CfP: MLA Session “Where are the Wonder Girls? Heroines and Persistence in Campus Novels”, Jan 7-10,2020. Deadline for abstracts: March 15, 2020.

“Where are the Wonder Girls? Heroines and Persistence in Campus Novels”

Call for Papers

Modern Language Association Convention

Toronto, Ontario

January 7-10, 2021

Enormous reading pleasure can be derived from Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys but where are the wonder girls? Where are American (campus) novels about gallivanting women academics and writers based in academia, getting into trouble, having multiple lovers in different countries, shoplifting, dancing naked in the rain (the list is suggestive, not exhaustive)? Yet novels which are comic, feel-good, and sporting happy endings? There is a discernible tendency to cast as protagonists of campus novels and artist novels unhappy and unlucky women, tormented victims rather than fierce individuals with agency.

I’m seeking papers on representations of women academics and writers in contemporary US campus literature depicting women’s efforts to survive as artists. I’m interested in e.g. how an artist heroine navigates the nexus between and the lacunae of intellectuality, creativity, and sexuality, juggling different roles the society has burdened her with, while battling various obstacles, exterior and interior and, if she doesn’t have an inherited income and a house of her own, being torn between the need to create and the need to live, caught in a double-bind between art and life, succeeding and/or failing as a woman or as an artist. I’m primarily interested in portrayals of active women artists who are protagonists not mere characters.

Please submit a 250-word abstract and brief biography to marta.lysik@uwr.edu.pl by March 15, 2020.

https://mla.confex.com/mla/2021/webprogrampreliminary/Paper12953.html

CfP: “The American Campus Novel in the 21st Century” Seminar/ACLA Chicago, March 19-22, 2020; deadline for abstracts September 23rd

Call for Papers

“The American Campus Novel in the 21st Century“

Seminar organized within the framework of the

annual ACLA conference.

Please apply via acla.org (portal opens September 1st) before September 23.

Information about the seminar: https://www.acla.org/american-campus-novel-21st-century

The campus novel, an Anglo-American genre, having as its protagonists alternately students, teaching staff, and full professors, acts as a barometer measuring the state of the nation and education. While critically commenting on campus life, often spotlighting subversive behaviors and contesting the status quo, the campus novel portrays the individual’s struggle for personal advancement and definition of one’s own identity and values. It serves as a battleground for concepts and ideologies pervasive in the times it depicts. Many established American and British authors, and a few international writers living and working in the US, explored the potential of this subgenre, especially its satirical penchant and “pejorative poetics” (Kenneth Womack), in order to comment on contemporaneous issues.

This seminar aims to explore the various interactions between academe and the real world primarily in contemporary American campus fiction in connection with modern day discourses and trends, but it can also tackle non-fiction and film/TV series. Proposals may concern campus fiction, academic life writing, and film about academia, and the following areas and topics:

• Indigenous studies
• Postcolonial studies
• Race studies
• Queer and feminist theory & gender studies
• Ecocriticism and environmental studies
• Posthumanism and animal studies
• Trauma, illness, and disability studies
• Critical university studies
• Refugees, migrations, and immigration
• Cosmopolitanism
• Digital media and technology
• Religion
• Media and journalism
• Politics and activism

Please direct all queries to marta.lysik@uwr.edu.pl.

Marta J. Lysik

Assistant Professor

Department of Literary and Documentary Genres

Institute of Journalism and Social Communication

The University of Wroclaw

Fulbright Visiting Scholar 2019-2020

Department of English

Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Carnegie Mellon University

CfP: SEMINAR ON ACADEMIC FICTION in Cracow, 15-16 Nov, 2019. Deadline for abstracts: October 1, 2019.

CALL FOR PAPERS

SEMINAR ON ACADEMIC FICTION

Institute of English Studies, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland

15-16 November 2019

The Institute of English Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and Professor Merritt Moseley invite abstracts for twenty-minute papers on academic fiction.

Papers addressing any aspect of the relationship between academic fiction and the real world, literary commentary on the crises of university education, the lives of academics, creative writers in academia, academia and race, class, or gender, or other relevant topics are welcomed. Relevant non-fiction and film may also be considered. There is no cost for participation.

Submit an abstract of around 150 words with a brief biographical statement to Merritt Moseley, via email at moseley@unca.edu.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is 1 October 2019. Notifications will follow on 10 October.

Time:          Friday-Saturday, 15-16 November 2019

Venue:         Institute of English Studies, al. Mickiewicza 9,

31-120 Kraków, Poland

Organizers: Professor Merritt Moseley moseley@unca.edu

Dr hab. Bożena Kucała bozena.kucala@uj.edu.pl

 

CfP:”Representations of Textual and Contextual Boundaries in Academic Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Film” in Kaunas, Lithuania 27-28 April, 2017

 

Session organized within the framework of the

“Texts and Contexts: The Phenomenon of Boundaries” conference

Vilnius University Kaunas, Faculty of Humanities

This panel aims to explore the representations of different boundaries at work in academic fiction, non-fiction and film, be they referring to genre and its textual fabric, or the reality and different contexts these narratives depict.

Submissions can relate, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Textual vs. material reality in academic narratives,
• Student-teacher boundaries and off-limits behaviors in academic narratives,
• Divisions in the academe,
• No limits – academic utopias and dystopias,
• Breaking the boundary of realism – sci-fi academic narratives,
• Limits of empathy and identification – academics reading and writing academic novels,
• Frontiers and trailblazers in the academe,
• Probing the limits of truth, or facts and fiction in academic narratives and life writing – autofiction, roman à  clef etc.,
• Academic metafiction and breaking down of the fourth wall – writers writing about writers and writing,
• Limitless navel-gazing? Self-reflexivity in academic narratives, or academics writing about academe and academics
• Academic novel – genre boundaries and margins

Please send a short abstract (no more than 200 words) for a 20-minute paper, and a bio note by 6 February, 2017 to the session organizer Marta Lysik at marta.lysik@uwr.edu.pl.

CfP: “The Concepts of Home in the Context of Academe and Academic Fiction,” Kyiv, Ukraine, 17-18 March 2016

Call for Papers

“The Concepts of Home in the Context of Academe and Academic Fiction”

Kyiv, 17-18 March 2016

Panel

organised within the framework of the

International Conference in Literary Studies “Poetics of Home/House”

Kyiv National Linguistic University

 

In which ways does the academia warrant the status of a “second home” for its members? Do the groves of academe function as a safe haven, a sanctuary of classrooms and libraries, a harbor for liberal education, cultural exchange, tradition, and free thought? Can the academia constitute a private microcosm for an expat scholar, conference hopper, or a foreign student? And if it can, as a multicultural space providing a sense of home for representatives of diasporic communities, can it foster dialogue and reduce conflict between societies and countries?

We are looking for explorations of the academia-as-a-home in the short and the long term, in fiction old and new, ranging from Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin to Michel Houellebecq’s Submission.

We invite papers treating these, and related themes, in all genres and sub-genres referred to as academic fiction by British, American, and international writers.

Possible topics (the list is suggestive not exhaustive):

• The university as a private universe in academic fiction,
• Intercultural communication in academic fiction,
• Multiculturalism in academic fiction,
• Expat scholars, conference hoppers, and foreign students,
• Exchange and staff mobility programs (Erasmus+, ISEP, Fulbright etc.),
• University as shelter,
• At home in the world: cosmopolitanism in academic novels,
• Surrogate homes abroad: music, food, and literature in academic fiction,
• Unwilling dislocations and homesickness in academic fiction,
• Speaking in tongues: language in and of academic fiction,
• From home to college: university as a rite of passage,
• The concept of home in academic life writing.

Please send a short abstract (no more than 200 words) and bio by 15 January, 2016 to Marta Lysik at marta.lysik@uwr.edu.pl.

The language of the panel is English.