Call for
Submissions for an Edited Collection
In a brief essay
published in Parallax shortly after the 11th
of September 2001, Homi K. Bhabha refutes the reductionism
of the “clash of civilizations” explanation for the attacks
in New York and Washington, DC, and the downed plane in a
Pennsylvania field offered by too many commentators:
"[T]he decision to implement and administer terror,
whether it is done in the name of god or the state, is a
political decision, not a civilizational or cultural
practice." Even as Bhabha makes this significant
distinction, his comments point toward another question,
necessarily subsequent to the events themselves: How have
the political events of that September day, as well as their
aftermath, affected cultural practice?
This edited
collection, tentatively entitled "From Solidarity to
Schism: 9/11 and After in Fiction and Film from Outside the
United States," seeks to address that question through
discussions of novels, short stories, and movies from
wide-ranging geographical sites of cultural production. That
is, the collection’s focus is on how writers and filmmakers
from outside the US represent September the 11th
and any of the far-reaching events that came about because
of the attacks that day. Do these fictions and films, as
cultural practices, inaugurate new narrative or formal
devices in their efforts to represent the attacks and/or
their fallout? What manner of critique is offered, if any?
Have these fictions and films ushered in a new aesthetics of
terror and its consequences?
This collection
will be an important supplement to the US-centered cultural
and critical production addressing 9/11, providing
researchers and teachers alike with resources and contexts
that will allow them to broaden their own examinations of
related works.
Please send all
inquiries and abstracts of no more than 500 words (or full
drafts of between 4000-6000 words) to the editor, Cara
Cilano, at cilanoc@uncw.edu by 20 August 2008. Complete
essays chosen from the abstracts will be due by 1 November
2008. While the fictions and films may be in any language,
the essays themselves should be in English, as should any
citations of primary and secondary sources.
‘Flogging a Dead
Horse: Are National Literatures Finished?’
Victoria University of Wellington
11 and 12 December, 2008
Papers are invited a range of topics, including:
• The nation in literature
• The ‘canon’
• Globalism and literature
• Book markets and readerships
• Alternative literary nationalisms
• Contemporary postcolonial and critical theory on the
nation
• Culture and literature
• Dispossessed nationalisms
• Fantasy and the nation
• Minority literatures
• Diasporic literatures and nations
Speakers are not
restricted to New Zealand topics. Comparative papers are
welcome
250 word abstracts should be submitted to
Lydia.Wevers@vuw.ac.nz
by 1 August, 2008.
Embodied Politics in Visual
Autobiography (collection; abstracts due May 15/08)
We invite contributions for a proposed
collection of essays on visual autobiography, focusing on
health, bodies, and embodied subjectivities. The collection
will consider how cultural practices of self-narration
and self-portraiture image and imagine
unruly bodies and, in so doing, respond to Patricia
Zimmermann's call for "radical media democracies that
animate contentious public spheres" (2000, p. xx).
How are health, dis/ability, and the
body theorized, materialized, and politicized in visual
autobiographies, including forms such as photography, video
art, graphic memoir, film, body art and performance, and
digital media? We are particularly interested in the
potential of visual autobiographies to:
-explore how bodies negotiate
disciplinary regimes and technologies
-produce counterdiscursive manoeuvres
and new representational spaces
-investigate how power/knowledge
relations constitute embodiments
-provoke critical and ethical
reflection
We welcome contributions from
academic- and arts-based researchers and practitioners. We
encourage a wide range of critical perspectives: cultural
studies, critical theory, disability studies, feminist
studies, critical race studies, diaspora studies, queer
studies, Aboriginal studies, globalization studies, literary
studies, art history, music, media studies, theatre and
performance studies. Analytic approaches could involve:
textual analysis; histories, presents, and futures;
practices and practitioners; and pedagogy.
Possible topics:
dis/ability
sickness/wellness
disease
bodies negotiating borders and
boundaries
traded and disappeared bodies
trauma and testimony
memory and memorializing
monstrosity
care of the self
care-giving
fatness and body size
aging
body alterations and transformations
environments
activisms
Send a 300- to 500-word abstract,
working title, and a brief bio, by email in a Word
attachment, to Sarah Brophy (brophys@mcmaster.ca)
and Janice Hladki (hladkij@mcmaster.ca)
on or before May 15, 2008. Inquiries are also welcome. Final
papers should range in length from 4000-8000 words.
About the editors: Sarah Brophy is an
Associate Professor in English and Cultural Studies,
McMaster University. Janice Hladki is an Associate Professor
in Theatre and Film Studies, McMaster University.
--
Sarah Brophy
Associate Professor
Department of English and Cultural
Studies
McMaster University
Hamilton, Canada
L8S 4L9
phone: 905-525-9140 ext. 22243
fax: 905-777-8316
CREATIVITY AND UNCERTAINTY
Australian
Association of Writing Programs
27 – 29
NOVEMBER, 2008
An
International Conference on Writing, Teaching and Creativity,
University
of Technology, Sydney Australia
Writing is a
kind of grappling with uncertainty. Writers write to find out
what they do and don’t think. Uncertainty is also inherent in
the challenges thrown up by the world in which we write, the
challenge of living in an increasingly complex, increasingly
mediated society. Uncertainty is also the process of writing
itself. The journey into the unknown. The shot in the dark. The
way the work transforms itself in the process of writing.
This
international conference, a creative collaboration between the
Centre for New Writing, University of Technology, Sydney and the
Australian Association of Writing Programs, seeks to investigate
and explore the interconnectedness between creativity,
uncertainty and writing in the context of the creative writing
program. In particular, it will examine specific approaches to
writing and the teaching of writing in the contemporary
university, examining writing as discourses or conversations
between students and teachers, assessing the role, function, and
purposes of fiction in society, writing movements, styles and
developments in new media in the academy.
Papers are
sought from those engaged in the fields of creative writing,
literature, media, cultural studies, teaching, creativity
studies, philosophy and theory.
Possible topics
may include but not limited to:
v
Creativity and Uncertainty
v
Creativity and Pedagogy
v
Creativity and Identity
v
Reading
creatively
v
Originality and constructions of ‘the new’
v
The
semiotics of graphics and photographics
v
Metaphor
and the metaphorical
v
Genre
fiction and short fiction
v
Creativity and the writer/academic
Abstract
Deadline: 30 June, 2008
Peer review
and acceptances in principal: 31 July
Full paper
submitted for refereed acceptance: 3 October
Please send
abstracts to:
Conference
Convenor: Assoc. Professor John Dale, UTS Centre for New
Writing.
newwriting@uts.edu.au
