CFP MMLA 2022 Science and Fiction: Posthumanism and the Post-Apocalyptic (proposals by 4/15/2022; Minneapolis 11/16-21/2022)

MMLA 2022 Science and Fiction: Posthumanism and the Post-Apocalyptic

Source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/03/15/mmla-2022-science-and-fiction-posthumanism-and-the-post-apocalyptic

deadline for submissions: April 15, 2022

full name / name of organization: Andy Harper / Midwest Modern Language Association

contact email: andy.harper@slu.edu

Science and Literature: Posthumanism and the Post-Apocalyptic

The recognition of anthropogenic climate change and the form and figure of apocalypse have intertwined in the U.S. consciousness for at least as far back as George Perkins Marsh’s 1864 contention in Man and Nature that “earth is fast becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhabitant.” For at least so far back, writers and philosophers have contributed to the cultural imagination of humanity’s future: adaptation or extinction. This panel invites contributions which look beyond the “now” of what Marsh calls “climatic excess” to the bodies, minds, and forms of being that emerge in literature that registers environmental collapse or transformation. What human (or posthuman) subjectivities (or intersubjectivities) populate our imaginary future? What other ends are we able to imagine by imagining the end of the world—or simply of human life on it? Such discussions may take up, for instance,

• The alien body in science fiction
• Biocultural or bioregional perspectives
• The climate crisis in literature and film
• Ecocriticism and/or eco-feminism
• Geographical collaborations
• Metamorphoses (cockroach and otherwise)
• Post-apocalyptic narratives
• Radiation and radioactivity in popular culture
• Techno-utopian solutions
• Zombies

Papers on a variety of literary traditions and literary theory are invited. Please submit an abstract or proposal not exceeding 300 words to andy.harper@slu.edu by 15 April 2022. The Midwest MLA 2022 convention will be held 16-21 November in Minneapolis, Minnesota.



Last updated March 15, 2022

CFP Fairy Tales: New Spaces, Different Faces (6/21/14; Midwest MLA)

Possibly a repeated post:

Fairy Tales: New Spaces, Different Faces
full name / name of organization:
Midwest Modern Language Association
contact email:
rmh7x5@mail.missouri.edu

In his article, “Decolonizing Fairy-Tale Studies” (2010) Donald Haase cautions against the “limited horizon of much contemporary fairy-tale research” and advocates developing “effective intercultural or transcultural model[s] for understanding the fairy tale,” in order to “create a disciplinary or interdisciplinary space that can accommodate the genre in its many manifestations.” A few recent, exemplary studies indicate the rich theoretical possibilities for fairy-tale scholarship: Jack Zipes draws on cognitive science and evolutionary biology in The Irresistible Fairy Tale, and Cristina Bacchilega’s Fairy Tales Transformed? frames fairy tale adaptations as “ideologically-variable desire machines” entangled in a hyptertextual age of wonder and magic.

This special session panel for the 2014 Midwest Modern Language Association is interested in exploring new theoretical spaces of the fairy tale with a preference toward less canonical writers and texts. Potential papers might consider, but are not limited to, the following: material culture readings emphasizing the “thingness” of fairy-tales; marginalized fairy-tale texts and films; fairy tales and (post)colonial discourse; fairy tales and queer theory; fairy tales and post/trans-humanism; and fairy tales and eco-criticism. We welcome paper proposals from any historical period of fairy-tale cultural production and in any form: from the theatre of seventeenth-century French contes des fées, to Victorian chapbooks of fairy-tale figures, to contemporary television shows like "Once Upon a Time" and "Grimm."

Papers dealing directly with the 2014 conference theme, “The Lives of Cites”, are particularly encouraged, especially those engaging with the mental and physical landscapes, as well as the rural and urban settings of the fairy tale and its modern incarnations.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words and a 1-2 page curriculum vitae to Ryan Habermeyer at rmh7x5@mail.missouri.edu. no later than June 21, 2014.


By web submission at 05/30/2014 - 17:56