October, 2002

Cultural Studies and Disciplinarity

Deadline: October 1, 2002

Special Issue of The Journal of Language and Learning across the Disciplines: Cultural Studies and Writing in the Disciplines, Guest Editor: Sharon Stockton

We are seeking essays that explore connections between cultural criticism and  the discourses of the academic disciplines. Articles may conduct historical  investigations into the culturally-derived origins of specific disciplines,  interdisciplines or sub-disciplines; explore the ways in which disciplinary  rhetoric privileges certain voices; track alternative rhetorics surviving in  the margins of mainstream academic discourse.  We encourage writers to address  these topics from diverse critical stances by employing theories including but  not limited to those of class, gender, sexuality, diaspora, ethnicity, and new  media. We welcome contributors who specialize in rhetoric and composition  studies as well as those who teach in other disciplines and/or interdisciplines.

Submit a two-page proposal by Oct. 1, 2002
Preliminary acceptance by Dec. 1, 2003

SEND PROPOSALS TO:
stockton@dickinson.edu
Or regular mail:

Sharon Stockton
English Department
Dickinson College
Carlisle, PA 17013

Cultural Memory and Social Identity

Deadline: October 31, 2002

Essays on Canadian Writing invites submissions for a special edition on cultural memory and social identity, to be edited by Roxanne Rimstead.

Whether as a moral discourse, a social construct, a process, a contested site, or a commemorative practice, cultural memory is invoked for various purposes.  The politics of remembering and forgetting permeate testimonies to trauma, claims for recognition by subaltern groups, nostalgic narratives of the nation's shared past, postcolonial and feminist writing, constructions of personal identity, and representations of the present and the future. The study of memory acts calls into question whether the relationship between reality and remembering is one of continuity or discontinuity. How do different media and genres provide sites for enacting traumatic or nostalgic memories (e.g. of welfare, homelessness, street life, prison life, demonstrations, exile, youth, nation building, rural life, family, and community)? How can we, as readers of memory acts, go beyond mere description of the formal properties of these texts (ranging from testimony and documentary reportage to postmodern collage and historical metafiction) to understand the cultural politics implied by remembering and forgetting?

This issue will probe different uses of memory acts across various genres of literary and popular culture in Canada, including but not limited to novels, autobiographies, oral histories, films, reportage, theatre, poetry, and history. Comparative studies are welcome, as are cultural studies and other interdisciplinary approaches.

The deadline for submission of papers is 31 October 2002.

Submissions (in duplicate) should be mailed to:

Roxanne Rimstead
Responsable Littérature canadienne comparee/
Comparative Canadian Literature
Dept. Lettres et communications (FLSH)
Université de Sherbrooke
Sherbrooke, QC   J1K 2R1
rrimstead@sympatico.ca

Submit a Call for Papers