Interventions: New Perspectives on Politics, Freedom, and Democracy May 10, 2019 – Leicester, UK.  Keynote address from Professor Robert Eaglestone, Royal Holloway. Deadline for abstracts and panel proposals: February 1st, 2019.  Please send all submissions to interventions2019@gmail.com. Interventions 2019 aims to critically explore pertinent socio-political issues and their cultural representations. Papers of twenty minutes might include, but are not limited to: •    Post-truth politics •    Neoliberalism and freedom •    Democratic participation •    Class and austerity politics •    Globalisation, migration, and citizenship •    Censorship, offense, and free speech •    Autonomy and marginalised identities •    Resistance and activism in the arts and humanities •    Theoretical interventions with regard to freedom and democracy •    Cultural responses to political events •    Social media and social movements •    Politics and the academe •    Corporations, governments, and accountability •    Politics and mental health •    Technologies and democracy •    Anti-semitism and Islamophobia

CFP: 3rd Sexual Cultures Conference: PLAY University of Turku 28-29 May, 2019 Confirmed keynote speakers: Tom Apperley (University of Tampere), Kane Race (University of Sydney) & Katrin Tiidenberg (Tallinn University) The 3rd Sexual Cultures Conference focuses on the notion of play, understood as autotelic practices of pleasure where the enchantment of the activity is an end in itself. As the game studies scholar Miquel Sicart nevertheless notes, the pleasures of play can be ambivalent indeed: “Play is not necessarily fun. It is pleasurable, but the pleasures it creates are not always submissive to enjoyment, happiness, or positive traits. Play can be pleasurable when it hurts, offends, challenges us and teases us, and even when we are not playing. Let’s not talk about play as fun but as pleasurable, opening us to the immense variations of pleasure in this world.” Building on this understanding of play, as well as sex, as […]

Call for Papers: American Literature Association 30th Annual Conference, May 23-26, 2019 Westin Copley Place 10 Huntington Avenue Boston, MA 02116 Conference Director:  Olivia Carr Edenfield Georgia Southern University Conference Fee:  For those who pre-register before April 15, 2019:  $100 ($75 for Graduate Students, Independent Scholars, and Retired Faculty). After April 15, the fees are $125 and $100. Deadline for Proposals:  January 30, 2019 The ALA website contains details and instructions for submitting proposals as well as important information for representatives of participating author societies. Proposals from individuals and program information from author societies should be sent to Professor Olivia Carr Edenfield via email (carr@georgiasouthern.edu) by January 30, 2019, following the instructions on the website: www.americanliterature.org