Scarcity in American Culture Conceptions of abundance are a quintessential theme in the United States cultural narrative, inextricably linked to the idea of the ‘good life.’ Unforeseen shifts toward conditions of scarcity invariably disrupt this sense of cultural wellbeing. Simultaneously, scarcity has an intrinsic value, where rarity and exclusivity accord unique dimensions of value and status. We seek submissions for a forthcoming special issue of the European Journal of American Culture focusing on the ways in which manifestations of American scarcity have been interpreted or conceptualized in optimistic or pessimistic terms. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary papers that focus on how scarcity relates to the transformation of social and cultural spaces. Papers are welcome to draw from a diverse range of interrelated topics including but not limited to, material and visual culture, sensory studies, architecture, media, politics and protest, identity and diversity, ideology and tradition. The European Journal of […]

The School of Arts and Humanities at Nottingham Trent University seeks to appoint a 0.5 Permanent Lecturer in English from 1 September 2016.  Applications are sought from candidates specializing in the following: 19C and 20C American literature, travel writing, Modernism and a broad knowledge and understanding of the major subject areas within English Studies. You will be able to demonstrate experience and expertise in teaching, curriculum design and assessment in English and within your own specialist area. Candidates must possess a commitment to teaching and learning and be able to work in a team-based and interdisciplinary context. The post-holder will be expected to contribute to curriculum delivery and development at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.  Applicants should have a strong research background with evidence of the ability to publish in top international journals and should have the aptitude to teach to the highest standards at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. […]

WHAT DO PICTURES DO? “REMEDIATING IMAGES/ L’IMAGE REMÉDIATISÉE” International conference June 1 and 2, 2017 Université de Bordeaux Montaigne Organizing Committee Mathilde Arrivé (EMMA, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) Nicolas Labarre (CLIMAS, Université Bordeaux Montaigne) Héléna Lamouliatte-Schmitt (CLIMAS, Université de Bordeaux) Richard Phelan (LERMA, Université Aix-Marseille) Keynote speakers Jan Baetens (Professor of Cultural Studies/Literary Studies, University of Leuven – Editor, Image & Narrative), "Le cineromanzo: un film sur papier" W.J.T. Mitchell (Professor of English and Art History, University of Chicago - Editor, Critical Inquiry) The term “remediation” was first introduced in 1999 by Jay David Bolter and David Grusin in their now classic Remediation: Understanding New Media (MIT Press). They adopted the term in order to describe the way new media refashion visual content initially created within “traditional” media such as photography, painting, film and television, a content which often itself turned out to have been a product of successive repurposings […]

Call for Papers: “Fictions of Management,” an international conference held at the John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität Berlin, December 8-10, 2016 Deadline for proposals: June 15, 2016. The theory and practice of modern business management arose in the late nineteenth century in the United States as a response to unstable markets, labor unrest, and organizational challenges in the new massive industrial corporations of the Gilded Age. As a system of efficiency and control, management soon became a generalized principle for dealing with everything from health, housework, and educational reform to imperial expansion, mass immigration, and related processes of racialization and naturalization. Taking a long view, management could also be regarded as integral to American society and culture from the beginning: from Puritan self-rationalization to the quantified self, from the management of slave plantations to technologies of social control, from the first national census in 1790 to the big data […]

Border Crossings:Translation, Migration, & Gender in the Americas, the Transatlantic, & the Transpacific Society for the Study of American Women Writers & Université Bordeaux Montaigne Dates: 5th – 8th July 2017 Venue: Université Bordeaux Montaigne, France Conference director: Stéphanie Durrans To maintain a continuity with their previous conference (in Philadelphia, November 2015) on liminality and hybrid lives, the organisers would like this first SSAWW conference in Europe to address the significance of “border crossing” in the lives and works of American women writers. Such experiences have always been important to American women. Early diaries and travel notes left by 17th– and 18th-century women provide us with valuable records of and about their migratory experience to the New World and their lives and experiences in America. Besides offering more records of such experiences, the 19th century also witnessed an explosion in travel writing, fiction, and poetry treating with travel, as growing numbers of American women writers […]