The BACLS Biennial Conference The inaugural British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies – What Happens Now Conference (BACLS-WHN) is on 10th-12th July 2018 at Loughborough University, UK. Keynote Speakers: Dr Sandeep Parmar (University of Liverpool) Professor Alison Phipps (University of Sussex) Baroness Lola Young, in conversation with Dr Kaye Mitchell (University of Manchester) We invite contributions to the first official BACLS ‘What Happens Now’ conference. Understanding the contemporary as a fluid and hybrid ‘moment’, contemporary literary studies explores works of culture and their relation to the emerging political and social formations of the present. We welcome contributions on topics from across the field of contemporary literary studies, including modern languages, comparative and world literatures, eco-criticism, postcolonial studies, translation studies, linguistics, performance studies, media theory, comics studies, video games studies, adaptation studies, the study of popular music, cultural studies, critical theory, and digital humanities. BACLS-WHN will include readings and performances, as well as three […]

CFP: Don’t Look: Representations of Horror in the 21st Century One Day Symposium   28th April 2018   University of Edinburgh   Keynote Speaker: Dr. Sorcha Ní Fhlainn (Manchester Metropolitan University)     We live in scary, uncertain times. In recent years, we have witnessed the rise of hard-line nationalism, the ascendency of racist alt-right politics and attacks on the increasingly fragile-looking institution of democracy. We contend, daily, with the threat of seemingly inevitable ecological catastrophe. The Horror genre has always been understood as a potent mirror and bellwether, able to digest the socio-cultural and political currents of a given moment and feed them back to us in uncompromising and disturbing ways. This conference seeks to consider how representations of horror are changing in our own contemporary moment, where the line between fiction and reality, truth and lies appears to be fraying beyond recognition.   Recent academic scholarship on horror has diverged towards topics […]

CALL FOR PAPERS: DIGITAL⇌CULTURE 2018 A one-day conference hosted by the Digital Culture Research Network, and supported by the Midlands3Cities DTP (M3C) Cohort Development Fund Date: Friday 20th April 2018 Venue: University of Nottingham Abstract Submission Deadline: Friday 9th February 2018   'Digital⇌Culture 2018' explores the varied links between digital and cultural processes. Digital tools such as social media, mobile devices, video games, data analysis infrastructures, and networked technologies increasingly permeate our everyday lives. As a result, the production and expression of ‘meanings’ or ‘values’ – like the experience and performance of identity, gender, embodied lived experience, political activism, linguistic engagement, knowledge and power relations – are increasingly co-constituted by digital platforms. This one-day conference, which includes a keynote speech from Prof. Tim Jordan (Uni. of Sussex), aims to bring together researchers from a wide array of disciplines with an interest in digital culture. Submission We invite proposals from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to present theoretical and empirical research in response, […]

DISCO! An Interdisciplinary Conference University of Sussex 21-23 June 2018 From its origins as a New York City subculture amongst gay, black and Latino/Latina practitioners, and its transition into the mainstream, to its subsequent lives across international scenes, disco poses pivotal questions about the entanglements of art, industry, identity, and community. Disco is the site of many significant and lasting debates in popular culture, including those surrounding the figures of the DJ and the diva, the status and significance of dancing bodies, the tension between what is authentic and what is synthetic, and the historic maligning of society’s others. This major interdisciplinary international conference aims to examine and expand these debates. We therefore invite researchers from a range of academic backgrounds to re/consider disco cultures in their shifting historic and social contexts. We hope to explore disco as a tentacular phenomenon that reaches across multiple sites of production and consumption, […]