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New Seminar: MVSA SEMINAR: The Transatlantic Periodical Press (April 8-10, 2016)

full name / name of organization:
Midwest Victorian Studies Association
contact email:
phegleyj@umkc.edu

MVSA SEMINAR: The Transatlantic Periodical Press
Seminar Leader: Jennifer Phegley, Department of English, University of Missouri – Kansas City

Midwest Victorian Studies Association (MVSA) 2016
Conference Topic: Victorian News: Print Culture & The Periodical Press

April 8-10, University of Missouri, Columbia

Recent studies of nineteenth-century transatlantic culture have overturned the standard narrative of Anglo-American literary relations that cast British literature as original, dominant, or colonizing and American literature as derivative, subservient, or rebellious. As Paul Giles points out in Transatlantic Insurrections, transatlantic culture is often characterized by the “more discomfiting figures of mirroring and twinning” indicative of two cultures developing in parallel rather than in opposition to each other. The conception of an American literature borne primarily out of insurgence against British cultural production becomes even more tenuous when we abandon our focus on authorial and national identities to examine the development of the periodical press, which frequently involved collaboration, imitation, homage, borrowing, copying, repurposing, and reprinting of authors, formats, images, serials, poems, and articles on both sides of the Atlantic. In The Culture of Reprinting in America, Meredith McGill argues that our author-centered nationalist frameworks have, until recently, prevented us from examining the importance of the ways in which “foreign literature is repackaged and redeployed” on both sides of the Atlantic. While American editors, publishers, and readers engaged with cheap reproductions of British authors and texts, the more established and centralized British publishing system was also seeking new writers, periodical genres, and markets in the United States.

This seminar welcomes scholars interested the interdependence of the two national literary cultures or the ways in which British and American authors, editors, and publishers knowingly collaborated or covertly adapted each other’s work. Possible topics include but are not limited to the publication and reception of British writers in the United States and American writers in Great Britain; novel serialization, poetry publishing, and illustration in periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic; the international exchange of news and information through the press; the creation and imitation of magazine formats; and reader responses to transatlantic print culture.

Participants in MVSA seminars will write 5-7 page papers that will be pre-circulated to the other participants prior to the conference. During the seminars, the seminar leader and participants will identify important points of intersection and divergence among the papers and identify future areas of inquiry and collaboration. The seminar format allows a larger number of scholars to participate in MVSA and to seek financial support from their respective institutions to attend the conference and discuss a shared area of scholarly interest. Seminars are limited to 12 participants.

Send a 300-word abstract and 1-page vita (both as MWord documents) by October 15, 2015, to Jennifer Phegley at phegleyj@umkc.edu.

For more information, please visit www.midwestvictorian.org

The Midwest Victorian Studies Association is an interdisciplinary organization welcoming scholars from all disciplines who share an interest in nineteenth-century British history, literature, and culture.

Call for Monographs 2015: Book Series on East‐West Cultural Encounters in Literature & Cultural Studies

full name / name of organization:
National Taiwan University Press
contact email:
lucr0110@gmail.com

This Series seeks scholarly works on intercultural encounters in literature, particularly East‐West precolonial, colonial, or postcolonial contacts that expose, problematize, or re‐create the sense of locality, historicity, and subjectivity. The Series especially welcomes monographs written in English or other languages translated into English. Conference volumes or edited volumes by multiple authors will not be considered at this time. Volumes of essays with a thematic focus written by a single author, however, are welcome. We also encourage the submission of revised doctoral dissertations which employ innovative concepts related to our topics. Suggested topics include but are not limited to the following:

● Colonial literature in the countries of the Asian Pacific Rim
● Transpacific or transatlantic cultural or literary routes/roots
● New cultural identities in literature in neocolonial and global Asia
● The relationship between Asia and Oceania
● The contacts between Asia and Europe or the Americas
● Theoretical paradigms of globality and worlding
● Convergences and divergences of exile, diaspora, and expatriation
● Asian diasporic writing in the new millennium
● Canons and genres
● Classics in modern contexts
● Cultural translations of Sinophone, Anglophone, Francophone and/or Hispanophone literatures

A leading university in the world, National Taiwan University is striving for more international collaborations and scholarly exchanges. NTU Press, playing an important role in disseminating
top‐notch research and scholarship in the Chinese‐speaking academy, is now expanding its scope of publication in English. All submissions will be assessed by the Editors and reviewed by anonymous readers. Once the book project is approved, the author(s) will receive a contract from NTU Press. Please send a book prospectus, the author’s CV, and a sample chapter to the Editors. The manuscript should employ the MLA format and style, and only a completed manuscript will be considered.

Series Editors
Dr. Bennett Yu‐Hsiang Fu (bennettfu@ntu.edu.tw)
Dr. Chi‐She Li (jisheli@ntu.edu.tw)

New Conference: Transatlantic Connections, January 13-17 2016: Drew University, Ireland

Transatlantic Connections Conference 3 January 2016 13-17

full name / name of organization:
Drew University
contact email:
drewtransatlantic@gmail.com

Call For Papers
The Transatlantic Connections Conference is a unique, multi-disciplinary gathering that aims to encourage conversation between scholars and researchers of Irish and Irish-American culture and the writers, artists, local historians, surfers, musicians, skaters, chefs, poets, thinkers and readers of Irish and Irish-American culture.This is the third year of Transatlantic Connections, and the overall theme of this year is Ireland and the Diaspora.

The location is in Bundoran, in County Donegal, an incredibly cultural and scenic county, sandwiched between the province of Northern Ireland to the east, the counties of Sligo and Leitrim to the south, and the wild Atlantic Ocean all along the west coast. Bundoran is a small seaside town that has experienced the vicissitudes of Ulster history, a community of people who share a love of Irishness, hospitality, the ocean and the craic (that’s a Gaelic word for fun!)
History and Culture matter in Ireland. It has always been a country that is very aware of its political and cultural past. But there are less well-known aspects of Irish culture. Irish creativity is well-known in literature, it was inevitable that it would spill into other areas of popular culture, especially where subcultures such as surfing and skating began to thrive. Interesting things are happening in Irish film and media, music, art and design. The same talents that launched a thousand books and poems are now busy being creative in all sorts of contemporary directions. This deserves our attention.

American influence and opinion has always been important in Ireland, and Irish people have made very important contributions to the culture of the United States. This conference aims to identify some of these experiences, discuss them, celebrate them and encourage their continuity. Our range of panels reflects the eclectic nature of these experiences, and our objective of integrating the academic conference experience with an authentic experience of a vibrant and current Irish Culture.
Papers are invited in the following areas:

Diaspora Studies
History
Literary Studies
Creative Writing
Popular Culture
Traditional Irish music
Film & Media Studies
Irish Language: An Ghaeilge
Medical Humanities
Peace Studies

For further information, please email drewtransatlantic@gmail.com or visitwww.taccireland.com