Opportunities

CFP: Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture, Fall 2010 Issue, WHO OWNS AFRICA’S CULTURAL PATRIMONY?
Critical Interventions invites submissions for a special issue on the question of Africa’s cultural patrimony in Western museums, especially in
the context of recent international debates about repatriation of historical artworks relocated from one culture to another through conquest,
colonization or looting. In the first decade of the 21st Century, demands by various countries for repatriations of significant artworks and cultural
objects have shaken up established ideas about the ownership and location of historical cultural objects. While many Western museums have been willing to reach agreements about repatriating or compensating for culturally important artworks in their collections claimed by other Western countries, there has been no acknowledgment of the right of Africans to ownership of African artworks or cultural patrimony looted from Africa during and after the period of European colonialism, which are now held in the so-called “Universal Museums” of the West. Aside from the fact that Western museums hold large quantities of looted African artworks (the British Museum’s holding of the Benin bronzes being a canonical case in point), these museums also appear to claim ownership of the cultural patrimony of these objects by enforcing copyright claims to the artworks. Since African artworks emerged as part of complex knowledge systems in various indigenous African cultures, such claims deprive Africans of any share in the economic value produced by these objects as a result of their redefinition as a canon of artworks with discursive and financial value. Western countries also routinely deny Africans access to these artworks through enforced localization (no Western country will grant an African a visa merely to visit any museum in Europe or America), which invalidates their claim of housing the artworks in “universal museums”.

To paraphrase Ivan Karp (1991) demands for recognition of Africa’s ownership of its cultural patrimony in Western museums assert the social, political, and economic claims of African producers in the larger world and challenge the right of established Western institutions to control representation of African cultures. In this regard, the proposed issue of Critical Interventions posits a fundamental question: *who owns Africa’s cultural patrimony *and why are African claims to their looted cultural objects held in Western museums denied in contemporary discourses of repatriation and reparations?

We seek papers that posit or contest African ownership of looted African cultural patrimony in the dual contexts of the relationship between African artworks in their contemporary locations (Western museums, Western private collections, the art historical construction of meanings), and the history of their origins as part of communities of objects, whose use in religious, ritual, secular, and social space formed part of knowledge systems and cultural heritage of particular African peoples. We particularly encourage submissions that interrogate the commodification of African cultural patrimony and cultural identities in the context of global capital, and examine the representational, legal, political, and cultural positions that support or deny African claims to ownership of historical art objects as relevant aspects of contemporary African cultural patrimony.

Please send 300 word abstracts and CV, by December 10, 2009, to the editors:
Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie (ogbechie@arthistory.ucsb.edu)
John Peffer (j_peffer@yahoo.com) .

Critical Interventionsis a peer-reviewed journal of advanced research and writing on African art history and visual culture. Submission and
subscription information can be found at http://www.criticalinterventions.com.

CFP: Center for the History of Print Culture/Library History Seminar XII: Libraries in the History of Print Culture
Madison, Wisconsin
September 10-12, 2010

Library records provide a particularly fruitful avenue into the history of print culture.  For millions of Americans from mid-nineteenth century on, institutional libraries have constituted a major path of access to texts, and in recent years, print culture scholars have begun to exploit libraries as a rich--and widely available--source of data.  In addition to providing an important link between individual readers and the texts that they read, libraries can help occupy the middle ground between specific texts and readers and the macro or meta-theories that have come to dominate literary criticism. Indeed, libraries provide print culture scholars with an arena in which to exercise the historical and sociological imagination, linking micro analysis of the study of this text, these readers, here and now with the dimensions of macro analysis—such as class, race and gender, that they recognize need to be included.  Libraries are both a site and a source of re gulating processes.  The interactions of multitudes of authors and readers are shaped in part by the meta-texts of the library’s operations:  its classification and cataloging practices, its shelving system and the principles on which it bases reader access to those shelves; its circulation rules, its spatial and temporal arrangements for in-house reading; its provision of printed signs and guides to the collection, its use of web pages and personnel to steer readers along pre-defined and recognizable paths.  Yet just as individual readers engage in ruses which allow them to appropriate individual texts, so those who read in the library read the library itself—becoming in the process, potentially resistant readers of the library. 

 We especially encourage the submission of proposals that make use of library records as primary sources, that focus on libraries as sites of textual encounter, or that locate libraries in the broader print culture of specific places and at specific times.  Proposals for individual papers or complete sessions (up to three papers) should include a 250-word abstract and a one-page c.v. for each presenter. Submissions should be made via email to printculture@slis.wisc.edu. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2010. Notifications of acceptance will be made by early March.  Registration information will also be available by early March. 

Keynote speakers will be Professor Janice A. Radway of Northwestern University (author of Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature, and A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire) and Professor Wayne A. Wiegand of Florida State University (author of many books on library and print culture history, including Books on Trial: Red Scare in the Heartland [with Shirley A. Wiegand] and Irrepressible Reformer : A Biography of Melvil Dewey.

Two publication opportunities will be available. As with previous conferences, we plan to produce a volume of papers for publication in the Center’s series, “Print Culture History in Modern America,” published by the University of Wisconsin Press. A list of books the Center has produced, available on the Center’s website (http://slisweb.lis.wisc.edu/~printcul/), offers a guide to prospective authors. We also plan to publish a special issue of Libraries and the Cultural Record (whether papers appear in the book or the journal will be decided by the editors, in consultation with the UW Press and L&CR editors).

A web page for the conference is under construction at http://slisweb.lis.wisc.edu/~printcul/

 Co-sponsors are the Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America, the School of Library and Information Studies, the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Library History Round Table of the American Library Association, the University of Wisconsin Libraries, Madison Public Library,  the Wisconsin Library Heritage Center and the departments of History, English, the History of Science, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and the Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies

JOB: Tenure-track Assistant Professor History, Theory, and Criticism of Art, University of San Diego
The Department of Art of the University of San Diego invites applications for a full-time tenure track position at the rank of assistant professor to begin September 2010. The successful candidate will help develop a new undergraduate curriculum that emphasizes translations and connectivity across the arts, cultures, and continents. Candidates should be able to teach advanced topical courses on the diverse artistic practices and visual cultures in Asia broadly conceived, encounters between Asian and non-Asian cultures throughout history, colonial histories, or the condition of the arts and artists in times of global flows, migrations and diasporas.

We seek an individual who demonstrates potential for advanced research and scholarship in the history and theory and criticism of art and who can devise innovative strategies to teach in a pluralistic and multi-disciplinary department. The Department of Art promotes academic excellence with small-size classes, seminar-style teaching, faculty-student collaboration and close mentoring. Faculty are eligible for internal Faculty Research Grants (FRG), Large FRGs, research travel allowances, publication subsidies, and course reductions, and are expected to sustain a clear agenda in research and publications.

The University of San Diego's Department of Art encompasses art history and visual arts majors, a new curriculum in architecture, and an interdisciplinary program, Art, Technology and Critical Studies. Our art history faculty are particularly interested in the historiography of modern art and architecture, the intersections between art and politics, and critical issues concerning the production, reproduction, and display of art.

Candidates are required to hold a Ph.D. or A.B.D. in art history, visual culture, or allied fields. Applications should include a letter delineating research and teaching interests, curriculum vitae, syllabi of a minimum of two courses you would like to teach at the University of San Diego (one introductory course, and one advanced undergraduate seminar), representative writing samples, and contact information for three recommenders. Please explain in your letter how you may contribute to our evolving curriculum in the history, theory and criticism of art. Please include a SASE only if you require the return of your publications/writing samples. For priority consideration materials should be received by November 20, 2009.

Please send applications to: Search Committee History, Theory and Criticism of Art Department of Art University of San Diego 5998 AlcalPark San Diego, CA 92110 For additional information please contact Ms. Alexandra Mundt, amundt@sandiego.edu, (619) 260 2280. The University of San Diego is a private, Catholic institution chartered in 1949, and is committed to promoting cultural diversity and equal employment opportunities. Website: http://apptrkr.com/121021

Fellowship: Boston College - Dissertation Fellow. Any discipline in the Humanities & Social Sciences focusing on African & African Diaspora Studies
Boston College’s African and African Diaspora Studies Program (AADS) is proud to announce the inaugural year of its dissertation fellowship competition. Scholars working in any discipline in the Humanities or Social Sciences with projects focusing on any topic within African and/or African Diaspora Studies are eligible. We seek applicants pursuing innovative, preferably comparative, projects in dialogue with critical issues and trends within the field.

This 2010/2011 fellowship includes a $30,000 stipend, health insurance, a $1,500 research budget, and a fully equipped office. The fellow must remain in residence for the 9-month academic year, deliver one public lecture, and teach one seminar course.

The successful applicant will have full access to BC’s seven libraries as well as several rare books and manuscripts collections. Of particular interest is the Nicholas M. Williams/Caribbeana Collection, consisting of materials from and about Africa, Jamaica, and the British West Indies. The fellow can also benefit from BC’s newly founded Institute for the Liberal Arts, as well as events sponsored by programs/installations in International Studies, American Studies, Asian American Studies, Middle East Studies, Islamic Civilization and Societies, as well as the internationally renowned McMullen Museum.

Applications must include the following: 1) a 2000 word, detailed project proposal that includes a plan for completion, 2) an 800 word personal essay that describes how this fellowship will assist you in achieving future professional goals, and 3) three letters of recommendation, one of which must be from the dissertation advisor. Eligible applicants must complete all requirements for the PhD, aside from the dissertation, by the start of the fellowship year.

Applications must be submitted by 18 December 2009, either electronically to aads@bc.edu or postmarked by regular mail to Chair, AADS Fellowship Committee, Boston College, 301 Lyons Hall, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA, 02467-3806.

Boston College is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer dedicated to building a culturally diverse faculty and a multicultural environment. We strongly encourage applications from women, individuals from historically underrepresented groups and individuals with disabilities, and covered veterans.

Contact Info:
Chair
AADS Fellowship Committee
Boston College
Lyons Hall 301
140 Commonwealth Ave
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
Website: http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/aads/resources/

Residency: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Scholars In Residence Academic Year 2010-2011
APPLICATION DEADLINE: December 1, 2009

THE SCHOMBURG CENTER residency program assists scholars and professionals whose research on the black experience can benefit from extended access to the Center’s resources. Fellowships funded by the Center will allow recipients to spend six months or a year in residence with access to resources at the Schomburg Center and other research units of The New York Public Library.

SCOPE
The Scholars-in-Residence Program is designed to (1) encourage research and writing on the history, literature, and cultures of the peoples of Africa and the African diaspora, (2) to promote and facilitate interaction among the participants including fellows funded by other sources, and (3) to facilitate the dissemination of the researchers’ findings through lectures, publications, and the ongoing Schomburg Center Colloquium and Seminar Series. Applicants must indicate in their proposal how they propose to use the resources of the Schomburg Center as well as those of the other research units of The New York Pubic Library to further their research. For access to the Schomburg Center and The New York Public Library catalogs, see our website: www.nypl.org. (Click on “Catalogs” then “CATNYP” The Research Libraries On-Line Catalog.) For more information call 212-491-2218.

ELIGIBILITY
The Fellowship Program is open to scholars studying the history, literature, and culture of the peoples of African descent from a humanistic perspective and to professionals in fields related to the Schomburg Center ’s collections and program activities. Projects in the social sciences, science and technology, psychology, education, and religion are eligible if they utilize a humanistic approach and contribute to humanistic knowledge. Creative writing (works of poetry and fiction) and projects that result in a performance are not eligible. Persons seeking support for research leading to degrees are not eligible under this program. Candidates for advanced degrees must have received the degree by December 1. Foreign nationals are not eligible unless they will have resided in the United States three years immediately preceding the application deadline.

SELECTION Criteria
Applications for the Scholars-in-Residence program will be reviewed by a seven member selection committee consisting of the Residency Program Director and external reviewers chosen from scholars in the humanities and the social sciences. Fellows will be selected on the basis of the following criteria:
• Relationship of the project to the resources of the Schomburg Center .
• Qualifications of the applicant.
• Quality and feasibility of the project plan.
• Importance of the proposed project to the applicant’s field and to the humanities.
• Relationship of the project to the humanities.
• Likelihood that the project will be completed successfully.
• The provisions for making the results of the project available to scholars and to the public at large.

Stipendsand Residency
Fellowships are awarded for continuous periods of six or twelve months at the Schomburg Center with maximum stipends of $30,000 for six months and $60,000 for twelve months. Fellows must devote full time to their research projects. They are expected to be in continuous residence at the Schomburg Center and to participate in the intellectual life of the Program. They may not be employed during the period in residence except sabbaticals from their own institutions. Those selected as Scholars-in-Residence may supplement their stipends with support from their own institution or small outside grants if the requisite approval is received from the Schomburg Center . Fellows may begin residence at the Center after September 1. This program is made possible in part through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation.

ApplicationInstructions
A complete application must include 10 copies of each item listed below and a self-addressed, stamped post card to acknowledge receipt of the application package:
• The Schomburg Center Scholars-in-Residence Application Form (original)
• A 1500 word description of the proposed study
• Curriculum vitae
• Three (3) reference letters should be mailed directly to the Scholars-in-Residence Program and received no later than December 1st.

Descriptionof Study
In no more than 1500 words, the applicant should provide a detailed description of the proposed study, including but by no means restricted to, the following elements:
• A statement of the topic under consideration with specific reference to the major questions, problems, and theses being investigated.
• An outline of the plan for carrying out the study or project.
• Discussion of the sources in the Schomburg Center and other research units of the New York Public Library for the study and the plans for examining them.
• Description of research methods.
• Applicant’s competence in the use of any foreign languages needed to complete the study.
• The place of the study in the applicant’s overall research and writing program.
• The significance of the study for the applicant’s field and for the humanities in general.
• The final objective and expected products of the study. Plans for publications, lectures, exhibitions, teaching, and other vehicles of dis semination should be detailed. Fellows will be expected to share their findings through these means and as participants in the Schomburg Center Colloquium and Seminar Series during their residency.
Notification will be made in mid-March 2010.

Submission of Application
Application can be downloaded at: http://www.nypl.org/research/sc/scholars/index.html

Completed applications must be postmarked no later than December 1 and mailed to:

Scholars-in-Residence Program
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
515 Malcolm X Boulevard
New York , New York 10037-1801
www.schomburgcenter.org
Email address: sir@nypl.org

APPLICATION DEADLINE: December 1, 2009



CFP: Words. Beats. Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture
The editorial staff of Words. Beats. Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture seeks high quality manuscripts, literature, poetry, book reviews and artwork for a general topic issue to be published in July 2010. We invite innovative submissions that consider hip-hop music and culture from a wide range of critical perspectives. In-depth studies of individual artists and texts are welcome. In particular, works from the fields of ethnomusicology, gender studies, interdisciplinary studies, cultural studies, technology and sociology are encouraged. We also accept research on areas that influence our work as academics, including hip-hop pedagogy and curriculum, as well as the place of hip-hop studies in the university. Additionally, Words. Beats.  Life welcomes provocative essays that will stimulate thought on the current and future role of hip-hop culture and music in the 21st century.

Words. Beats. Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture is a peer-reviewed, hybrid periodical of art and hip-hop studies published by the 501(c)(3) non-profit, Words Beats & Life, Inc. The Journal is committed to nurturing and showcasing the creative talents and expertise of the field in a layout that is uniquely hip-hop inspired. We publish issues twice a year with the intention of serving as a platform where the work of scholars and artists can appear in dialogue with one another. Since 2002, Words. Beats. Life has devoted its pages to both emerging and established intellectuals and artists. As the premier resource for hip-hop theory and practice, we hope that the scholarship we publish will serve as a resource for the field of hip-hop studies and the work of hip-hop non-profits, helping each to elevate to the next phase of their respective growth in America and around the globe.

Words. Beats. Life adheres to APA style. The maximum length for articles is 5,000 words. Complete guidelines for contributors can be found in each issue of the journal as well as on our Web site at http://wblinc.org/Journal_callforsub.htm. Please send any questions and submissions to submissions@wblinc.org. Deadline: January 4, 2010.

CFP: Second Annual African Diaspora Studies Symposium, “Uncovering Lost Perspectives: History and Representation in the Diaspora”
As a part of the centennial celebration of the first state-supported Historically Black liberal arts institution, North Carolina Central University invites proposals for the Second Annual African Diaspora Studies Symposium, to be held March 20-21. The theme for this year is “Uncovering Lost Perspectives: History and Representation in the Diaspora.” In keeping with the breadth of the Liberal Arts, proposals will be considered for papers, panels, performances (music or theater), film, and graphic art from any branch of Diaspora studies. Last year’s symposium brought together scholars, activists, and artists from across the region, and disciplines as varied as Public Health and performance art. Building on the inaugural event, this symposium will bring together scholars, community members, artists, and documentarians to engage with each other on issues facing the African Diaspora and African Diaspora Studies in a dynamic, community-oriented fashion. North Carolina Central University, located in the heart of Durham, was founded in 1910 as the first state-supported liberal arts institution to serve the black community. The University prides itself on its relations with the Durham community, and The NCCU African Diaspora Studies Symposium encourages input and participation from both academics and the community.
Papers and submission

Individual abstracts should be 250 words or less and panel abstracts should be 750 words or less. Abstracts should be submitted by Tuesday, December 1, 2009. Please include, for all participants, a five-line biography with institutional/organizational affiliation and contact information.Please direct all submissions to Youssef J. Carter at youssefcarter@gmail.com and Joshua Nadel at jnadel@nccu.edu.This two-day symposium is free and open to the public. It will be held on the campus of North Carolina Central University in Durham, NC on March 20 and 21, 2010.

CFP: Architecture and Performance: Graduate Student Symposium
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Yale Center for British Art, Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut

This one-day graduate student symposium considers architecture through the framework of its explicit and implicit performative aspects.

The built environment bears witness to the performances of its makers. It also reflects and informs the behavior of its inhabitants. The activities of those involved in producing architecture-among them architects, engineers, masons, builders, and decorators-and those who use it, represent some of the performances in which architecture participates. Other interpretations of "performative" architecture may be more conceptual. A building may, for example, be taken to embody the technical, ornamental, or historical knowledge of its producers. Alternatively, architecture may play a central role in communicating visual or verbal narrative in a painting, novel, or play, for example. This symposium explores the historical and theoretical relationships between architecture and performance across a range of disciplines, geographic locations, and periods.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:
* religious architecture
* institutional and domestic spaces
* the use of architectural tools
* labor and craftsmanship
* designing and/or building as performance
* the performance of architectural knowledge
* "working" documents as evidence of performance
* the visual realization of principles or conventions
* sketches and en plein air practice
* town planning and bird's-eye views
* military architecture
* theatrical architecture
* architecture and performance art
* space and the body
* architecture and narrative

We invite proposals for 25-minute papers on this theme from graduate students across the arts and sciences. Special consideration will be given to papers examining the topic in relation to British art and culture. Cross-disciplinary and comparative studies are particularly welcome.

Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words by November 30, 2009. E-mail toimogen.hart@yale.edu, or mail to:
Imogen Hart, Research Department
Yale Center for British Art
1080 Chapel Street
P.O. Box 208280
New Haven, CT 06520-8280

Travel funds for speakers are available upon application.

Fellowship: The Wolfsonian-FIU Fellowship Program

The Wolfsonian-Florida International University is a museum and research center that promotes the examination of modern visual and
material culture. The Wolfsonian's fellowship program is intended to support research on the museum's collection, generally for periods of
three to four weeks. The program is open to holders of master's or doctoral degrees, Ph.D. candidates, and others who have a significant
record of professional achievement in relevant fields.

The theme for the fellowship program for 2010-11 is Design and Health. We welcome applications from scholars in any field in the humanities
who propose to investigate the links between design and health from the late nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth century. We intend both of these terms to be understood in a broad sense: "Design" to include a range of practices, such as product design, graphic design, interior design, architecture, and urban planning; "Health" to include such concerns as personal hygiene and fitness, public health, medicine, body image, and disability.

The focus of the Wolfsonian collection is on North American and European decorative arts, propaganda, architecture, and industrial and
graphic design from the period 1885-1945. The United States, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands are the countries most
extensively represented. There are also smaller but significant collections of materials from a number of other countries, including Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Japan, the former Soviet Union, and Hungary. The collection includes works on paper (including posters, prints, and design drawings), furniture, paintings, sculpture, glass, textiles, ceramics, lighting and other appliances, and many other kinds of objects. The Wolfsonian's library has approximately 50,000 rare books, periodicals, and ephemeral items.

The Wolfsonian's collection has many objects and publications that may support research on the connections between design and health. Among these are: books and periodicals about physical culture, especially in the United States; publications on interior design, architecture,
housing reform, and urban planning; design drawings for a great variety of building types; advertisements for health resorts; personal or household objects, such as razors, massagers, sunlamps, and vacuum cleaners; and publicity for health and fitness campaigns.

Applicants are encouraged to discuss their project with the museum staff prior to submission to ensure the relevance of their proposals
to the Wolfsonian's collection. For more information about The Wolfsonian and its collection, visit the website at http://www.wolfsonian.fiu.edu, call 305-535-2686, or email to research@thewolf.fiu.edu. Applications for the 2010-11 academic year must be postmarked by December 31, 2009.

CFP: Crossing Boundaries: Foreign Relations and Transborder Histories, 2010 Conference of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) invites proposals for panels and individual papers at its annual conference to be held June 24-26, 2010 at the Pyle Conference Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In order to receive full consideration, proposals should be submitted no later than December 1, 2009.

The program committee welcomes panels and paper proposals that deal with the history of United States’ role in the world in the broadest sense. In order to complement SHAFR’s signature and continuing strengths in diplomatic, strategic, and foreign relations history, particularly for the post-1900 period, the Committee especially encourages proposals that deal with non-state actors and/or pre-1900 transborder histories, as well as proposals that involve histories of gender and race, cultural history, religious history, environmental history, economic history, labor history, immigration history, and borderlands history. The Committee also invites applications from scholars working in areas other than U. S. history, and panels that include work by such scholars. Finally, the committee welcomes panels dealing with issues such as pedagogy and professionalization.

To defray traveling costs for some graduate students and first-time participants, SHAFR is offering a number of competitive fellowships. Please read below for further information.

The committee seeks complete panels with a coherent theme in one of the following formats: (1) three papers, chair, and commentator; or (2) a roundtable discussion with a chair and participants. Panels and roundtables must have at least three presenters. The committee also welcomes panels using innovative procedures. We request that applicants have no more than two roles at the conference and only one presentation of their own research.

Please read and follow the instructions at: SHAFR 2010 Annual Meeting link at the SHAFR website, http://www.shafr.org.

Although proposals for individual papers will be considered, proposals for complete panels are encouraged and will receive preference. Those seeking to create or complete a panel should consult the “panelists seeking panelists” link at the SHAFR 2010 Annual Meeting website.

Electronic submissions are strongly encouraged, but paper submissions will also be accepted. Please email a copy of your application as a single Word file attachment to Anne Foster and Naoko Shibusawa, program chairs, at: program-chair@shafr.org. If submitting a paper copy of your application, please mark “SHAFR 2010 Proposal” on the front of the envelope, and mail it to: Naoko Shibusawa, History Department, Brown University, 79 Brown St., Providence, RI 02912

Divine Graduate Student Travel Grants
This year SHAFR will offer several Robert A. and Barbara Divine Graduate Student Travel Grants to assist graduate students who present papers at the 2010 conference. The following stipulations apply: 1) no award will exceed $300 per student; 2) priority will be given to graduate students who receive no or limited funds from their home institutions; and 3) expenses will be reimbursed by the SHAFR Business Office upon submission of receipts. The Program Committee will make the decision regarding all awards. A graduate student requesting travel funds must make a request when submitting the paper/panel proposal. Applicants must include another separate abstract in their travel grant application. Funding requests will have no bearing on the committee's decisions on panels, but funds will not be awarded unless the applicant’s panel is accepted by the program committee in a separate decision. Requests must be accompanied by a letter from the graduate advisor confirming the unavailability of departmental funds to cover travel to the conference.

SHAFR Diversity and International Outreach Fellowship Program
This year, SHAFR inaugurates a competition for fellowships that will cover travel and lodging expenses for the 2010 annual meeting. The competition is aimed at scholars whose participation in the annual meeting would add to the diversity of the Society. Preference will be given to persons who have not previously presented at SHAFR annual meetings. The awards are intended for scholars who represent groups historically under-represented at SHAFR meetings, scholars who offer intellectual approaches that may be fruitful to SHAFR but are under- represented at annual meetings, and scholars from outside the United States. "Scholars" includes faculty, graduate students, and independent researchers. To further acquaint the winners with SHAFR, they will also be awarded a one-year membership in the organization, which includes subscriptions to Diplomatic History and Passport. For application instructions, contact diversityprogram@shafr.org. Please send another separate abstract of the individual paper proposal. Funding requests will have no bearing on the committee's decisions on panels, but funds will not be awarded unless the applicant’s panel is accepted by the program committee in a separate decision. Application deadline: December 1, 2009.

CFP: Intellectual Exchange and Networks in Europe, 1500-1660: Approaches from the Humanities and Social Sciences
May 7-8, 2010
A conference hosted by the Early Modern, Renaissance, and Western Mediterranean Workshops of the University of Chicago.

We are pleased to announce an interdisciplinary graduate conference, "Intellectual Exchange and Networks in Europe, 1500-1660: Approaches from the Humanities and Social Sciences," to be held May 7-8, 2010 at the University of Chicago. This conference will create a forum for investigating how ideas moved through Europe in the formative years of 1500 to 1660. We welcome all approaches and interpretations of this topic, including but not limited to the social networks, trade routes, epistolary webs, as well as the multiple forms of literary transmission, by which ideas traveled in Europe from one place to another and from one period of time to another. In order to address the issue of intellectual exchange and networks in its most capacious sense, the conference will draw together the work of graduate students and faculty from across the departmental boundaries of art history, English, history, political science, and the Romance languages. As an interdisciplinary forum about the movement of ideas in the early modern period, this conference will also raise serious questions about the movement of ideas in our own period: How has current work on intellectual exchange divided itself along disciplinary lines? What might be learned by putting into dialogue the various methodologies and understandings that are currently developing in each of these disciplines? Please send an abstract of 250 words proposing a fifteen to twenty-minute paper to: intellectualexchange@gmail.com. Abstracts should be approximately 250 words and included in the body of an e-mail. Deadline extended to: Monday, November 30, 2009

CFP: Divining the Message / Mediating the Divine
April 2-3, 2010
Columbia University Religion Graduate Students' Conference

Whether sacred symbols or sanctioned authorities, intermediaries have been both conduits for and barriers to access to the divine. Mediating objects, forms, rituals, and people have long been central to religious practice and belief. They are conditions of both possibility and impossibility, at one and the same time providing glimpses of the heavens and anchoring us to the earth.

Institutions such as the Catholic Church and the Imamate have at times dictated the ways in which humans commune with the divine. In other places and at other times, charismatic leaders or apprenticed specialists have mediated more directly. Some of these leaders prophetically mediate between a culture's past and its future, and in the example of the archive, between its past and its present sovereignty. At other times, previously religious spheres have undergone near total reinscription, leaving passive forces like evolution and the invisible hand of the economy to dictate what was previously the realm of a more intentional being. The institutions mediating faith in markets and divine faith have changed radically, leaving us to wonder what may persist through their reinscription.

New media technologies have transformed not only how people commune with one another, but also how they communicate with the divine. With the printing press and telephone wires, and with television and the internet, we can now consider whether our message to the divine is best delivered by letter, email, voicemail, or text message. While many still attend brick and mortar churches, build a sukkah in their backyard, or chant at a Shinto shrine, the current moment of technological acceleration has changed the ways in which many people practice religion. Some study Buddhism in the virtual gaming world of Second Life, others visit a satellite campus of Saddleback Church to see Rick Warren's Sunday sermon streamed in from the other side of Orange County, and still others sit on the beach while reading the New International Version of the Bible on their Amazon Kindles. As intermediaries proliferate, and as our relationship to old mediations changes, so do the ways in which we practice religion, imagine the divine, and imagine ourselves.

The 2010 Columbia University Religion Graduate Students' Conference seeks to bring together papers from a wide range of disciplinary, theoretical, historical, and geographical perspectives that examine varying conceptions of mediation, including:

1. The media of mediation (print, TV, internet, cinema, icons, translation, etc.)

2. The institutions of mediation (Church, state, theology, tradition, economy, culture)

3. The people who mediate (the Pope, gurus, pastors, priests, séance mediums, other spiritual leaders, and the spirit possessed)

4. Temporal mediations (prophecy, mourning, melancholy, and trauma, as mediating the past, present, and future)

Presenters from the social sciences and humanities are equally welcome. We also invite visual art proposals exploring the conference's theme to be displayed in the gallery adjoining the panel rooms for the duration of the conference.

Please submit an abstract (prepared for blind review) of no more than 300 words to columbia.religion@gmail.com by December 1, 2009.  Final papers should be 9-12 double-spaced pages in length (presenters will have approximately 20 minutes to speak). Panel submissions are also welcome; for panels of 3 or 4 presenters, please include an abstract of 250 words detailing the common concerns tying the individual presentations together, in addition to the individual paper abstracts.

CFP: Forming and De-forming the Human Body, 23rd Annual Graduate French and Italian Symposium, University of Wisconsin – Madison
April 16 – 17, 2010

The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd. 
-Friedrich Nietzsche

The human body has continued to captivate intellectuals of the arts and sciences throughout history, whether through an aesthetic or physiological study of its structural form and internal mechanisms or in an attempt to comprehend the complexities of the mind that reside within the biological machine. Literature, art, music, film, and storytelling often turn our attention to these ideas of the body, and their inquiries into the physical body and the mind have framed our universal conceptions of health and disease, while also giving rise to myriad variations on the notions of bodily normality and abnormality. The body becomes a receptacle for our non-corporeal collective and individual identities, divisions, and prejudices. Sick or well, beautiful or ugly, powerless or powerful, the body is the site of competing visions that structure our perceptions of its physical form and its philosophical and social signification. While we frequently favor the “normal” and thereby reject the “abnormal”, it is the bodily abnormalities that best explore and question our definitions and interpretations of the body. Reflection on these bodily deviations not only elucidates what we consider to be normal and why, but it also destabilizes conventional distinctions between the typical and the atypical, between conformity and deviancy. The 23rd Annual Symposium of the Graduate Association of French and Italian Students seeks to investigate various representations of the deformed or deviant body in order to explore what constitutes our formulation of health (normality) and disease (abnormality).

We welcome submissions from all applicable disciplines that shed light on the ways in which we can “reform” our general conceptions of the body through the lens of the deviant or otherwise “deformed” body.  

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

The Sick Body:

• Physical illnesses, epidemics, disabilities, doctors and medicine

• Mental illnesses, neuroses, psychoses, the mentally ill as Other, treatment, therapy, the fragmentation of the self

• Medical or societal definitions of the healthy and unhealthy human body

The Ugly Body:

• Aesthetic conceptions of the body in artistic, visual, literary and cinematographic forms

• Physical deformities, monstrosities, the grotesque

• Fragmentation, bodily manipulation or transformation

The Sexual Body:

• Queer studies and the queering of the body, sexuality, transsexuality

• Gender studies, Woman as Other, masculinities and feminities, social or physical gendered roles

• Eroticism, fetishism, masochism

The Powerless Body:

• Crimes against the individual, crimes against humanity, genocide, persecution, destruction of the body

• Politics, authority, regulation of the body

• Effects of colonialism, occupation, wars on the body
  

We invite abstracts in English ranging from 200 – 250 words that relate to or expand upon the topics suggested above.  Papers will be limited to 20 minutes and must be presented in English.  In your abstract, please include name, email address, academic affiliation, and AV requests.  Along with your abstract submission, please suggest the category or categories to which you feel your submission is best suited.

Please address inquiries and abstract submissions to Theresa Pesavento and Tina Petraglia at gafissymposium2010@gmail.com.  Abstracts must be received no later than January 15th, 2010.  For further information, please visit http://frit.lss.wisc.edu and click on the GAFIS link.

CFP: ON NOT LOOKING: Essays on Images and Viewers
Submissions are invited for an edited book with the working title On Not Looking: Essays on Images and Viewers. Contemporary experience presents us with a contradiction: while we are at a historical moment when images have never been so readily available and circulated, we increasingly ”don’t look” at images. The collection of essays will explore the myriad ways that not looking at images — as opposed to not seeing — is manifest in our burgeoning image culture today. Contributions are sought that address practices and representations of “not looking,” “turning away,” and other manifestations of physical and mental distraction from material images.

Our relationship to the glut of images that saturate the world is characterized by an ever-expanding contemporary form of iconoclasm. Again and again, while documentary images are touted as a reliable form of visible evidence, or as commensurate with the every day life they depict — due to their apparent mimeticism and their potential to be seen simultaneous with the event — we don’t trust them, we question them, we continually go back to written words as a way of understanding and confirming what we have seen. This scepticism involves a looking away from the image. Even as the means of production become increasingly available, even as images are exhibited, published, seen and watched everywhere, we are either discouraged to turn away, or we are unable, or unwilling to look at what is pictured before us.

Not looking often comes as a result of privileging the other senses. Thus, we are directed to listen where we might want to look: in museums and art galleries, institutions apparently devoted to the idolatory of images, we are continually coaxed away from looking – we are enticed into following the audio guide, reading the texts on the wall, believing the written catalogue at the bookstore. Our eyes are constantly distracted from the supposed purpose of our visit: to look. Alternatively, looking with the eyes is devalued in the world of virtual reality: touching, hearing, smelling, even tasting challenge visual perception as the measure of our bodily experience of the visual world. In another example, never before have the images that document the modern battlefield been so abundant and readily available — on television, the World Wide Web, Instant Messaging and so on. Yet, again and again these images are censored, prohibited, manipulated and disguised in an effort to quell their power and blind their audience. Like the turn away from the deceptive documentary image as evidence, the press and the powers they represent force us to look elsewhere for the truth.

Despite the wont to “not look,” to look away, to look elsewhere, scholarship in the more traditional disciplines of art history, cinema and media studies, and the relatively recent interdisciplinary fields of visual and image studies have focussed on discussions of “practices of looking” “how we see,” and, for example, the precision of vision in modernity. Within the fields of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and other critical studies, scholarship tends to understand iconoclasm as a form of blindness or metaphysical distraction, not seeing when we look. Artists and imagemakers today, however, continue the preoccupation with the habit of “not looking” “looking away,” “turning elsewhere” in analogue and digital media. On Not Looking will bring the concerns of critics and philosophers together with those of artists and imagemakers: the essays will reinstate the image to its position of primacy in an interrogation of the contemporary tendency to look away. As such, the anthology will contribute to ongoing debates about the politics and aesthetics of looking, and better assess the role of images, and our relationship to them, within contemporary history and culture more generally.

The collection will be divided into a number of sections with essays from different theoretical perspectives that focus on the image, and our relationship to it, as sites of “not looking”. Potential areas to be discussed might include: Politics of institutional exhibition and perception of images (including museums, schools, prisons, and so on); Censored, repressed, and banned images; Transformations to practices of not looking as a result of new media interventions; The image in history and memory; Not looking at images of bodies and cultures on the margins; Religious and cultural prohibitions about looking at certain types of images; Responses to images of trauma; Images in everyday life (eg. Reality TV, the role of the image in travel and tourism, YouTube interventions; advertising, home movies and family photo albums); Embodied vision and visceral imagery (e.g. acts of violence and the mutilated body); Political interventions (including public protest, Photojournalism, ecological imagery, and so on).

Submissions that focus on a variety of material images are welcome. These will include but are not limited to: painting, architecture, film, photography, video, television, museum exhibitions, the World Wide Web, cell phone images and the printed press. Essays that explore contemporary images that follow our habit of not looking, as well as the way older works have been revised and displayed within the contemporary moment are sought. All inquiries, and/or 400-500 word abstract, and current CV can be sent to Frances Guerin: fjguerin@gmail.com by December 15, 2009. Full essays of 5,000-7,500 words will be due September 30, 2010

CFP: Reading Material: Textual and Cultural Objects
University of Wisconsin-Madison Conference in Language and Literature (MADLIT) English Dept. Graduate Student Conference
March 4-6, 2010

The Graduate Student Association at the University of Wisconsin-Madison English Department is pleased to announce the 6th Annual MadLit Conference. This year’s conference, “READING MATERIAL,” engages the intersections between literature and material culture. The rise of material culture studies in the last decade has begun to move us away from questions about how ideology shapes the world and towards a serious consideration of how our material world makes us. Given its roots in the physical world (as opposed to language and discourse), this emergent critical methodology brings several urgent questions to the doorstep of literary studies: What is the role of the material object in the world of the text? How do we apply reading practices to objects? What are the implications of reading texts themselves as objects? And what does a methodology rooted in “things” mean for the future of literary study? While grounded in literary studies, these considerations cannot help but engage fields related to literature, including history, art history, theater, paleography, consumer studies, and anthropology, and
how these fields produce their own forms of “reading” objects. To this end, we hope this conference will invite a discussion of how literary studies is or should be inherently inter-disciplinary.

Keynote Speaker: Elaine Freedgood. Professor of English at New York University, Elaine Freedgood is a scholar of critical theory and Victorian literature and culture. She has been a foundational voice in the study of objects and things. Her 2006 book, The Ideas in Things: Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian Novel, is no less than a standard in the field and has been called “a manifesto for a new way to read fiction.” Dr. Freedgood’s other work includes: Victorian Writing about Risk: Imagining a Safe England in a Dangerous World (Cambridge 2000) and
an edited collection of source material, Factory Production in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford 2003). Her articles have appeared in such journals as Victorian Studies, Novel, and Contemporary Psychoanalysis.

We are currently soliciting proposals for 15-20 min. presentations and three-person panels on any aspect of objects, things, and literature Possible considerations might include:
 What is the importance of distinctions between “objects,” “things,” “material goods,” etc.?
 What are the limits of the “material”?
 How do objects cross or define borders? What are the postcolonial implications of material culture studies?
 What is the materiality of place—of domestic spaces, gothic spaces, etc.?
 Are objects gendered or sexualized?
 Does literature mask or illuminate the material world?
 How does the materiality of the book evolve across periods? How do fields like paleography and book history speak to the relationship between texts and objects?
 Do artifacts, relics, or curiosities mandate their own forms of reading?
 How does drama complicate “thing theory,” given that the object has a presence on the page and the stage?
 Does our changing relationship with materials over time complicate our notions of periodization?
 Do objects produce and/or complicate genre?
 What is the status of the “thing” in the digital age?
 How we bridge the perceived divide between abstract theory and a material world?
 What does it mean to consider a text as a “thing”?
 How does “thing theory” change the way we read literature? And, more broadly, how does “thing theory” help us rethink the process of “reading”?

Please submit a 250-word abstract to UWMadLit@gmail.com by January 10th, 2010. Accepted papers will be announced by January 25th.

CFP: Divining the Message / Mediating the Divine
April 2-3, 2010
Columbia University Religion Graduate Students' Conference

Whether sacred symbols or sanctioned authorities, intermediaries have been both conduits for and barriers to access to the divine. Mediating objects, forms, rituals, and people have long been central to religious practice and belief. They are conditions of both possibility and impossibility, at one and the same time providing glimpses of the heavens and anchoring us to the earth.

Institutions such as the Catholic Church and the Imamate have at times dictated the ways in which humans commune with the divine. In other places and at other times, charismatic leaders or apprenticed specialists have mediated more directly. Some of these leaders prophetically mediate between a culture's past and its future, and in the example of the archive, between its past and its present sovereignty. At other times, previously religious spheres have undergone near total reinscription, leaving passive forces like evolution and the invisible hand of the economy to dictate what was previously the realm of a more intentional being. The institutions mediating faith in markets and divine faith have changed radically, leaving us to wonder what may persist through their reinscription.

New media technologies have transformed not only how people commune with one another, but also how they communicate with the divine. With the printing press and telephone wires, and with television and the internet, we can now consider whether our message to the divine is best delivered by letter, email, voicemail, or text message. While many still attend brick and mortar churches, build a sukkah in their backyard, or chant at a Shinto shrine, the current moment of technological acceleration has changed the ways in which many people practice religion. Some study Buddhism in the virtual gaming world of Second Life, others visit a satellite campus of Saddleback Church to see Rick Warren's Sunday sermon streamed in from the other side of Orange County, and still others sit on the beach while reading the New International Version of the Bible on their Amazon Kindles. As intermediaries proliferate, and as our relationship to old mediations changes, so do the ways in which we practice religion, imagine the divine, and imagine ourselves.

The 2010 Columbia University Religion Graduate Students' Conference seeks to bring together papers from a wide range of disciplinary, theoretical, historical, and geographical perspectives that examine varying conceptions of mediation, including:

1. The media of mediation (print, TV, internet, cinema, icons, translation, etc.)

2. The institutions of mediation (Church, state, theology, tradition, economy, culture)

3. The people who mediate (the Pope, gurus, pastors, priests, séance mediums, other spiritual leaders, and the spirit possessed)

4. Temporal mediations (prophecy, mourning, melancholy, and trauma, as mediating the past, present, and future)

Presenters from the social sciences and humanities are equally welcome. We also invite visual art proposals exploring the conference's theme to be displayed in the gallery adjoining the panel rooms for the duration of the conference.

Please submit an abstract (prepared for blind review) of no more than 300 words to columbia.religion@gmail.com by December 1, 2009.  Final papers should be 9-12 double-spaced pages in length (presenters will have approximately 20 minutes to speak). Panel submissions are also welcome; for panels of 3 or 4 presenters, please include an abstract of 250 words detailing the common concerns tying the individual presentations together, in addition to the individual paper abstracts.

CFP: Let Spirit Speak! Cultural Journeys through the African Diaspora
April 22-24, 2010
The City College of New York
New York, NY

In many traditional African cultures, there is unity in the material and the spiritual, in the seen and unseen. There is no difference between the sacred and the secular within this system of thought: everything is imbued with the spirit of God. Binaries that dominate Western thought (man/woman; mind/body; light/dark; good/evil) do not function in the same way within these cultures, as the emphasis is not on extremes but on balancing these radical differences, on reconciling them.

In this three-day conference, we wish to celebrate the myriad manifestations of life in the languages and literatures, the music and arts of the African Diaspora. We will rejoice in the multiple expressions of life, giving voice and paying homage to the ancestors.

We invite scholars and cultural workers from all areas of arts and humanities: Art, Dance, Drama, English, Ethnic Studies, Film, Languages, Linguistics, Literatures, International Studies, Music, Philosophy, Religion.

We invite paper abstracts and complete panels, workshops, and roundtable proposals on all aspects of the cultural manifestations of the African Diaspora. 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 brief description of the theme as well as abstracts for all speakers. Abstracts should be a minimum of 300 words. We welcome presentations in all of the languages of the African Diaspora in the Americas.

The deadline for abstracts and proposals is December 15, 2009.

Selected papers from the conference will be published as conference proceedings.

Please email abstracts to Dr. Vanessa K. Valdés at: culturaljourneys2010@gmail.com. The conference website is forthcoming.

Travel Grant: The John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture
The John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture, part of the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special
Collections Library at Duke University, announces the availability of travel grants for research travel to our collections.

The John Hope Franklin Research Center seeks to collect, preserve, and promote the use of printed and manuscript materials bearing on the history of Africa and people of African descent.

Our travel grants are for undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and independent scholars conducting research using collections held by the John Hope Franklin Research Center. Grant money may be used for travel, photocopying, and living expenses while pursuing research at the Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library. Applicants must live outside of a 50-mile radius from Durham, NC. The maximum award per applicant is $1,000.

The deadline for application is January 29, 2010. Recipients will be announced in March 2010. For more information and to download a copy of the application form, please visit: http://library.duke.edu/specialcollections/services/grants/application.html

Applicants are encouraged to contact the Franklin Center's research services intern before submitting:
David McIvor
franklin-collection@duke.edu
http://library.duke.edu/specialcollections/franklin/index.html

CFP: June Edition of the Journal of Pan African Studies (JPAS)
The Journal of Pan African Studies (www.jpanafrican.com) invites papers for a June 2010 edition on African-centered/Africana Psychology. Africana Psychology critically investigates and interrogates the life-worlds of people of African descent from an African-centered perspective. This special edition seeks articles that address the major issues of identity, education, health, clinical/counseling, criminal justice, sexuality/gender, methodology, racism/oppression, religion/spirituality and intellectual history.

Suggested topics include (but are not limited to) the following:
The rationale for African-centered Psychology
Definitions and conceptual models/orientations in African-centered Psychology
History of the development of African-centered Psychology
African-centered Psychology in literature
The relationship between African spirituality/philosophy and African-centered Psychology
The relationship between history and cultural personality
Psychological intervention and treatment with Black patients
Media images and Africana identity
Intelligence testing with Black populations
Sexuality and sexism in Africana communities
The training of Black psychologists
The social viability of African-centered Psychology

We also welcome book reviews of recent and new publications within the domain of African-centered/Africana Psychology.

The selection criteria will involve: relevance to theme, clarity of paper, intellectual significance, and originality. Participants must send a 50 word abstract by February 1, 2010 and their paper by April 1, 2010 (the paper and abstract must include participant name, affiliation, paper title, and e-mail address) to the Guest Editor. The paper should not exceed 25 pages via MS word. Notification of acceptance will be provided at least 30 days after receipt of abstract/paper.

Contact:
DeReef F. Jamison, Guest Editor
Email:  jamisond@savannahstate.edu

For more information on the Journal of Pan African Studies, visit our website at: www.jpanafrican.com

CFP: 2010 SLA Graduate Student Symposium “Who Are We?: SLA in a Global Society”
Friday, April 16 & Saturday, April 17, 2010 Memorial Union, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Co-sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Iowa

The field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) continues to develop by drawing on theory and research from both its founding fields and newly contributing areas of study. This wide variety of perspectives contributes to a flow of ideas across disciplinary, geographical, and linguistic boundaries, describing a myriad of linguistic situations, from lingua franca communication to language maintenance, acquisition, and loss. From this multi-faceted research base SLA addresses a diverse range of linguistic and social ideas relevant to multilingual classroom, community, and workplace settings and explores a view of identity, both of researcher and researched, as fluid, multiple and increasingly trans-national and transcultural.

We seek proposals from graduate students of their research that reflects the interdisciplinary and globally expanding nature of the field of SLA. The graduate students at the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin–Madison have formed a partnership to host this annual conference, with organization and hosting of the conference alternating between the universities. Our purpose is to provide an opportunity for graduate students in SLA and related disciplines to present their work and meet distinguished researchers in their field.

Keynote Speaker
Bonny Norton (University of British Columbia): http://www.lerc.educ.ubc.ca/fac/norton/

Invited Speakers from the Sponsoring Institutions
Richard Young (UW-Madison): http://www.english.wisc.edu/rfyoung/
Michael Everson (U of Iowa): http://www.education.uiowa.edu/people/facstaffs/meverson.htm

A panel of professors and graduate students from the University of Iowa and the UW–Madison will address how identity in SLA work is explored through different methodologies, discussing the variety of ways identity can be investigated and unraveled within SLA research.

We invite proposals for papers and posters from graduate students at any level of graduate study. Paper presentations will be 20 minutes followed by a 10-minute discussion period. Posters will be displayed on Saturday, April 17. Poster presenters will be expected to stand by their posters to discuss their work during a 1-hour session.

Areas of particular interest include, but are not limited to, those related to the symposium theme and/or any of the following areas:
• Formal approaches to language learning
• Generative second language acquisition (syntax, phonology, semantics)
• Heritage language acquisition
• Identity and language learning
• Language testing and assessment
• Learner corpora and SLA
• Second and foreign language pedagogy
• Second and foreign language policy
• Second language analysis and use
• Second language and cultural socialization
• Second language learning and technology
• Second language pragmatics
• Second language processes and learning
• Socio-cultural approaches to language learning

Please visit http://www.sla.wisc.edu/content/current_students/2010_symposium.htm to access an electronic copy of this call and an abstract submission form. The deadline to submit abstracts by December 30, 2009 to: slagrads@languageinstitute.wisc.edu Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 29, 2010. Please use the online form for all submissions. You will be asked to provide the following information: presenter name(s), affiliations, mailing addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers, AV needs, and summary (50 words), title, and abstract (300 words) of the presentation. You will also be asked to indicate if you would like your abstract considered for presentation as a paper or as a poster. You may also indicate whether or not you would like your abstract to be considered for presentation as a poster, if it is not selected for a paper presentation. Evaluation of Proposals: Reviewers will take into consideration these criteria when evaluating proposals: I. Choice and clarity of topic, perspective, and/or method II. Quality of research (literature, methods, and conclusions) III. Contribution to field, originality IV. Relevance to current issues in SLA Please contact slagrads@languageinstitute.wisc.edu with questions.

UW-Madison Doctoral Program in SLA: www.sla.wisc.edu
UW-Madison Language Institute: www.languageinstitute.wisc.edu
University of Iowa FLARE: http://international.uiowa.edu/centers/flare/
Margaret Merrill merrill2@wisc.edu Carolina Bernales bernales@wisc.edu Symposium Co-chairs

CFP: POPULAR MUSIC AND SOCIETY Special Issue: Michael Jackson: Musical Subjectivities
Edited by Susan Fast and Stan Hawkins

Submissions are invited for a special edition of Popular Music and Society that examines constructions of subjectivity in Michael Jackson's
music, with a focus on gender, sexuality, age, disability, and race. Contributors are invited to address ways in which Jackson's vocality,
grooves, rhythmic invention, songwriting, conformity with and/or irreconcilability of generic categories, particular songs, song categories (such as ballads) or albums, record production, use of technology, and live or mediated performance work to produce his own, often spectacularized, subjectivities, as well as those of his listeners.  We are interested in drawing together articles that engage in an interdisciplinary manner the myriad ways in which subjectivity is constructed in Jackson's work: narratives of desire, healing, redemption, anger, violence, celebrity; engagement with world politics, charity; intergenerational relationships; the spectacular body in performance; illness as it impacted his music and performance; freakishness/the fantastic; challenges to hegemonic constructions of race, masculinity, sexuality, gender--to name only a few possibilities.

Although we welcome contributions that employ a broad range of methodologies, including the development of new methodologies for the
analysis of popular music, we intend that these essays address musical sound and sound related to text (lyrics), image(s), and dance directly.
While the complexity, ambiguity, and irreconcilability of Jackson's subjectivity/ies have been covered exhaustively, mainly by the mass media, only a few scholarly essays have made significant inroads to understanding these phenomena; moreover, none of these has addressed
musical sound in detail.  We therefore see the need for rigorous scholarship into Jackson's creative output, with specific emphasis on
musical sound, the place where he, himself, arguably commented most explicitly upon the matters referred to above.  Our vision is that this
issue will include essays that range over Jackson's long career, from his time with the Jackson 5 through his last studio album, Invincible,
and final live performances, perhaps including the forthcoming film documenting preparation for his This Is It tour.

Essays of 6,000-8,000 words are due by September 2010.  Essays will be peer-reviewed.  Inquiries regarding potential essay topics and their
suitability for inclusion are welcome.  Please include your professional/academic affiliations, a postal address, and preferred email contact with your essay; for purposes of blind peer-review, please do not include your name within the body of the essay.

Please address all communications to: Susan Fast (McMaster University, Canada) fastfs@mcmaster.ca or Stan Hawkins (University of Oslo)
e.s.hawkins@imv.uio.no

CFP: THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA GRADUATE ART HISTORY SOCIETY 25th Annual Symposium: Art & Text
The School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa is seeking papers to be presented at our 25th Annual Art History Graduate Student Symposium on Friday and Saturday, April 9th and 10th, 2010. The topic, Art and Text, is deliberately broad, and graduate students are encouraged to submit proposals exploring art that incorporates or engages with text across a range of possibilities. Subjects might include
illuminated manuscripts; non-figural Islamic art; art reflecting the writings of such authors as Ovid, Dante, and Milton, among many others; the Bible and apocrypha; Asian art; collage; graphic design as fine art; and such artists as William Blake, Francisco de Goya, and Kurt Schwitters, for whom the written word was often an integral part of the images they created. Papers should be analytical rather than descriptive, and presentations should be the standard 20 to 25 minutes in length. Students selected as speakers will be guests of the Art History Society at the keynote dinner, and will receive a modest honorarium toward housing. Further information will be provided upon acceptance. Accepted participants will be expected to submit the final draft of the paper four weeks prior to the symposium. Keynote speaker to be announced.
Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words, along with a Curriculum Vitæ and cover letter, to Wendy Bellew at: wendy-bellew@uiowa.edu.

CFP: New Electronic Journal: Islamic Africa
Islamic Africa is a new peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary journal published online by Northwestern University Press in collaboration with
the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa (ISITA) at the Program of African Studies of Northwestern University. Incorporating
the journal Sudanic Africa and retaining its focus on historical sources, bibliographies, and methodology, Islamic Africa covers the
field of Islam in Africa broadly understood to include the social sciences and humanities. The new journal seeks to promote the scholarly
interaction among Africa-based scholars and those located institutionally outside the continent. The first issue will appear in Spring 2010.

Islamic Africa invites scholars to submit essays, or short pieces, notices, and reports on research in progress to be considered for
publication. Such submissions should make original contributions to knowledge. The material must not have been previously published, or be
currently under review elsewhere. Submissions are welcome from any discipline in the social sciences and the humanities; the geographic
focus includes the entire African continent, as well as the adjacent islands and the diaspora.

Submissions should be sent electronically in both Microsoft Word and PDF formats to: Gianna Mosser, Managing Editor, Islamic Africa,
islamicafrica@northwestern.edu.

CFP: Hemisphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas, Volume III
Deadline for Submissions: January 16, 2010

Hemisphere: Visual Cutures of the Americas is an annual publication produced by graduate students affiliated with the Department of Art and Art History at the University of New Mexico. Hemisphere provides graduate students the opportunity to publish articles, recent exhibition and book reviews, and interviews pertaining to all aspects and time periods of the visual and material cultures of North, Central, South America, the Caribbean and related world contexts.

We seek completed 20-30 page papers from advanced Ph.D. students, and 5-10 page reviews and interviews from M.A. and Ph.D. students, for publication in the peer-reviewed Volume III of Hemisphere. We accept submissions written in English or Spanish. Topics of past articles include: the commemoration of death and celebration of life at the Temple of the Inscriptions, C.E. 683, Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico; civic architecture and colonial social formation in 16th century Santo Domingo, Hispaniola; the construction of Brasilidade, or a notion of "Brazilness," at the 1939 New York World's Fair; Cantinflas' subversion of hegemonic structures through his performances in Mexican cinema; memory and exile in Abelardo Morell's contemporary camera obscura photographs of Havana; and Deborah Bright's challenge to the national narrative of the United States through her photographs of Plymouth Rock and stone walls in New England.

Please send a single printed hardcopy of your submission, as well as a digitized copy on a disk to the Editorial Committee by January 16, 2010. Notifications will be made in March. Submissions made via e-mail will not be considered. For formatting instructions, see: http://www.unm.edu/~artdept2/graduate_programs/Hemisphere_submission.html. Each submission should be in Chicago style format and must be accompanied by a cover letter that prominently notes the title of the essay, the field of study to which it pertains, as well as a curriculum vitae that includes the author's status (i.e. Ph.D. student or Ph.D. candidate), department, and institution name and location. Journal contributors receive 5 complimentary copies. Additionally, authors of 20-30 page papers published in Hemisphere will be invited to participate in a symposium in the Fall of 2010 at the University of New Mexico, where they will present their essay.

Please submit completed papers, reviews, and interviews to: Hemisphere The University of New Mexico Department of Art and Art History MSC04 2560 1 University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001Please direct any questions or inquiries to hmsphr@unm.edu. Past volumes of Hemisphere are archived through D-Space at: https://repository.unm.edu/dspace/handle/1928/7002/browse-title.

CFP: INTERIORS: DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE, CULTURE 
Berg Publishers are pleased to announce the launch of a new academic journal, Interiors: Design, Architecture, Culture in 2010. The editors, Anne Massey, (MIRC, Kingston University) and John Turpin (Washington State University) welcome contributions that consider the spaces and places within built structures. Interiors: Design, Architecture, Culture willbring together the best critical work on the analysis of all types of spaces. Whether homes, offices, shopping malls, schools, hospitals, churches and restaurants, interiors are all embedded with meaning, both consciously and subconsciously, and evince particular, multi-sensory and psychological responses. The Journal will investigate the complexities of the interior environment's history, orchestration and composition, and its impact on the inhabitant from a trans-disciplinary perspective.  

In its exploration of the interior environment, Interiors aims to challenge divisions between theory and practice, and seeks to be a place of inspiration and information for practitioners, historians and theorists of the interior. There are no limits in terms of geography or chronology. The content of the Journal is relevant not only to the design disciplines, but also those of anthropology; art and design history; cultural studies; film studies; gender studies; geography; material culture; sexuality studies and visual culture.  

We are seeking articles that reflect the latest research on the interior from historians, practitioners and theorists. Principal articles of 5,000 to 7,000 words, including notes and references, with 4-8 illustrations are invited, and should be sent as an attachment to interiors@bergpublishers.com by 4th January 2010. Further details of the Journal, including Notes For Contributors, are available on www.bergjournals.com/interiors. If you have any queries about the Journal or about submitting an article, please contact us on the above email address.  

CFP: Revolutions and Heterotopias: Journal of Transnational American Studies Special Forum
Guest Editors David Sartorius (University of Maryland), Lessie Jo Frazier (Indiana University), & Micol Seigel (Indiana University)

Given the anniversaries of the 1959 Cuban and 1979 Nicaraguan revolutions, the centennial of Mexico?s 1910 Revolution and the bicentennial of its independence, the years 2009-2010 are an especially propitious time to reflect critically on the significance of revolutions and heterotopias in the Americas.  In acknowledgement of these multiple revolutionary anniversaries to be celebrated in the years 2009-2010, this special forum will offer reflections on revolutions in the Americas, particularly the political imaginaries that inspired them and that they simultaneously unleashed and repressed.  Revolutionary imaginations have not limited themselves to the ?no place? of utopia, but have issued resolutely pragmatic calls for ?other? (hetero-) ?spaces? (-topias) in culture and politics. Heterotopias lie within the realm of possibility, while still the purview of great hope.  They help to ground the revolutionary theory they serve and inspire, preserving it from deracination.

Papers submitted to this collection might treat the Cuban, Nicaraguan, or Mexican revolutions, but they need not be limited to either the twentieth century or to political upheavals.  The editors welcome work on less state-centered events, movements, practices, and ideals that have imagined or generated heterotopias.  Submitted papers could also offer wide-ranging discussions about revolutions, literal or figurative, that have been and continue to be carried out by historically marginalized subjects ? women, indigenous peoples, queers, and migratory and diasporic subjects ? and about the ways in which space and place have helped to configure these revolutions, from the national to the transnational and across the range of public to private.

By juxtaposing these historical, geographic, and thematic engagements, the editors seek to generate dialogue about radicalism in, and radical
difference across, the Americas?epistemological and pedagogical revolutions, sea changes in ways of knowing and administering knowledge (for example, through particular archival practices), chasms between theoretical concerns in Latin America vis à vis the United States.  Replacing a conventional Latin American Studies approach with a hemispheric one, we offer scholars an opportunity to reframe these questions.  The ?Americas? focus, still aimed at a particular part of the world, does not entirely resolve critiques of area studies that have productively informed transnational American Studies and other transnational scholarship, but it highlights the shifting frame of analysis.  We welcome submissions that take up the very question of frames?submissions that might, in the case of revolutionary processes, address the tensions between those contained within (and directed against) national states and those that aspire to global scope.

Submissions should not exceed 8,000 words, must follow the Chicago Manual of Style, and include an abstract (not to exceed 250 words). All manuscripts are submitted electronically, and we prefer DOC or RTF files (although PDF files are allowed if all fonts are embedded and they are created using Adobe's PDF Distiller instead of PDF Writer).  Please email submissions to frazierl@indiana.edu.  Submissions will be peer-reviewed and are due November 30, 2009.

CFP: "Horizons & Horizontality" 2010 Graduate Student Symposium, Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Keynote address: Jennifer Roberts, Professor, History of Art & Architecture, Harvard University

“Contemplation of the sky is the grace and curse of humanity." -Aby Warburg

If a horizon is "the boundary-line of that part of the earth's surface visible from a given point of view; the line at which the earth and sky appear to meet" (OED), then it is by definition at once inherently visual and inherently positional: the horizon depends on the viewer's perspective. And just as the horizon demarcates the limits of what we can see, so the term has come to describe the limits of what we can know.

Erwin Panofsky implied a direct relationship between visual and epistemological horizons when he linked the Renaissance invention of linear perspective to the era’s awareness of its historical distance from classical antiquity. While Freud associated the human's evolution to a vertical posture with the primacy of the visual faculty, Georges Bataille described sight as parallel to the “horizontal axis” of animal life. From the horizontal composition of processions in Greek and Roman sculpture to Albrecht Dürer’s depiction of a draftsman rendering a reclining nude through a perspective grid to Jackson Pollock dripping paint onto a horizontal canvas, artistic practice has concerned itself with the connection between vision, distance, and the subject's relation to the horizontal plane.

This conference seeks to explore the roles played by horizons and horizontality—both literal and figurative—in the visual arts and the writing of their histories. Submissions are invited to interpret the terms “horizons” and “horizontality” concretely or broadly. Papers might consider:

assembly lines; arenas; chronology and duration; distance; entropy; exploration, territory, and frontiers; earth and cosmos; exchange; false (or real) horizons; flatness; floors, friezes and lintels; the gendering of horizontality; les grandes horizontales; gravity; horizontal architecture; horizontal scrolls; horizon lines; the informe; lateral social relations; limits of perception; leveling and destruction; panorama; parallax; peripheries; perspective; the politics of horizontality; processions; sarcophagi; strata and excavation; symmetry; syntax; skyline; the terrestrial and the extraterrestrial; urban or suburban sprawl; vanishing points.

We welcome submissions from graduate students in all areas of art history, archaeology, architecture and related disciplines. Email abstract and CV to Tessa Paneth-Pollak and Frances Jacobus-Parker at gradsymp@princeton.edu by Monday, January 11, 2010. Abstracts should not exceed 300 words and final papers should not exceed 20 minutes in length. Selected speakers will be notified by February 1, 2010.

CAAS 2010 CONFERENCE: "AFRICA MATTERS": Celebrating 40 years of the Canadian Association of African Studies
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
5-7 May 2010

In celebration of its 40th anniversary, the Canadian Association of African Studies (CAAS) extends a special welcome to scholars working
on all aspects of African studies at its next annual conference in Ottawa on May 5-7, 2010.  The Institute of African Studies at Carleton University is hosting the conference with support from the African Studies Research Laboratory at the University of Ottawa.  The Ottawa area, of course, is bilingual. Our aim is to attract both Anglophone and francophone scholars from Canada as well as an international group of specialists and, in so doing, facilitate discussion and dialogue across disciplines and among scholars based in both the North and South. This Call for Papers intends to provide a forum for addressing and presenting academic research and policy proposals that examine the histories, debates, policy issues, and current practices related to African matters.

CAAS contributes expertise, research, and informed debate concerning a wide range of African "matter" related to sociocultural issues, the
arts, political economy, the environment and transnationalism, among others.  Since 1970, CAAS has demonstrated how African issues matter
to a wide range of Canadian and international publics in academic, policy-making, programming, and many other circles.  Although the
interest of these different publics in African matters has waxed and waned over time, the expanding recognition of African contexts and
initiatives to a growing range of transnational practices (from humanitarianism to peace-building; markets to social movements; climate change to food security; religious dynamism to health and education policies; sports to music and cinema; migration and diasporas to the forging of the Atlantic world) means that the continent is becoming more prominent in the attention, imagination, and actions of more and more publics.

Beyond the growing interest in Africa in Canada, however, this conference welcomes investigation and discussion on the vast array of other topics of interest in African Studies.  For example, Africa Matters provides participants with the opportunity for sharing research and debate concerning the study of issues related to Africa and African diaspora from events as wide-reaching as the slave-trade, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and current conflicts to the minutiae of everyday life, such as schooling practices, religiosity, and media consumption, etc.. We encourage the submission of research papers in English or French in these and other areas.

Closing date for submitting paper and panel abstracts is:  January 31, 2010

Conference Fees:
oRegular Scholars: $200
oScholars coming from Africa: $100
oStudents: $100

We hope to have the on-line payment option available by December.

For further information about the conference and CFP, please see the CAAS website: http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~caas/en/2010call_for_papers.htm

For information on submitting paper and panel abstracts (Form A), registration (Form B) and Graduate Student Financial Assistance (Form
C), click on 'forms' to the left. If you have any questions concerning abstracts, registration, or payments, please contact caas@ualberta.ca

If you require other information concerning the conference, please contact caas2010carleton@gmail.com

Accommodations:  Information about registering for accommodations in Ottawa will be posted on the CAAS website as soon as it becomes
available.

CFP: American Studies Association of Turkey 34th International American Studies Conference: The Art of Language: Cultural Expressions in American Studies
November 3–5, 2010 Alanya, Turkey

Confirmed Speakers:
Shirley Geok-Lin Lim
Cherrie Moraga
Celia Herrera Rodriguez

According to American poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Thought is the blossom; language the bud; and action the fruit behind it.” Without language in all of its forms—oral, written, visual, and symbolic—there would be no way to translate thoughts into political action or personal expression. In many branches of American Studies, language itself has become a form of art—the vehicle through which those in the mainstream and in the margins have communicated their histories, cultures and visions of the future. Socially-constructed and thus almost always political in nature, language not only allows individuals to develop an understanding of their environment(s), but also permits them to engage in the shaping of their own landscapes.

Language is thus intrinsic to the expression of culture. Not only does it convey values, beliefs and customs, but it also has an important social function in that it fosters sentiments of collective identity and solidarity. It is the means through which culture and its traditions are preserved and transferred from generation to generation. Consequently, as languages disappear, cultures, and their numerous layers of representation, also wither away and die, for gone are the mechanisms that translate thought into experience. Conversely, language also has the power to produce and unite, serving as the currency for cross-cultural exchange, the adaptation of new rites and rituals, and the transformation of individuals into global citizens.

The American Studies Association of Turkey invites proposals that consider the art of language as a cultural expression, broadly conceived. We particularly encourage abstracts which incorporate transdisciplinary explorations of the subject, and welcome submissions from any branch of American Studies. Possible themes include, but are not limited to:
• Music as a language of cultural expression
• Indigenous languages and cultures/language revitalization
• Multilingualism/multiculturalism
• The politics of language and culture
• Trans or intercultural languages
• English as the global language/“American” as the global culture?
• Cultural expression in speech behavior
• Cultural outcomes/products of language (hybridity, creolization, metissage, mestizaje)
• The manipulation of language for cultural/political purposes
• Race, language and culture
• Semiotics/semantics/sign language
• Visual language/visual culture/aesthetics
• The visual word (comic books/graphic novels/political cartoons)
• Art, language and culture
• Literature and cultural expression
• Food and clothing as cultural expressions
• Ecolinguistics
• Performance as a language of cultural expression
• Oral traditions (griots, storytelling, folktales, street poetry) as cultural expressions
• Domestic arts (quilting, weaving, pottery, and needlework) as cultural expressions
• Language and American identity
• The body as a language of cultural expression
• Self-writing (travel writing, journals, diaries, and memoirs) as cultural expressions
• Translation/interpretation/adaptation of language
• Language as cultural resistance/subversion
• Design/architecture as languages of cultural expression
• Artificial languages/constructed languages/technolanguages
• Pedagogical applications of language and culture
• The limits of language, especially for cultural expression

The time allowance for all presentations is 20 minutes. An additional 10 minutes will be provided for discussion. Proposals for papers, panels, performances, exhibits, and other modes of creative expression should be sent to Tanfer Emin Tunc (asat2007@gmail.com) and should consist of a 250–300 word abstract in English, as well as a 1–2 paragraph biographical description for each participant. • Deadline for submission of proposals: April 30, 2010 • Notification for acceptance of proposals: August 1, 2010 More information will be posted on our website as it becomes available: http://simplifyurl.com/4b0 In Cooperation with the Embassy of the United States and the City of Alanya

CFP Issue #67 of The Velvet Light Trap: Seeing Race: Our Enduring Dilemma
"You lie!" Rep. Joe Wilson shouted during President Barack Obama's speech on health care reform in the halls of Congress. Media pundits were quick to point out that the 19th century was the last occasion of such an egregious breach of protocol took place in Congress. Members of both Houses urged the Republican congressman from South Carolina to apologize for his misconduct--and he did. Soon after, though, the discourse shifted to the reasons for Wilson's outburst. The factor of race became one major point in attributing blame, but that fire was never allowed to flame because of the overwhelmingly hegemonic ideology of colorblindness that currently saturates our culture. This same story could be told in relation to the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the pop culture firestorm that singed Isaiah Washington and the cast of Grey's Anatomy, or the discourses surrounding First Lady Michelle Obama's hair. The notion that we cannot talk about race unless it is specifically and clearly identified as such in media and culture-at-large is as implicitly understood as is the notion of "one nation under God"--and it is just as powerful. And yet, although we claim to be blind to the markers of external and cultural difference, we always "see" race.

Issue #67 of The Velvet Light Trap will explore all the varied ways that we "see" race in television, film and new media. While the editors maintain a broad definition of "seeing race," special consideration will be given toward articles that interrogate the nexus of racial visibility as a sociocultural fact and/or color blindness as an ideological practice. Whether papers approach seeing race as a discursive category, a commercial commodity, and/or an object of consumption, the editors anticipate submissions that connect these strategies to the historical, industrial, political, and cultural factors that underpin a society's values.

Possible Topics include, but are not limited to:
Seeing Race in War
Spectacle
Production Cultures
Race and Genre
Race in Political Media
Race and Gender Intersectionality in Media

Papers should be between 6,000 and 7,500 words (approximately 20-25 pages double-spaced), in MLA style with a cover page including the writer's name and contact information. Please send one copy of the paper (including a one-page abstract with each copy) and one electronic copy saved as a Word .doc file in a format suitable to be sent to a reader anonymously. The journal's Editorial Advisory Board will referee all submissions. For more information or questions, contact Andrew Scahill at adscahill_at_mail.utexas.edu. Hard copy submissions are due January 30, 2010, and should be sent to: The Velvet Light Trap, c/o The Department of Radio-Television-Film, University of Texas at Austin, CMA 6.118, Mail Code A0800, Austin, TX, 78712 The electronic copy submission is also due on January 30, 2010 and should be sent to Andrew Scahill at adscahill@mail.utexas.edu.

The Velvet Light Trap is an academic, peer-reviewed journal of film and television studies. Graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Texas-Austin alternately coordinate issues. The Editorial Advisory Board includes such notable scholars as Charlie Keil, Dan Marcus, David Desser, David Foster, Michele Malach, Joe McElhaney, Beretta Smith-Shomade, Jason Mittell, Malcolm Turvey, James Morrison, Tara McPherson, Steve Neale, Aswin Punathambekar, Peter Bloom, Sean Griffin, and Michael Williams.

CFP: Transverse, a Journal of Comparative Literature
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.  (Voltaire)
The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.  (Walt Whitman)

Transverse, the graduate journal of the University of Toronto’s Centre for Comparative Literature, welcomes academic papers, literary
reviews, creative writing, and art on the topic of Censorship. The journal will be published online in the spring of 2010 at
chass.utoronto.ca/complitstudents/transverse

For as long as people have been speaking and writing, there have been authorities vested with the power to determine what could be spoken
and by whom. The censor was an officer of Rome who, from the 4th century BC, was responsible for the honourable task of upholding good
governance. Although censorship was for the Romans a positive thing in that it guaranteed the success of the state, the connotations of
censorship today are, at least in the West, undeniably negative. What has censorship meant at different historical moments? What is the
status of censorship today? How has it evolved? In order to mark Transverse’s shift to a web-based journal, we are devoting this issue
to exploring all issues related to censorship, a topic whose dimensions are complicated by the rapid transformation of communication technology.

 Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

 Ancient Censorship
           Early Roman conceptions of censorship
           The death of Socrates
           Censorship in ancient Greek drama
Early Modern Censorship
           Milton’s Areopagitica
Dramatic versus print censorship in Elizabethan and Jacobean England
Ancien Regime permission and privilege
           Women and self/familial/societal censorship
           Government versus inquisition censorship in Golden Age
Spain and the evolution
of censorship in Spain from 1558-1631
           Censorship and Conquest of the New World
Parody, satire, irony: rhetoric and censorship
Letters and the Art of the Unsaid
Nineteenth-Century Censorship
           Sexology and Censorship
           Imagined Communities and Censorship
           Revolution and Censorship
           New World Independence, Birth of Nations, Censors
Twentieth-Century Censorship
           McCarthyism
           Censorship in the USSR, Cuba
           Censorship under fascism/totalitarian regimes
           Feminism and censorship
           Banned books
Contemporary Censorship
           Censorship and Queer studies
           Censorship and money or social status
           Literary representations of censorship
Censorship and surveillance
                       Is the Google hegemony a form of censorship?
                       Censorship in the age of Wikipedia, open
source software and media,
blogs, Facebook…
           Is the prohibitive pricing of books and other media a form
of censorship?
           Artistic responses to censorship
Etc.

Guidelines:

Critical essays should be between 3000 and 4000 words, in Microsoft Word, MLA format with appropriate citations. Literary reviews can be on any work relating to the topic. We are looking for submissions 500-800 words in length, with publication information attached.
Creative writings – we accept poems and short stories (1500 word max.) Art – please submit in Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat (pdf) format.

Contributors must be graduate students at the time of submission. Please direct all documents and inquiries totransversejournal@gmail.com

Deadline: March 1, 2010

CFP: The 2010 Annual Conference of the Middle Atlantic American Studies Association
Theme: Spaces: Personal, Cultural, Urban

Date: March 19-20, 2010
Venue: La Salle University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The host of MAASA's 2010 conference will be La Salle University.  On the La Salle campus, one finds a cultural site of interest to all students of American culture: Belfield, the one-time estate of Charles Willson Peale.  As a painter, civic leader, inventor, educator, taxidermist, museum curator, military commander, paleontologist, naturalist, and landscape gardener, Peale embodied the interdisciplinary ideal that continues to shape the field of American Studies.  Fittingly, it is the spirit of Peale that inspires this conference theme.  In the American Studies tradition, we seek interdisciplinary papers that explore multiple and varied concepts of space: transnational or intercultural spaces; public spaces; intellectual spaces; imaginary or fantastical landscapes; rural, suburban, and urban America; retail and shopping venues; religious spaces; city planning and architecture; artistic spaces; ethnic spaces; tourism; spaces shaped by memory and nostalgia; and spaces of food creation and consumption.  Undergraduates interested in presenting their work in the Undergraduate Roundtable should select a mentor and then contact Dr. Francis J. Ryan (ryan@lasalle.edu).  Accepted graduate students will be encouraged to submit their work electronically several weeks prior to the conference so as to be considered for our award-Most Outstanding Graduate Paper.

Deadline for Proposals is January 15, 2010.  Please send a one-page abstract and one-page CV to John R. Haddad either electronically (jrh36@psu.edu ) or by
mail:

John Haddad
American Studies
School of Humanities
Penn State Harrisburg University
777 West Harrisburg Pike
Middletown, PA 17057

 We welcome submissions from graduate students in all disciplines. Papers should be related to East Asia, Inner Asia, Singapore, or Vietnam. We will consider submissions of individual papers and panel proposals.

Eligibility and Application Guidelines:
1.  Applicants must be currently enrolled in a program of graduate study ("postgraduate" in British degree classification systems)
2.  Papers must be related to East Asia, Inner Asia, Singapore, and Vietnam. 
3.  Abstracts must be no longer than 250 words, submitted exactly as directed on the HEAS Conference website
4.  Deadline for abstract submission:  November 25, 2009 (Wednesday)
5.  Detailed instructions and more information are available on our website: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~heas/conference/
 
Inquiries:
For general conference inquiries, please contact: heasconference@gmail.com 
For abstract submission inquiries, please contact: heas.abstracts@gmail.com