Call for Papers: The Red and the Black – The Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic Conference to be held at the Institute for Black Atlantic Research (IBAR), University of Central Lancashire, Preston, 14-15 October 2017, to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution. Keynote speaker: Professor Winston James, University of California, Irvine. With special performances from Linton Kwesi Johnson (invited) and David Rovics The Russian Revolution was not only one of the most critical events of the twentieth century in its own right but an inspirational event across the ‘black Atlantic’ as a blow against racism and imperialism.  For colonial subjects of European empires internationally as well as black Americans, the Russian Revolution promised the hope of a world without oppression and exploitation.  This conference aims to build on the growing scholarship and literature in this area to explore the impact the revolutionary events in Russia during 1917 made […]

Elie Wiesel has long been a pivotal figure in Holocaust discourse. His book Night was one of the earliest works by a survivor and continues to be a significant point of reference in Holocaust literature. He went on to become an incredibly prolific writer, working in a range of genres. His death in July 2016 invites examination of what form his literary, political, and cultural legacy will take. Despite a large and distinguished body of scholarship on his writing, many of his works, particularly his more recent fiction such as The Sonderberg Case (2010) and Hostage (2012), have yet to be subject to sustained critical analysis. This volume seeks to bring together insights into Wiesel’s novels. The editors invite abstracts on any work concerning Wiesel’s novels. Topics may include: Wiesel and the contextualization of the Holocaust within Jewish history The relationship between Wiesel’s fiction and non-fiction Hypertextuality in Wiesel’s work […]

CFP Lying Conference to be held at Bordeaux Montaigne University, France, November 9-10, 2017. If you look up the word “lie” in the Oxford dictionary, it is defined as an intentionally false statement, meant to deceive. Like irony, lying is a matter of intention and interpretation, and it exists in a virtual space. Indeed, if it is not reported or simply detected by somebody else, a lie never exists as such, and in a way never reaches its potential. However, unlike irony, it is not regarded as a figure of speech. It does not refer to the particular position or strategy of a speaker with regard to his/her own words, but instead to the deceitful nature of these words. Lying challenges facts and truth and distorts them. It either works in the interests of the liar or, when it becomes compulsive or pathological, against them. It can thus designate fundamentally different […]