CFP Special Issue of the Journal of Narrative Theory: Narrating Cities

CFP – Special Issue of The Journal of Narrative Theory: “Narrating Cities”

The Journal of Narrative Theory seeks submissions for a forthcoming special issue: “Narrating Cities”.

Since 2007, for the first time in history, the majority of the world’s population has lived in cities. Have narratives, and readings of them, prepared us for this?

Papers are welcome that try to say something new about how urban environments past or present have produced, or have been re-produced in, narratives. In diverse locations, and at various times, cities have provided narratives with subjects, audiences, technologies of consumption and distribution; in turn, narrative show cities themselves, accommodating plurality or regulating otherness. Clearly, not all narratives, and not all cities, do this in the same way.

Cities divide and discriminate, often all the more viciously precisely because social and spatial divisions are hard to uphold when the past accretes and geography compels interdependences. Do narratives counteract or consolidate such divisions?

A city may reify the solid certainties of ideology and politics, where material reality plumbs the depths and scrapes the sky. Yet with each corner turned the city, its inhabitants, you, take on new forms, new identities. How have narratives registered these realities and disruptions? Given the rise of global cities, can they continue to do so?

Cities are exciting, terrifying, overwhelming, lonely places, home and unhomely to millions: do the structures of narrative mitigate estrangement, or does narrative dislocation amplify the uncanny?

Papers should concern these or related issues as reflected in the novel or any of its antecedents, narrative theory, and/or interdisciplinary critical theory, including cultural geography. Hence we invite considerations of any genre or any period of literature, from the pamphlets of early modern London to the contemporary postcolonial, globalised novel, Anglophone or otherwise. We encourage submissions on non-canonical texts and authors.

Information about the journal can be found at the following address:

<http://www.emich.edu/public/english/literature/JNT/JNT.html>

Contributors should follow the MLA style (5th edition), with footnotes kept at a minimum and incorporated into the text where possible.

Please send a copy of the submission by email attachment to the editor Adam Hansen (adam.hansen_at_unn.ac.uk) by April 2009.

Or, if you prefer, send two copies of the submission as well as a stamped addressed envelope to Adam Hansen at the address below:

126, Lipman Building
Division of English and Creative Writing
Northumbria University
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE1 8ST
United Kingdom

Hard-copy submissions will not be returned unless a second stamped envelope (self-addressed) is also enclosed. Overseas authors wishing to submit disposable copies should indicate so in an accompanying letter.

ACLA 2009 Convention: March 26-29, 2009
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

The Territories of the Citizen: Literature and Political Belonging

Seminar Organizer: Carrie Hyde

“I am a citizen of somewhere else.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Custom-House

Though the term “citizen” began as a designation for an inhabitant of a city, its implied boundaries have been redrawn to name an allegiance to other territorial institutions: the state, the nation, as well as loosely continental associations (such as the European Union). In addition to mapping these geographic allegiances, the rights of the citizen have been variously conceived as hereditary (Edmund Burke), and natural, and so presumptively inalienable (Thomas Paine). This seminar examines the relationship between competing formulations of the citizen, as articulated not only in different historical crises (such as revolution, civil war, and emancipation movements), but as a central legacy of the anomalous affiliations enabled by fiction.

Questions to address include: How does fiction reflect and reconfigure territorial affiliations? What are the aesthetics of citizenship? Are fictions of citizenship organized by the same distinctions as civic law? How does the rhetoric of rights inform different notions of the literary? How is citizenship shaped by its categorical exclusions: the slave, the alien, the stateless? These questions are formulated broadly to include different approaches, but the panel encourages submissions that address these issues concretely through the lens of a particular text or genre.

Abstract Deadline: November 1, 2008
*Note: All paper proposals must be submitted through the ACLA conference website:
http://www.acla.org/submit/
Just select the "The Territories of the Citizen" seminar from the menu, and your abstract will go directly to the organizer.

If you have any questions about the seminar, please feel free to contact me at chyde_at_eden.rutgers.edu

Call for Papers

Sounds of Silence: Silence and Speech in Cultural, Political and Ethical Contexts (ACLA 2009, Harvard University, March 26-29)

In her article “Freedom’s Silence,” Wendy Brown examines notions of silence and speech and questions the implicit equation between freedom and speech. Following Foucault’s notion of silence in The History of Sexuality, Brown notes that silence is a potentially subversive force, and yet it is discursively produced. Its relation to power is thus complex and ambiguous, as silence is oppositional neither to power nor to speech. “Silence,” writes Brown, “is identical neither with secrecy nor with not speaking. Rather, it signifies a particular relation to regulatory discourses, as well as a possible niche for the practice of freedom within those discourses.”

In our seminar we wish to examine and to complicate the notion of silence within various social, cultural, ethical, linguistic and political contexts. Notions of silencing and muteness can be explored in all discourses involving power relations: How does globalization treat the local language? What is the sound of silence in colonialism? What is being said? What is muted and left in abeyance? Must silence and speech be oppositional to one another? What is the role of silence in writing after trauma and how can the paradox of silence and writing be settled? Papers may also investigate silence as the language of the oppressed “other”/subaltern, or alternately focus on the subversive nature of silence.

We welcome papers from different disciplines and fields that address and critically explore literary and other representations of silence and of the silenced, as well as philosophical, linguistic and ethical discussions of silence and speech.

DEADLINE FOR PAPER PROPOSALS: NOVEMBER 1, 2008.

For more information, contact seminar organizers at: yali.dekel_at_nyu.edu and andrea.cooper_at_nyu.edu, and visit our seminar page on the ACLA website: http://www.acla.org/acla2009/?p=306

Shakespeare & the Golden Age

PCA 2009
NATIONAL CONFERENCE
New Orleans Marriott Hotel
Wednesday, April 8, through Saturday, April 11

Proposals are now being accepted for “Shakespeare and the Golden Age.” Any and all aspects of culture from or about this time period are encouraged. The emphasis is on the “Early Modern World.” We are interested not only in the literature and drama but other art forms, technology and material culture from or about the era. We are also eager to open the conversation up to interests outside England. We strongly encourage those with an interest in areas such as Spanish Theatre and literature before 1700 to make proposals.

Inquiries regarding this area and/or abstracts of no more than 500 words may be sent to the email or physical address below by November 9, 2008. Please include a brief biographic paragraph (100 words or less) and a working bibliography for your paper.

Gregory J. Thompson, Ph.D.
Department Head and
Professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities
Department of English and Humanities
Rogers State University
1701 W. Will Rogers Blvd.
Claremore OK 74017
918/343-7659

gthompson_at_rsu.edu

For more conference information please visit http://www.pcaaca.org

Late Shakespeare: Texts and Afterlives

"That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts.
There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking." Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols (1888).

We are pleased to announce that a two-day conference on "Late Shakespeare: Texts and Afterlives" will take place in Trinity College Dublin on December 5th & 6th interrogating things recent, late, and belated in the study of Shakespeare. The conference is kindly supported by the School of English at Trinity College Dublin. We are delighted to announce that the plenary speaker for this event is Professor Michael Hattaway.

Many of the later quarto texts of Shakespeare's plays boast that they are copies of plays 'latelie Acted'. This conference proposes to investigate things recent, late, and belated in the work of Shakespeare. On one level the conference promotes new writing in the field of Shakespeare studies with the papers themselves being lately written. The conference also encourages an investigation of what it means for a work to be late, what happens to a text once the writing is finished, and what implications there are for an author who is writing late in his career or even who is 'late' (i.e. who is published posthumously).

To that end, the conference organisers would welcome papers that include, but are not limited to, the following themes: The writing process; 'late' trends/events that influence a text or its production; late-authorship; the relationship between the author and the text after the writing is finished; textual ephemera, marginalia, or dedication; authorship and death; bardolatry; issues of time, decay, or time-keeping in texts; the afterlife of the text; representations of the afterlife in a text; lost, forgotten, or neglected texts; performance/textual history.

Papers should be no longer than 20mins in length. If you are interested in presenting a paper, please submit a 100 word abstract to Dr. Andrew J. Power & Mr. Rory V. Loughnane at lateshakespeare_at_gmail.com before November 3rd 2008. More information on the conference is available at http://lateshakespeare.blogspot.com/

Call for Papers
American Literature Association Conference
21-24 May 2009
Boston, Massachusetts

The Stephen Crane Society invites papers and proposals for a panel at the American Literature Association Conference in Boston on 21-24 May 2009 at the Westin Copley Place Hotel.

The panel is open to all topics, but proposals on the following topics are particularly encouraged:
Crane and the visual arts
Race and Ethnicity in Crane’s work
Crane’s poetry
Women in Crane’s work
Crane and the American West

Presentations will be limited to 20 minutes.
Please email proposals (of approximately 300 words) by January 5, 2009 to
John Dudley
Department of English
University of South Dakota
414 E. Clark St.
Vermillion, SD 57069
John.Dudley_at_usd.edu

Conference details may be found at the American Literature Association web site:
http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/english/ala2/index.html

The Kurt Vonnegut Society invites proposals for papers to be presented at two sessions of the 2009 American Literature Association in Boston, MA, May 21-24. Presenters need not be members of the Kurt Vonnegut Society (though we certainly hope they will join). Please send a 250-word abstract for 15-minute presentations to Robert Tally at robert.tally_at_txstate.edu by December 1, 2008.

1. Vonnegut after the American Century
In 1941, Henry Luce famously declared that the 20th century was “the American Century.” In 2007, his own magazine (Time) declared that the 21st is “the Chinese Century” (and the Beijing Olympics may have added the exclamation point). As a chronicler of the American experience, Kurt Vonnegut offers a unique perspective on the American Century and its effects. As “a man without a country,” Vonnegut provides pointed criticism of the very idea of the American Century. How does Vonnegut’s work speak to the rise and/or decline of the American imperium? What is the role of Vonnegut’s work in 21st-century literary studies? What is Vonnegut’s take on globalization? What is the role of Vonnegut in a “post- American” literature?

2. Open Topic

THE POE STUDIES ASSOCIATION is sponsoring TWO panels at the American Literature Association Conference in Boston, MA, May 21-24, 2009.

TEACHING POE
This panel invites abstracts on any aspect of teaching Poe. Possible topics include but are not limited to:
• Teaching Poe in the digital classroom
• Poe in a variety of pedagogical contexts, including survey courses in World and American literature
• Poe in the 19th-Century literature seminar
• Poe in the writing classroom
Please send brief C.V. and 250 word abstracts for papers on these or any topic related to teaching Poe to Susan Amper at susanamper_at_yahoo.com by Jan. 15, 2009.

POE AND THEORY
This panel seeks to offer some answers to the inquiry, What is the current state of Poe studies in relation to critical theory/cultural studies? Abstracts for papers applying theory to any of Poe's works, or responding to recent theoretical readings of Poe's writings are equally welcome. Send abstracts (250 words) to Marcy Dinius at mdinius_at_udel.edu by Jan. 15, 2009.

American Writers During Their Twilight Years: "Final" Works from America's First Three Generations

This collection of essays will focus on the "final" or “late” works of important American authors—authors whose major works were written in the nineteenth century or the early twentieth century and whose life spans and literary careers were long enough for the writers to have lived through, at least, two major literary movements. The writers who published in the twentieth century will be limited to authors who grew up, from birth to early adulthood, in the nineteenth century.

*The collection will begin with the late works of authors like Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper, who passed away in the 1850s, and will end with late works by authors born in the 1860s and 1870s, like Edith Wharton or Theodore Dreiser. The middle of the collection will include final works by authors whose careers began and ended in the nineteenth century. The collection will cover three generations of American writers. The collection will focus on major authors who continued writing into old age and had achieved a level of fame.

*A study of the final works of American writers offers a way of viewing American literary history from the antebellum and post-bellum nineteenth century, through the early twentieth century, in the purview of a "long nineteenth century" approach of literary study. The study will include final works, from the late 1840s, on one end of the spectrum, to the late 1930s, on the other.

*With rare exceptions, the final works of authors are often neglected by scholars in favor of masterpieces of an author's early and middle career. However, final works, in their subject matter and style, as well as in their strengths and failings, provide unique insights into authors' views on their careers, on mortality itself, on spirituality, and on the direction of the nation as a whole. Final works offer important knowledge about—and are often material evidence for—how authors dealt with old age. In addition, final works give readers a sense of how authors responded to profound changes in literary/artistic movements, new technological advances, and major historical events over the course of their lifetimes. Finally, such a study would enable dynamic discussions of literary influence, in terms of how the writers in question responded to new influences, and how they saw how their own work had influenced other artists in the younger generation.