GFF 2017: Realities and World Building

 

The creation and experience of “new” worlds is a central appeal of the fantastic. From Middle Earth to variations of the Final Frontier, the fantastic provides a seemingly infinite number of fantastic “worlds” and world concepts. It develops and varies social and cultural systems, ideologies, biological and climatic conditions, cosmologies and different time periods. Its potential and self-conception between the possible and the impossible offer perspectives to nearly every field of research.

The plurality and concurrent existence of different, even contradictory concepts of reality is an established topos in cultural and social sciences.1 In a similar fashion, scientific narratives can simultaneously coexist with fantastic ones within the cultural network of meaning2 – without creating an existential antagonism between them. The reason for that is not that one of these narratives is true while the other is not, but – following Hayden White, who assumed that scientific and literary narratives have more in common than not3 – because both of them are fictional. If a fantastic narrative is internally consistent, it is in a Wittgensteinian sense4 as true as Newton’s laws. This poses an existential problem for the fantastic: if it applies to every consistent narrative, what is the defining difference between fantastic and other narratives?

In our everyday practice, however, we seem to easily distinguish the fantastic from other aspects of reality. How is that possible? How can fantastic worlds emerge within and besides other multiple world-conceptions? What are the functions of fantastic worlds in the construction of reality? In designating texts as fantastic, we explicitly assert their fictitious character. Which practices do we employ to facilitate this designation?

We call narratives fantastic that violate our common reality consensus, thus establishing their own counter-reality consensus – in other words, a different world. This is done in different ways, thereby defining fantastic genres: for example, science fiction uses key motives like objects and cultural practices (interstellar travels, wormhole-generators, etc.) for world-building that belong to a realm of conceivable future possibility. While the modern scientific reality consensus does not categorically preclude beaming, it does deny the very possibility of a demon summoning.

In order to serve as a foil to the real, the fantastic has to play an ambiguous role: key motives of its multiple worlds have to be recognizable as imaginary, but at the same time at least some of these elements have to be linked with common reality consensus. A typical strategy for achieving this ambiguity is the incorporation of cultural practices that remind us of established perceptions of history, most prominently perhaps the European Middle Ages. Thus, a perceptible distance between the narrative and the recipient’s common reality consensus gets established, while using parts of this very consensus to render the narrative comprehensible.

Wolfgang Iser considers the “fictive” to be an intentional act, and the “imaginary” the recipient’s conception of the fictionalization’s effects.5 World Building is part of every narrative, but as a result of variable cultural contexts, every narrative is involved in different modes of production and perception. The conference aims to emphasize and reflect these very acts of fictionalization used to build fantastic worlds – in different media, and on theoretical as well as methodological levels.

Accepted Keynotes: Stefan Ekman (University of Gothenburg, Sweden) Farah Mendlesohn (University of Stafford, UK)

Possible Topics: • Intermedia (and media-specific) features and indicators of fantastic worlds in film, TV, literature, (digital) games, etc. • How does the extradiegetic constitute fantastic worlds and vice versa? Social and cultural systems, ideologies, biological and climatic conditions, cosmologies, etc. • World-building methods and practices: reflections on economic and technical resources; transparent world-building (Making-ofs, exhibitions, interviews, etc.) • Construction plans: sourcebooks, world editors, Table-Tops, miniatures, dioramas, LARPs • We are of course open to further suggestions. The conference will also feature an “Open Track” for presentations beyond the scope of this CFP.

The GFF awards two stipends to students to help finance traveling costs (250 Euro each). Please indicate if you would like to be considered.

CALL HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO February 28th 2017

Please send short bio & abstracts (500 words max.) to thomas.walach@univie.ac.at

The Eccles Centre for American Studies, Cold War Geographies

The Eccles Centre for American Studies, The British Library, London Monday 16 January 2017

Keynote Speaker: Professor Klaus Dodds, Professor of Geopolitics, Royal Holloway

The British Library’s next major exhibition will focus on ‘Maps and the Twentieth Century.’ The Cold War had a seismic impact on global geographies during the second half of the twentieth century. Not only did it physically impact lands from the barren Nevada desert to the jungles of South East Asia, but the ideological conflict of the Cold War also had a significant impact on national borders, global cities and imagined geographies. The legacy of the Cold war on global geographies has had a profound effect upon the way in which nations now think about their place in the world and their relationships with each other. From an American point of view, this has had a particular influence on how the U.S. is viewed and engaged with on an international level. This one-day symposium seeks to explore and assess how the Cold War changed boundaries, restructured terrain and redefined concepts of space and place. In doing so it seeks to prompt discussion and assessment of the geopolitical impact this had, particularly on the United States.

This is an interdisciplinary symposium, both panel and paper proposals are welcomed from across the disciplines, including, but not limited to, geography, politics, history, visual culture and American Studies. Papers which make use of the Library’s collections are particularly encouraged. Possible topics could include:  The politics of space and place  Geographical imaginaries  Legacies of Cold War conflict  Dark geographies and covert spaces  The evolution of Cold War cities  Cold War cartographies  Borders and borderlands  Changing global narratives  Aesthetic and cultural responses to contested geographies  The impact and legacy of nuclear testing  Issues of decolonisation and westerncentrism  Technologies of mapping and surveillance

Proposals of no more than 250 words should be sent to Mark Eastwood (mark.eastwood@bl.uk) by the deadline of midnight on Sunday 27th November 2016. All submissions should include the name of the presenter, their institution, email address, a short profile, and the title of the proposed presentation. Proposals from PGs and ECRs are warmly welcomed.

Symposium registration will open in October 2016

Heidelberg Center for American Studies 14th Annual Spring Academy Conference

Heidelberg, Germany, 20-24 March, 2017

/Call for Papers/

The fourteenth HCA Spring Academy on American History, Culture, and Politics will be held on March 20-24, 2017. The Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) invites applications for this annual one-week conference that provides twenty international Ph.D. students with the opportunity to present and discuss their Ph.D. projects.

The HCA Spring Academy will also offer participants the chance to work closely with experts in their respective fields of study. For this purpose, workshops held by visiting scholars will take place during this week.

We encourage applications that range broadly across the arts, humanities, and social sciences and pursue an interdisciplinary approach. Papers can be presented on any subject relating to the study of the United States of America. Possible topics include American identity, issues of ethnicity, gender, transatlantic relations, U.S. domestic and foreign policy, economics, as well as various aspects of American history, literature, religion, geography, law, musicology, and culture.

Participants are requested to prepare a 20-minute presentation of their research project, which will be followed by a 40-minute discussion. Proposals should include a preliminary title and run to no more than 300 words. These will be arranged into ten panel groups.

In addition to cross-disciplinary and international discussions during the panel sessions, the Spring Academy aims at creating a pleasant collegial atmosphere for further scholarly exchange and contact.

Accommodation will be provided by the Heidelberg Center for American Studies.

Thanks to a small travel fund, the Spring Academy is able to subsidize travel expenses for participants registered and residing in developing and soft-currency countries. Scholarship applicants will need to document the necessity for financial aid and explain how they plan to cover any potentially remaining expenses. In addition, a letter of recommendation from their doctoral advisor is required.

START OF APPLICATION PROCESS: August 15, 2016

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: November 15, 2016

 

SELECTIONS WILL BE MADE BY: January 13, 2017

PLEASE USE OUR ONLINE APPLICATION SYSTEM: www.hca-springacademy.de

MORE INFORMATION: www.hca.uni-heidelberg.de

FOR FURTHER QUESTIONS: springacademy@hca.uni-heidelberg.de

Thank you very much!

Best Wishes,

Stella Müller & Franziska Pentz

 

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Spring Academy (Stella Müller & Franziska Pentz)

Heidelberg University

Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA)

Hauptstr. 120

69117 Heidelberg

Germany

 

Tel: +49 (0)6221-54 37 14

Call for Contribution – RSA Journal N. 28

RSA Journal, the official journal of the Italian Association of North American Studies (AISNA), invites submissions for its 2017 issue on “Touring Texts: Tourism and Writing in US Culture.” While critics have noted time and again the constitutive nexus between travel (in its manifold guises), travelogues, and the formation of American culture(s), the specific practice of tourism has emerged over the past decades as one of the most interesting fields of research. The multiple critical perspectives applied to its interdisciplinary nature, spanning over the boundaries of several disciplines (sociology, anthropology, ethnography, semiotics, history, cultural studies, and literature, to name but a few), have identified tourism as a powerful theoretical tool for studying and understanding social and cultural transformation, turning it into nothing less than a hermeneutic paradigm. From the turn of the nineteenth century onward, American culture has consistently and conspicuously engaged touristic issues in a variety of texts. But despite increased interest, many aspects of the interactions between tourism and the literary and cultural sphere remain to be further understood. We invite articles that explore, from a comparative, transnational, historical perspective, new marginal, emergent, or dominant forms of exchange between literature, history, and tourism within American Studies, as well as re-readings of canonical texts through the lens of tourism studies, or of forgotten and overlooked texts in which touristic concerns figure significantly.

 

Topics might include, but are not restricted to:

Narratives of tourist practices;
Literary representations of new forms of tourism;
Touring cultures vs. the touring of cultures;
Touring texts vs. the touring of texts;
Case studies of the interaction between the touristic/literary/historical fields;
Tourism and gender/class/race/religion;
Touristic narratives and consumption;
Travelogues within/outside the US;
The literary and the tourist gaze;
Alternative tourisms and its representations;
Tourism, Nationalism, Globalization;
Literary tourism, heritage industry, and living history.

 

200 word abstracts and a short c.v. should be sent by September 1, 2016 to the Guest Editors, Simone Francescato (simone.francescato@unive.it) and Carlo Martinez (carlo.martinez@unich.it).

Acceptance notification will be emailed by October 15. The deadline for submission of accepted articles is March 15, 2017.

RSA Journal is a peer reviewed journal. Submissions must be in English, must use the MLA style, and must be no longer that 6.000 words (40.000 characters, including spaces, notes, and works cited).

Master in American History, Culture and Society – Università di Monaco

Fino al 1 luglio 2016 sono aperte le iscrizioni al Master in American History, Culture and Society della Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität di Monaco (LMU). La LMU è uno dei centri di eccellenza del sistema accademico tedesco e il Dipartimento di Studi Americani uno dei centri di ricerca più all’avanguardia nell’ambito degli American Studies in Germania. Gli studenti interessati a candidarsi possono vistare la pagina dedicata al master, dove non solo è possibile consultate le schede biografiche dei docenti e le loro pubblicazioni, ma anche visionare l’elenco dei corsi e seminari offerti dal nostro Dipartimento.

Tutti i corsi e seminari  del Master sono tenuti in inglese e, grazie alle politiche educative del governo tedesco tese a coniugare eccellenza dell’offerta formativa e inclusione sociale, le tasse di iscrizione risultano estremamente contenute. L’Academic Advisor è a disposizione per qualsiasi chiarimento e sarà felice di accompagnare gli studenti attraverso tutte le fasi del processo di selezione e iscrizione (master@amerikanistik.uni-muenchen.de).

 

Ulteriori dettagli disponibili sul sito: http://www.en.amerikanistik.uni-muenchen.de/studium/index.html

Conflict, Power and their Representations

The concept of conflict is omnipresent in the public and therefore in the political sphere but it is also a key part of the intellectual domain. In the field of literature every work is bound to describe or comment on various forms of conflict. Agôn and polemos have always been part of literature and politics.

The aim of this interdisciplinary international conference, which takes place after the previous conferences organized by the Power Studies Network in Caen, Poitiers and Paris Ouest Nanterre, is to interrogate the intertwining of the concepts of conflict and power. The conflicts between various forms of power will be tackled from a political, sociological or legal point of view.

We will deal with conflicts between social groups, conflicts between the three branches of power (executive, legislative, judiciary) that, according to Montesquieu, have to be separate in order to balance each other (the famous checks and balances of the US Constitution), conflicts between candidates running for election, conflicts between various interest groups. This analysis amounts to questioning the usual ways in which every society deals with social, political and economic conflicts.

In the field of international relations, that is, in a Hobbesian world of the “war of all against all” (Bellum omnium contra omnes), conflict is, of course, the rule. Thus this conference might address the making of a conflict in a given context but also the management, the avoidance or resolution of these conflicts. The idea that any power leads to the creation of a counter-power and therefore creates conflict is fertile in all the areas of intellectual or artistic activity.

One may wonder why the word “conflict” seems to have only negative connotations although as Frances Fox Piven argues “conflict is the very heartbeat of social movements”. The absence of conflict in cases of domination, therefore when one type of power triumphs, is not a sign of harmony but rather a way of silencing dissent or a mystification. Conflict can thus be viewed as a source of life which has a regulating effect that can balance various powers.

In the field of art, whether in movies or visual arts (painting, photography…) as well as in literature and poetry the representation of conflict, whether it be war, matrimonial quarrels (Hogarth, Mariage à la mode), the representation of social or political conflict is a standard feature. Thus war narratives or photographs openly or indirectly aim at contesting or invalidating the dominant discourse conveyed by the powers that be through specific processes or techniques. One may here refer to Goya and his series of prints known as The Disasters of War which foreground the brutal reality of war and eliminates what made acts of war appear glorious or heroic.

Concerning so-called religious conflicts, one may wonder how disagreements lead to confrontations, how negotiations or settlements come about. How can one give a non-religious interpretation of these conflicts? Is there a new propensity to conflict in urban areas or new ways to accommodate conflicting interests? Can the city, the space where a multiplicity of actors with diverging interests meet in a more or less integrated space, become the locus of power, a politicized space where various groups can exert power? What literary or artistic representations of urban conflict can emerge from this?

Participants in this conference may also choose to deal with the staging of these conflicts by the media and link their analysis with philosophical or cultural interpretations of power.

This resolutely transdisciplinary conference is thus open to topics and issues dealt with by social science, history, literary or artistic criticism and philosophy. Macho power as well as military power, biopower (Foucault), the power of lobbies or the power of elites (C.W Mills) necessarily create conflicts and can be deconstructed by gender or feminist analysis and thanks to a sociological, political or philosophical approach. In all these fields the conference will study the relationship between power, counter-power and conflict. The sources of power in all its forms and its various modalities are thus within the parameters of this conference.

Dead line for proposals: April 30 2016 to : Eliane Elmaleh : eliane.elmaleh@univ-lemans.fr, Taoufik Djeballi : taoufik.djebali@unicaen.fr, Salah Oueslati : salah.oueslati@univ-poitiers.fr, Pierre Guerlain : pierre.guerlain@gmail.com

 

 

 

Forging the American Century: World War II and the transformation of U.S. internationalism

 
The intersection of contemporary debates about the future of American power and recent developments in the field of diplomatic history compel us to reconsider the foundations and contours of the American Century.

“Forging the American Century”, seeks to combine the current concern for America’s changing role in the world with new and developing insights into the nature of international relations to revisit the origins of the American Century: World War II and its aftermath. The conference is not about the high diplomacy of the war, nor is it necessarily about the start of the Cold War. Instead, it will address the ways in which the World War and America’s rise to global power drove Americans in different fields, both inside and outside the sphere of formal diplomacy, to forge new connections with the world. We will also address the many ways in which people around the world responded to the new or changing American presence.

By invoking the term “American Century”, we do not intend to link up to Henry Luce’s original arguments. With its confusing mix of jingoism, democratic idealisms, free market enthusiasm, nationalism, and naiveté, Luce’s “American Century” has rarely been taken seriously as a blueprint for American internationalism. However, the concept of an “American Century” has recently made a comeback in discussions about the United States’ relative decline. Can the United States maintain its international economic position in the face of Chinese competition? Have the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq caused irreparable damage to its role as an international leader? Will rising powers, especially the much-discussed BRICS countries, challenge the liberal world order that the United States has built and sustained?

In a recent anthology that he described as a “dissenter’s guide to the American Century”, Andrew Bacevich argues that:

“the conditions that once lent plausibility to visions of an American Century [have] ceased to exist…Contemporary reality no longer accommodate[s] the notion of a single nation arrogating to itself the role of a Good Samaritan, especially a nation with dirty hands…The utility of Luce’s formulation as a description of the contemporary international order or as a guide to future U.S. policy has been exhausted.”

Others have been more optimistic, both about the nature of the American Century and its future. Joseph Nye defines it as “the extraordinary period of American preeminence in military, economic, and soft power resources that have made the United States central to the workings of the global balance of power, and to the provision of global public goods”. While the international environment will become more complicated in the future, he announces simply that “the American century is not over”.

The running debates over the future of American power make this an opportune moment to reconsider the foundations of U.S. internationalism, especially in the light of recent innovations in the field of diplomatic history. Over the past fifteen years, terms such as empire, soft power, and anti-Americanism have become commonplace in discussions of America’s role in the world. Foreign policy, power politics, and the work of statesmen and professional diplomats no longer dominate histories of U.S. foreign relations. Current scholarly interest in soft power, public diplomacy, and Americanization have opened the field to the study of culture. “New” diplomatic historians study the role of individuals, networks, musicians, athletes, transnational movements and a wide variety of other forms of “informal” diplomacy. A focus on American action has made room for the study of interaction: the ways in which peoples throughout the world have resisted, negotiated, or welcomed the American presence.

 

Disciplines and topics

We welcome scholars from all disciplinary and theoretical backgrounds to present fresh insights into the historical foundations of U.S. power and the international order it helped to create during and (immediately) after the Second World War. The following questions may be helpful in formulating contributions to this conference:  

(1) How did the War and its aftermath change the practice of diplomacy? How did diplomats develop new strategies to reach out to the world? How did they coopt private initiatives or vice versa?

(2) How did individuals, companies, civic groups, and other “informal” diplomats shape America’s global presence during and after the war?

(3) How did the United States shape the international environment through its support for new diplomatic, financial, and economic institutions? To what extent did those new institutions shape U.S. actions?

(4) How did America’s new role in the world shape its domestic culture, politics, or society?

(5) How have Asians, Africans, Europeans, and Latin Americans resisted, negotiated, or welcomed the new American presence.

(6) How have processes of historical memory and (re)interpretations of World War II shaped U.S. internationalism in domestic and transnational contexts?

 

Paper Proposals

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers. Please send a 300 word abstract and brief biographical note to j.vandenberk@let.ru.nl by May 15, 2016

 

Date and location

The conference will take place at the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, on October 27-28, 2016. This conference is an initiative of the North American Studies Program at the Radboud University. For more information about our program and our staff please visit www.ru.nl/nas.

Please note that a small fee may apply for participants in this conference.

The Profane West

The profane: not limited to the blasphemous or the obscene, but rather encompassing that which is underrepresented, undervalued, censored, denied, and/or secretly shared. Unofficial and unsanctioned pleasures and punishments. The necessary complement of the sacred, helping both to define and erode it.

The 51st annual Western Literature Conference, hosted by Linda Karell (Montana State University), will take place in the spectacular natural beauty and undeniable tourist development that is Big Sky, Montana. We invite you to think about “the profane West” in ways that challenge entrenched definitions/conceptions/celebrations of the West—including the once subversive.

In addition to proposals on the conference theme and any aspects of literature about the North American West, we especially encourage innovative proposals on the following:

• Indigenous literatures of and about the West
• Feminist and queer approaches to Western literature
• Women’s autobiographical and memoir writing
• Pedagogy and K-12 issues in Western literature
• Animals (and sacred cows) in Western literature
• Montana literature and writers

Proposals for panels and roundtable discussions should include an abstract for each paper or presentation. Deadline: June 1, 2016.

For more information see http://www.westernlit.org/wla-conference-2016/. Please direct your questions to WLAConference2016@westernlit.org.

Master in American Studies at the University of Torino

PROGRAM OVERVIEW: The Master in American Studies at the University of Torino, Italy, is a one-year program offering students an in-depth interdisciplinary exploration of “America,” past and present. Fully taught in English by committed specialists in various fields of American Studies, the program is renowned for its international scope (over 60% of our students are international), personalized attention to students and small classes (maximum 20 students). Participants receive individual academic and administrative support throughout the length of the program, as well as visa and housing assistance prior to arrival.

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Competitive tuition and university fees, a well equipped city campus, a diverse and culturally intense urban life, and sustainable living costs make the University of Torino the ideal place to pursue an MA in American Studies

Students attend courses, seminars, and lectures with Italian and International experts in American (US and Canadian) History and Politics, Literature, Film, Drama, Popular Culture, Music, Art, Environmental Studies,, Digital Humanities and Academic Writing. They also participate in field activities and learn how to effectively present issues and ideas in speech and writing and how to use library and online resources for research.  A supervised dissertation of 6-9000 words, optional study abroad opportunities through the Erasmus program and an optional internship complete the program. read more

WHEN: November 2016 – September 2017. Typical teaching schedule: 1st semester –> November-February; 2nd semester –> March-May 2017. Individual dissertation tutorial: June-September 2017. All classes meet on Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings during both semesters, thus making the program also suitable for students with professional engagements, provided they have ample time for individual study. There is no availability requirement in Torino for students outside semesters 1 and 2.

WHERE: Courses are taught at the Department Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the University of Torino, in the heart of the city’s downtown. Classrooms are equipped with audio and video projection facilities

LANGUAGE OF INSTRUCTION: This program is fully taught in English.

TOTAL COST (tuition and fees): 3,500 euro

INTERNSHIPS/STUDY ABROAD/SCHOLARSHIPS: A three-month (optional) INTERNSHIP opportunity with international organizations in Europe and the US is offered to all participants. See the INTERNSHIPS link for details. Participants are eligible for 1-semester study-abroad SCHOLARSHIPS through the Erasmus program at some of the most prestigious American Studies institutes in Europe (Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Paris, Warsaw, etc). No other scholarships are offered at this time. In case any new scholarships, large or small, become available, all eligible applicants – including those who have already paid their tuition fees – will be invited to compete.

PROFESSIONAL PLACEMENT: The program provides training in academic and practical skills tailored to meet the needs of future players in a transatlantic and global environment. Graduates are well placed to work as teachers, journalists, translators, librarians, editors, as well as in the areas of tourism and international relations. Graduates of this one-year program may opt to continue to a two-year MA (in Italy: Laurea Magistrale) with credit recognition (see “program” link for details). The program also strengthens self-confidence and motivation to eventually continue to a PhD program, in Italy or abroad.

APPLYING FOR THE PROGRAM: Applications are received from February through September. Applicants must hold at least a BA degree in the humanities or in a cognate field and must submit proof of English language proficiency (see ADMISSION page for details).

Full details at http://www.masteramericanstudies.unito.it