Calls for Papers  

• Materials:

• Word Limit: 550

• Language: English or French

• Due date: September 15, 2018

• Late submissions will not be accepted

• Notification of Acceptance:

• Complete (Accepted) Articles Submission:

• Main Contact Person:

• October 15, 2018

• Word Limit: 9,000 including notes and list of works cited

Essays are invited for a forthcoming special issue of the CR on American literary naturalism in a global context. As Christopher Hill has argued in “The Travels of Naturalism and the Challenges of a World Literary History,” the history of nineteenth-century naturalist fiction points to disorderly patterns of circulation that suggest “multiple, overlapping histories, together forming a heterogeneous history on the scale of the planet.” Using the concept of “travel” as his point of reference, Hill sees naturalism as a paradigm for thinking about transnational literary, cultural, and economic transformations. This special issue aims to offer new perspectives on American literary naturalism in the context of global transformations from the nineteenth century to the present. Of particular interest are re-readings of canonical texts as well as less frequently discussed authors in comparative, transatlantic, postcolonial, and hemispheric approaches. Especially welcome are theoretically-inflected essays that offer novel, provocative definitions of the genre as it has developed from the mid/late nineteenth century to the present.

Possible topics can include but are not limited to:

• American naturalism in translation
• The international reputation and reception of American naturalist authors, poets, and dramatists, particularly in lesser known or less frequently discussed cultural contexts (e.g. Asia, South America, Central and Southern Europe, and the Middle East, among others)
• The social, economic, and political contribution of American naturalism to (post) modernity
• The interaction of American naturalism and other genres (e.g. realism, modernism, regionalism, journalism, melodrama, documentary, film, travel narratives), especially in less frequently addressed sociocultural contexts
• American naturalism and issues of transnational scope and interest (e.g. empire, globalization, immigration, climate change, diasporic studies, food studies, aging, among others)
• American naturalism and world literature: can we read American naturalism in the context of or as “world literature”? Can we rethink central thematic aspects and narrative patterns of American naturalism (e.g. determinism, evolution, nature, commodity culture, gender/race/and class) if we expand our range to different cultural, geographical, and geopolitical contexts?
• Teaching American naturalism in non-American cultural and geographical contexts

Please send 300-500 word proposals and short bios to Myrto Drizou, Boğaziçi University ([email protected]) or [email protected] by October 30, 2018. Essays of 9000 words (Chicago style, 15^th edition) will be due by December 2019 for publication in spring 2021. All inquiries are welcome.

Please join us on March 13-16, 2019, for the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA) #40 in its theme of “Politics and Conflicts.”  We welcome ideas for papers and panels on science fiction, fantasy, fairytale, horror, or superhero stories, and on other works in speculative genres in literary, theatrical, TV/film, artistic, comic book, animation, videogame, or digital media. We especially invite work on Guest Scholar Mark Bould (Science Fiction Research Association Pilgrim Award recipient; author of many books of science-fiction scholarship [e.g., Science Fiction: The Routledge Film Guidebook]) and Guest Author G. Willow Wilson (winner, PEN Center award; Hugo-Award-winning writer, Ms. Marvel and Alif the Unseen).  

Through Oct. 31, 2018, the International Fantastic Division of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) is soliciting proposals for ICFA 2019 papers, sessions, creative readings, and other panels about the global fantastic in any media and discipline. We welcome international research and art about spiritual, fabulist, weird, and experimental expressions of the non-real/surreal, as well as about regional speculative and fantastic narratives distributed over commercial mass media. Our IF Division accepts academic proposals about global, decolonial, and indigenous texts by university and independent scholars; by translators, librarians, and researchers; and by graduate students in all fields. Artists of fantastic works may submit proposals to our Creative Track of writing, music, theater, film, and poetry sessions, as well as for panels on topics of interest to creative professionals. In March, we will meet at the Orlando Airport Marriott Lakeside to celebrate, debate, and deduce speculative fiction’s contributions to grasping the politics and conflicts of our past in their capacity to guide us toward more inclusive futures.

For more on ICFA #40, see: https://www.fantastic-arts.org/annual-conference/. For proposal-related questions, contact the IAFA Division Heads (e.g., of the International Fantastic Division): https://www.fantastic-arts.org/about/governance/division-heads/

To submit proposals by 10/31 see: https://www.fantastic-arts.org/icfa-submissions/.

Announcing Eugene Gant’s arrival on earth in the first year of a century that would be the millennium’s last, Thomas Wolfe heralded his protagonist as “borne in . . . upon the very spear-head of history.” And throughout accounts of the doings of Eugene Gant and George Webber (and others), Wolfe interweaves threads from ancestral and national stories and traces influences exerted on individual destinies by the tides of great events. As the 2019 Memorial Day weekend begins, we will gather near the New World home of Wolfe’s paternal ancestors and at the site of a fearful and decisive battle in this nation’s history. Gettysburg is an ideal place to consider Wolfe’s evoked intersections of public and private, of collective and individual, of past, present, and future.

Organizers of this forty-first annual meeting look forward to productive discussion of history--recorded, remembered, or in the making--as subject, backdrop, or concern in Wolfe’s writing. Those who wish to present papers are invited to submit proposals on any aspect of Wolfe’s writing on the past and its influence, or on the struggles of individuals to contend with events and forces that shape their times and lives. Wolfe’s consciousness was formed by Western philosophical and religious thought and by the English language and the literature it spawned. He was aware of the overshadowing of the present by the past and of the need to understand the history of one’s forebears--and of those of others. Wolfe’s world-view was additionally affected by impressions of the conquest of this continent, by the founding of a new kind of nation and its tearing apart in civil strife, by waves of immigration and the rise of large cities, by the evolution of capitalism and resulting social disparities, by the sufferings of the Great Depression, by hatred and prejudice in its several forms, by the abomination of slavery. The clash between attachment to Germany as ancestral land and impressions of World War I, the rise of Nazism, and the lead-up to World War II affected Wolfe’s understanding of his world and his delineation of the nature and destiny of the characters he created.

Please send 250-word (email attachment) proposals to Anne Zahlan at [email protected] by 7 January 2019.

Conference registration and sessions will be located in the Wyndham Gettysburg, 95 Presidential Circle, Gettysburg, PA 17325: www.wyndhamgettysburg.com. For more information, see www.thomaswolfereview.org/2019-conference., or contact Rebecca Godwin at [email protected] or Anne Zahlan at [email protected]. 

Education Matters (Deadline March 1, 2019)

Culture in Focus (www.mga.edu/cif) invites contributions for its second issue.  The theme of this issue is “culture and education.”  Papers submitted can be in any language, but an abstract in English is required.  Topics may also include, broadly, cultural studies or literature (i.e., any European literature, Turkish literature, Japanese literature, Nigerian literature, etc., etc.). Please consult the submission guidelines when submitting.  Inquiries to [email protected].