Data limite: 1 settembre 2017

La rivista América Crítica, in occasione della pubblicazione del secondo numero (dicembre 2017), invita alla presentazione di articoli per una sezione monografica curata da Javier González Díez (Università di Torino) e Fiorenzo Iuliano (Università di Cagliari).

Questa sezione propone una riflessione sulle visioni dello spazio urbano e della vita cittadina nel contesto pan-americano, con particolare attenzione ai linguaggi e alle pratiche sociali che assume –  o ha assunto in passato – l’idea di “fare la città” a partire dalle dinamiche della subalternità e dalle rappresentazioni contro-egemoniche dal “basso”. Saranno pubblicati in questa sezione articoli che riflettono, quindi, sulle attività di riappropriazione della città, sulle strategie di resistenza alle pratiche di gentrification, sull’interazione tra spazio urbano e gruppi subalterni (minoritari e/o “sottoculturali”) e sulle modalità in cui lo spazio urbano è stato, di volta in volta, rappresentato, immaginato o reinventato attraverso diversi mezzi espressivi (letteratura, teatro, cinema, fumetto, musica, fotografia, televisione, arti visive). Sono infine auspicabili interventi che offrano una riflessione sulle riconfigurazioni degli spazi urbani in una prospettiva comparata tra Nord e Sud America.

Saranno benvenuti articoli inediti e di carattere interdisciplinare, dalle scienze sociali agli studi umanistici.

La sezione monografica includerà le seguenti linee tematiche:

Rappresentazioni controegemoniche della città

Linguaggi e forme della socialità urbana

(Ri)creazioni di identità urbane

Appropriazioni/riappropriazioni dello spazio urbano

Culture indigene e spazi urbani

Riflessione sulla dicotomia rurale/urbano

Città del sud Vs città del nord

Impatto dei flussi migratori nazionali e transazionali

Resistenza alle pratiche egemoniche di definizione degli spazi urbani

Le studiose e gli studiosi che desiderino partecipare possono inviare i loro contributi entro il 1 settembre 2017, alla pagina web della rivista, nella sezione ‘proposte online’ (http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/cisap/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions), nella quale si possono consultare le Norme editoriali (http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/cisap/about/submissions#authorGuidelines).

América Critica Website: http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/cisap/index

The newly elected administration inaugurated the year 2017 by raising questions in the nation and the world about the oncoming policies of the US government regarding the construction or removal of barriers, the care or exploitation of the environment, and many other dilemmas involving radically alternative scenarios for our future relations to the world and to our habitats. What is at stake is the option of facing contemporary cultural and political challenges on the ground of a shared or an exclusive governance.

In terms of historical and literary reflection, this involves a rethinking of the positioning of even the newest transnational perspectives, such as Border, Hemispherical, and Oceanic Studies, which are called to acknowledge the mobility and multiplicity of the where and what of their investigation. The 24th AISNA Biennial Conference proposes to discuss possible ways of reconceptualizing the mutual and shifting positions of center(s) and margin(s), subject(s) and object(s) in terms of relation, and particularly of an inclusive structure of relations that are based on an ecological ethics. Workshop proposals are invited from the diverse areas of inquiry of AISNA addressing methodological hypotheses, such as the need to assume a complex framework of simultaneous scales of analysis; translation as the main means and medium to expand our theoretical conversation; an ecocentric and ecological paradigm as the ground for our decision-making procedures; and networking as the privileged tool for a hopeful and successful management of the urgent issues posed by an unstoppable process of globalization and an apparently similarly unavoidable process of exhaustion of the planet’s resources.

Topics may include but are not confined to:

• North-American Studies & World Literature
• Rethinking Cosmopolitanism in a Global Perspective
• Exilic Writing
• Migration and the Environment
• US Literature and Global Circulation (Markets and Publishers)
 Translation and World Literature; Multilingualism; New Textualities
• Ecolanguage, Ecopoetry, Ecopoetics • Animal Studies
• Environmental Dystopias
• Landscape Transformations and Shifting Geographies
• Environmental Justice
• Environmental Politics; Presidencies and Environmental Policies
• Foreign Relations and Climate Change
• US Environmental Activism
• Inhabiting the ‘Wilderness’ – Past and Present
• Natives’ Territories and Newcomers’ Settlements
• Ecofeminism

The deadline for workshop proposals is April 15, 2017. Submitted proposals will be reviewed by the conference organizer and the AISNA board. A selection of max. 20 workshops will be issued by April 30, notified to the submitters by email, and published on the Conference website.

Submissions should be written in English and include:
• a workshop title • a clearly stated description of the proposed topic in no more than 300 words
• contact details of the workshop’s coordinator or coordinators (max. 2), including professional affiliation.

Each workshop will host no more than four papers, including the coordinator’s or coordinators’. In case they intend to present papers in their own workshops, aspiring coordinators should indicate their prospective titles in their proposals. We remind aspiring coordinators that their task will comprise a brief introduction of the speakers, a strict monitoring of the observance of the allotted 20-minute time for each presentation, and a supervision of the following question and answer session, aimed to stimulate a fruitful discussion in the last but essential part of each workshop. For this purpose, in their proposal they should also suggest the name of a discussant.

All workshop proposals should be sent by e-mail to the conference organizer, Paola Loreto (paola.loreto@unimi.it), as well as to the secretary of AISNA, Simone Francescato (segretario-aisna@unive.it).

Link to the conference page: sites.unimi.it/AISNA

Link to the registration page: sites.unimi.it/AISNA/register

>> NEW <<: Here is the Conference program.

Bando per borse di studio per la partecipazione alla AISNA Biennial Conference di Milano

21st International Colloquium of American Studies
(Biannual Conference of the Czech and Slovak Association for American Studies):

The conference is organized by Palacký University Olomouc in cooperation with The Czech and Slovak Association for American Studies, and Embassy of the United States in Prague.

TOPICS AND ISSUES:

• How does literature, film, television, art, history and cultural geography reflect the notion of the human body/subject/identity or objects as being situated or emplaced; place as an event?
• How does literature respond to Yi-Fu Tuan’s notion of place as a field of care?
• Does the identification of place have to involve an “us/them distinction in which the other is devalued” (David Harvey)?
• Should one speak of constructing or producing a place? (“Place, then, needs to be understood as an embodied relationship with the world. Places are constructed by people doing things and in this sense are never ‘finished’ but constantly being performed.” (Nigel Thrift)
• How are places “produced” by cultural practices such as literature, film and music?
• How is the human subject and identity constructed or produced by places?
• Which new kinds of places appear in recent American literature?
• Place as home, outdoor places, indoor places and their changing meanings over time.

Deadline for paper proposals (ca 250 words): March 30
Address: colloquium.olomouc@upol.cz and michal.peprnik@upol.cz
Extended versions of papers will be peer-reviewed and their selection will be published in the peer-reviewed scholarly journal Moravian Journal of Literature and Film published by Palacký University Olomouc Press (seehttp://www.moravianjournal.upol.cz/ ).
Plenary speakers TBA. See the colloquium web pages for further details:  http://colloquium.upol.cz
 
Registration fee: 1000 CZK (40 EUR), reduced fee for doctoral students: 800 CZK (30 EUR). The fee includes conference package, two lunches, and a reception.

The geography of noir has frequently changed after its “classical” period  (1941 The Maltese Falcon – 1958 Touch of Evil), both coming to include  crime literature, TV series, social drama, and new media in its sphere, and welcoming such controversial issues as gender, ethnicity, and trauma among its themes. We invite scholars in all fields of Angloamerican studies to send proposals about noir as genre, sub- (or sur-) genre, or stylistic mode; about noir writers and film directors of the past and the present; about the new directions of crime fiction(s) regarding LGBT; about the ways noir has (or has not) interfaced with chaos theory, complexity, and fractal geometry; about the connections between noir and politics; about the representation(s) of evil in contemporary literature and the media; and about noir and the American Canon.

Authors are kindly requested to register in the journal site and to follow all the instructions in the “Authors’ guide” when uploading their papers. As usual, submissions (about 5000-6000 words) will be double-blind peer-reviewed.
The deadline for their submission is 15 July 2017

Lo spazio, e in particolare lo spazio urbano, costituisce un elemento narrativovisuale caratterizzante della letteratura a fumetti sin dalla sua nascita. Per lungo tempo, gli autori di fumetti hanno privilegiato un’ambientazione cittadina per le loro opere, e si sono rivolti implicitamente a un pubblico che, per stile di vita e modalità di consumo del fumetto in quanto ‘prodotto’ dell’industria culturale, non poteva che essere pienamente urbanizzato.

Accanto a questa rappresentazione ha guadagnato terreno anche l’interesse per lo spazio interno o domestico, dalla casa allo studio d’artista, dal condominio all’ospizio, dal carcere all’ospedale. Si tratta di spazi di vario tipo: familiari, collettivi, sociali o solipsistici, interagiscono in ogni caso con la narrazione, determinandone a volte l’intero impianto narrativo. Non ambientazioni neutre, dunque, ma al pari dello spazio urbano, spazi decisivi per la gestione della narrazione e dei personaggi che vi si muovono.

Infine, oltre all’accezione narratologica dello spazio rappresentato, nel caso del fumetto occorre considerare, con specificità proprie e per certi versi complementari, quella dello spazio come materia semiotica. Il fumetto non si limita, infatti, a raffigurare gli spazi, ma produce sulla superficie piana della pagina una spazialità propria, che rimette in gioco e spesso ridefinisce radicalmente le nostre coordinate di percezione e rappresentazione dello spazio.

In che modo lo spazio viene tematizzato e trasformato, potenziato o depotenziato, nella narrazione a fumetti ? In quale misura il fumetto riscrive e reinventa lo spazio offrendosi come luogo di una riconfigurazione possibile, o utopica, o fantastica delle coordinate spaziali? In che modo tale riconfigurazione incide sui dispositivi di percezione? E ancora, come si modifica la rappresentazione della spazialità a fumetti entro la rete delle trasformazioni transmediali in corso?

Queste sono le principali domande da cui il convegno SPAZI TRA LE NUVOLE prende le mosse, chiamando studiose e studiosi a confrontarsi sul tema dello spazio nella narrazione a fumetti, sullo sfondo del più generale paesaggio narrativo e transmediale contemporaneo. Le proposte d’intervento approvate, che possono affrontare l’argomento secondo i più diversi approcci teorico-critici, saranno discusse durante il convegno in sessioni coordinate dai respondent individuati dal comitato scientifico.

Il programma delle attività prevede, inoltre, una sessione di incontro con gli autori – Sara Colaone e Manuele Fior – e due sessioni speciali, in forma laboratoriale, che si prefiggono di indagare i temi, rispettivamente, della città e della casa. Le sessioni laboratoriali intendono costituire delle occasioni di confronto puntuale sui testi e sono perciò aperte in modo particolare a proposte di intervento incentrate sulle opere a fumetti indicate di seguito.

La città
Andrea Pazienza, Le straordinarie avventure di Pentothal (1982)
Art Spiegelman, In the Shadow of No Towers (2004)

La casa
Richard McGuire, Here (2014)
Paco Roca, La casa (2015)

Le proposte di intervento, di circa 500 parole, devono essere corredate da una breve nota bio-bibliografica dell’autore e da un’essenziale bibliografia teoricocritica. È possibile partecipare con due interventi nel caso in cui uno riguardi le sessioni laboratoriali. La proposta di partecipazione deve essere inviata entro il 31 maggio 2017 a spazi.nuvole@unica.it. L’accettazione verrà comunicata entro il 30 giugno 2017.

Gli interventi al convegno potranno accedere a una pubblicazione peer-reviewed. La scadenza per l’invio della versione definitiva degli articoli è il 30 dicembre 2017. 

The Department of American Literature of the School of English at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in collaboration with the Hellenic Association for American Studies (HELAAS), invite scholars to submit proposals for the international conference ―The Politics of Space and the Humanities‖ to be held in Thessaloniki.

The latest socio-cultural and political developments on both sides of the Atlantic have again placed space at the center of attention of current scholarship in the Humanities. The relation between places, people, and geographies as caused by immigration, migration and refugee flows, demographic changes, war tensions and conflicts, environmental disasters, urban expansion, and mapping technologies has always been dynamic. Nowadays, finding ourselves in the midst of change, we need to reconsider the politicized nature of space, its impact on individuals and the shaping of identity in a number of contexts within Anglophone literary and artistic production that open up the Humanities to numerous other disciplines and spatial interactions.

We invite individual abstracts and panel proposals from scholars, researchers and artists in an array of subjects (without being restricted to) in any of the proposed topics below:

– Literary geographies

– Imagined spaces

– Performing space

– Photographic, cinematic, visual and typographic representations of space

– Geopolitics

– Space and Globalization

– Space and surveillance

– Urban mappings and ethnicity

– Architextural spaces

– Media and environment

– RPG games

– Space-narrative-gaming

Abstracts and/or panel proposals should be submitted by May 1st, 2017.

Please include the following in your submission:

– Name

– Affiliation (if any)

– Email address

– Title of Abstract or Panel Proposal

– Abstract (250 words)

– Bio

Please address e-mails to: trapatz@enl.auth.gr (Dr. Tatiani Rapatzikou); detsi@enl.auth.gr (Dr. Zoe Detsi).

Applications are now open for the 2017 History Scholar Award

Each year, the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s History Scholar Award honors college juniors and seniors who have demonstrated academic excellence in American history or American studies.

History Scholars spend a week in New York City, where they attend lectures by eminent historians, go behind the scenes at The Gilder Lehrman Collection, and take historical walking tours.

Interested in applying for the History Scholar Award or know an outstanding college junior or senior? Please visit www.gilderlehrman.org/hsa, share this email, or send us their name and email address, and we will follow up.

The application deadline is March 30, 2017. Please email or call (646) 366-9666 x17 if you have any questions.

We hope to see you this summer!

Education Department
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

SPECIAL GUESTS: Frank Costigliola (University of Connecticut) Michael Cullinane (Northumbria University) Mario Del Pero (SciencesPo) Sylvia Ellis (University of Roehampton) Petra Goedde (Temple University) Justin Hart (Texas Tech University) Lisa McGirr (Harvard University) Kiran Patel (University of Maastricht)

Theodore, Eleanor, and Franklin Roosevelt are three of the most inspiring and dynamic political leaders in 20th century US history. Theodore and Franklin both redefined the presidency and political leadership, each in their unique way. Eleanor, the first modern First Lady, as a widow became a prominent media personality and advocate of political causes such as human rights and the anti-nuclear movement. Each of the three Roosevelts had a specific impact, influence, and legacy, shaping the foreign and domestic policy of the United States, and the relations between the US and the world, through the twentieth century and beyond.

The Rooseveltian Century is a new concept for contemporary history. The nearest equivalent is the idea of the Wilsonian Century, based on the worldview of President Woodrow Wilson and how he conceived of US power being used to shape world politics through WWI (‘making the world safe for democracy’). In contrast, the Rooseveltian Century examines the three Roosevelts as a ‘collective agent’ who, through both domestic and foreign policies, changed our understanding of the responsibilities of government and the global role of the United States. This mean that the Rooseveltian Century, as a historical frame, makes use of the three Roosevelts to view, critically consider and explore key themes in US history and international relations, without necessarily stating that the three acted in unison or that they expressed the same views or policies.

This conference builds on the experimental MOOC, ‘The Rooseveltian Century’, produced by Giles Scott-Smith and Dario Fazzi in 2016. The event, the first to be held at the newly-founded Roosevelt Institute for American Studies, has two main purposes. Firstly, it will uniquely combine research on each of the three principal Roosevelts within an overarching historical investigation into their influence and legacies. Secondly, it will frame the debate around the central themes, motifs and images that can be represented by the term Rooseveltian Century, identifying the longer-lasting meaning and importance of this frame in current-day (international) politics.

PROPOSALS Paper proposals on the following topics are welcome: 1) Domestic and International Public Policy – which fields were initiated, shaped, or heavily influenced by the Roosevelts; 2) ‘Rooseveltian Transfer’ – how public policy initiatives were taken up by and shared between the Roosevelts and their supporters; 3) Who Influences Who – the roots of Rooseveltian idealism and realism; 4) Public Memory – how the Roosevelts both shaped their own public legacies and have been used by advocates (and adversaries) to represent distinct identities and causes in the public realm; 5) Partisan Politics – how the Roosevelts influenced socio-political and party-based activism; 6) Style and Media – how the Roosevelts responded to and used a changing media environment for their personal and political purposes; 7) Institutions and Alliances – how did the Roosevelts transform US foreign relations and the US role in the world; 8) Principles and Values – how did the Roosevelts broaden conceptions and understanding of such ideals as democracy, freedom, and equality?

DEADLINES Please send a 250-word proposal, together with a CV, to rooseveltiancentury@gmail.com. The deadline for paper proposals is 31 March 2017.

Draft papers of 5000 words will be required no later than 1 November 2017, in time for circulation to all participants prior to the conference. For all enquiries please contact Giles Scott-Smith.

Association Française d’Etudes Américaines (AFEA) / French Association for American Studies
 
Call for Presentations
 
The French Association for American Studies invites doctoral students in American studies to take part in the Graduate Symposium (“Doctoriales”) specifically organized on their behalf during its annual conference. This year’s workshops will be held on Tuesday, June 6, 2017 (9am-5pm) at University of Strasbourg (France). The conference will take place on June 7 to 9, 2017. For further information, please check our website: http://www.afea.fr
 
Since 2008, the AFEA has been encouraging the internationalization of its Graduate Student Symposium by offering grants (up to 500 euros each) for a maximum of ten European candidates (other than French) to help cover their travel expenses. All students are, in addition, invited to attend the whole conference free of registration charges. The symposium provides an opportunity for PhD students to present their research in a less formal session than that of a full conference panel, and confront it to that of other European scholars. Doctoral students may be at an early or more advanced stage of their research. The proposals will be responded to by professors specializing in related fields. Candidates are invited to give their presentations in English within one of the two workshops offered: 1) American literature, or 2) American “civilization” (history, sociology, political science…). Proposals relevant to both fields (film studies, visual arts or music, for instance), or to another field (such as translation studies or linguistics) can be sent to either of the co-chairs.
 
Applications
 
Candidates must send a Curriculum Vitae and a 500-word abstract summarizing their dissertation proposal, plus an estimated budget of traveling expenses and funding otherwise available to them. They must mention when they began their PhD, and the name and affiliation of their advisor.
 
– Proposals in civilization must be sent electronically to Professor Romain Huret (Romain.Huret@ehess.fr).
 
– Proposals in literature must be sent electronically to both Professors Françoise palleau-papin (francoise.palleau@wanadoo.fr) and Mathieu Duplay  (mduplay@club-internet.fr)
 
Deadline for application : February 15, 2017. The symposium organizers will respond to all applicants by March 15, 2017.
 
Professors Françoise Palleau-Papin, Mathieu Duplay, Romain Huret.

La sessione del prossimo Congresso Geografico promossa da Fabio Amato, Elena dell’Agnese e Chiara Giubilaro, avrà come titolo “Media e Geografia“. 

La sessione verterà sul ruolo dei media nella costruzione di immaginari geografici e sarà aperta a tutte le proposte sul tema. Per esempio, seguendo le tre sotto-sessioni tematiche:

– Nostra patria è il mondo intero: geo-grafie e metafore dello spazio politico nelle canzoni di protesta e contro la guerra (a cura di Elena dell’Agnese)

– Migrazioni: un approccio visuale (a cura di Chiara Giubilaro)

– Ma l’America è lontana: geografie e geopolitiche della serialità oltre gli States (a cura di Fabio Amato)

Link alla call: 
http://www.congressogeografico.it/sessione/s32/

Form da compilare per inoltrare le proposte di contributo entro il 15 febbraio 2017:
http://www.congressogeografico.it/invio-abstract/