Tuesday 18 June 2013

CFP: Being Beyond Boundaries: Dissolving (Species) Hierarchy in Contemporary Culture

John Galsworthy Building, Penrhyn road, Kingston University, Kingston, Surrey KT1 2EE

Saturday 5th October
Kingston University, London

In her recent work on human-animal encounter, Donna Haraway asks us to consider ‘who “we” will become when species meet’. At the centre of Haraway’s question is a concern for the mutuality of species, and a desire to reconfigure those Enlightenment inheritances which dialectically position ‘animal’ as the other of ‘human’. Such interests demand a reappraisal not merely of humanist discourse, but also of related questions regarding ethics and responsibility.

This one day symposium hosted in conjunction with Cultural Histories at Kingston aims to consider how contemporary cultural texts in their broadest definition (literature, performance, creative writing, film and television) not only engage with the human-animal encounter, but also how this relationship might speak to a transformative social discourse in terms of ‘beingist’ agendas that interrogate not only humanist allegiances, but also more traditional identity politics.

Confirmed guest speaker: Professor John Mullarkey, Professor of Film and Television, Kingston University.

The organisers welcome 20 minute papers that speak to any aspect of this theme, which might include, but are not limited to:

Animal-human encounters
Animal as metaphor/anti-metaphor
Animal-human transformations
Performing the ‘animal’
The animal other in popular culture
'Beingist’ interrogations of identity politics
Revisions of humanism/ posthumanism/ transhumanism in the context of animal encounters
Speculative realism and the animal
Animal ethics/responsibility
Animals and anti-correlationist perspectives

The organisers intend to put together an edited collection based on the symposium theme. Selected presenters may be invited to submit essays based on their papers.

Please send 200 word abstracts to Sara Upstone and Heidi James-Dunbar by 15 July 2013.

Enquiries to Sara Upstone

CFP: DigiPal One-Day Symposium

Date: Monday 16th September 2013
Venue: King's College London, Strand
Co-sponsor: Centre for Late Antique & Medieval studies, KCL

It is with great delight that the DigiPal team at the Department of Digital Humanities (King's College London) announce their third Symposium.

We've built up a scholarly camaraderie over the last two years and much look forward to our annual opportunity to discuss and debate the computer-assisted study of medieval handwriting and manuscripts.

How to propose a paper

Papers of 20 minutes in length are invited on any aspect of digital approaches to the study of medieval handwriting and manuscripts.

The topics below might help guide potential submissions:

* terminology for describing handwriting
* visualisation of manuscript evidence and data
* meaning and mining in palaeography
* automatic letter-form identification
* methods for dating/localising script
* crowd-sourcing in palaeography
* the practical and theoretical consequences of the use of digital images
* examples of research that would benefit from a Digital Humanities (or DigiPal) approach

The above are only serving suggestions, so please don't feel limited to these topics.

To propose a paper, please email a brief abstract (250 words max.) to the symposium organizers.

The deadline for the receipt of submissions is 10.23pm on Wednesday 3rd July 2013

What is DigiPal?

For more information, please visit our website or dive in at the deep end.

Medieval and Early Modern Student Association Postgraduate Conference - The Mutilated Body

8-9 July 2013 at St John's College, Durham University

MEMSA is proud to announce its seventh annual postgraduate conference, an event designed to bring together postgraduate and early career researchers in interdisciplinary dialogue. This year's topic is the Mutilated Body, where delegates will explore aspects of destruction, disability, and personhood in the medieval and Early Modern periods, investigating medical humanities and hagiography, as well as interpretations of the conceptualisation of mutilated corporeality, as typified by books, the nation-state and kingship, or Christendom. Keynote speakers will be Professor Faith Wallis (McGill University) and Professor Charlotte Roberts (Durham University). Delegates will also have the option to tour the Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition, following a talk by Professor Richard Gameson (Durham University).

Please click here to register online.

Liturgy in History: International Study Day

Call for Participants

We are delighted to announce a call for participants for Liturgy in History, an international study day for graduate students and early career researchers at Queen Mary’s Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies.

Liturgy in History: a full-day workshop exploring liturgy in practice in the medieval and early-modern periods.
When: Tuesday 19th November, 9:30 – 17:00 (lunch provided)
Where: Queen Mary, Mile End Campus, room tbc

One of the most exciting developments in medieval, renaissance and early modern studies over the past decade has been a renewed historical appreciation of liturgical sources. Liturgies, so crucial to understanding the lived experiences of religion, were seedbeds for cultural production across Europe, and were deeply contested in the changing confessional landscapes of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Liturgy in History will provide a unique opportunity to engage with liturgical sources and access the expertise of researchers in the field.

Three speakers – Professor Nils Holger Petersen (University of Copenhagen), Professor Emma Dillon (King’s College London) and Dr. Beth Williamson (University of Bristol) – will guide participants through the structure and formulae of liturgical sources. The musical, visual, architectural and performative aspects of the liturgy will all be carefully considered and approaches to liturgy re-interrogated. The day will culminate in a trip to a nearby renaissance church which will help situate them in their context. We would be delighted to welcome international participants and students from diverse disciplines, to reflect the multidisciplinary focus of the day itself.

Participants will not only have the opportunity to learn more about the current state of liturgical research but will also be given the chance to offer their own insights into this pivotal aspect of medieval and early modern studies.

Please see below for a provisional schedule of the day.

If you would like to join us please email Hetta Howes. Attendance will be free of charge, but places are limited to ensure discussion and participation, so it is essential that you book your place.

Liturgy in History International Study Day, 19 November 2013

9:30–10:00 – Registration, tea and coffee

10:00–11:15 Professor Nils Holger Petersen (University of Copenhagen): An introduction to the structure and formulae of liturgical sources in the Christian West

11:15–11:25 – Coffee break

11:25–12:30 Professor Emma Dillon (King’s College London): Sung components of liturgy – how was liturgy was presented and experienced in medieval and early modern Europe?

12:30–13:10 – Lunch

13:10–14:25 – Dr. Beth Williamson (University of Bristol): Space and Sight in the Liturgy

14:25–14:35 – Coffee break

14:35–15:25 – Prof. Miri Rubin: Round Table discussion

15:25–17.00 – Visit to an historic church to consider liturgy within a church, how religious changes affected ritual, and to experience liturgical music from across the period

Impossible Spaces Launch Party

Friday 19 July, 7.00-9.00pm
Free entry

International Anthony Burgess Foundation
3 Cambridge Street
Manchester M1 5BY
United Kingdom

Join us at the launch of Impossible Spaces, a new collection of short stories from Hic Dragones.

Sometimes the rules can change. Sometimes things aren't how they appear. Sometimes you can just slip through the cracks and end up... somewhere else. What else is there? Is there somewhere else, right beside you, if you could only reach out and touch it? Or is it waiting to reach out and touch you?



Don't trust what you see. Don't trust what you hear. Don't trust what you remember. It isn't what you think.

A new collection of twenty-one dark, unsettling and weird short stories that explore the spaces at the edge of possibility. Stories by: Ramsey Campbell, Simon Bestwick, Hannah Kate, Jeanette Greaves, Richard Freeman, Almira Holmes, Arpa Mukhopadhyay, Chris Galvin Nguyen, Christos Callow Jr., Daisy Black, Douglas Thompson, Jessica George, Keris McDonald, Laura Brown, Maree Kimberley, Margret Helgadottir, Nancy Schumann, Rachel Yelding, Steven K. Beattie, Tej Turner and Tracy Fahey.

Free event, with wine reception from 7pm. Readings from Douglas Thompson, Rachel Yelding, Tracy Fahey, Jeanette Greaves, Nancy Schumann, Jessica George and Hannah Kate. Launch party discount on book sales and competition/giveaways.

Wednesday 5 June 2013

CFP: Stage the Future: The First International Conference on Science Fiction Theatre

Saturday April 26, 2014
School of English, University of Royal Holloway

Keynote Speakers:
Jen Gunnels (New York Review of Science Fiction)
Dr. Nick Lowe (University of Royal Holloway)

Science Fiction Theatre doesn’t officially exist. You won’t find it listed as a sub-genre of either science fiction or theatre and you won’t find it on Wikipedia (though you will find a 1950s TV series with the same title – luckily, there is a theatre entry in the SF Encyclopaedia). Apart from that, there seems to be only one book on the subject so far, called “Science Fiction and the Theatre” and that was more than twenty years ago.

And yet Theatre itself was born out of the Fantastic. It began as a religious ceremony filled with metaphysical concepts and mythological beings, and it went on with fairy tales (especially as children’s theatre) and fantasy (see A Midnight Summer’s Dream, Faust, and many more), never denouncing its mystical roots. Even when it seemed to convert to Realism, it gave birth to the Absurd. Still one cannot help but notice that, though its performance has undergone major changes in the digital era, thematically theatre seems hesitant to take the next big step and follow cinema and literature to the science-fictional future.

This is strange because there have been many science fiction plays, some of them quite important in the history of theatre. Consider Beckett’s Endgame and its post-apocalyptic setting. Consider Karel Čapek who actually coined the term “Robot” in his science-fiction play “R.U.R.”, recently added to Gollancz’s “SF Masterworks” series. Consider even Rocky Horror Show and the Little Shop of Horrors.

But in the end, even if there was none of the above, even if there had been no robots, aliens or demigods in theatre so far, now would be the time for them to dominate the stage. In the age where real robots are sent to Mars, in the age of Star Wars, Avatar and the Matrix (and so many superhero films every year), theatre cannot stay behind.

This conference is the first of its kind and hopes to raise awareness of the need for a new theatre that is already here; a theatre that has its roots in the past and its eyes on the future.

This event aims to bring together scholars, critics, writers and performers for the first international academic conference on Science Fiction Theatre. Papers are welcome on any topic related to speculative theatre. Topics might include, but are not limited to:

-Depictions of future times
-Utopia and Dystopia
-Proto-science-fiction in theatre
-Ancient Speculative Theatre (Prophets, Monsters, Gods)
-Theatrical adaptations of science fiction novels and films
-Science and Theatre
-Science and the Human
-Performing the Non-Human and the Post-Human
-Temporality, SF and Theatre
-Dramaturgical Analysis of the Unknown
-Space Opera and Science Fiction Opera
-Theatre and the Weird
-Other fantastical theatres (Horror, Fantasy, Supernatural)

The conference welcomes proposals for individual papers and panels from any discipline and theoretical perspective. Please send a title and a 300 word abstract for a 20 minute paper along with your name, affiliation and 100 word professional biography to the conference convenors by 28 February 2014.

The conference is organised by Christos Callow, PhD candidate, Department of English, University of Lincoln and Susan Gray, PhD candidate, Department of English, University of Royal Holloway.

Toby Stone at North City Library


Tuesday 4 June 2013

CFP: Caietele Echinox/Echinox Journal - Fantasy and Science Fiction

Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Caietele Echinox
Volume 26 (2014)

Caietele Echinox/Echinox Journal is a biannual academic journal in comparative literature, dedicated to the study of the social, historical, cultural, religious, literary and arts imaginaries. It is edited by Phantasma, the Center for Imagination Studies of the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania. It is accredited by ERIH (European Research Index for the Humanities – NAT) and CNCS (The Romanian Nacional Council for Scientific Research) and indexed in EBSCO Publishing, CEEOL (Central and Eastern European Online Library), MLA International Bibliography and FABULA.

The possibility to build other worlds, different from those we live in, is emphasised in two important streams of modern literature: fantasy and science-fiction. Fantasy literature became famous in the second half of the 20th century. Developing the theoretical hallmark set by J. R. R. Tolkien in his essay “On Fairy-Stories” (1947), researchers like C. N. Manlove, W. R. Irwin, Eric S. Rabkin, Roger C. Schlobin, Brian Attebery, Rosemary Jackson, Kathryn Hume, and more recently Lucie Armitt and Farah Mendlesohn tried to define this type of literature, by establishing its historical and cultural roots, and disclosing fictional/ rhetorical/ imaginary mechanisms that enable the construction of “secondary worlds” (in Tolkien’s own words). There are still questions that need answers and any theoretical contribution and attempt to clarify concepts in this field are welcome. How do space and time function in fantasy fiction? Which methods and concepts work best to interpret this type of fiction? How far can we go to establish its roots? How did the narrative structure of fictions about possible and impossible worlds change throughout time? What kind of relationship can emerge between fantasy literature, the digital environment that creates alternative worlds, and the filmic portrayal of well-known stories such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Neverending Story, Harry Potter, and so on? What relevance does fantasy literature have for the modern and postmodern individual?

In what concerns the science-fiction literature, the call envisages papers focusing both on different subgenres of SF and on the borderline works between SF and other genres. The first category includes articles that discuss and analyse works by the so called ‘Hard SF’ authors (such as, but not limited to, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, David Brin, Gregory Benford, Hal Clement or Stephen Baxter), ‘soft’ and social SF that revolve around themes connected to economics, social sciences, political science, psychology and anthropology (Arthur C. Clarke, The Strugatsky Brothers, Stanislaw Lem, Janusz Zajdel), utopian / dystopian fiction (developed by or related to George Orwell, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Doris Lessing, Aldous Huxley or Karel Capek), Cyberpunk, Biopunk, Steampunk and Dieselpunk fiction (William Gibson, Steve Stiles, Bruce Sterling, Neil Stephenson, Pat Cadigan, and others), feminist SF (Ursula Le Guin or Margaret Atwood), time travel narratives similar to those written by H.G Wells, military SF (John Ringo, David Drake, David Weber or S.M Stirling), uchronias and alternate history novels (Ward Moore, Philip K. Dick or Murray Leinster), superhuman or apocalyptic Science-Fiction (Olaf Stapledon, A.E van Vogt, George R. Steward or Ridley Walker) or Space Opera (L. Ron Hubbard, Edward E. Smith or Joss Wheedon). Bordeline SF includes horror stories by authors that have incorporated in their narratives science fictional elements (such as Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley or Edgar Allan Poe), works that combine SF with fantasy elements (Ann McAffrey), or with mystery (Kurt Vonnegut and others).

Deadline: January 1, 2014
Please follow Echinox Style Sheet

Send your papers to Corin Braga