be original, they need not be responsive to the conference theme questions posed above. We seek to feature the research of professional, graduate and undergraduate students in order to recognize outstanding scholarship among students in progress.

Student awards and certificates for the most outstanding Oral Presentation ($200) and Poster Presentation ($150) will be awarded in each of the three divisions: (Humanities), (Social Sciences), and (Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Physical Sciences and Engineering). Judges will evaluate all presentations and provide written feedback to presenters.

General Guidelines:

All submissions must be accompanied by the Submissions Cover Sheet

A 250word abstract (including purpose and background, methods, results, conclusions) is required for all submissions.

Electronic Submissions are preferable (Please send either Word Documents or PDF documents to michelle.nearon@yale.edu)

All notifications and announcements will be made via email by February 25, 2012.

Session Lengths:

Academic Panels: 1 hour total (no more than 3 paper presenters and 1 discussant)

Workshops : 1 hour total (no more than 3 presenters)

Oral Research Presentations (individual): 15 minutes with 5 minutes for questions

Poster Research Presentations (individual): poster presenter must be available to discuss his/her poster during the poster session/judging session lasting 1 hour.

ELECTRONIC, FAX, or POSTAL SUBMISSIONS are acceptable. All electronic or faxed submissions must be received by 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time  JANUARY 31, 2012. All postal submissions must be postmarked by JANUARY 31, 2012

Send to:

          Yale Bouchet Conference 2012

          Office for Diversity & Equal Opportunity

          Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

          P.O. Box 208236

          New Haven, CT 065208236

FAX: (203) 4327765: (Please indicate Yale Bouchet Conference Submission on cover sheet)

E-MAIL: michelle.nearon@yale.edu: (Please indicate Yale Bouchet Conference Submission in Subject Heading)

For further information: Phone (203) 436-1301; Email: michelle.nearon@yale.edu

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