Announcements
This section is open to BCLA
members who would like to post any relevant information on their
activities (upcoming conferences they are organising, launches of new
titles, and so on). Please send anything you think would be of interest
to the web editor
Call for Papers
Taking Liberties: Sex, Pleasure, Coercion (1748-1928)
15-17 June 2012, Newcastle University
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1 November 2012
Keynote Speakers:
Helen Berry (Newcastle University) on Sex, Marriage and the Castrato
Joseph Bristow (UCLA) on Oscar Wilde’s Sexual Practices
Cora Kaplan (Queen Mary, University of London) on Rape, Representation and Slavery
Richard C. Sha (American University) on Romanticism and the Paradoxes of Free Love
From the publication of John Cleland’s Fanny Hill (1748) to D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928), literature has imaginatively exploited the relationship between freedom, coercion and sexual pleasure, constantly pushing at the boundaries of what it is permissible to describe, represent and perform. At the same time, the history of print, film and theatre censorship has been told as a story of progressive unshackling from constraint. In this narrative, these ever-widening freedoms and challenges have been understood as positively beneficial to individuals and to societies. Yet the idea of sexual liberty as an unqualified good has increasingly come under scrutiny, giving way to the realization that freedom from sexual constraint can sometimes mean imprisonment in new and alternate structures of power, frustration and denial. This international, multidisciplinary conference seeks to complicate and enrich our understanding of the relation between sex, pleasure and coercion in a liberal context. It will explore the many ways in which literary and visual texts and performances can be understood to create, reinforce, question and/or dissolve these structures, as well as interrogate the complicity of publishing and the law in their framing and dismantling.
Key conference questions are:
• How are the complex relations between sexual licence, pleasure and coercion understood, represented and negotiated during the long nineteenth century?
• How did censorship and obscenity laws shape the literary/cinematic/theatrical landscape?
• How were sexually controversial texts – from erotica to triple-decker novels, from peep-shows to West-End theatre – produced, circulated, preserved and consumed?
We are interested in literary and visual texts/performances from across the cultural spectrum. We welcome papers from English, Drama, Film & Visual Culture, History, Law, Modern Languages, Sociology and Geography.
Possible topics include:
• Sex, Sexuality and the Law
• Gender and the Law
• Obscenity/Pornography
• Censorship
• Rakes/Dandies/Mollies
• Prostitutes/Madams/Pimps
• Rape/Sexual Violence
• Sex on Stage/Screen
• Sex Manuals/Diaries
• ‘Lewd’ Behaviour
• The Politics of Pleasure
• Flirtation, Seduction, Exploitation
• Corrupting the Innocent
• Voyeurism/Striptease/Burlesque
• ‘Dirty’ Books
• Bowdlerization
• Advertising Sex/Abortion/Contraception
• Sexual Initiations
• Sadomasochism/Masters and Slaves
• Tyranny and Slavery
Proposals of up to 300 words should be emailed by 1 November 2011 to TakingLiberties@ncl.ac.uk>. Other inquiries should be directed to Dr Ella Dzelzainis at ella.dzelzainis@ncl.ac.uk.
The conference is organized at Newcastle University by the Long Nineteenth Century Research Group (School of English), with the support of the Gender Research Group and the Newcastle Institute for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities.
Call for submissions and expessions of interest:
New Hispanisms: Cultural and Literary Studies
Series Editor: Anne J. Cruz, University of Miami, USA
New Hispanisms: Literary and Cultural Studies presents innovative studies that seek to understand how the cultural production of the Hispanic world is generated, disseminated, and consumed. Ranging from the Spanish Middle Ages to modern Spain and Latin America, this series offers a forum for various critical and disciplinary approaches to cultural texts, including literature and other artifacts of Hispanic culture. Queries and proposals for single author volumes and collections of original essays are welcome.
Announcing a new book series from Ashgate Publishing Company
Transculturalisms, 1400 - 1700
Series Editors: Ann Rosalind Jones, Smith College; Jyotsna G. Singh, Michigan State University; & Mihoko Suzuki, University of Miami
This series will present studies of the early modern contacts and exchanges among the states, polities and entrepreneurial organizations of Europe; Asia, including the Levant and East India/Indies; Africa; and the Americas. Books will investigate travelers, merchants and cultural inventors, including explorers, mapmakers, artists and writers, as they operated in political, mercantile, sexual and linguistic economies. We encourage authors to reflect on their own methodologies in relation to issues and theories relevant to the study of transculturism/translation and transnationalism. We are particularly interested in work on and from the perspective of the Asians, Africans, and Americans involved in these interactions, and on such topics as:
- · Material exchanges, including textiles, paper and printing, and technologies of knowledge
- · Movements of bodies: embassies, voyagers, piracy, enslavement
- · Travel writing: its purposes, practices, forms and effects on writing in other genres
- · Belief systems: religions, philosophies, sciences
- · Translations: verbal, artistic, philosophical
- · Forms of transnational violence and its representations
Proposals should take the form of either:
1. a preliminary letter of inquiry, briefly describing the project; or
2. a formal prospectus including: abstract, brief statement of your critical methodology, table of contents, sample chapter, estimate of length (NB, in words, pls), estimate of the number and type of illustrations to be included, and a c.v.
Please send a copy of either type of proposal to each of the three series editors and to the publisher, at these addresses:
Ann Rosalind Jones
Esther Cloudmann Dunn Professor of Comparative Literature
Program in Comparative Literature
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063
USA
arjones@smith.edu (if sending attachments to Prof. Jones, pls make sure they end as .doc)
Jyotsna G. Singh
Professor of English
201 Morrill Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1036
USA
jsingh@msu.edu
Mihoko Suzuki
Professor of English
321 Ashe Building
University of Miami
Coral Gables, FL 33124
USA
msuzuki@miami.edu
Erika Gaffney
Publisher
Ashgate Publishing Company
101 Cherry Street, Suited 420
Burlington, VT 05401-4405
USA
E-mail: egaffney@ashgate.co.uk
Inquire is a new peer-reviewed international journal of Comparative
Literature to be published online by the graduate students of the Program of
Comparative Literature at the University of Alberta beginning January 2011.
"Inquire" aims to build upon the successes of Comparative Literature as a
multifaceted discipline that emphasizes the study of minor literatures and
languages, translation, and literary theory by providing the space for
informed discussion and creative research by graduate students. Accordingly,
the first issue is titled Bold Inquiry: New Directions in Comparative
Literature.
We are looking for essays that clearly strive to reconsider traditional
topics in new ways or to take up less canonical forms, genres, and
methodologies. An investigation of poetry, drama, short stories, or novels
might emphasize epic or performance poetry, tragedy or melodrama, fables or
abridgments, the historical novel or speculative fiction. A study of
non-fiction could include the almanac, biography, travelogue, textbook,
criticism, etc. Emphasis might be on writers or readers, publishers or
sellers and involve the book, chapbook, pamphlet, journal, magazine,
newspaper, theater, film, website, etc. Methodologies of interest include,
but are not restricted to: (1) rhizomatic research, the tracing of literary
connections not restricted to traditional means or areas of investigation;
(2) book history, the description of print artifacts as material,
historical, social, and cultural objects; (3) digital humanities, the use of
multimedia technologies to research, present, and compare languages and
literatures. In short, we encourage submissions that take an
interdisciplinary and innovative approach to describe and discuss the
production, dissemination, and reception of literature in all forms across
languages, cultures, and national borders.
All submissions: original work not submitted elsewhere, complete essays in
English, 5-7,000 words (including bibliography and endnotes), MLA format,
.doc (if possible), 12-pt font, double-spaced throughout, include a separate
cover sheet with name, institutional affiliation, email, an abstract (200
words), and a short biography (100 words). Submissions will be received from
graduate students only until September 10, 2010. All submissions accepted
for review will be read anonymously. Further information about the journal
is available at
http://www.ualberta.ca/~inquire. Or http://www.ualberta.ca/%7Einquire
Please send queries or submissions to inquire@ualberta.ca
