Autor: GKS

32nd Annual Conference of the Postgraduate Forum (PGF) of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS/DGfA)

University of Regensburg, Regensburg/Germany, November 10-12, 2022 (hybrid)

Deadline: September 18, 2022

https://www.uni-regensburg.de/language-literature-culture/american-studies/research/conferences/pgf-2022/index.html

Since its inception in 1989, the PGF has been a platform for early career researchers in the broader field of American studies, offering them the opportunity to present and discuss their on-going projects and to engage in critical conversations with scholars working in similar as well as different disciplines. The organizers of the 2022 Postgraduate Forum are pleased to announce the call for papers for the 32nd annual conference to be hosted at the University of Regensburg from November 10-12, 2022.

Conference Theme and Format

In light of current academic debates and wider public discourses on cultures of memory and its uses, we want to reflect on how early career researchers can benefit from approaching American studies through the multidirectional lens of memory studies. More specifically, we seek to engage in discussions of how acts, ethics, practices, and rituals of remembrance should be cultivated in 2022, a year which has shown how distorted versions of history and memory are not only reduced to abstract self-fulfilling narratives but also turned into justifications for actual warfare in the most extreme case. With that in mind, we ask the questions: What roles do academic research and education play in cultures of memory and remembering? What are the transnational dimensions of cultural memory? What are our responsibilities as emerging scholars, as teachers, as human beings in shaping cultures of memory? What are the possible pasts, presents, and futures of memory studies as American studies?

Alongside submissions dedicated to transnational memory cultures, we also invite and encourage contributions from the broader field of American studies.

In addition to thematic panels, a keynote lecture, and the annual PGF meeting, we are also planning an excursion to the Flossenbuerg Concentration Camp Memorial and Museum to get insights into their work, as well as workshops on mental health and academic accountability and responsibility.

Application

We invite early career researchers of all disciplines of American studies to submit an abstract of 250-300 words for a 15-minutes presentation and a short narrative biography of ca.150 words in a single PDF file. Please send all proposals to pgf@dgfa.de by September 18, 2022.

Selected contributions will be published in a special issue of the peer-reviewed online journal Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies (COPAS).

Accessibility

As organizers of the 2022 Postgraduate Forum, we are committed to ensuring all events and contents are accessible to all. Please feel free to communicate with us about your accommodation needs when sending in your proposals, or as it arises. Do not hesitate to approach us at any time if you have any concerns.

We plan to host the 2022 Postgraduate Forum as a hybrid event.

For further information, please visit our conference website at: https://www.uni-regensburg.de/language-literature-culture/american-studies/research/conferences/pgf-2022/index.html. Please check back regularly as the website will be updated progressively as we move closer to the conference date.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Regensburg this fall!

Your Regensburger PGF Conference Team 2022

Contact Email: pgf@dgfa.de

ExRe(y) 2022

December 1-2, 2022 (MS Teams)

Deadline: August 31, 2022

Department of English and American Studies at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin and Department of American Literature and Culture at The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin are pleased to announce the third ExRe(y) conference. A two-day international conference “ExπRE: Going Off in Post-Millennial North-American Literature and Culture” will be held online on December 1-2, 2022.

We invite proposals for papers and panels that focus on the topic of the (broadly understood) expiration and waning in American and Canadian literature and culture of the last two decades.

Topics may include, but are not limited to the following:

• time and passing
• ends and resolutions (break-ups, disintegration, cliffhangers, happy endings, closure, points ofno return)
• illness, aging, death
• end-of-the-world narratives/scenarios
• regress, ruin, decay
• waning, fading, and effacement (of hopes, memories, scars, power, confidence, narratives, boundaries, divisions)
• failure and disappointment
• trends and fashion
• validity, legal status, rights
• trash, debris, and the poetics of waste
• things that go off (food, alarms, bombs)
• adaptations, remakes, golden oldies, Netflix cancellations

and

• the many faces of π (irrationality, transcendence, infinity, bye-bye, Miss American Pie)

Confirmed plenary speakers:

Prof. Caren Irr (Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA)

Prof. Aneta Dybska (University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland)

For the conference publication we are pleased to announce a special issue of a peer-reviewed open access academic journal Roczniki Humanistyczne (2024), indexed, among others, in Web of Science, ERIH Plus, and Scopus.

Titled abstracts of up to 250 words should be sent to exreyconference@gmail.com by 31 August 2022. All submissions must include a 100-word biographical statement.

The conference will be held online via MS Teams. The conference fee is 150PLN/35€.

Further information is available on the conference website at www.exrey.umcs.lublin.pl.

The 27th Biennial NAAS Conference in Uppsala May 25-27, 2023

Deadline: September 1, 2022

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) to an unusuallyhigh 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.)

In order to submit a paper proposal, please provide us with a 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 naasinfo2023@gmail.com.

Deadline for proposals: September 1, 202 2. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by the end of November 2022.