[JFKI-News] WG: Newsletter July 2020

[John-F.-Kennedy Institute <administration@jfki.fu-berlin.de>]

Von: Catrin Gersdorf <executive_director@dgfa.de>
Gesendet: Samstag, 25. Juli 2020 13:31
An: jfki@zedat.fu-berlin.de
Betreff: Newsletter July 2020

 

Liebe DGfA-Mitglieder,

 

ein Semester voller Herausforderungen neigt sich dem Ende zu. In diesem Newsletter möchte ich besonders auf die Bekanntmachungen unter dem ersten Punkt „DGfA“ hinweisen. Die neue Ausgabe der Amerikastudien / American Studies sowie das DGfA Mitteilungsblatt 2020 sind ab sofort online abrufbar.
Bitte beachten Sie außerdem die Stellungnahme zur prekären Situation Postgraduierter in Zeiten von Corona: https://dgfa.de/statement-on-the-precarious-situation-of-postgraduates-in-times-of-corona/
Ihren nächsten DGfA Newsletter erhalten Sie nach einer Urlaubspause wie gewohnt dann im September wieder. 
Ich wünsche Ihnen allen einen erholsamen Sommer.

Mit herzlichen Grüßen

Ihre Catrin Gersdorf
Geschäftsführerin

1. DGfA

1.1. Digitale Townhall Meetings

1.2. Änderung der Satzung der DGfA

1.3. Amerikastuden / American Studies 64.2

1.4. Annual Bulletin 2020

1.5. Call for Contributions: Special Issue Amerikastudien / American Studies 2021: The Continuity of Change? New Perspectives on U.S. Reform Movements
Deadline: July 31, 2020

1.6. Call for Contributions for a Special Issue of Amerikastudien/American Studies: Common Grounds? Transatlantic Perspectives on the State of American Democracy
Deadline: Sept. 15, 2020

1.7. Call for Special-Issue Proposals on topics in American Studies (Amerikastudien / American Studies)
Deadline: Sept. 15, 2020
 

2. Ausschreibungen

2.1. Ausschreibung: W 3 - Professur für Amerikanistik: Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften, Philosophische Fakultät der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Deadline: July 31, 2020

2.2. Call for Applications: EAAS Postgraduate Travel Grants
Deadline: August 1, 2020

2.3. Stellenausschreibung: Akademische/r Rätin/Rat (w/m/d) für Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft (Anglistik / Amerikanistik) und Fachdidaktik Englisch, Pädagogische Hochschule Karlsruhe
Deadline: Sept. 15, 2020.

2.4. EAAS Rob Kroes Publication Award Call for Manuscript Submissions
Deadline: Sept. 30, 2020


3. Veranstaltungen und Call for Papers


3.1. Call for Papers: Doing Southern Studies Today (Humboldt University Berlin, tentative date: 14-15 January 2021)
Deadline: August 1, 2020

3.2. Call for Contributions: Special Issue of Studies in American Naturalism on “Intimate Knowledge in American Realism and Naturalism”
Deadline: August 16, 2020

3.3. Call for Papers: The Medial Afterlives of H.P. Lovecraft: Comic, Film, Podcast, TV, Video Game
Deadline: August 31, 2020

3.4. Call for Papers: Distance and Diversity in Times of Crisis: Literary Expressions and Artistic Responses at Saarland University in Saarbrücken (hybrid workshop), October 15-17, 2020
Deadline: Sept. 10, 2020

3.5. Call for Proposals: What Happened? Continuities and Discontinuities in American Culture - The 27th Biennial NAAS Conference in Uppsala, May 20-22, 2021
Deadline: Sept. 15, 2020

3.6. Call for Papers: Elemental America – A special issue of ZAA Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik: A Quarterly of Language, Literature, and Culture
Deadline: Sept. 30, 2020

3.7. Terminverschiebung: 9. Öffentlicher Workshop des Arbeitskreises Biographie und Geschlecht zum Thema „Auto/Biographie und Gender: Fakt, Fake, Fiktion“, Universität Bayreuth, 17.-18. Juli, 2020. VERSCHOBEN. Neuer Termin: 1.-2. Oktober 2020
Date: Oct. 1-2, 2020

3.8. Call for Papers: COPAS Thematic Issue 21.2 – Embracing the Loss of Nature: Searching for Responsibility in an Age of Crisis
Deadline: Oct. 15, 2020

3.9. Call for Book Chapters: The Aliens Within: Danger, Disease, and Displacement in Representations of the Racialized Poor
Deadline: Oct. 15, 2020

3.10. Call for Papers: Edited Collection on “New York City in Song”
Deadline: Oct. 31, 2020

**************************

1. DGfA

1.1. Digitale Townhall Meetings

Im Verlaufe des letzten Jahres, und vermehrt in den letzten Monaten, haben insbesondere die Mitglieder des PGF und des Diversity Roundtable die Forderung an Vorstand und Beirat herangetragen, dass sich die DGfA in einem Prozess der kritischen institutionellen Selbstreflexion mit den Themen „struktureller Rassismus“, „Wahlen und Gremien in der DGfA“, „Jahrestagungen und Diversity“, „Situation des wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchses“ sowie „DGfA als Fachgesellschaft und politisches Mandat“ auseinanderzusetzten. Diesen Prozess wollen wir mit einer Reihe von digitalen Townhall-Meetings in Gang setzen. Ein erstes Forum dieser Art ist für Mitte Oktober 2020 geplant. Der genaue Termin wird rechtzeitig über den Newsletter bekannt gegeben. Thema: „Rassismus und Anti-Rassismus in der DGfA: Eine Debatte“.

 

1.2. Änderung der Satzung der DGfA

Ebenfalls aus PGF und Diversity Roundtable gibt es den Wunsch einer Satzungsänderung, mit dem Ziel, in der Vereinssatzung die Repräsentation unterschiedlicher Statusgruppen im DGfA-Beirat zu regeln. Vorstand und Beirat werden sich in ihrer Herbstsitzung noch einmal mit dem Thema befassen und die Einsetzung einer Satzungsänderungskommission veranlassen.

 

1.3. Amerikastuden / American Studies 64.2
The General Editors and Editorial Team of Amerikastudien / American Studies is pleased to announce that the special issue American Eugenics (Amst 64.2) has just been published. It is available for open access at https://amst.winter-verlag.de.

 

1.4. Annual Bulletin 2020

The Annual Bulletin (“DGfA Mitteilungsblatt”) 2020 is now accessible online. The Annual Bulletin of the GAAS is published once a year and contains news concerning the GAAS and information on:
• University classes and courses, instructors and scholars in the field of American Studies
• New acquisitions at research libraries
• Fellowships and exchange programs
• Meetings, conferences, and symposia
• Current and completed research projects.

Follow this link to download Annual Bulletins from 2010-2020: https://dgfa.de/about/annual-bulletin/download-information-booklet/
The password is: MBdgfa10

 

1.5. Call for Contributions: Special Issue Amerikastudien / American Studies 2021: The Continuity of Change? New Perspectives on U.S. Reform Movements
Deadline: July 31, 2020

Charlotte Lerg & Jana Weiß (guest editors)

The recent Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S. and around world once again remind us to acknowledge and address the systemic injustice based on racism that has deep historic roots. A long tradition of protest and demands for reform loom up behind the activists of today – a legacy that endows the movement with an arsenal of references but at the same time augments the frustration at the perceived lack of real change.
Reforms perpetually seek to redefine and renegotiate citizenship, freedom, (social) justice, and equality. Throughout U.S. history, reform movements were shaped by and simultaneously further contributed to a rhetoric, culture, and ideology of “progress” and of constant improvement. They took aim at “social ills” (e. g. poverty), political structures (e. g. taxes), belief systems (moral and/or religious), ideologies (e. g. white supremacy), body regimes (e. g. health), institutions (e. g. the military), or even entire nations and/or supra-national organizations. Some movements were more encompassing, tackling a number of these areas, like for example the Civil Rights Movement, others were more selective focusing on a single issue like for example the Pure Foods Movement.
Pursuing new perspectives on this ‘continuity of change’, the special issue conceptualizes reform (movements) beyond established dichotomies of progressive vs. reactionary, liberal vs. conservative, and radical vs. moderate. Moreover, the issue aims to tie together rather established fields in the study of progressive reform movements (like gender equality, social and racial justice, or environmental protection) with strands and areas, that so far have received less attention and that are usually considered “conservative” or even “anti-progressive” (for instance, the Nixon administration, the military, or the American housewife). This also entails going beyond ‘classical’ reform periods such as the Progressive Era or the 1960s as well as highlighting the heterogeneity of U.S. reform movements, chronologically and thematically.
In doing so, the special issue addresses two questions in particular: (1) How have reformers ‘imagined’ or ‘constructed’ the social and/or racial ‘other’ and how did that impact their particular reform efforts? (2) How does intersectionality and identity construction feature in reform (movements)? We believe these questions are inextricably linked, and we look for contributions that interrogate this connection further.

We invite proposals for articles dealing with reform movements as outlined above. The proposal should include a 250-word description of the article and a one-page CV. The editors appreciate a heterogeneity of scholarly perspectives. The deadline for submission of the proposal is July 31, 2020. Please send your proposals to: weissjana@uni-muenster.de.

 

1.6. Call for Contributions for a Special Issue of Amerikastudien/American Studies: Common Grounds? Transatlantic Perspectives on the State of American Democracy
Deadline: Sept. 15, 2020

Guest Editors for the Editorial Board: Cedric Essi, Heike Paul, Boris Vormann

(Deadline for Contributions of 1500-2000 Words, if accepted: November 30, 2020)
The U.S. as a political entity and as an “imagined community” (Anderson) has a long history of espousing its own uniqueness, while disavowing its problematic origin story as part of a world system of racialized capitalism. At this point, American exceptionalist ideas have long been exhausted (even as they are periodically revived in an ethno-nationalist vein) and the core of the U.S. democratic system has become the object of close scrutiny. The rhetoric of a shared set of truths and principles has been again heavily tested of late as being just that: rhetoric or, worse, hypocrisy. In the face of stark political and cultural polarization, an apparent (and certainly not unfounded) lack of trust in the state and its institutions, and the further increase of social inequality in a neo-liberal regime, this special issue seeks to address the foundational and long-standing fault lines of the nation while at the same time discussing ways to overcome them.
This volume invites thinkers, artists, scholars, activists to reflect on the current state of American democracy, its national, subnational, and transnational imaginaries, and its potential democratic futures. The editors envisage the following rubrics and overall sub-themes: Equality and Inequality, Demos and Belonging, Sovereignty and Its Discontents, Statehood and Statecraft, Global Implications and Transnational Civil Society.
Deadline for 1-Page Proposals: September 15, 2020

Please send proposals to:
Cedric Essi (cedric.essi@uni-osnabrueck.de)
Heike Paul (heike.paul@fau.de)
Boris Vormann (b.vormann@berlin.bard.edu)

 

 

1.7. Call for Special-Issue Proposals on topics in American Studies (Amerikastudien / American Studies )

Deadline: Sept. 15, 2020

The editors of the journal Amerikastudien / American Studies invite proposals for a special issue on any topic of American Studies to be published in 2022. Proposals should elaborate on the specific design of the topic, should be inter- or transnational in scope, and should highlight the quality of the proposed contributions with regard to the overall topic. The proposals should include:
• a 500-word description of the topic, presenting method, theory, and expected content;
• a bibliography outlining the topic’s current state of research
• two or three confirmed contributors with working titles and 200-word abstracts
(further contributors are to be recruited through an open call for papers to be organized by the special issue’s guest editors).
Criteria for selection will be academic excellence, originality, social and/or political relevance, as well as the combination and coherence of the issue’s conceptual frame and its proposed contributions. The editors appreciate a heterogeneity of scholarly perspectives.
The best proposal will be selected by the General Editors, Associate Editors, and the Editorial Board in mid-October 2020. The deadline for submission of the proposal is September 15, 2020.

 

 

2. Ausschreibungen

2.1. Ausschreibung: W 3 - Professur für Amerikanistik: Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften, Philosophische Fakultät der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn

Deadline: July 31, 2020

In der Philosophischen Fakultät der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn ist im Institut für Anglistik, Amerikanistik und Keltologie schnellstmöglich eine

W 3 - Professur für Amerikanistik: Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften

im Rahmen des Professorinnen-Programms III des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) zu besetzen. Bei der ausgeschriebenen Professur handelt es sich um eine vorgezogene Wiederbesetzung.

Gesucht wird eine Persönlichkeit, die das Fach in seiner ganzen Breite vertritt und idealerweise über mindestens zwei Forschungs- und Lehrschwerpunkte verfügt, die einerseits historisch (18.-19. Jh., Moderne und Postmoderne), andererseits literatur- bzw. kulturwissenschaftlich ausdifferenziert sind. Erwartet wird die Mitarbeit an den Studiengängen des Instituts, der Fakultät und der Universität sowie die Bereitschaft zu deren Weiterentwicklung; Erfahrungen im Einwerben von Drittmitteln sind sehr willkommen. Erwünscht ist die Beteiligung an den transdisziplinären Forschungsbereichen (TRAs) der Universität und an neuen Forschungsverbundinitiativen. Erwartet wird die Mitwirkung an der akademischen Selbstverwaltung sowie die Bereitschaft, sich für die Internationalisierungsstrategie der Universität zu engagieren.
Voraussetzung für die Bewerbung ist eine fachlich einschlägige Promotion sowie die Habilitation bzw. habilitationsadäquate Leistungen.
Die Einstellungsvoraussetzungen richten sich nach § 36 Hochschulgesetz NRW.
Die Universität Bonn setzt sich für Diversität und Chancengleichheit ein. Sie ist als familiengerechte Hochschule zertifiziert und verfügt über einen Dual Career-Service. Ihr Ziel ist es, den Anteil der Wissenschaftlerinnen in Bereichen, in denen Frauen unterrepräsentiert sind, zu erhöhen und deren Karrieren besonders zu fördern. Sie fordert deshalb einschlägig qualifizierte Wissenschaftlerinnen nachdrücklich zur Bewerbung auf. Bewerbungen werden in Übereinstimmung mit dem Landesgleichstellungsgesetz behandelt. Die Bewerbung geeigneter Menschen mit nachgewiesener Schwerbehinderung und diesen gleichgestellten Personen ist besonders willkommen.

Bitte senden Sie Ihre Unterlagen (Lebenslauf, Schriftenverzeichnis, Verzeichnis der Lehrveranstaltungen, falls vorliegend Lehrveranstaltungsevaluationen, Zeugnis- und Urkundenkopien) sowie fünf einschlägige Schriften in digitaler Form, in der Regel die Promotionsschrift, die Habilitationsschrift und weitere relevante Publikationen, bis zum 31. Juli 2020 in elektronischer Form (PDF-Datei mit max. 15 MB an philfak.berufungen@uni-bonn.de) an den Dekan der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Bonn (Am Hof 1, D-53113 Bonn).

 

2.2. Call for Applications: EAAS Postgraduate Travel Grants

Deadline: August 1, 2020

Postgraduate students in the Humanities and Social Sciences who are registered for a higher research degree at any European university, and are members of an American Studies association belonging to EAAS may apply. Two kinds of grants are available: the Transatlantic Grant and the Intra-European Grant. The maximum single award granted may amount to EUR 2,000.

The Transatlantic Grant will permit the holder to conduct research which illuminates a particular area of American Studies in a designated university, independent research organization or archive in the United States.
The term of the grant will be between three weeks (minimum) and eight weeks (maximum). Successful applicants will receive a grant intended to cover round trip travel and some of the living expenses. Only students registered for a Ph.D. are eligible to apply for the Transatlantic Grants.

The Intra-European Grant will allow the recipient to conduct research for a period of up to four weeks in an American Studies Center or university library or archive in Europe. Graduate students who are registered either for a Ph. D. or a Master's degree by research are eligible to apply for Intra-European Grants.

Applications must be made on the official form and should include written confirmation from the host institution that the researcher will have access to the necessary resource materials, and a letter from the student's academic supervisor. Applicants will be required to supply a detailed estimate of the cost of their visit, including the cost of travel, subsistence, and incidentals. They should also state the minimum amount of money needed to make the trip possible. Applicants are encouraged to seek supporting or matching funding wherever possible.

Grant recipients will be responsible for making their own arrangements for travel and accommodation. Travel must be completed within twelve months of the grantee being notified of the award.
Grantees are required to submit a report to the EAAS within thirty days of returning from their research visit. Obviously the report should include the grantees' institution and destination. For technical reasons please limit the file to 1024 Ko.
The application deadline (receipt of the application) for the current round is Saturday, 1 August 2020. You may download the Application Form as a PDF file: https://www.eaas.eu/eaas-grants/travel-grants

Please send the completed Travel Grant Application Form including:
an estimated budget,
a recommendation letter from academic supervisor,
a letter of confirmation from the host institution
to Dr. Zuzanna Ladyga-Michalskaat, Vice-President of the EAAS, by e-mail attachment to vice-president@eaas.eu

 

 

2.3. Stellenausschreibung: Akademische/r Rätin/Rat (w/m/d) für Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft (Anglistik / Amerikanistik) und Fachdidaktik Englisch, Pädagogische Hochschule Karlsruhe

Deadline: Sept. 15, 2020.

Die Pädagogische Hochschule Karlsruhe ist eine bildungswissenschaftliche Hochschule mit rund 3.700 Studierenden und einem breiten Angebotsprofil an Lehrerbildungsstudiengängen sowie Bachelor- und Masterstudiengängen zu außerschulischen Bildungsbereichen.

Zum 1. Oktober 2020 ist am Institut für Mehrsprachigkeit im Fach Englisch eine Vollzeitstelle einer/eines

Akademischen Rätin / Akademischen Rats (w/m/d) für
Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft (Anglistik / Amerikanistik) und Fachdidaktik Englisch
Besoldungsgruppe A 13
Kennziffer 37/2020

zu besetzen. Es handelt sich um eine Beamtenstelle, die auch im Angestelltenverhältnis besetzt werden kann. Die Stelle steht unbefristet zur Verfügung.
Ihre Aufgaben:
• Lehrveranstaltungen und Prüfungen in allen fachspezifischen Studiengängen/Modulen
• Fachliche Schwerpunkte: Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft (Anglistik / Amerikanistik); Fachdidaktik Englisch mit einem Schwerpunkt im Lehramt Sekundarstufe
• Betreuung von Praktika im Bereich Schulpraxis
• Mitarbeit in der akademischen Selbstverwaltung
• Unterstützung der Forschungsaktivitäten in der Abteilung
• Die Lehrverpflichtung beträgt 16 Semesterwochenstunden zuzüglich der Betreuung von Unterrichtspraktika.
• Unsere Anforderungen:
• Hochschulstudium Lehramt mit Fach Englisch oder Anglistik/Amerikanistik; 1. und 2. Staatsexamen
• Schulpraktische Erfahrung wäre von Vorteil
• Promotion im Bereich Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft (Anglistik / Amerikanistik) oder Fachdidaktik Englisch
• Erfahrungen im Bereich der Hochschullehre (Anglistik / Amerikanistik oder Fachdidaktik) sowie längerer Aufenthalt im englischsprachigen Ausland sind erwünscht

Bewerbungsschluss: 15. September 2020

Es gelten die Einstellungsvoraussetzungen nach § 52 Landeshochschulgesetz Baden- Württemberg. Qualifizierte Frauen werden ausdrücklich gebeten, sich zu bewerben.
Schwerbehinderte werden bei gleicher Eignung vorrangig eingestellt.
Wir freuen uns auf Ihre Online- oder E-Mail-Bewerbung unter: https://jobs.b-ite.com/hytgk

 

 

2.4. EAAS Rob Kroes Publication Award Call for Manuscript Submissions

Deadline: Sept. 30, 2020

The European Association for American Studies (EAAS) invites submissions for its biennial Rob Kroes Publication Award for an unpublished book-length manuscript.
The award is named for Rob Kroes, who served as Treasurer (1976–1988) and President (1992–1996) of EAAS. For many years, Rob Kroes also edited the series European Contributions to American Studies, where the EAAS Biennial Conference volumes appeared from 1980 to 2006.

EAAS is now launching with Brill a new series with the title “European Perspectives on the United States: The European Association for American Studies Series” where the winning manuscript will appear: https://brill.com/page/eaas
The competition for the Rob Kroes Publication Award is open to all national and jointnational American Studies organizations in EAAS (see http://www.eaas.eu/abouteaas/constituent-members).

EAAS defines “American Studies” broadly. To be eligible, a manuscript should be in the fields of literary, cultural, political, historical or interdisciplinary studies. Emphasis placed on other disciplines and the arts within the context of American studies are also welcome. All entries should be concerned with phenomena or events that focus on what is now the United States of America. We welcome comparative and international studiesthat fall within these guidelines.
To be considered, manuscripts should be around 80,000-90,000 words long (double spaced; Font: Times New Roman: Font size: 12) in total with introduction and bibliography included. Style to be used: MLA for submissions in literature and culture, Chicago for submissions in history and political science.
Authors of eligible manuscripts are invited to nominate their work. We urge scholars who know of eligible manuscripts written by others to inform those authors of the opportunity. The award is open to authors of English-language manuscripts only. Entrants are requested to write an 1-2 page précis or abstract explaining why the manuscript is a significant and original contribution to American Studies.

The winning work will be awarded a €500 EAAS Prize and will be published at no cost to the author by Brill. Diagrams, illustrations, tables, photographs (in black and white or colour) may be included at no extra cost.
Brill agrees to pay a royalty of 4% on the net sales receipts of the first and all subsequent printings/reproduction in digital, electronic of optical format of a volume to the monograph author(s).
The author will be expected to clear any copyright issues. Any other guidelines will be provided by the Series Editor.
Please note that on submission all manuscripts will be checked for their academic integrity before review.
Submission instructions: Please submit a pdf-version of your manuscript, with the précis, to: EAAS Book Series Editor, Marek Paryz at m.a.paryz@uw.edu.pl
Deadline of Submission: Sept. 30th, 2020.

 

 

3. Veranstaltungen und Call for Papers

 

3.1. Call for Papers: Doing Southern Studies Today (Humboldt University Berlin, tentative date: 14-15 January 2021)

Deadline: August 1, 2020

In the field of Southern Studies, the first twenty years of the 21st century were defined by attempts to formulate and visualize the future of Southern Studies. The “future,” most publications propose, lies beyond traditional narratives of Southern exceptionalism and sectionalism that promote a specific “sense of place” that cannot be found outside the South. A more dynamic and global understanding of the South needs to be implemented if Southern Studies wants to contribute to a critical engagement with current and past cultural and social developments, in and outside the U.S. Despite the expansion of the scope of Southern Studies though, the ‘old’ questions remain: What and where is “the South”? What is “southern”? While “sense-of-place”-regionalism, a rather essentialist and nativist approach to being “southern,” is outdated, the concern with the “place of ‘place’” in Southern Studies remains. This conference aims to bring together scholars who want to share their work on “the South” and “doing Southern Studies” in an uncommon place: Berlin – a place outside “the South.” We don’t expect definite answers to the ‘old’ questions (although we welcome them). We rather want to explore the trajectories of Southern Studies in and outside the U.S. We owe our title to Scott Romine and Jennifer Rae Greeson who claim that “[d]oing Southern Studies is unmasking and refusing the binary thinking – ‘North’/‘South,’ nation/South, First World/Third World, self/other,” it is “thinking geographically, thinking historically, thinking relationally, thinking about power, thinking about justice, thinking back” (2016: 4). We take their definitions as this conference’s objective and seek an exchange of these thoughts.

We are particularly interested in papers that tackle the South as a “multiplicity of communities” (Gray 2002: xxiii), factoring in race, gender, sexuality and ethnicity; the role (or rather the problematic exclusivity) of whiteness in Southern Studies; imaginations of “the South” in popular media; the Global South and the possible transnational routes of Southern Studies. Confirmed keynote speakers: Riché Richardson (Cornell University) and Martyn Richard Bone (University of Copenhagen).
Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words and a short biographical info to conference organizers Evangelia Kindinger (Humboldt University Berlin) and Greta Kaisen (Humboldt University Berlin) at doingsouthernstudies@gmail.com. The deadline for paper proposals is 1 August 2020. Please note that the date of the conference is subject to change, considering the current state of pandemic and its developments.

 

 

 

3.2. Call for Contributions: Special Issue of Studies in American Naturalism on “Intimate Knowledge in American Realism and Naturalism”

Deadline: August 16, 2020

While many recent investigations into the late nineteenth century have focused on large-scale changes such as the growth of mass media and the consolidation of American national identity, this special issue of Studies in American Naturalism will investigate the negotiation of the ‘small,’ intimate concerns of life in literature. Realist fiction and its increased focus on the individual and ever more sophisticated techniques of exploring developments of thought and norms of experience not only reflect the growing interest in such ‘small matters,’ highlighting what contemporaries’ self-conception as ‘modern’ meant on the levels of emotion and consciousness, but also allow for new ways of engaging with intimacy and knowledge. At the same time, Naturalism’s fascination with the lower classes and issues such as prostitution, which American literature had previously shied away from, provided contemporaries with insights pertaining to sexuality, the body, and secrecy (even though Naturalist characters themselves are notoriously incapable of cognitively understanding their predicament). As such, we understand intimacy as including, yet going far beyond the concerns of sex and sexuality (cf. Intimate Matters). Intimate matters are also childbirth and grief, friendship and longing, love and relationships, introspection and domesticity, addiction and illness. In all these, intimate knowledge in fiction is thus always oscillating between disclosure and secrecy – a contrast ripe for exploration via literary means.
As John Gibson highlights, “Literature does not treat the world as an object of knowledge but as a subject of human concern,” and therefore offers “a dramatic investigation” (483). Such a mode of knowledge production, we argue, is especially valuable for those aspects of life closed off to other (particularly: scientific) modes of inquiry. The “experiential familiarity” (Felski) enabled by fiction offers unique access to intimate matters, which encompass “what is closely held and personal and […] what is deeply shared with others” (Yousef).

This special issue is part of the recent trend to explore extrascientific modes of knowledge production. It is also indebted to a number of studies, especially in affect and queer studies, which have explored intimacy’s ties to sexuality, capitalism (cf. Illouz), and politics (cf. Berlant). The contributions in this special issue want to link these two concerns to understand how intimacy is not only lived and experienced, but shared and mediated, in short: How it can be (made) known. The contributions further seek to historicize intimate knowledge. Given Realism’s and Naturalism’s programmatic investment in knowledge (and especially, epistemological uncertainty) and the era’s increased focus on individualism and interiority, we propose that literary texts from this period are uniquely suited for these endeavors.
Contributions might address the following questions:

- What are examples of the breakdown of distance between text and reader, when matters are brought “unnervingly close” (Felski)? What are the aesthetic as well as ethical implications of such a discomfort?
- How do Realist and Naturalist texts position themselves vis-à-vis public discourses which rely increasingly on the exploitation (e.g. rise in autobiographical writing; articles on scandals such as Tilton-Beecher-Affair) and investigation of intimacy (e.g. psychology; sexology; photojournalistic investigations of private spaces)?
- How are late nineteenth-century approaches to intimacy (e.g. Wharton’s anthropological gaze) building on or producing different forms of literary knowledge than, e.g., sentimentalism’s focus on sympathy or pre-war concerns of affiliation (cf. Coviello)?
- Which modes of communication (on the level of plot as well as narrative discourse) lend themselves to engaging with intimate knowledge (e.g. gossip, narration in free indirect discourse, dreams, dialogue, letters and diary entries)?
- In what ways does Naturalism mobilize the representation of ‘real’ intimate matters to attack Victorian morality as ‘unreal’?
- How did Naturalist writers deploy issues of intimacy in their quest for authenticity and their desire to carve out a new public image of ‘the author’ as bohemian iconoclast?
- How is intimacy bound up with cultural identity and social hierarchies? Whose intimacy is (not) depicted and to what ideological ends?
- How is the treatment of intimacy in literature in the late nineteenth century shaped by the “slippage” between Realism and Naturalism, that is, “the presence of realist aesthetics in naturalist fiction and the presence of naturalist aesthetics in realist fiction” (Duneer)?
- To what extent is knowledge produced in Realist and Naturalist writing, which famously embraced a strong truth claim by promising ‘the truthful treatment of material’ (W. D. Howells), a mirage, because writers were predominantly middle-class in social position and habitus, and thus had very little access to the lower classes, the demi-monde, etc.?
- In contrast, how does a focus on authors beyond the ‘WASP canon’ (e.g. Charles Chestnutt, Sui Sin Far, Zitkála-Šá, Maria Cristina Mena) also broaden or change our understanding of intimate knowledge? For that matter, which insights can be gained from transnational comparisons of intimate literary knowledge?

We invite contributions that employ a variety of approaches, be they close readings of specific moments of intimacy in literary texts, comparative analyses of the topos in different works and contexts, phenomenological inquiries, theoretical explorations of the epistemological status of intimacy and the specific qualities of literary knowledge in this context, or historical studies of reading Realist and Naturalist works as an intimate experience for contemporary audiences (and the discursive inhibitions against it).

Please send abstracts of approximately 500 words and a brief bio note to the guest editors of the special issue, Katrin Horn (Katrin.Horn@uni-bayreuth.de) and Katharina Motyl (kmotyl@mail.uni-mannheim.de) by August 16, 2020. Authors will be notified about editorial decisions by late August. Full essays of no more than 8.000 words (including works cited) will be due by February 28, 2021 and undergo double-blind peer review.

 

 

3.3. Call for Papers: The Medial Afterlives of H.P. Lovecraft: Comic, Film, Podcast, TV, Video Game

Deadline: August 31, 2020

Ed. Max José Dreysse Passos de Cavalho & Tim Lanzendörfer
We are seeking essays dealing with medial adaptations of the work of H.P. Lovecraft. Amidst the recent Lovecraft renaissance, the adaptation of Lovecraft’s stories, but also of “Lovecraftian” themes and motifs, into various kinds of audiovisual narratives has proliferated and become vastly successful in a number of guises. Critical discussions of this phenomenon, however, have often been restricted to the identification of Lovecraft’s themes, adaptation’s fidelity to Lovecraft’s texts, and the influence of Lovecraft on contemporary horror and weird fiction more generally. The proposed collection will expand the discussion of Lovecraft adaptation by interrelating strongly on the concrete formal and medial choices of adaptations with the specific demands (if there are any) of Lovecraft(ian) fiction. Departing from a theoretical discussion that has seen Lovecraft as either congenial to adaptation or entirely resistant to it, it aims to understand Lovecraftian adaptation as a means of negotiating different ways of representing the unrepresentable, and to question the notion of the unrepresentable itself. Lovecraftian adaptation goes beyond its own relation to Lovecraft’s fiction, and helps us understand the respective affordances of written fiction versus audio visual media, permitting us not just to see the peculiarities of Lovecraft better, but also to ask fundamental media-theoretical questions.

We are looking for essays that address the question of Lovecraft adaptation in visual, aural, and mixed media: professional and amateur films, TV series, podcasts, (video) games, comics, and other media. Media of interest may be “direct” adaptations of Lovecraft’s source material or those called “Lovecraftian,” and we encourage discussion of this latter term especially with regards to the question of what, if anything, gets “adapted” in so encompassing a term. Among the texts we are interested in are, for instance, the films produced by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, the German Die Farbe, or The Color Out of Space (2020), but also older adaptations; radio plays and podcasts such as British Radio 4’s The Whisperer in Darkness (2019-2020), but also things like Tanis (2015-) or The White Vault (2017-); video games such as the Dead Space Series (2008-2013), Alan Wake (2010), Bloodborne (2015), At the Mountains of Madness (2016, still in early access), The Call of Cthulhu (2018), or Moons of Madness (2019), as well as older games such as Alone in the Dark (1992); the large number of Lovecraft and Lovecraftian comics, such as Alan Moore’s Providence series or Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke & Key (2008-2013). All of these are very much inter alia; we are looking for a wide variety of source texts.

Among the topics we are interested in are media-philosophical discussions of the problem of Lovecraft(ian) adaptation; interpretative readings of Lovecraft(ian) fiction; the affordances of medial forms (including their capacity to be both expansive and limited in their relationship to Lovecraft); the relationship between Lovecraft’s medial afterlives and the market; the question of Lovecraft and contemporary philosophy as reflected in the media texts; what Lovecraft adaptation can tell us about adaptation more generally; what is named by “Lovecraftian” in these texts; and a variety of other topics that address the complex of questions sketched above, ideally interrelating several of these issues. Especially when you aim to propose a “Lovecraftian” text, we would appreciate a rationale for this determination.

We are looking for 300-500 word abstracts and a short biography, to be submitted by August 31, 2020, to lanzendo@uni-mainz.de and maxdreys@uni-mainz.de. We will collect the most promising abstracts into a coherent volume addressing the problems laid out above, and will propose the collection to Palgrave Macmillan’s series Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture, who have already expressed an interest in the project. Finished essays of about 7000 words are expected around June 2021; details to be cleared later.

 

 

3.4. Call for Papers: Distance and Diversity in Times of Crisis: Literary Expressions and Artistic Responses at Saarland University in Saarbrücken (hybrid workshop), October 15-17, 2020

Deadline: Sept. 10, 2020

In cooperation with the German-American Institute Saarland, the Chair of North American Literary and Cultural Studies at Saarland University (UdS) will hold a 3-day UdS American Studies Graduate Forum (on-site and online) that invites advanced Master students, doctoral candidates, as well as junior and senior scholars to present their papers in a workshop-style setting. The forum will also offer participants a chance to discuss their research with peers as well as with more advanced scholars. This year, we invite submissions dealing with issues of diversity, distance, and crisis.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion have become catchwords in the past years, but the current pandemic has put these issues in stark relief, as it has become clear that the Covid-19 pandemic is disproportionately impacting disadvantaged groups. New perspectives are emerging as this health crisis has aggravated disparities, shining a light on more subtle forms of diversity, such as issues surrounding child-care and caregivers. The current pandemic has exposed deep social divisions in our societies, drawing the attention to the many challenges of marginalized communities.
The imposed actions to prevent the spread of the virus, summarized under the catchphrase ‘social distancing,’ have aimed at ensuring a minimum physical interpersonal distance, often engendering a side effect of increased onerous and stressful situations, leading, in turn, to affective, emotive, and emotional distance and re-orientations. At the same time, as people all over the world are struggling with the very perceptible and experienceable force of this ‘social distancing,’ global distances have been dismantled and the world has moved more closely together in the virtual world, as the offer of online events increased considerably.

The UdS American Studies Graduate Forum 2020 offers a setting in which a decidedly humanities-driven, cultural studies and literature studies approach to issues of distance and diversity in times of crisis will be discussed. Focusing on literary and artistic expressions of and reactions to various forms of crises, ecological crises as well as health crises, this workshop seeks to highlight cultural representations that call for gender and racial equity, and a commitment to LGBTIQ issues.

Topics can include but are not limited to:
• the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion, especially in our current pandemic times
• distancing & forms of artistic/artivist expressions
• the impact of physical distancing on disadvantaged communities
• coming to terms with crisis-inflicted traumas
• emerging (virtual) community-building practices
• distancing & new forms of protest
• cancel culture & identity politics

In order to submit a proposal, please send an email, including a title, a 250-word abstract, and a short biographical note to amerikanistik@mx.uni-saarland.de by September 10, 2020.

 

3.5. Call for Proposals: What Happened? Continuities and Discontinuities in American Culture - The 27th Biennial NAAS Conference in Uppsala, May 20-22, 2021

Deadline: Sept. 15, 2020

While it appears to be perennially tempting to see one’s own time as exceptional and unprecedented, it is nevertheless safe to say that our present time is perceived by many as
characterized by crises of different kinds (democratic, humanitarian, environmental, economic, medical) to an unusually high degree. As a result, the stakes are high when it comes to identifying causes and cures and the political, media and academic communities are all concerned in their different ways with constructing narratives that make sense of what is happening: Backlash, renewal, apocalypse? Whatever their political, ideological or theoretical underpinnings or agendas, all mobilize tropes of either continuity – understood for instance as progress, degeneration or intensification – or discontinuity – understood for instance as a break with previous values, a dramatic shifting or an unprecedented development, or of both at the same time.

In a specifically North American context these narratives draw on a long tradition of speaking of the nation as renewing itself, as becoming again what it was (meant to be). In our academic contexts, a number of “turns,” often framed as oriented away from traditional human-centered or rationalist concerns, can be understood as a response to a sense of crisis and raise new questions for the field of American studies. A focus on continuities and/or discontinuities provide opportunities for discussing both the specificities of American developments and their place in larger cultural, historical, and political contexts.
The 27th biennial NAAS conference welcomes panel and paper proposals that engage with continuities or discontinuities in American social, political, historical or cultural life or within the field of American studies. We seek contributions in a wide array of disciplines, including, but not limited to history, politics, literature, film and media studies, sociology, art history, visual studies, gender studies, critical race and ethnicity studies, the environmental humanities etc. We also welcome papers on any topic related to American studies.

The conference will take place at Uppsala University, Sweden’s first university, located some 70 kms north of Stockholm, easily accessible by train or by flight to Stockholm-Arlanda airport. The conference is open to scholars and students from all countries, but we offer lower registration fees to members of NAAS (Nordic Association for American Studies), EAAS (European Association for American Studies), and ASA (American Studies Association in the U.S.)
Confirmed keynote speakers
Erika Lee, Rudolph J. Vecoli Chair in Immigration History and Director of the Immigration History, Research Center at the University of Minnesota (https://cla.umn.edu/about/directory/profile/erikalee)
Imre Szeman, University Research Chair and Professor of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo (http://imreszeman.ca/)
Submitting a proposal
In order to submit a paper proposal, please provide us with title, abstract (200-300 words) a brief bio and contact information.
In order to submit a panel proposal, in addition to the information listed above for each individual presentation, please provide us with a title for the panel, the name, email address and brief bio of the panel convener, and a description of the topic (200-500 words).
Submissions should be sent to: naasinfo2021@gmail.com
Deadline for proposals: September 15, 2020.
Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by November 15, 2020.
Conference website: https://naas2021.com

 

 

3.6. Call for Papers: Elemental America – A special issue of ZAA Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik: A Quarterly of Language, Literature, and Culture

Deadline: Sept. 30, 2020

Guest Editors: Moritz Ingwersen, American Studies, University of Konstanz; Timo Müller, American Studies, University of Konstanz

This special issue seeks to address the construction of American subjectivities and cultural narratives by tracing the material elements that sustain and suffuse them. Many American foundation narratives center on the struggle of a bounded heroic individual against the unruly forces of a “natural” environment that taunts and incites fantasies of human mastery, control, and containment. As the nation’s primordial adversary, the elemental world of wind, ocean, heat, or dust is itself a participant, or collective of participants, in the production of America as a material-semiotic entity. Long before the interpellation of the human as a geologic subject and namesake of the Anthropocene, the elements had already been on the inside of frontier, house, engine, lung, and cell. Who are these elemental intruders, cohabitants, boundary-crossers, and “strange strangers” (Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought [Harvard UP, 2010] 15) that traverse American narratives of progress and exposure?
         Recent proposals to think with the elements—from Cohen and Duckert’s “elemental ecocriticism” to Peters’ and Parikka’s work on “elemental media” and Macauley’s “elemental philosophy”—have revisited the Empedoclean quartet of water, air, earth, and fire to address the shifting material affinities, affects, and motilities that connect global climatological forces to cultural production and emplaced material ecologies. Building on such approaches, this special issue examines American literature and culture as both constitutive of and constituted by the elements, which, following Cohen and Duckert, we understand as “the perceivable foundations of which worlds are composed, the animated materialities with and through which life thrives” (Elemental Ecocriticism [U of Minnesota P, 2015] 13). Both “ultradeep” (Stephanie LeMenager, Living Oil [Oxford UP, 2014] 6)) and multiscalar, elemental America reveals itself in the volatile poietic capacities of floods, blizzards, earthquakes, and wildfires. It also takes shape in recent additions to the periodic table like Tennessine or Livermorium (respectively named after an American state and city). As “storied matter” (Cohen in Serenella Iovino & Serpil Oppermann (eds), Material Ecocriticism [Indiana UP, 2014] 6), elements are not an ontological given or passive background but the products and producers of cultural texts and material metaphors. Put in the registers of elemental media theory, they are infrastructural operators that connect.
         Accessing America via its elements both expands and departs from canonical investigations of American encounters with “nature” in that the environment is apprehended “disanthropocentrically” (Cohen), highlighting material dimensions that ground, envelop, and decenter cultural production. An elemental perspective encourages questions such as: How do American texts follow and shape elemental trajectories such as those that lead from Lithium mines to Silicon Valley to toxic landfills? Whose political voices—human and nonhuman—are amplified or silenced in economies of cotton, corn, carbon, or cobalt? How does the distribution of and exposure to American elements highlight issues of environmental racism and justice? Which images of American identity emerge from transcorporeal exposure to the elemental world of wind, ice, atmosphere, toxins, and oil spills? What are the cultural and literary traces of anthropogenic radioactive isotopes like Strontium90, the lead in Michigan’s waters, or America’s plastisphere?
         Building on such questions, we invite contributions that unfold American culture from its elements—be they oil, wood, plastic, plutonium, helium, ocean, concrete, superstorms, or others. We specifically encourage engagements with theoretical directions in fields that include but are not limited to the energy humanities, petrocultures, environmental media theory, the blue humanities, materialist ecocriticism, science and technology studies, critical infrastructure studies, ecofeminism, and new materialism.
 We encourage proposals on a wide variety of literary genres and artistic media that include music, land art, performance activism, photography, design, and painting. Contributors might address but should not feel constrained by the following themes:
• nonhuman modes of storytelling
• the cultural agency of the elements
• the elemental unconscious in ecohorror, climate fiction, new weird, and science fiction, etc.
• pollution, toxicity, and radioactivity
• trans-corporeality and exposure
• resource extraction and environmental justice
• petromodernity and speculative energy futures
• nature writing and landscape painting
• site-specificity and situated knowledges
• thinking through and designing with seawater, wind, atmosphere, dust, etc.
• Indigenous narratives of more-than-human relations
• Anthropocene, climate change, ecotopia, and post-apocalypse
• the life cycles of consumer objects and geological media
• the aesthetics of coal, oil, steel, and plastic
• environmental politics and activism

Please send a proposal (400 words) and a brief biographical note (100 words) to moritz.ingwersen@uni-konstanz.de and timo.mueller@uni-konstanz.de by September 30, 2020. 
The special issue is scheduled to appear in spring 2022. Completed articles (of approximately 5000 words) will be due in April 2021.

 

 

3.7. Terminverschiebung: 9. Öffentlicher Workshop des Arbeitskreises Biographie und Geschlecht zum Thema „Auto/Biographie und Gender: Fakt, Fake, Fiktion“, Universität Bayreuth, 17.-18. Juli, 2020. VERSCHOBEN. Neuer Termin: 1.-2. Oktober 2020

Date: Oct. 1-2, 2020

Der neunte Workshop des Arbeitskreises Biographie und Geschlecht fördert den interdisziplinären Austausch von Nachwuchswissenschaftler*innen und beschäftigt sich in diesem Jahr mit Projekten zum Thema Auto/Biographie und Gender: Fakt, Fake, Fiktion. Die Teilnehmenden erörtern verschiedene Teilaspekte des Forschungskomplexes mit Fokus auf Geschlecht und methodische sowie ästhetische Fragestellungen.

Der Workshop geht dabei davon aus, dass das Spannungsverhältnis von Fiktion und Fake, Fälschung und Fakt sowohl in der biographischen Forschung als auch für die Auseinandersetzung mit autobiographischem Schreiben von zentraler Bedeutung ist. Der Literaturwissenschaftler Philip Lejeune beispielsweise definiert 1975 den „autobiographischen Pakt“ zwischen Autor*in und Leser*innen als die Übereinkunft, dass in einer Autobiographie (ausschließlich) über wahre Begebenheiten aus dem Autor*innen-Leben erzählt wird. Wenig später revidiert er dies angesichts der unvermeidlichen fiktionalen Anteile jeder Form literarischen Schreibens: “In spite of the fact that autobiography is impossible, this in no way prevents it from existing“ („The Autobiographical Pact [bis]“). Ähnlich konstatiert Dee Garrison für das biographische Forschen und Schreiben die Unumgänglichkeit, auf „techniques of the novelist“ (und damit narrative/fiktionale Anteile) zurückzugreifen („Two Roads Taken“ in: The Challenge of Feminist Biography).

Der Workshop möchte deswegen Raum dafür geben, das Verhältnis von Authentizität und historischer Wahrheit in unterschiedlichen Forschungsprojekten zu beleuchten: Wie verhält es sich mit der Verwendung von autobiographischem Schreiben als historischer Quelle und der Verwendung historischer Quellen für die Analyse literarischen Schreibens? Welchen Zugang fordern autobiographische Fiktion und fake memoirs? Wie schreibt man die Biographie von Fälscher*innen? Kann Fiktion als historische Quelle für biographische Forschung dienen? Gibt es eine Geschichte des gefälschten Archivmaterials? Wie gestaltet sich das Verhältnis von Geschlecht zu Authentizität/Wahrheit und Fiktion/Täuschung? Gehen Frauen und Männer in historischer Perspektive auf unterschiedliche Weise mit Fälschung und Fälschungsvorwürfen in life writing um? Wie nähert man sich sozio-historisch und kulturell kontextspezifischen Vorstellungen von Fakt und Fiktion an? Welche (authentifizierende) Bedeutung haben Para- und Metatexte?

Der zweitägige Workshop beginnt mit einem Vortrag von Prof. Dr. Antje Kley (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg), an den sich eine gemeinsame Lektüre- und Diskussionseinheit anschließt. Am zweiten Tag werden Projekte vorgestellt und in der Runde aller interessierten Teilnehmenden aus verschiedenen Disziplinen (z.B. Kulturwissenschaft, Literaturwissenschaft, Musikwissenschaft, Geschichtswissenschaft, Soziologie) diskutiert.

Anmeldungen zur Teilnahme ohne Vortrag sind bis 1.9.2020 möglich (vorbehaltlich der räumlichen Möglichkeiten unter Einhaltung der dann gültigen Abstands- und Hygieneregeln).

 

 

3.8. Call for Papers: COPAS Thematic Issue 21.2 – Embracing the Loss of Nature: Searching for Responsibility in an Age of Crisis

Deadline: Oct. 15, 2020

Please find the current CfP for the next thematic issue of  Current Objectives in Postgraduate American Studies (COPAS) on our website: https://copas.uni-regensburg.de/pages/view/cfp
With our guest editors Jaime Hyatt and Florian Wagner, we are looking for contributions on the topic of " Embracing the Loss of Nature: Searching for Responsibility in an Age of Crisis." As always, we are dedicated to publishing the work of early career researchers in American Studies in Germany and beyond and we are looking very much forward to your contributions to this forthcoming thematic issue.

We welcome scholarly articles as well as creative work. The deadline for all submissions is October 15, 2020. Please upload your work to https://copas.uni-regensburg.de. Articles should be about 5,000 to 8,000 words in length and will be peer-reviewed.
We kindly ask artists to include a brief statement (1,000-1,500 words) with their creative work. Open access publication is scheduled for April 2021. Please see the COPAS website for editorial policies and submission guidelines.
COPAS guest editors Jaime Hyatt and Florian Wagner and the COPAS editorial team 
We look forward to your submission!

 

 

3.9. Call for Book Chapters: The Aliens Within: Danger, Disease, and Displacement in Representations of the Racialized Poor

Deadline: Oct. 15, 2020

Edited by Geoffroy de Laforcade, Daniel Stein, Cathy C. Waegner, and E. Arnold Modlin

Disease, want, ignorance, squalor, and idleness – the five “giant evils” identified by British social reformer William Beveridge in 1942 as needing eradication – summarize two centuries of representation of the laboring poor as “dangerous classes,” uncontrollable, filthy, diseased, unbounded, and rebellious. Debates on the “social question” and the West’s “civilizing mission” deployed stigmas of pathology and tropes of racialization, generating biologized fantasies of perilousness and degeneracy in cities and colonies. These debates culminated in new technologies of state discipline and control, pseudo-scientific strategies of social engineering (such as eugenics), and a cultural industry of fantasized fear and loathing, filling the popular imagination with images of jeopardy and disorder in a context of fast-paced economic change and catastrophic political convulsions. During a brief parenthesis of post-war industrial development, working-class, colonized, and outcast subjects, the pathologized, racialized, policed, and interned dregs of society, were believed redeemable within an integrated social compact – pending formal education, respectable employment, and the exercise of responsible citizenship. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, however, a growing sense of calamity and chaos accompanied decolonization, deindustrialization, mass migration, ongoing warfare, and multifarious threats to social peace. Landscapes of despair and desolation spawned new concerns for the health of the body politic, and revived discourses of disease, danger, and displacement in cultural and social scientific representations of the racialized poor. The current pandemic, wave of uprisings against structural racism, and global migration crisis bring to mind the contemporaneity of Susan Sontag’s intuition in her essay “Illness as Metaphor” (1978): “The fact that illness is associated with the poor – who are, from the perspective of the privileged, aliens in one’s midst – reinforces the association of illness with the foreign, with an exotic, often primitive place.” This book will explore narratives of disease, danger, and displacement through the lens of literary criticism, visual studies, historical representation, cultural geography, and public discourse. It aims to revisit the process of “othering” – a key heuristic device of postmodern and postcolonial discourse – through stigmatization, the encoding of social practices, and the biopolitical embodiment of alterity. The ‘parasitical’ “poor” and ‘disease-bearing’ racialized “aliens-in-(our)-midst” will be considered as multidimensional characters of an unfolding collective biography of humankind, with its changing and recurrent aporias, and the birthing of new forms of agency, identity, and countercultural _expression_.
The collection is organized into two parts – Critical Engagement with Core Texts and Interdisciplinary Variations. More than just reprinting or annotating primary source material, the framing of Core Texts engages us in contentious, living discussions of literary, philosophical, political, visual, and material narrations across time and place, addressing thematic content and comparative study in the spirit of reasoned inquiry and pedagogical clarity. Interdisciplinary Variations will envision the methodological, heuristic, and epistemological implications of scholarship and interpretation across academic disciplines. The book, part of a decade-long cooperation between Norfolk State University in Virginia and the University of Siegen in North Rhine-Westphalia, is intended for use in classrooms and as a template for further research and critical dialogue. It is conceived as a tribute to Dr. Page R. Laws, Professor of English and Dean Emerita of the R. C. Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University.

Dr. Geoffroy de Laforcade is Professor of Latin American, Caribbean and World History at Norfolk State University.
Dr. Daniel Stein is Professor of North American Literary and Cultural Studies, and Vice Dean for International Affairs at the University of Siegen.
Dr. Cathy C. Waegner taught in the American Studies Program at the University of Siegen until her retirement.
Dr. E. Arnold Modlin, Jr. is Associate Professor of Geography and Chair of the Department of History and Interdisciplinary Studies at Norfolk State University.

Please submit a 300-word abstract (in English) and CV to Geoffroy de Laforcade at gdelaforcade@nsu.edu by October 15, 2020.
 

 

3.10. Call for Papers: Edited Collection on “New York City in Song”

Deadline: Oct. 31, 2020

New York City has one of the richest musical histories in all of the US, and has been the subject of an astonishing number of songs – something that has so far not been comprehensively addressed in academic works.
Thus, the proposed volume under the working title “New York City in Song” wants to analyze songs written about New York City, and engage with the depiction of the city within them, but also use it as a way to deal with several musical genres that the city has been home to, and was instrumental in developing. These include the vaudeville and musical theater scene on Broadway and beyond, but also hip hop, disco, punk, folk, jazz, swing, rock or pop music. It will therefore contribute to both the fields of urban studies and popular music studies, which have become well-developed areas of study over the recent years, but are still lacking specialized literature – especially such that considers their intersections.

We are seeking contributions from those with a cultural studies, media studies, music geography, cultural history or musicology background, making possible a far-ranging treatment of the interconnection of the city space and its musical history. We are looking for authors with an accessible writing style, while still having rigorous research standards. Our final line-up should reflect the varied musical history of New York, placing particular emphasis on marginalized histories.
Each chapter should focus on one song (potentially two if by the same artist or composer or if you can make a convincing argument for thematic or historic connection, such as cover versions) or a whole album (if possible to discuss it properly in one chapter), either from the following list or one of your choosing that you think reflects a specific imagery/myth of the city or a key element of New York’s music scene. It should put the musical pieces into its historical context at the time of writing, its relevance for the musical genre it belongs to, how it and its artist is connected to New York City, and what image of the city it depicts.

Intellect has expressed interest in the project and we (Dr. Veronika Keller, Dr. Sabrina Mittermeier and Maciej Smólka) expect to be contracted based on a convincing final table of contents. Please send us an abstract of 300 words plus a 150 word author bio by October 31, 2020 to newyorkinsong@gmail.com. Full first drafts of chapters of 3,000-5,000 words will be due by March 31, 2021, aiming for a publication of the book some time in 2022.
Find the full Call for Papers here: https://dgfa.de/wp-content/uploads/Call-for-Papers-for-an-Edited-Collection-on-%E2%80%9CNew-York-City-in-Song%E2%80%9D.pdf

 

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