USACLALS - United States Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies

CFP: 11th Annual South Asian Literary Association (SALA) Conference, Los Angeles, January 2011

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:33:46 -0400

CALL FOR PAPERS

11th Annual South Asian Literary Association (SALA) Conference
Los Angeles, January 2011

Transnational Realisms and Post Realisms in South Asian Literature and Culture

This conference examines ways in which South Asian realist and postrealist writers unsettle and rework realist codes. South Asian cultural and narrative forms are erased or occluded in the realism/anti-realism debate. The normative account in literary histories posits realism as the precursor to modernism. South Asian literary realisms diverge from, and are discontinuous with, the long history of debate about Platonic and neo-Platonic art as copying a copy of the real. Neither the philosophic-scientific development of the doctrine of the real, nor 19th century realism as the objective expression of the world view of the European bourgeoisie, can be fully claimed by South Asian realisms except in indirect, synoptic, and belated ways as the travel of ideas through Empire. How might we account for the ways in which colonial and post-colonial South Asian writers dismantle the opposition between realism and modernism? Categories troubled by the South Asian writer include conventional oppositions between realism and myth: realist versus non-realist art: written realisms as distinct from realism in oral storytelling: novel versus petit récit (short tale): realism in frame narratives in relation to realism in episodic or cyclic narratives: social realism as a contrast to magical realism.

Once these binaries are exploded, new paradigms are made available to us: planetary and transnational realisms. Space, time and identity in South Asian realisms are not always situated within the frameworks of nationalism. Transnational, or planetary realisms, suggest that the South Asian writer need not be an apologist for the nation state and he/she does not have to be tied to or encumbered by strictly mimetic conventions of representation. We invite papers on literature, criticism, film, cultural, and social activism that explore any aspect of South Asian realisms and/or post(-)realisms within both national and diasporic contexts. Papers may explore, but are not restricted to, the following ideas and questions:

Realism’s narrative forms and migratory routes. How can we theorize verbal,
discursive, characterological, digressive, as well as truth telling realist conventions in South Asian narrative forms (such as the qissa, dastaan, kathasagar, Puranic tale, folktale, or epic recitation)?

Whose reality does realism narrate? Which classes, communities, genders and
castes constitute the privileged subject of South Asian literary realisms? In what ways have new reading publics among South Asian, diaspora, and non-South Asian communities generated local and global markets for writers of fresh and unexpected South Asian literary realisms?

Affective Realisms. Realism seduces by producing an essential reality and unity
of affect. How might new wave or neo-realist literature, music, and film construct an essentialism of affect? How is the local and the global imagined in such constructions?

The Language of Realism. Is realism language-neutral or are there distinct
formations of realisms in each South Asian vernacular literature? Is it possible to trace a non-Western history of metaphysics that attends to the material, the social, and the everyday, and moves fluidly between realist registers and the unseen?

Activist Realisms. The author/playwright/filmmaker-activist who deploys realist and neo-realist modes often aims to make social and physical reality the basis for consciousness raising. How might Dalit literature, women’s writing, and queer cultural texts re-read and rework the historical significance of realism, or speak to current political issues requiring activism? What are the narrative modes for representing the empirical realities of violence and/or movements for social change?

Socialist or Liberal Realisms. New narratives and narrative technologies in Bollywood essay global neo-realisms, such as the investigative documentary, films themed around terrorism and/or police brutality, and films that document the immigrant’s return home. In post-liberalized India, can we speak of right wing statist appropriations and co-opting of literary and cinematic realisms?

Subaltern Realisms. Subaltern realisms emerge from lower classes and castes that critique dominant religious practices and modes of domination. For example, how has Bhakti realism invented and reinvented itself in the cinematic and literary-cultural consciousness of South Asian cultural production?

Realism and Reality: reassessments, influences, updates

Please send, in an email, a 250-word abstract of your paper and a 5-6 line bio-note listing your institutional affiliation and current email address to the conference co-chairs at the email addresses given below. The subject line of your email should contain the words “SALA 2011.”

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 25 August 2010

Co-chairs and Email addresses:

Rashmi Dube Bhatnagar, University of Pittsburgh, rashmi@pitt.edu

Rajender Kaur, William Paterson University, kaurr@wpunj.edu

CFP: Ethnic Canons in Global Contexts, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, April 7-10, 2011

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:40:37 -0400

2011 CONFERENCE CALL FOR PAPERS  
25th Annual MELUS/USACLALS Joint Conference
 April 7 – 10, 2011
 Florida Atlantic University 
Boca Raton, FL

  THEME: Ethnic Canons in Global Contexts 

As an ongoing and vital process through which societies and cultures have become integrated through a globe-spanning network of communications, economics, and politics, globalization addresses the transnational circulation of ideas and languages. Its impact on literature is manifold, with both positive and negative associations, wherein cultures receiving outside influences ignore some, adopt others as they are, and then immediately start to transform others. Certain aspects of globalization – such as hybridity and multi-rootedness – are increasingly present in literary texts as we witness ways in which they shape new literary forms, interrogate existing canons, and explore the emergence of ethnic canons.

  We invite paper abstracts and complete panels, workshops, and roundtable proposals on all aspects of the multi-ethnic literatures of the United States and elsewhere. We are particularly interested in proposals that explore globalization in terms of its influence on ethnic canons, and vice versa, and encourage presentations on all global frameworks of analysis, such as Atlantic studies, global feminisms, pan-Africanism, postcolonialism, transnationalism, global indigenous studies, etc. Submissions should detail requests for specific audiovisual equipment, if needed. We also ask that a proposal for a complete panel, roundtable, or workshop include a short description of the central topic, supplemented by brief abstracts of individual speakers’ contributions.  Deadline for abstracts and proposals (250 words in Word or rtf format): NOVEMBER 15, 2010

  PLEASE NOTE: e-mail abstracts to: John Hawley at jhawley@scu.edu AND to Prof. Nora Erro Peralta and Prof. Taylor Hagood at melus2011@gmail.com

Hotel rooms have been  set aside at the:
 Renaissance  Boca Raton Hotel ($99/night)
 2000 NW 19th Street
Boca Raton, FL 33431 
(561) 368-5252

All presenters, chairs, and respondents must be members of a chapter of ACLALS (preferably USACLALS). Membership information can be found on the USACLALS website at:

http://www.usaclals.org/?q=node/23&PHPSESSID=692aa421a51c430ceba9b78331d8e4e0

It remains to be determined whether or not participants will also need to become MELUS members at half the regular charge. 

CFP: Postcolonialism and Labour, EACLALS Postgraduate Conference, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany, 26-27 March 2011

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 19:19:33 -0400

Postcolonialism and Labour

EACLALS Postgraduate Conference
Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany

26 - 27 March 2011

Keynote by Professor Frank Schulze-Engler (Goethe University, Frankfurt)

The conference is mainly for those who are currently working on their postgraduate/doctoral thesis. However, early career researchers (who are usually defined as up to five years after obtaining a PhD) are invited to present as well.

This inaugural postgraduate conference aims to provide a space for debate and discussion on reconfiguring the category of ‘Labour’ within Postcolonial Studies. Historically speaking, given its Marxist affiliations and the tropes of eurocentrism in universalising ‘Labour’ as a normative category against the local and particular, Postcolonial Studies has not engaged critically with the notion of ‘Labour’. However, the concept is now gaining purchase in the field owing largely to globalisation, international division of labour, immigration and the radical restructuring of work and professions both within and outside the West. Yet, despite these recent developments, Postcolonial Studies can be criticised for effectively abandoning the economic essence of cultures by ceaselessly reworking ‘difference’, ‘hybridity’ and ‘disjunctures’ as the cultural markers of historical and persisting inequalities. In the last twenty-five years we have witnessed the emergence of a wide range of literary and filmic productions that reconfigure the notion of ‘Labour’, including Hanif Kureishi’s My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999), Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003), Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things (2003), Hari Kunzru’s Transmission (2004), Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) and Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger (2008).

This conference seeks papers that address, but are not limited to, the following questions:

How, and in what ways, can the concept of ‘Labour’ be redressed from a culturally contingent perspective (as opposed to totalising Marxist approaches)?
How does the recent surge of immigrant and diasporic literature and film reflect the workings of ‘Labour’ in their narratives?
In light of globalisation – the increasing global division of labour, shifts and uncertainties of financial markets – is there a need for Postcolonial Studies to embrace the Marxist concepts of labour without categorically abandoning its culturalist project?

We invite papers from postgraduates working in the disciplines of literature, history, cultural studies, sociology, film and media studies, human geography, linguistics, politics, religious studies and communication among others. Proposals reflecting an interdisciplinary approach are particularly welcome. Some suggested themes are:

Labour and its Cultural Constructions
The aesthetics of writing labour
The visual aesthetics of labour

Labour and Power Relations
Restructuring labour in the Post-Imperial era
Neo-imperialism and labour

Labour and Globalisation
New technologies and new forms of labour
New technologies and old forms of labour

Labour and Capitalism
Revisiting Marx in the global economic crisis
Transformations in the working class

Labour and Gender
New Feminism in the age of globalisation
Deconstructing the gender divide in the job market

Labour and Identity
New Ethnicities for a new labour market
Crossing national identities

Labour and Exploitation
Legitimising the exploitation of illegal immigrants
Illegal exploitation of immigrants

Labour and Exile
Reflections on exile as survival
Refugees, migrant workers and exile

We also welcome presentations in the form of workshops where postgraduate students can share and discuss their work in progress. In addition to the paper presentations, postgraduate students are encouraged to present early findings of their research in the form of posters.

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words for individual presentations (20 minutes), workshop presentations or poster presentations to eaclals.pg.conference@googlemail.com. Include your name, affiliation, email address, a brief biography and indicate whether you will present in a PANEL, WORKSHOP or with a POSTER.

Abstracts: Deadline for abstracts is: 01 November 2010

For further information about the conference, please see the website at www.eaclals.ulg.ac.be/pg-conference

Participants must be EACLALS members. Please see the EACLALS website at http://www.eaclals.org for subscription rates and further information.

CFP: Beyond Geography: Literature, Politics and Violence in Pakistan, JPW 47.2 special issue

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 19:17:49 -0400

A special issue of JPW on Pakistan is being edited by Muneeza Shamsie, This will be issue JPW 47.2 which will be published in April 2011 (copy due at publishers in February 2011).

The theme is 'Beyond Geography: Literature, Politics and Violence in Pakistan" and the issue will look at the the thin dividing line between diaspora and non-diaspora in Pakistani English writing, as well as the literary response to the current events - and other aspect of politics and turmoil in Pakistan. She would like to make the issue as comprehensive as possible by including other dimensions of Pakistani English Literature - identity, nation, gender, social disparity etc. Her aim is to compile an issue which will examine the dynamics of current event sin Pakistan, and in particular the literary response

Muneeza Shamsie would also like to include an article discussing the works of both Mohsin Hamid and Mohammed Hanif (on a comparative basis). This should be no longer than 7000 words and should follow the JPW style-guide (which is essentially the same as MLA) . Alternatively she would also consider TWO separate articles one on each author, if you were able to write on only one of them.

If you are interested in contributing to this special issue an article which covers the work of both or alternatively one of these authors please contact her on mshamsie@gmail.com.

The deadline for abstracts and expressions of interest is 15th June and for final submission to her is 30th November.

CFP: Biopolitics and Postcolonial Literature: A Special Issue of Australian Literary Studies, February 1, 2011

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:49:34 -0400

Biopolitics and Postcolonial Literature: a Special Issue of Australian Literary Studies.

In The History of Sexuality Michel Foucault describes the emergence of a modern form of power-knowledge, built around the administration of bodies and the management of life, and distinguishes it from an older form of sovereign power: “the ancient right to take life or let live was replaced by a power to foster life or disallow it to the point of death.” It is a formula that has subsequently informed work on everything from health care to genocide. Partly through the influence of Giorgio Agamben’s work on “bare life” and Achille Mbembe’s work on “necropolitics,” it also plays an increasingly important role in redescriptions of colonialism and its legacies, even as the relationship between sovereignty and biopolitics has been sharply debated.

What is the historical relationship between literary discourse and biopolitical practice? How useful is the notion of biopolitics for a general sense of literary history, and for work in specific colonial and postcolonial contexts? How might it change our sense of the archive, or question prevailing modes of periodization? How might it help us connect the colonial past to the global present?

Topics might include (but certainly aren’t limited to) narratives of invasion and extinction, regimes of protection and assimilation, fictions of hybridity and miscegenation, the relationship between sexuality and sovereignty, the nation as a biopolitical category, and broader discourses on race, citizenship, public health, immigration, security and border control.

Final submissions would be due by February 1, 2011. Please send papers and inquiries to Andrew McCann at Andrew.McCann@Dartmouth.Edu

Conference: South Asians Making Britian, 1870-1950, Bharat Britain, September 13-14, 2010

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:23:47 -0400

*REGISTRATION NOW OPEN*

Bharat Britain: South Asians Making Britain, 1870-1950
13-14 September 2010
British Library Conference Centre, St Pancras, London

Invited keynote speakers include:
Humayun Ansari
Elleke Boehmer
Antoinette Burton
Mukti Jain Campion
Dominiek Dendooven
Hanif Kureishi
Chandani Lokuge
Susheila Nasta
Nayantara Sahgal
Rozina Visram

Held in partnership with the British Library, this major international conference marks the culmination of the AHRC-funded research project ‘Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad, 1870-1950’, led by the Open University in collaboration with the University of Oxford and King’s College, London. Inter-disciplinary in approach, the project explores the manifold ways in which South Asians impacted on the formation of Britain’s cultural and political life prior to Independence and Partition in 1947. It adds historical depth and breadth to our present-day readings of ‘diaspora’ and ‘migration’, and counters the common perception that a British monoculture only began to diversify after the Second World War.

Showcasing new research from an impressive range of distinguished scholars, curators and writers worldwide, ‘Bharat Britain’ will map the various networks and affiliations South Asians and Britons formed across boundaries of ‘race’, ‘nation’, ‘culture’ and ‘class’, setting up connections which were to anticipate the shapes of things to come. These are evident in different areas of British cultural and political life, from the elitist literary and artistic circles of Bloomsbury where friendships were forged between poets and painters; to the anticolonial organisations which brought South Asian and British activists together in the lead up to Independence; to the battlefields of the two world wars where Indian sepoys and volunteers fought alongside British soldiers. Yet these interactions were also, at times, marked by hierarchies and dissent. Whether through riot, strike or petition, South Asians struggled for their rights as imperial citizens, shifting ideas of ‘Britishness’ in the process.

The conference will open the project exhibition ‘South Asians Making Britain: 1858-1950’ which will then tour across the UK. It will also launch and make available for the first time a unique interactive database comprising several hundred entries on South Asians in Britain.

To register and for further details, please go to: www.open.ac.uk/arts/south-asians-making-britain/conference.htm

CFP: Empire and Me: Personal Recollections of Imperalism in Reality and Imagination, June 16-18, 2010

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:35:11 -0400

Empire and Me: Personal Recollections of
Imperialism in Reality and Imagination
16th - 18th June 2010

Is imperialism really dead? What did people close up to colonialism or affected by its immediate aftermath make of it in their personal writings and remembrances?

This conference marks the Centenary of The Round Table, which came in to being to promote the British Empire but which has evolved into a forward-looking organisation facilitating robust discussion of international affairs, especially as they pertain to the modern Commonwealth. In Empire and Me Cumberland Lodge and the Round Table combine to talk about imperialism in literature. There will be a particular focus on colonial and post-colonial diaries, memoirs, autobiographies, blogs and other kinds of recollections conceived or written against a colonial or post-colonial background. The conference brings together writers, scholars and enthusiastic readers to ask whether imperialism is truly a thing of the past or alive and kicking in today's world, but expressing itself in a different vocabulary and in other circumstances.

Click here for registration information:

http://www.cumberlandlodge.ac.uk/our_conferences/forthcoming_conference_pages/Empire+and+Me

Amongst others, speakers include:

For all registration enquiries please contact Janis Reeves on 01784 497794 or

janis@cumberlandlodge.ac.uk

CFP: 2011 EACLALS Conference, Istanbul, Turkey, April 26-30, 2011

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 18:21:19 -0400

The call for papers for the 2011 EACLALS conference in Istanbul closed on 31 March and received an enthusiastic response, but several colleagues have recently contacted us to enquire whether it was still possible to submit an abstract. In agreement with conference convenor Isil Bas and her team, we have decided to extend the deadline for the submission of proposals until 31 May 2010.

Please submit abstracts of about 200 words for individual presentations (20 minutes) or panel proposals for three speakers (90 minutes) to EACLALS2011@googlemail.com. Include your name, affiliation, email address and a brief biography (for attachments include your name as part of the file name). Add 5-6 key words and an indication of the most appropriate subtheme for your paper.
-------------

CALL FOR PAPERS: EACLALS TRIENNIAL CONFERENCE 2011

AT: Bogazici (Bosphorus) University, Istanbul, Turkey, from 26 to 30 April 2011

THEME: ‘Under Construction: Gateways and Walls’

This conference proposes to examine the state of postcolonial studies using the concepts of (re)building, transition and change, process and construction, in order to discuss the social and political crises and dilemmas of the contemporary moment which urgently need addressing.

The Gateway, the Wall: these conceptual figures suggest the practical and piecemeal yet also provisional nature of our discipline and scholarly explorations, and the way that knowledge may be constructed to function as both barrier and pathway to further modes of enquiry. Delegates might like to reflect on the current state of postcolonial theory, which is increasingly used alongside new models taken from migration studies or globalisation theory. This expansion offers a ‘gateway’ to new discourses and disciplines, but correspondingly traditional postcolonial frameworks are also inevitably in danger of losing their critical purchase. Questions to be posed might include: Can postcolonial studies act as ‘gateways’ to the understanding of the contemporary world by intersecting with other theoretical models? Or do postcolonial models act as ‘walls’ that block perspectives currently only available if used in conjunction with other discourses and disciplines? Can earlier postcolonial discourses still be confidently applied to current economic and political conditions (e.g. the rise of the BRIC countries, especially China and India)? What new challenges do postcolonial modes of thought face today (the Middle East, for instance, is one amongst other complex areas of inquiry)? Such questions can be explored either from a theoretical angle or through particular case studies in the fields of literature, language, cinema and visual arts.

The theme ‘Under Construction’ also reflects the conference location in Istanbul, a city of ‘border-zones’ that straddles East and West, Europe and Asia, but which historically has also been a gateway between North and South, between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, between ‘wild Scythia’ and the ‘civilised’ Roman Empire, between orthodox Russia and the Byzantine metropolis of Constantinople. It hints at the layered political status of Turkey, a complex multicultural nation which was once the centre of an empire and currently seeks a ‘gateway’ into a larger community of nations through entry into the European Union. Turkey also images the geopolitical shifts currently occurring due to globalisation, and suggests that remappings of older notions of how the world is divided up, such as empires, colonies, nation-states and regions, are now required. How adequate in the global/glocal third millennium are current conceptual frameworks constructed around terms like cosmopolitanism, the transnational and the transcultural? What new terms and frameworks can we use to address the provisionality of contemporary life: terrorism, global warming, migration, multilingualism, diasporic subjects and groups who lack a definitive homeland?

Subthemes offering pathways towards and around the theme of ‘Under Construction’, and images of gateways, walls and border-zones:

Interactions with the Orient as the ‘Other’
Revisiting Edward Said’s Orientalism and Eric Auerbach’s Mimesis
Worlding the Text and the Critic

Interdisciplinarity and Postcolonial Studies
The ‘post-postcolonial’ and the globalised world
Is world literature postcolonial?
Postcolonialism and transnationalism

Nation-states and Nationalisms
The nation’s gateways and walls
Global networks versus the nation-state?
Governmentality and its discontents
Global English and language choices
Geopolitics of East and West
Revisiting empires, colonies, and commonwealths
Dying and reviving states
China, the new empire

History and Memory
After Gallipoli: reconstructions and representations
National myths and identity
Trauma, mourning and memory

Postcolonial Aesthetics
To write life or not to write life
Is there a postcolonial genre?
Electronic gateways: the death of the book?

Bosphorus – Interfaces under Four Winds
North-South/East-West ambiguities and divergences
Myths of ‘wilderness’ and ‘civilisation’
Postcolonial romanticisms

Minority Subjects and Communities
Debating the ‘Other’ inside
Minority versus majority identitarian discourses

Ocean Flows and Networks
The Black Aegean, the African Mediterranean
Islands, archipelagos, and isthmuses
The sea as history

Postcolonial Migration and Cosmopolitanism
The neo-liberal subject and globalisation
Constructing utopias, the ‘shock of the new’
Where is the new cosmo/polis?
Diasporas, exile and migration as crossings

Ethics as Boundary and Marker
An environmental ethics under construction
Terrorism, the subject and globalisation
What is a postcolonial ethics?

Gender as Threshold and Border
Geographies of gender
Trans/gendering the subject
Globalising the queer

Abstracts: Deadline for abstracts is 31 May 2010.

Please submit abstracts of about 200 words for individual presentations (20 minutes) or panel proposals for three speakers (90 minutes) to "EACLALS2011@googlemail.com". Include your name, affiliation, email address and a brief biography (for attachments include your name as part of the file name). Add 5-6 key words and an indication of the most appropriate subtheme for your paper.

Delegates must be members of an ACLALS chapter. To renew your subscription to the US chapter, follow this link: http://www.usaclals.org

CFP: DEADLINE APPROACHING! International Conference on Multiculturalism and Global Community, 24-27 July, Tehran, Iran

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 19:37:00 -0400

International Conference on Multiculturalism and Global Community, 24-27 July 2010, Tehran, Iran

The deadline for submission of abstracts is April 10th.

For more information please visit: http://www.icmgi.info/

For queries please contact: conference@mcgc.ir

The 2010 Creative Writing Issue of the South Asian Review - "Pakistani Creative Writing in English: Tracing the Tradition"

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 18:14:53 -0400

The 2010 Creative Writing Issue of the South Asian Review

"Pakistani Creative Writing in English: Tracing the Tradition"

  South Asian Review, the referred journal of the South Asian Literary Association, invites submissions for the 2010 Creative Writing Issue, Volume 31, Number 3. The issue will foreground original creative writing in English in all genres by well-established and emerging Pakistani writers, with a focus on contemporary living writers, including those of the Pakistani Diaspora. The overall goal of this issue is to trace the tradition of Pakistani creative writing in English that represents diversity through connectivity in terms of such themes and concerns as: authorship, language and identity, dis/location, formal innovation, ethnic/national (un)belonging, sexual politics, desire and sexuality, gender and religion, intergenerational conflicts, the country and the city, and globalization.
All submissions must be received by July 31, 2010. A completed manuscript prepared either in Microsoft Word in 12 point Helvetica or in Rich Text Format (RTF) and not exceeding 6,000 words should be transmitted electronically. Manuscripts should be personally edited and polished before submitting. The submission should be accompanied by: (1) a statement that the work has not appeared elsewhere in parts or as a whole (or if it has, permission to reprint must accompany the submission); (2) a biographical note of about 50 words; and (3) a complete mailing address. Manuscripts, in any form, will not be returned.

Please send inquiries and manuscripts to:

 Dr. Fawzia Afzal-Khan and Dr. Waseem Anwar, Co-Guest Editors
 Dr.Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Director, Women and Gender Studies
Room 121, Dickson Hall
Montclair State University
Upper Montclair, NJ 07043
USA
khanf@mail.montclair.edu

Dr. Waseem Anwar
Dean, Faculty of Humanities
Professor and Chairperson, Department of English
Forman Christian College (A Chartered University)
Ferozepur Road, Lahore 54600, Pakistan
miaaon@hotmail.com

-----

The 2010 Regular Issue of SAR
South Asian Review, the refereed journal of the South Asian Literary Association, invites submissions for the 2010 issue, Volume 31, Number 2 (October/November). SAR is a representative scholarly forum for the examination of South Asian languages and literatures in a broad cultural context. The journal invites healthy and constructive dialog on issues pertaining to South Asia, but the thrust of the dialog must be literature and the sister arts. The journal welcomes critical and analytical essays on any aspect or period of South Asian literature (ancient, precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial). SAR is open to all ideas, positions, and critical and theoretical approaches. Recognizing the linguistic and cultural diversity of the subcontinent, the journal particularly welcomes essays in intercultural, comparative, and interdisciplinary studies in the humanities. The journal is also interested in essays on music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and other related fields. The following areas are of special interest to the journal:

South Asian Literatures Cultural Studies
South Asian Languages Colonial Studies
South Asian Studies Postcolonial Studies
South Asian Culture Comparative Literature
South Asian Diaspora Women’s Studies
Comparative Aesthetic Film Studies
Literary Theory Transcultural Studies
 
Critical articles of 15–25 pages, prepared in accordance with the MLA style and accompanied by an abstract of 8–10 lines and a biographical note, must be received by June 30, 2010. Articles can be sent by mail or transmitted electronically. All correspondence pertaining to the 2010 issue should be addressed to:

K. D. Verma, Editor, South Asian Review Department of English
 University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown
 Johnstown, PA 15904 
Phone: 814-269-7143 
Fax: 814-269-7196
 kverma@pitt.edu

Inquiries regarding book reviews should be addressed directly to:

Professor P. S. Chauhan 
Department of English 
Arcadia University 
450 South Easton Road
 Glenside, PA 19038-3295
 Phone: 215-572-2106 
chauhanp@arcadia.edu

CFP: Local Knowledge - Global Translations, Bhasha and ACLALS, Vadodara, India, September 11-16, 2010

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:56:41 -0400

CHOTRO THREE
Local Knowledge - Global Translations
 The Imagination & the Images of Indigenous Communities in the Twenty-First Century

Bhasha Research and Publications Centre, Vadodara, India in association with Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (ACLALS) announces a conference to be held from 11 to 16 September 2010  at Delhi & Shimla

This conference, as the Bhili tribal term ‘chotro’ implies, aims to ‘bring toghether’ writers, artists and scholars from all over the world interested in languages, literatures, cultures, histories and movements of the indigenous peoples of the post-colonial world. Two Chotro Conferences were held in India in 2008 and 2009, respectively, and the conference being announced will be the third and the final conference in the series.

Chotro-Three will be held for the first two days, 11-12 September, at Delhi, which is the capital of India, and for the next two days, 13.14 at Shimla, which was the summer capital during the colonial era. A special Symposium on ‘The Indigenous and the Visual Culture’ will be held on the 16th September at Keylang, situated at an altitude of 12000 feet in the Himalayas. A number of eminent Indian writers, artists and media persons will address the conference.

The Bhasha Research and Publication Centre has since its inception worked specifically with and on behalf of the Adivasi or tribal people of India, recognized in India as janajatis, whose cultural expression remains little known both in India and abroad. Bhasha has undertaken to document the linguistic, literary and artistic heritge of these communities. It has collaborated with national academies of art and literature and research institutes to encourage research in culture studies. It has pioneered the publication of literary and educational materials in tribal languages and has set up the Adivasi Academy at Tejgadh (Gujarat) as an institute of formal education for the promotion of tribal languages, literature, arts and culture. In recent years, Bhasha has initiated setting up of another institution for Himalayan Studies under the name ‘Himlok: Institute of Himalayan Studies’.
Together with its co-sponsors, Bhasha now seeks to initiate discussion of the experience of indigenous people on a global scale and in a comparative, cross-cultural perspective. The proposed conference will provide an opportunity for an international exchange of ideas between indigenous people and those interested in their cultural expression, for there are indeed close parallels between, for example, the Aborigines of Australia, the First Nations of Canada and the Adivasis of India. It is hoped that the conference will explore the existence and the future of the knowledge traditions of the indigenous communities in the rapidly changing context of economies and expressions. It is hoped that in drawing attention to the cultural traditions and the response of indigenous people to their marginalization the world over, the conference will at the same time provide new orientation and inspiration for post-colonial studies.

Contributions are sought on the following topics:

Oral traditions; Orature / indigenous world-views; knowledge systems/ storytelling; folk tales; poetry; drama and performance/ aesthetics / threatened languages / language death; language development / scripts/ subaltern history/ cultural and human rights/ publishing in aboriginal languages/ translation from aboriginal languages/ marginalization of aboriginal / tribal cultural expression/ imagery of the indigenous in theatre, cinema, media.

Bhasha would be happy to receive audio visual material, slides, photographs, calligraphy, handwritten and illustrated poetry, stories and samples of literature poetry, stories and samples of calligraphy by, for, and, on indigenous communities, in order to set up a display and an exhibition, as a backdrop to the proposed gathering, to enlarge its archive, and, to further fortify and spread awareness about the indigenous knowledge system and their modern transformations.

PRACTICAL ARRANGEMENTS
Registration: The registration form can be downloaded from
http://www.bhasharesearch.org.in or www.aclals.ulg.ac.be and should be returned as an attachment by email to Ganesh Devy (Bhasha) at ganesh.devy@gmail.com

Conference Fee:

There will be several categories of conference fee:

A) For the participants who wish to participate in the conference for the first two days in Delhi, that is the 11-12 September:
Overseas participants from Australia, Western Europe and North America –
GBP 80/ EUR100 / USD 120
Participants from African and Eastern European Countries –
USD 60
Participants from India
INR 2000

B) For the participants who wish to participate in the conference for the first four days in Delhi and Shimla, that is from the 11th to the 14th September
Overseas participants from Australia, Western Europe and North America –
GBP 130/ EUR160 / USD 200
Participants from African and Eastern European Countries –
USD 100
Participants from India
INR 3500

C) For the participants who wish to participate in the Conference as well as the Special Symposium, from the 11th to the 16th September.
Overseas participants from Australia, Western Europe and North America –
GBP 180/ EUR200 / USD 250
Participants from African and Eastern European Countries –
USD 120
Participants from India
INR 5000
Registration fee will be accepted not before 1st April 2010, and not after 30 June 2010
There will be no further charge for accommodation, meals and local transport nor the transport for Delhi-Shimla-Keylang and Keylang-Shimla-Delhi / or Delhi-Shimla and Shimla-Delhi, as the case may be.
The organizers will not be able to provide travel support to Indian participants for their travel between their home-town and Delhi. Similarly, no travel support will be available to any overseas participants for the international travel.

Abstracts:

Abstracts of presentations in approximately 200 words should be sent by email before the 31st November 2009 to Professor Geoffrey V. Davis, University of Aachen, Germany. Abstracts should not be sent directly to Bhasha Research Centre, India.
email Address: davis@anglistik.rwth-aachen.de
Acceptance of contributions:
Notification of acceptance of papers will be sent to the participants by Prof. Geoffrey Davis by 31st January 2010.

A formal letter of acceptance of paper will be sent by Prof. G. N. Devy, Bhasha Research and Publication Centre, India, by 15th February 2010 at the latest. A second letter confirming a scholar’s participation in the conference will be sent to the Indian Embassy/Consulate in the participant’s country on receiving the registration fee between April and June 2010.

Visa Requirements:

Foreign nationals requiring visas can download Indian visa forms from the website of the Indian embassy in their country of residence.

Publication:

One volume of the proceedings of the Chotro Conference- 2008 was published in January 2009 by Orient BlackSwan under the title Indigeneity: Culture and Representation, ed. G.N. Devy, Geoffrey V. Davis and K. K. Chakravarty. The second volume Ethnographies: Society and Interpretation will be published in early 2010 (Orient BlackSwan). The proceedings of the Chotro-2009 conference are getting ready for publication.

The organizers will be keen on having a selection of papers presented in Chotro-2010 published. The conference proceedings will be published jointly by Rodopi, Amsterdam & New York in their Cross/Cultures: Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures in English series and by an Indian publisher.

Submission of finalized papers for publication:

Participants interested in having their papers considered for publication will be expected to submit the final text by 10th December 2010 at the latest.

CHOTRO
Local Knowledge - Global Translations
 The Imagination and Images of Indigenous Communities in the twenty-first Century
=======================================================================
Bhasha Research and Publications Centre, Vadodara, India
in association with
the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (ACLALS)
announces a conference to be held from 11 to 16 September 2010 at Delhi & Shimla
========================================================
REGISTRATION FORM

Name:
Institutional Affiliation:
Institutional Contact details ( Fax/ E-mail/ Telephone/ Address) :
Dates on which You wish to Participate:
11-12 September
11-14 September
11-16 September

Country Category:

Australia, western Europe, America, Africa, Eastern Europe, India

Title of Presentation:

Synopsis in approximately 200 words:

Special Medical Needs ( particularly for high altitude travel) :

Date on which Registration Form is submitted:

Additional person(s) accompanying you:

NOTE: Registration form containing the synopsis of your presentation is to be submitted through e-mail to Prof. Geoffrey V Davis, Aachen, at: davis@anglistik.rwth-aachen.de

CFP: TEXTING OBAMA: politics/poetics/popular culture, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK September 7-10, 2010

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:57:48 -0400

Call for Papers

An Interdisciplinary Humanities and Social Sciences Conference

TEXTING OBAMA: politics/poetics/popular culture

7-10 September 2010
Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.

Hosted by English Research Institute, the MMU Writing School and
The Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences Research

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Simon Gikandi, David Theo Goldberg, Bonnie Greer, Ato Quayson.
Readings from Carol Ann Duffy, Jackie Kay and others

Barack Obama’s presidency is widely seen as the beginning of a new era, not only in world politics but also in global culture, with the present increasingly glossed as the ‘Age of Obama’. Our conference will ask what the terms of this naming might mean by addressing the diverse range of representational forms attached to Obama in contemporary world culture – as a person, icon and phenomenon. The conference will map and explore the specific historical, political and cultural climates in which Obama(’s) texts operate. It will interrogate the signifiers, signs and processes that circulate around Barack Obama, and explore his own contributions and interventions across diverse media.

Proposals are invited for papers or panels that engage with these diverse textualities. Questions might include: In what ways do Obama texts ‘travel’ and under what conditions? How might travelling theory or diaspora theory engage with Obama texts? In what ways might attention to Obama texts interrogate or develop extant or emerging frameworks at work in postcolonial, globalisation, media and cultural studies? How might a focus on transnational Obamas include or obscure local or national politics and expressions of black activism? How ought we to theorise pronouncements of a ‘post-racial’ America or/and a ‘post-Katrina’ America?

Possible streams might include: Postcolonial Obama: Kenya and Indonesia, Globalisation and Cosmopolitanism, Aloha Obama! Negotiating Hawaii, Obama and African-America, Rhetoric/Orature /Life writing, The Obama Families, Screening Obama, Obama and Hospitality, Black and Bi-Racial Masculinities, Race & Racial Politics, Obama in Europe, Publishing/Merchandising Obama, Ghosting Kennedy, Race and Fatherhood, Obama’s 100 days, Obama in the Academy, Law and Civil Rights, Black Activism, Obama’s Blackberry: New Technologies/Media and Race, Obama and Popular Culture: Watching The Wire, Obama and pedagogy.

Proposals should be emailed to textingobama@mmu.ac.uk by no later than 26 March 2010.

Organising Committee: Dr. Ellie Byrne, Dr. Julie Mullaney, Prof. Berthold Schoene, Department of English, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.

CFP: British Asian Culture in the Post-Millenium, University of Turin, 24-28 August, 2010

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:27:58 -0500

Call for Papers
10th Conference of the European Society for the Study of English / ESSE 10
24-28 August 2010
University of Turin, Italy

British Asian Culture in the Post-Millennium

Proceeding from the burgeoning interest in various aspects of South Asian cultures in Britain as well as their commodification since the late 1990s and acknowledging that Muslim British Asian identities have increasingly been seen as problematic in the aftermath of the Rushdie affair (1989) and in the post-9/11 and post-7/7 era, this seminar invites contributions that focus on critical negotiations with these processes in British Asian literature, film, music and the performing arts. The seminar particularly welcomes papers that engage with shifts of theoretical paradigms, from Stuart Hall’s “New Ethnicities” and Homi Bhabha’s “Third Space” that helped to shape the critical debate on British minority cultures in the 1990s to more recent conceptualisations of British Asian identity politics and inter- and intra-ethnic encounters and conflicts such as Avtar Brah’s ‘Diaspora Space’ and studies of South Asian popular culture, all of which may be tested against the challenges British Asian cultural productions both face in and pose to the post-millennium, globalized world.

Procedure for submitting proposals for papers:

Those wishing to participate in the Conference are invited to submit 200-word abstracts of their proposed papers directly to both convenors of the seminar before 31 January 2010:

Giovanna Buonanno (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia)
giovanna.buonanno@unimore.it

Christiane Schlote (University of Cambridge)
cs621@cam.ac.uk / schlote@ens.unibe.ch

The convenors will let the proponents know whether their proposals have been accepted no later than 28 February 2010.

Please note that authors of seminar papers will be expected to give an oral presentation of not more than 15 minutes duration, rather than simply reading their papers aloud. Reduced versions of the papers are circulated among all speakers in advance of the seminar.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us for more information. As this seminar is part of the ESSE 10 conference programme, we invite you to visit the ESSE website for more detailed information on ESSE and the Turin conference: www.unito.it/esse2010

CFP: Indo-Caribbean Literature and Culture, University of Warwick, 1-2 July, 2010

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:37:19 -0400

Indo-Caribbean Literature and Culture 2010
 Centre for Caribbean Studies
  University of Warwick  

1st-2nd of July 2010

  To mark the foundation of the Indo-Caribbean Studies Association, the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick is hosting its second interdisciplinary conference on Indo-Caribbean Literature and Culture.  

Indentureship propelled over half-a-million Indians across the kala pani to take root all over the world, negotiating new physical and figurative spaces for themselves and their descendants. The contribution of this widely-distributed Indian population to global culture and literature is substantial, and is particularly pronounced in the case of the Caribbean. Encompassing art, music, cuisine, religion, and more, the Indian presence is indelibly inscribed on the social, cultural, political and physical landscape of the region; emerging from their fascinating history is a wealth of creative writing and scholarly works.  

The flourishing of Indo-Caribbean literature and creativity over the past twenty years, exemplified by the renown of V. S. Naipaul and reinforced by the work of critically acclaimed authors such as Cyril Dabydeen, Mahadai Das, Ramabai Espinet, Roy Heath, Ismith Khan, Shiva Naipaul, Sam Selvon, and many more, has served to draw critical focus towards the unique and diverse elements of Indian life in the Caribbean and elsewhere. The postcolonial intersections of Indo-Caribbean experience provide a generative platform for critical and theoretical discourses, incorporating hybridity, hyphenated identities, neo-colonialism, eco-criticism, coolitude, cross-cultural transfer, gender construction and beyond.

  This event welcomes papers across the theoretical spectrum of Indo-Caribbean studies, and aims to investigate new avenues of research in the field. What impact have recent developments in postcolonial cultural theory had on our understanding of Indo-Caribbean experience? Conversely, what distinctive contribution does Indo-Caribbean literature make to a broader understanding of postcolonial cultures?

  Topics for consideration might include but are not limited to:  

Negotiation of Indo-Caribbean identities  
Memory, migration and exile
  Indian women in the Caribbean  
Politics and labour  
Gender and sexuality
  Religion and ritual  
Ecology and environment
  Language
  Survival and revival of visual arts  

Submissions: Proposals are invited from established and new scholars, including postgraduate researchers. 300-word abstracts should be sent to L.Gramaglia@warwick.ac.uk and should arrive by 21st December 2009.

Acceptance will be notified by 1st February 2010.  

To register for the conference please contact M.R.Tumbridge@warwick.ac.uk or Joseph.Jackson@warwick.ac.uk.

Dr Letizia Gramaglia 
University of Warwick

 Indo-Caribbean Studies Association http://go.warwick.ac.uk/icsa

CFP: Eco-Imagination, African Literature Association, 10-14 March, 2010

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:55:49 -0400

AFRICAN LITERATURE ASSOCIATION
36th Annual African Literature Association Conference
March 10-14, 2010
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
Tucson, Arizona

CALL FOR PANELS, ROUNDTABLES AND PAPERS

GENERAL THEME: ECO-IMAGINATION: AFRICAN AND DIASPORAN LITERATURES AND SUSTAINABILITY

In the recent past, sustainability referred more to development, environment, and economics, and some scholars did not think that the humanities and the arts could be included in this intellectual inquiry. There are now several centers of sustainability and the humanities, and courses such as “The literature of sustainability as literature of life” are being offered across the nation. Defining sustainability in broad terms, the 36th annual ALA conference will focus on how the environment and environmental issues are addressed in the literature of Africa and other areas where African peoples have settled, particularly the Americas. The conference will explore subtopics on matters including globalization and immigration and their connection to environmental questions. One objective of the conference will be to foster inter-disciplinary dialog about topics such as climate change or desertification, in the context of languages, literature and cinema.

SUBTHEMES
-Literature and the environment
-Eco-criticism and Literature
-Literature, Land and Landscape
-New Trends in Fiction
-Literature and Cinema
-African Language Literatures
-Women’s Literature and Cinema
-Literature and Globalization
-Literature and Children’s Rights
-Immigration in Literature and Film
-Translation Issues
-Teaching African and Diasporan Literatures

To follow the ALA tradition, papers and panels on all aspects of African/Diasporan literature are invited, but particular focus on the conference themes is encouraged.

Please send panel proposals including names of presenters and titles of topics by November 30, 2009 or individual paper abstracts by December 15, 2009 to the convener, Irène d’Almeida at ala2010tucson@gmail.com.