Conference Calls for Papers

Page last updated September 1, 2010

 

Posted: June 16, 2010
Deadline: September 15, 2010

Material Cultures

May 6-8, 2011
Department of English, University of Ottawa

How do objects circulate in our social, imaginary, and textual worlds? What are the politics of material culture and how does this inform our reading of historical and contemporary texts?  In what ways do we perceive and come to know the material world, and in what ways does the material make and unmake this "we"?  Proposals for papers are invited for a conference on Material Cultures in Canadian and Transnational Contexts, the 2011 edition of the Canadian Literature Symposium at the University of Ottawa.  Interdisciplinary, hemispheric, and theoretical approaches to the conference theme are welcome.

Proposed papers may consider, but are not limited to:

Keynote speakers:

For further details and updates visit: www.canlit-symposium.ca

Send electronic or paper proposals of 300-400 words by September 15th to:

Tom Allen: tallen@uottawa.ca, and
Jennifer Blair: jennifer.blair@uottawa.ca

Department of English
Arts 338
70 Laurier Ave. E
Ottawa, ON
K1N 6N5

Posted: August 16, 2010
Deadline: September 6, 2010

CFP: Literature, Rhetoric, and Values
Proposals due by Monday 6 September 2010
Conference 3-5 June 2011

Plenary: Barry Brummett (U of Texas at Austin) and Christopher Hitchens (The New School)
Keynote Speakers: Carolyn R. Miller (North Carolina State) and James Phelan (Ohio State)
Literature (n.): literary work or production; the realm of letters.
Rhetoric (n.): the study and practice of using symbols to persuade or influence.
Value (n.): the quality of a thing considered in respect of its power and validity for a specified purpose or effect.

This three-day conference will investigate the intersections of literature and rhetoric with values.

“Value” is never singular. Whether used to refer to a quality or a conviction, the term situates its referent in relation to a spectrum of other qualities and convictions called by the same name. Values emerge in dialogue with and in contrast to each other. Their holders articulate them in relation to a range of other beliefs encountered and imagined. To declare a value is to invite argument and to incite discussion. How do literature and rhetoric express values, and to what end(s)? How do they give values a form?
“Literature, Rhetoric, and Values” will feature a plenary discussion between Sapp Professor of Communication (U of Texas at Austin) Dr. Barry Brummett (The Rhetoric of Popular Culture, Techniques of Close Reading, Uncovering Hidden Rhetorics)and public intellectual Christopher Hitchens (teacher at The New School; regular contributor to Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair; author of Hitch-22: A Memoir, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere), as well as keynote addresses by Carolyn R. Miller, SAS Institute Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric and Technical Communication, North Carolina State University (and editor of Rhetoric Society Quarterly), and James Phelan, Humanities Distinguished Professor, Ohio State University (Narrative as Rhetoric, Experiencing Fiction).
The conference aims to foster productive interdisciplinary exchanges on the nexus of values with literature and rhetoric, broadly conceived. Conference organizers will accept 300-word proposals on topics that include, but need not be limited to, the following:

  1. literature, rhetoric, disinterestedness
  2. anatomies of value: embodiment in literature and rhetoric
  3. literature, rhetoric, and “the good life”
  4. literature, rhetoric, and “the digital life”
  5. poetic justice: literature, rhetoric, and law
  6. popular literature, popular rhetoric, popular values?
  7. “global” literature and “globalized” values

Send proposals for panels or individual papers by 6 September 2010 to the “Literature, Rhetoric, and Values” Conference Committee at the Department of English Language and Literature, University of Waterloo, 200 University Ave. West, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1, or email them to lrv2011@uwaterloo.ca. Inquiries about the conference may be sent to Shelley Hulan (shulan@artsservices.uwaterloo.ca).

All papers (other than keynote addresses) will be given in 1-1.5 hour sessions, but in order to maximize discussion, our moderators will rigidly enforce a 15-minute speaking limit per presenter.

Posted: February 2, 2010
Deadline: October 1, 2010

Conference on "Aging, Old Age, Memory, and Aesthetics," University of Toronto, March 2011

Complete CFP available here:
http://sites.google.com/site/agingoldagememoryaesthetics/.

This conference is interested in theorizations and analyses of literature and the arts that consider how aging is portrayed and experienced in light of social, political, scientific and cultural contexts that support diverse speculations about old age, aging, memory and aesthetics.  In using the term aesthetics, we are drawing attention to the arts, aesthetic practices, theories of art, and modes of representation as they pertain to aging and memory. We look forward to presentations that analyze a variety of theoretical, thematic, and disciplinary approaches that remain linked by the consistent placement of old age and aging at the centre of concentrated investigation.

Please send your 300-word proposal to andrea.charise@utoronto.ca by Friday October 1, 2010.  This event is supported by the Graduate Department of English and the Institute for Life Course and Aging, Faculty of Medicine, at The University of Toronto.

Posted: February 2, 2010
Deadline: October 1, 2010

“Romanticism & Evolution”

www.uwo.ca/english/evolution

The Romanticism Research Group at The University of Western Ontario invites paper and special panel proposals for an international conference, “Romanticism & Evolution.” The meeting will convene at Windermere Manor next to Western’s main campus in London, Ontario, 12 - 14 May 2011.

Plenary talks by
Gillian Beer (Cambridge University)
Tilottama Rajan (University of Western Ontario)
Robert J. Richards (University of Chicago)

Special Seminars Conducted by Alan Bewell (University of Toronto), Denise Gigante (Stanford University), Noah Heringman (Unviersity of Missouri), Thomas Pfau (Duke University), Matthew Rowlinson (University of Western Ontario), and Joan Steigerwald (York University).

Though Romanticism is often imagined as the “age of revolution,” recent criticism has seen renewed interest in the general theme of “Romantic Evolution,” including the resurgence of such topics as organicism, vitalism, natural history, and natural philosophy. The objective of “Romanticism & Evolution” is to defamiliarize prevailing notions of evolution by tracing their origins to literary and scientific discourses of the transitional period 1775-1850, a time that witnessed the genesis of the modern idea of “literature” alongside the emergence of specialized disciplines, such as geology, biology, physiology, chemistry, psychology, and anthropology. Disenchanted with mechanistic science and Enlightenment rationalism, Romanticism also introduced a new organic image of the world, which displaced the older atomistic and static idea of nature with one that was dynamic and evolutionary. However, whether the organic mode of explanation replaced the mechanical philosophy as a radically incommensurable paradigm, or whether both coexisted in creative tension during and beyond the Romantic period, remains a matter for debate.

Revisiting important events and developments in the history of evolution prior to the publication of The Origin of Species, “Romanticism & Evolution” will focus critical attention on earlier, less recognized theories of change and transformation emerging in the cultural, literary, philosophical, and scientific debates of the Romantic period. Instead of searching through eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century science for “forerunners” to the Darwinian revolution, this conference aims to explore British and European Romanticism’s liminal position between the classical idea of an immutable “great chain of being” and the rise of modern discourses of historiography.

Suggested paper topics include (but are not limited to):

Proposals for papers and sessions should be limited to 500 words. The deadline for the submission of abstracts for 20-minute presentations is 1 October 2010. Please include with your paper or session proposal, your name, e-mail address, and institutional affiliation. Abstracts should be e-mailed to romanticism@uwo.ca. For further information and conference updates, please visit the conference website listed above.