CFP ARISTEIA: The Journal of Myth, Literature, and Culture (Spec. Issue on Myth, Deep Time, Extinction, Survival) (5/15/2022)

ARISTEIA: The Journal of Myth, Literature, and Culture

Special Issue on Myth, Deep Time, Extinction, Survival

deadline for submissions: May 15, 2022

full name / name of organization: 

Michael T. Williamson / Indiana University of Pennsylvania

contact email: mtwill@iup.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/09/23/aristeia-the-journal-of-myth-literature-and-culture-special-issue-on-myth-deep-time

Call for Papers for ARISTEIA: The Journal of Myth, Literature, and Culture

Myth, Deep Time, Extinction, Survival

ARISTEIA: The Journal of Myth, Literature, and Culture returns after a twenty-year hiatus. This peer-reviewed print journal is now published under the auspices of the Dessy-Roffman Myth Collaborative at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. For our first issue, we invite scholarly essays of 5,000-7,000 words, poems of any length (including epic poems), and short stories of no more than 4,000 words. This issue’s theme encourages contributors to explore the relationship between Myth, “Deep Time” (geological time, metaphysical time, cosmological time, etc.), Extinction, and Survival. Please send preliminary abstracts of 500 words by December 10, 2021 or completed essays, poems or stories to Dr. Michael Williamson (mtwill@iup.edu) and Allen Shull (mrhcc@iup.edu) by May 15, 2022.

Myth can give us hope, existential strength, and the courage to face adversity. It can bring people and communities together. Weaving together (aspirational and/or inspiring) tales from our various mythological traditions, we can sustain ourselves in times of plenty and in times of scarcity. Myth attests to disasters as well as creations, and it beckons us, often uncertainly, towards forms of transcendence and plenitude that challenge our conceptions of what it means to be human.  Recent studies on geology, literature, and culture, for instance, reinforce the role that mythological thinking plays in shaping our expectations regarding catastrophe and continuity. David Sepkoski’s recent examination of how geological thinking affects culture, Catastrophic Thinking, for example, explores “the recognition that extinction is a ubiquitous, even commonplace phenomenon represents a profound shift in scientific and cultural awareness of the tenuousness of life and the balance of nature that has taken place over the past two hundred years” (17). Embracing and enriching diversity may seem to be a solution, but “but we also struggle with what diversity is and what it means” (16). As one of the most primary cultural artifacts of the human imagination, myth activates ideas about time, extinction, and diversity. How do we regard the death of plants and animals in catastrophic climate change, and how do we react to extinctions in the past, even the deep past? How do we deal with social extinctions, whether language death, erosion of the middle class and social mobility, or loss of traditional cultures and folkways? Do we mourn losses or celebrate amalgamations?  Our editorial board encourages scholarly research and creative writing that engages with these questions.

Subjects to Consider:

• Literary and cultural conception of extinction of species, family, language
• Literary and cultural conception of diversity in species and in cultures
• Literary and cultural conception of feuds, aristocratic extinction, or changing ways of life
• The literary and cultural conception of future extinctions and diversifications
• Literary genres and artistic branches as sites for extinction and diversification
• Language preservation, evolution, convergence, death, preservation, revival, reconstruction, and artificial construction
• Literary and cultural conception of catastrophe: loss, rescue, abandonment, and exile
• Literary and cultural conception of cross-temporal connections: immortality, time travel, preservation, rediscovery

Scholarly essays on all periods of literary and cultural history are welcome, but this issue especially welcomes works related to Mythology and Science Fiction, Mysticism, and literature and cultural objects from historical times of stress such as the plagues, revolutions, and natural disasters. Poems and short stories should address the theme of this cfp in a clear way.

Please direct inquiries to Dr. Michael T. Williamson (mtwill@iup.edu) and Allen Shull (mrhcc@iup.edu) For more information on the Dessy-Roffman Myth Collaborative visit https://www.iup.edu/news-item.aspx?id=294439&blogid=6121

Last updated September 24, 2021

CFP The Child of the Future Conference (1/5/2022; Cambridge, Eng. 6/30-7/1/2022)

The Child of the Future, Call for Paper Proposals 

Deadline for submission: January 5th, 2022

deadline for submissions: January 5, 2022

full name / name of organization: University of Cambridge

contact email: thechildofthefuture2022@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/11/15/the-child-of-the-future-call-for-paper-proposals-deadline-for-submission-january-5th

The Child of the Future 

Call for Paper Proposals

Deadline for submission: January 5th, 2022 

University of Cambridge, St John's College | Thursday June 30th – Friday July 1st, 2022 

"...the symbiont children developed a complex subjectivity composed of loneliness, intense sociality, intimacy with nonhuman others, specialness, lack of choice, fullness of meaning, and sureness of future purpose." (Haraway, 2016, Staying With The Trouble, p.149)  

After living through a once-in-a-generation pandemic, whilst in the midst of a slowly-evolving climate crisis, our expectations about what the future of humanity will look like have been called into serious question. These disruptions have impacted the world of children perhaps more than that of adults. In the wake of lockdowns and school closures, children’s development, interpersonal connections, and engagement with media, learning and play have become increasingly unstable and unpredictable. More concretely, populations are declining around the world, calling into question how many children of the future there will be and where we might find them.  Correspondingly, the ways in which we conceptualise the child are shifting. In parallel to world events, theoretical discourse in the fields of childhood studies have experimented with viewing children as ontologically fluid. Scholars are increasingly thinking outside of the temporal binary implied by the words “adult” and “child”, instead refiguring childhood and the wider spectrum of age as complex assemblages and entanglements; the child with greater time left (Beauvais, 2018 p.77), the child enfolded in matter and meaning across time (Barad, 2007), the human and the nonhuman inextricably linked (Haraway, 2016). This shift can be seen in children’s literature and media studies’ more recent interest in posthumanism, new materialism, spectrality and other adjacent theories which read childhood through the more abstract complication of animals, plants, objects, texts and technologies.  This conference aims to bring together these burgeoning conversations that are increasingly evident across disciplines at a time where these connections are more relevant than ever before. We are looking to explore the many and varied ways that scholars may conceptualise the idea of ‘the child of the future’. We hope to hear papers that interpret the topic in many different ways, those that consider the ‘child of the future’ as both real and imagined, actual and fictional.  In addition to a focus on the child of the future, proposal topics may include (but are in no means limited to):

• Posthumanism
• The Anthropocene and/or Chthulucene and/or Capitalocene
• New Materialism
• Nonhuman modes of being (animal, plant, microorganism, robot, etc.)
• Spectrality and hauntology
• Environments, bodies and spatiality
• Spirituality/religion
• Engaging with the past/ theorising the future
• Adaptation and transformation
• Memory
• Sci-fi, fantasy and non-mimetic media
• Technology and materiality
• Intergenerationality
• Pedagogy

We welcome papers of a duration of 20 minutes that will be arranged into thematic panels. Papers that blend the creative and the critical will be considered, and interdisciplinary papers and panel proposals are also encouraged. We particularly wish to offer opportunities for graduate students and other early-career scholars. If you fall into this category, please indicate in your application if you wish to be considered for one of our funded conference bursaries.  Please send an abstract of 300 words, a short biography (100 words) and 5-8 keywords in a Word document to thechildofthefuture2022@gmail.com with the following subject line: ‘The Child of the Future abstract’. Submissions must be received by 5th January 2022. Notification of acceptance will be sent out at the start of February 2022.  In line with COVID-19 guidance and regulations, we anticipate that this conference will go ahead as planned in person at St John’s College, University of Cambridge. However, we are conscious of the safety of all speakers and attendees and as such will update you of any changes should they arise. Thank you for considering this CFP, and we look forward to hearing from you!

Last updated November 15, 2021

Now Available Mythlore 139

Recently received from the Mythopoeic Society was Mythlore issue 139 for Fall/Winter 2021. The issue can be purchased directly at https://www.mythsoc.org/mythlore/mythlore-139.htm. The contents listed below are from the same site.

Mythlore 139 Volume 40, Issue 1 (Fall/Winter 2021)

Table of Contents

Editorial

— Janet Brennan Croft

All Worthy Things: The Personhood of Nature in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium

— Sofia Parrila

The Shape of Water in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings

— Norbert Schürer

Mirrors to the Underworld: Reflective Portals between Life and Death in the Harry Potter Series

— Trenton J. McNulty

Lewis and Clarke in the Caves: Art and Platonic Worlds in Piranesi

— Julie M. Dugger

Just Reading A Spell for Chameleon: An Appreciation with Caveats, and an Elegy

— Dennis Wilson Wise

Responsibility and Critical Thinking as Markers of Adulthood in Two Coming-of-Age Fantasy Series: Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching Novels and Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimeus Trilogy

— Anna Köhler

The Conscience of Solomon Kane: Robert E. Howard’s Rhetorics of Motive, World, and Race

— Gabriel Mamola

But Where Shall Wisdom be Found? The Lord of the Rings and the Wisdom Literature of the Hebrew Bible

— Mattie E. Gustafson

“Taliessin in the Rose-Garden”: A Symbolic Analysis

— Joseph Thompson

The Enigmatic Loss of Proto-Hobbitic

— Thomas Honegger

How Tolkien Saved His Neck: A lusinghe Proposition to the Oxford Dante Society

— John R. Holmes

Notes and Letters

Keystone or Cornerstone? A Rejoinder to Verlyn Flieger on the Alleged “Conflicting Sides” of Tolkien’s Singular Self — Donald T. Williams

A Holiday by the Sea: In Search of Cair Paravel — Reggie Weems

Jane Austen’s Lady Susan as a Possible Source of Inspiration behind C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters — Song (Joseph) Cho

Review Essay

Women Tarot Artists Inspired by the Golden Dawn: Recent Publications — Emily E. Auger

Reviews

Tolkien’s Modern Reading by Holly Ordway — Kris Swank

The Flight of the Wild Gander by Joseph Campbell — Phillip Fitzsimmons

God and the Gothic by Alison Milbank — Douglas A. Anderson

The Saga of the Volsungs: With the Saga of Ragnar Lothrok, translated by Jackson Crawford — Phillip Fitzsimmons

Tolkien the Pagan? Reading Middle-earth through a Spiritual Lens, edited by Anna Milon — Alana White

Re-Orienting the Fairy Tale: Contemporary Adaptations across Cultures, edited by Mayako Murai and Luciana Cardi — Nada Kujundžić

George MacDonald’s Children’s Fantasies and the Divine Imagination by Colin Manlove — Tiffany Brooke Martin

The Cards: The Evolution and Power of Tarot by Patrick Maille — Emily E. Auger

Terry Pratchett’s Ethical Worlds, edited by Kristin Noone and Emily Lavin Leverett — Felicity Gilbert

Briefly Noted:

Thanks for Typing, edited by Jukliana Dresvina, and In and Out of Bloomsbury by Martin Ferguson Smith — Janet Brennan Croft

Encyclopedia of Mythical Objects by Theresa Bane — John Zacharias

The Shared Witness of C.S. Lewis and Austin Farrer by Phillip Irving Mitchell — Landon Loftin

CFP PAMLA 2022 Call for Special Sessions (2/2022-4/30/2022; Los Angeles 11/11-13/2022)

 GEOGRAPHIES OF THE FANTASTIC AND THE QUOTIDIAN:

PAMLA 2022 CALL FOR SPECIAL SESSIONS

Source: https://www.pamla.org/pamla-2022-call-for-special-sessions/

PAMLA welcomes special session proposals for the 2022 PAMLA conference at the UCLA Luskin Conference Center and Hotel in Los Angeles, California (early morning Friday, November 11 through Sunday night, November 13, 2022) on topics of scholarly interest that are not too close to the topics of our general (standing) sessions (go to https://www.pamla.org/about/constitution-bylaws/ and search for “general sessions” to find a list of PAMLA’s standing sessions). Our system for paper proposals will open in February 2022, with April 30th as the submission deadline.

While we welcome special session proposals on a wide variety of topics, we are particularly interested in special session proposals that engage with the 2022 PAMLA Conference Theme: Geographies of the Fantastic and Quotidian.

As we converge on the magnificent, incomprehensible megalopolis of Los Angeles in November of 2022, it would be timely to consider the many “ecologies” of our lived spaces and places. [1] We might think dialectically in terms of clear, dynamic oppositions: exterior and interior spaces, for instance, or those we would categorize as real or surreal—or, perhaps to return to Los Angeles, “hyperreal.”[2] Within those texts we like to dwell—metaphorically at least, for the longue durée or for brief, eccentric interludes—as we discover that time intersects with space in surprising and contradictory ways.

The 2022 Special Theme invites our scholarly community to consider the overdetermined landscapes both of the imagination and of everyday experience. In the process, we hope collectively to interrogate the multiple topographies and topologies of our cherished narratives, for as Michel de Certeau reminds us, “stories … carry out a labor that constantly transforms places into spaces or spaces into places.”[3]

Los Angeles itself would certainly offer fertile ground for scholarly excavation, but we strongly encourage submissions that explore what Gaston Bachelard termed the “poetics of space” within texts of all sorts, as well as all sizes and varieties of context. Particularly fascinating might be explorations of the extraordinary, the exemplary, the “out of this world” sorts of places, real and figurative: the spaces of the fantastic and the bizarre. Conversely, the lived and experienced environments of the banal might spark equally fertile archaeologies of the everyday. For that is the allure of the often inscrutable or illegible cities of the imagination: they open up new territories.

We welcome special session proposals (due January 31, 2022) on any topic for our 2022 annual conference. Those that harmonize with our special theme might include all varieties of heterotopologies; explorations of fictional domains; Borgesian labyrinths; road narratives; enclaves of digital introspection or connection; theme parks; elision, caesura, and other grammatological openings; migration/border crossings; psychedelic “trips” of all sorts; native practices of tending the land; mirrors and projections; choreography and dance; exteriority/interiority; the politics or rhetorics of dispossession; theatrical staging; embodiment and disembodiment; panopticism; the family and/or spaces of domesticity; museums and archives; loitering; Zoom and other hauntings; homelessness and houselessness; settler colonialism; communities and cliques; as well as both paroxysmal places and quiet passages.

—

[1]    To borrow a fitting phrase from the famed British/American architectural critic Reyner Banham, whose Los Angeles: Architecture of the Four Ecologies, when read today, projects an alluring, smog-shrouded palimpsestual map of a city which has been repeatedly rewritten over the half-century since its publication.

[2]    Interestingly, both Umberto Eco’s 1973 “Travels in Hyperreality” and Jean Baudrillard’s 1981 Simulations reveal a fascination with Los Angeles, and particularly Disneyland, as the epicenter of a [seemingly] quintessentially American tendency to sanctify the fantastic.

[3]    It might seem outlandish to evoke Michel De Certeau’s spatial rhetorical practice of “walking in the city” within the paradigmatic autopia of Southern California (The Practice of Everyday Life, 118, 91), at least in the shadow of the New Wave/Punk pop eloquence of Missing Persons’ 1982 slightly vicious ditty. But, as Jane Jacobs teaches us in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the intricate “sidewalk ballet” of neighborhoods, large and small, routinely transcends the pedestrian (66).