January, 2002

Primo Levi

Deadline: January 18, 2002 

Hofstra University and the Hofstra Cultural Center  present  "If This Is a Man" The Life and Legacy of Primo Levi  Wednesday and Thursday October 23 and 24, 2002 

Hofstra University is proud to sponsor an international conference on the life and legacy of Primo Levi (1919-1987). His memoir, Survival in Auschwitz (If This Is a Man), has claimed a place among the masterpieces of Holocaust literature. Levi's last work, The Drowned and the Saved, is arguably the most profound meditation on the Shoah. In his lifetime, Levi forged an impressive body of work and his writings remain a powerful reminder of what transpired in the extermination camps of Europe and what it means to be human after Auschwitz.

We welcome paper proposals on any number of topics, including but not
limited to:
Levi and the Culture of Turin
Levi and Italian Jews
The Holocaust vs. the Culture of Science
Memory and Holocaust Memoirs
Language and Writing
Levi, Theater, and Film
Representations of the Holocaust
Suicide (?)

Proposals for other presentations, lecture/demonstrations, panels, round-tables and workshops are also welcomed.

A letter of intent, a three- to five-page abstract (in duplicate) and
curriculum vitae should be sent by January 18, 2002, to:

 HOFSTRA CULTURAL CENTER (HCC)
 200 Hofstra University
 Hempstead, New York 11549-2000
 Tel: (516) 463-5669
 Fax: (516) 463-4793
 E-mail: HOFCULTCTR@Hofstra.edu

The deadline for completed double-spaced papers with endnotes according to the Chicago Manual of Style, in duplicate, is August 2, 2002. Presentation time for papers, lectures, lecture/demonstrations and workshops is limited to 20 minutes. (Papers should be limited to 10-12 typed, double-spaced pages, excluding notes.) As selected papers will be published in the conference proceedings, previously published material should not be submitted.

Forthcoming Web site:  www.hofstra.edu/primolevi 

Conference Director:
Stanislao G. Pugliese
Associate Professor of History
Heger Hall
115 Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY 11549-1150 USA
(Tel): (516) 463-5611
(Fax): (516) 463-2201
E-mail:  stanislao.pugliese@hofstra.edu 
 

Conference Coordinator:
Richard Pioreck
Assistant Director for Projects, Publications and Faculty Liaison
Hofstra Cultural Center
200 Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY 11549-2000 USA
(Tel): (516) 463-5669
(Fax): (516) 463-4793
E-mail: culrjp@hofstra.edu

Refusing Our Way of Life: Praxis for a Radical Present

Deadline: January 25, 2002

Conference date: March 14-16 at the University of Florida
Keynote speakers: Cesare Casarino and Randy Martin

This conference seeks papers that address and create possibilities for continued revolutionary praxis and critique. In capitalism's movement toward securing a homogenized "way of life," the many contemporary political attacks on the left can defuse or ignite a radical politics for the future. Is the work of the present then merely to think about the future?

What strategies now offer viable alternatives for a radical present? Can performativity address, articulate, and enact class struggle? Can activism be effective in a global-economic context? Can resistance operate across differences of race, gender, and ethnicity? How can we combat a reified neo-liberal economic system for which "There is no alternative"?

Cesare Casarino interrelates philosophy, cinema,  literature and queer theory to reveal the contestatory  practices and heterotopic desires characterizing the  processes of history. His forthcoming book is titled  Modernity at Sea: Melville, Marx, Conrad in Crisis.  Also, he has co- dited Marxism Beyond Marxism, and  co-translated Giorgio Agamben's Means without End:  Notes on Politics. Presently, he is researching how  AIDS "has radically transformed the very forms of  representation available to contemporary culture."  Casarino is an Associate Professor with the Department  of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota.


Randy Martin deploys disciplines such as political theory, theater, and urban planning to examine the workings of  the public sphere.  Martin's latest book, On Your Marx:  Rethinking Socialism and the Left, attempts to navigate the  common ground between the various marxisms. His previous  books include Critical Moves: Dance Studies in Theory and  Politics, Performance as Political Act: The Embodied Self;  and Socialist Ensembles: Theater and State in Cuba and  Nicaragua. Martin is  associate dean of faculty and  interdisciplinary programs and professor of art and public policy at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He is also the coeditor of the journal Social Text.


Prospective papers may address (but are not limited
to) the following:
--Literary form and political change
--Activism and organization against global economy
--Literature and the epistemology of space
--Professionalization and the corporate university
--Revolutionary art: impact on public policy
--Queer activism: sexuality and citizenship
--Popular culture and the politics of containment
--Urban studies: ghettos and gated communities
--Diaspora studies: modernization and displacement
--Aesthetics of a general economy
--AIDS: the spectacle and the body
--Political economy of aesthetics
--Nationalisms and constructions of identity
--Representations of uneven geographical development
--Racialized ethnicities: denials and
  universalizations
--Marxism contra marxisms
--Globalization and the division of space
--Production values: theories of economy
--Global proletarianization of female labor
--Insurgent spatial practices: sites for alternative
  production

Non-traditional or performative panels will also be considered.

One page abstracts, questions, and comments should be
submitted to the Marxist Reading Group at
extinction@clas.ufl.edu. For info on previous
conferences visit http://www.english.ufl.edu/mrg

Abstracts due: January 25

R/Évolution

Deadline: January 31, 2002

An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
Hosted by the Ph.D. Humanities Program: Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture
March 23rd, 2002 at Concordia University
Keynote speaker: Mark Saunders

Graduate students from all disciplines are invited to submit proposals exploring "r/évolution." Proposals should translate into 15 minutes of presentation time (7-8 pages).

We invite proposals for the presentation and discussion of papers, short films, panel presentations, and more around a multifarious, oft- ontroversial, and timely theme. The goal of this symposium is to integrate theoretical, methodological, and "practical" approaches to the broad theme of "r/evolution." This symposium seeks to address the last century and to create space and possibility for continued praxis and critique of "revolution," "evolution," "progress," and "change." What does "revolution" mean in our historical context? What are (or have been) the vectors of and for political change? We hope to create a space in which questions can be asked of ideology, language, and discourse, and where dialogue on the past, present, and future can thrive.

Mark Saunders is an acclaimed and award-winning documentary filmmaker whose community-based work is grounded in urbanism and utopianism. His films include the Prix Du Public winning Battle of Trafalgar, 1993's The Truth Lies in Rostock, Exodus Movement of Jah  People and Exodus from Babylon, and the Innovations in Communications Award winning A Line in Time in 1999. He has helped to create non-broadcast productions for the World Development Movement, Transport and General Workers Union, New Economic Foundation, and Amnesty International. Resisting, severing, and transcending traditional disciplinary borders, his keynote address "Do Utopians Watch TV?" presents a rapid tour past the landmarks of independent media. Illustrated and contextualized with extracts from his own work, Saunders will discuss the intricacies of these questions from the beginnings of video up to Peter Watkin's La Commune and the new romantic hero, the "Media-Activist".

Presentations may address (but are certainly not limited to):

transition/s, "progress," change: social/political/cultural/epistomological, revolt v. revolution, continuity/discontinuity, nostalgia, memory, activism, movement/s globalization, revolutionary art, privatization and the academy, the task of history, popular culture, urban spaces, nationalisms, space/time, quiet opposition v. violence, generation/s, sexualities, identity/identity politics, silent revolution/s, collectivity, utopia/s, modernization, labour, HIV/AIDS, displacement, spectacle/s, feminism/s postfeminism/s, alternatives, institutionality, the "right," borders and margins, race, spirituality, morals & ethics, media, voice, myth, legend, folklore...

Presentation Formats: Papers, critical essays, poster presentations, panels, creative writing, and performance art. Non-traditional presentation formats are welcome!

Applicants should submit a title and an abstract of not more than 250 words to "R/Evolution":

Mailing Address:
Humanities Doctoral Program
School of Graduate Studies and Research, Concordia University
2135 Mackay Street, M-302 MONTRÉAL Quebec H3G 2J2
E-mail: candis.steenbergen@sympatico.ca

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: January 31, 2002.
E-mail submissions encouraged.
Abstracts/presentations in both English and French.

Out of Bounds? Science Fiction in the 21st Century

Deadline: January 31, 2002

8th Annual McGill University Graduate Student Symposium on Language and Literature "Representing the Border"
March 23 & 24, 2002
Montreal, Quebec

Given that an upcoming issue of PMLA is devoted to science fiction,  speculative literature appears to be in the midst of a critical  resurgence. This panel encourages proposals that explore the role of  borders within science fiction, be they distinctions between the  artificial and the natural, genders, temporal states and/or the curiously  amorphous character of the genre itself (e.g. answering the question:  what is "not" science fiction?). Authors such as Ursula LeGuin, Phillip  K. Dick, Tom Disch and Samuel Delany are notable for their willingness to  transgress such borders. How is it that these transgressions work to  transcend the border (i.e. the frontier) while at the same time  reinforcing it? Examinations of writers who are regional in their  interests and their settings, like Canadian-in-Texas Sean Stewart, are  also encouraged.

Please send submissions to matt.kavanagh@mail.mcgill.ca  by January 31st.

Dancing in the Clearing:  Black Women and The Making of a New Diaspora

Deadline: January 31, 2002 

Much has been written on the creative ways in which writers and artists of the African diaspora transform and transgress geographical, cultural, and historical borders with their works.  This anthology seeks to provide a platform for a new generation of women creative theorists to exemplify the ways in which these borders are transformed in the 21st century.  Moving beyond the idea even of borders, Black women writers from Africa and the African diaspora (including first generation continental African women) chart new paths of resistance, providing new models for Diasporic existence that redefine gender, identity, sexuality, nation, nationality, race, ethnicity and culture.  In this era of technological complexity, geographical borders, at the level of literature and art, have become erased, as women of African descent share in the cross fertilization of culture and history, language and voice.

The editors of this volume seek creative scholarship (meaning new critical approaches that acknowledge the creative as a space of critical engagement)that addresses the ways in which women of the new African Diaspora re-create diaspora in literature.  Even as their works speak of specific locations, they are also intertwined, intersecting in creative and sociopolitical focus.  Examples of the types of submissions requested are, but are not limited to: discussions of new voices amongst first and second-generation continental African women; performance poets and live artists; dancers.

Please send all submissions on a disk and two hard copies by January 31, 2002 to:

 Meredith M. Gadsby
 Assistant Professor
 Oberlin College Department of African American
 Studies
 10 North Professor Street
 Rice Hall Room 214
 Oberlin, OH 44074
 440-774-4278  440-774-6485 (fax)
 meredith.gadsby@oberlin.edu

 or

 Miriam Gyimah
 Assistant Professor, Department of English
 University of Maryland-Eastern Shore
 Princess Anne, MD 21853
 410-651-6204  410-651-6550 Fax
 Gyimahmc@yahoo.com

Women in Dialogue with Philosophy

Deadline: January 31, 2002

3rd Annual Boston College
Graduate Student Conference
April 5-6, 2002
Keynote Speaker: Gail Weiss, George Washington University

This conference will consider the topic of women in relation to philosophy. We hope to encourage a broad conversation about the role, effects, and contributions of women and thinking about women (or not) in philosophy. Topics may be thematic (i.e. feminism, ethics, epistemology, etc.) or might focus on one or more specific thinkers. We strongly encourage papers from disciplines other than philosophy, as well as the varied traditions within the field of philosophy itself.

Submission details:

We invite papers, panels, and responses. Papers must be no more than 10-12 pages double spaced, 12 point font (20 minutes), accompanied by an abstract of no more than 350 words. Email submissions will be accepted if the paper is attached to a cover letter indicating author's name, title, and school affiliation.  Panel proposals are encouraged. Interested respondents should email with areas of competence and interest.  Deadline for submission is January 31, 2002. Please send submissions to:

3rd Annual Philosophy Graduate Student Conference
Philosophy Department
Boston College
140 Commonwealth Ave.
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
Please send email submissions to:
gradphil.conference@bc.edu

Metaphors of Cyberspace:  Toward Literacies in an Electronic World

Deadline: January 31, 2002

Articles of 20-30 pages for a book project entitled:
Metaphors of Cyberspace:  Toward Literacies in an Electronic World
Edited by Caroline Maun, Morgan State University

Abstracts due (two page descriptions):  January 31, 2002
Final copy due:  May 31, 2002

Metaphors of Cyberspace:  Toward Literacies in an Electronic World is an  anthology of readings with supporting pedagogical materials that captures  both key moments in the history of electronic literacy and updates to the  present moment.  The guiding principle in selections and supporting material  is the investigation of the electronic world as created by the human  imagination through metaphor.  Cyberspace is overwhelmingly thought of as  like something else . . . a frontier, a superhighway, as space, with all of  its attendant assumptions regarding how people exist in the physical world.   Cyberspace, and the metaphors that simultaneously map it, circumscribe it,  and create it, is a dimension in which the imagination has full reign to  realize its own limitlessness. The focus of looking at the metaphors of cyberspace is very useful in  examining many of the key issues surrounding the topic.  The changing  boundaries that cyberspace and the Internet have made possible have effected  communities, identity, co-modification, marketing, economy, education, and countless other areas of our lives.  How we experience such basic  environmental bedrocks as time and space have been effected by the uses of  the Internet. Metaphors of Cyberspace will provide resources and guidance  for teachers and students to explore fully the implications of the new domains and will help them to map future landscapes for discovery.

Possible topics:

What is Cyberspace
Aesthetics of Cyberspace
Cyberspace and the Social World
Search Engines
Cyberspace and Education
The Digital Divide
Gender and the Net
Cyber Selfhood
Cyber Commerce

For consideration, send abstracts or full articles in MLA style by the
deadlines cited above to:

Dr. Caroline Maun
Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition
Department of English and Language Arts
Morgan State University
1700 E. Cold Spring Lane
Baltimore, MD 21251-0001
443-885-4141
fax 410-319-3166
cmaun@morgan.edu

All electronic submissions should be in Microsoft Word format.

Doing Cultural Studies in Cyberspace

Deadline: January 31, 2002

I am  organizing a session at the Crossroads in Cultural Studies  conference June 29-July 2 in Tampere, Finland.  I invite  both  grad students and faculty to submit papers. The session listing is posted below. If you wish to submit to the  session, email 150-word  abstracts of your papers, or full papers to me; papers are due by Jan.  31. For more information about the conference, see the Crossroads web site at  http://www.crossroads2002.com

Doing Cultural Studies in Cyberspace

Considerations of communication technologies in modern cultures have been  instrumental in rise and development of Cultural Studies. Thus far, however,  the scholarly response within Cultural Studies to analyzing Internet  technologies has not been as strong or systematic as with (for example)  television. Although a great deal of Internet- focused research has been  multidisciplinary, a Cultural Studies approach has really not been achieved  despite the fact that a recent wave of critical work aimed at demystifying  the role of capitalism in controlling innovation, distribution, and discourse  in regards to new media technologies can perhaps be seen as a beginning. What does Cultural Studies have to say (and to do) regarding the growing presence  of Internet technologies in the everyday lives of many people in communities  around the world? Papers that explore the contextualities and contingencies  of Internet use and those that explore the role of Cultural Studies in  rearticulating 'cyberculture studies' or 'cyberspace' in general are invited  for participation in this panel.

Organiser:
Jonathan Lillie
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Journalism and
Mass Communication 129 Windsor Cir.
Chapel Hill
North Carolina, USA 27516
E-mail: jlillie@email.unc.edu

Interdisciplinarity and the Dissolution of Borders

Deadline: January 31, 2002

8th Annual McGill University Graduate Student Symposium on Language and  Literature: "Representing the Border"
March 23 & 24, 2002
Montreal, Quebec

"Sharing the Wealth: Interdisciplinarity and the Dissolution of Borders"

Proposals are being solicited for a panel on interdisciplinary approaches to the humanities. Currently, academic disciplines are becoming more open, accommodating and convergent. As a result, there is a growing awareness that the borders regulating Other disciplines¹ are artificially constructed and as such tend toward decisively limited modes of inquiry.  Because ideas do not spring into tidily formed categories in the mind, there is reason to question the value of narrowly conceived and  autonomous academic disciplines.  Furthermore, because human and social interactions are complex and multidimensional, it follows that multiple approaches would allow for the most appropriate and productive accounts of these interactions.  

One-page proposals that may consider, but are not limited to the following topics are requested:

- Interdisciplinary papers on art history and literature; philosophy and literature; or film communications and literature.
- Multidisciplinary studies in the fields of sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, political science, linguistics, religious studies, etc.
- Papers that theorize issues of interdisciplinarity ­ its value in the academic and social spheres; its ethical implications (i.e. the Oborrowing¹ of methodological frames/modes of inquiry and modes of demonstration); particular problems with interdisciplinary studies (i.e. an overemphasis on the centrality of methodology?); how the current move toward interdisciplinarity affects the structuring of academic programs.  

Please send proposals to liisa.stephenson@mail.mcgill.ca by January 31, 2002.

Old Age and Ageing in British and American Literature and Culture

Deadline: January 31, 2002

03 and 04 May 2002
International Conference at the University of Bamberg, Germany

This conference will examine the ways in which old age and  ageing are depicted in British and American literature and  culture, film, art and music.  As old age and ageing are complex  phenomena, the focus of the conference in intentionally broad in  order to accommodate diverse topics, for example:
   
Images of old age and ageing
Socio-cultural implications of age and ageing
The language of old age and ageing
Gender and ageing
Age and ageing in medicine/disease
Age, ageing and death
Age, ageing and sex
The role of religion and spirituality
Age, ageing and anxiety
Age, ageing and family relationships
Poverty and wealth
   
Please direct your paper proposals (max. 500 words) before 31
January 2002 to
   
Prof. Dr. Christa Jansohn
Lehrstuhl für Britische Kultur
Universität Bamberg
Kapuzinerstr. 25
96045 Bamberg
phone: 863 2270 / 2271
fax: 863 5270 / 5271
email: christa.jansohn@split.uni-bamberg.de
homepage: http://www.uni-bamberg.de/split/cbs

Victorian Gender Benders

Deadline: January 31, 2002

8th Annual McGill University Graduate Student Symposium on Language and
Literature
"Representing the Border"
March 23 & 24, 2002
Montreal, Quebec

Papers are being solicited for a panel on the borders between genders and within genders in nineteenth-century fiction.

The literature of the Victorian period is filled with distinct notions of both femininity and masculinity. It often seems as though the literary characters' adherence to or deviation from  social norms determine which end of the respective gender spectrum they fit into, and consequently, their narrative fates. Women can usually be classified as either angelic wives, virgins, and spinsters, or fallen, tainted objects of pity and disdain. Men are often portrayed as either gentlemen, rakes, or dandies. While in many narrative instances these gender-specific categories  are clearly outlined and adhered to, in others the borders are crossed, and Victorian propriety is quietly trampled on. This panel will examine the ways in which the Victorians uphold and defy gender categories in their poetry and prose, and the implications thereof. One page proposals that may consider, but are not limited to the following topics are requested:

* Which characters adhere to gender stereotypes and what can we gather from their literary fates?
* What happens to female characters who are given masculine traits, and vice versa?
* If the Victorians are defying  gender norms in their fiction, then  do we  still associate the Victorian era with a certain rigidity and prudishness?
* Do male and female authors treat issues of gender in markedly different ways?
* How do the Victorians interpret and incorporate pre-existing concepts of  femininity and masculinity?
* How does the gender ideology of the Victorians affect later writing?

Please send proposals to Stephanie King [sking30@hotmail.com] by January 31, 2001.

Submit a Call for Papers