CfP: Scholar-Activism in the Twenty-first Century (British Library)

Animals in Detective Fiction Since its origins in the mid nineteenth century, detective fiction has been populated by a huge array of beasts. If the genre begins, as is widely supposed (though not without some debate), with Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841), then detective fiction’s very first culprit is an animal. Such beastly instances of criminal violence are among the genre’s most recurrent figurings of the non-human. Accordingly, like Poe’s frenzied ourang-outang on the spree in Paris, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) identifies a murderous aggression as part-and-parcel of animal nature. Detective fiction accommodates gentler and more law-abiding creatures too, however. Wilkie Collins, often thought of as the founder of the British detective novel, depicts the villain Count Fosco in The Woman in White (1859) surrounded by his ‘pretties’, ‘a cockatoo, two canary-birds and a whole family of white mice’, while Koko and […]

On 19th May 2017 Liverpool John Moores University will host the second annual International History and Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century conference. After the success of last year’s conference, we are looking to continue again with the wide-range of themes relevant to international history and diplomacy in the twentieth history. The aim of this year’s symposium is to gather a range of academics from all relevant disciplines who have international history, diplomacy, politics, humanitarianism and human rights history as their main subjects of interest to share their research in a multi-disciplinary environment.   The twentieth century was shaped by the changing dynamics of international relations. The first half of the century was dominated by the old European Imperial powers and the rivalry between these nations that ultimately lead to the outbreak of two world wars. The aftermath of the Second World War however had a monumental effect on the balance […]

The musical Hamilton, which opened on Broadway in August 2015 after a successful run at the Public Theater, has, in just a few years, become an awards powerhouse, a political lightning rod, and a cultural touchstone. Lin-Manual Miranda’s epic work, based on Ron Chernow’s sweeping biography of Alexander Hamilton, stands at the intersection where history and historical accuracy converge, where rap and showtunes merge, and where pop culture and high (or middlebrow) culture meet. Hamilton is simultaneously a groundbreaking musical theater experiment and an heir to the musical’s historical legacy, and it is in this divided, even contradictory role, that the musical finds its success. Musicologist Paul Laird (University of Kansas, kuvillancico@gmail.com) and theater scholar Mary Jo Lodge (Lafayette College, lodge@lafayette.edu) invite scholars from a wide range of disciplines to create essays about Hamilton for a proposed forthcoming edited collection with publication interest from Oxford University Press. For this scholarly volume, they seek chapters of 5000-6000 words that […]

Society for the History of Women in the Americas Annual Conference Thursday 6th July 2017 The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities The Society for the History of Women in the Americas (SHAW) welcomes proposals for its tenth annual conference, co-organised with The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities and the Rothermere American Institute. We invite 250 word abstracts for 20-minute presentations on any topic, geographical period, chronological time, or theme related to the history of women in the Americas. We also welcome comparative papers between two countries in the Americas or one in the Americas and a country outside the region. The conference welcomes papers from scholars at any stage of their career, especially graduate students. Diana Paton, the William Robertson Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh, will deliver the keynote lecture. Please submit abstracts along with a 100-word biography to shawconference2017@gmail.com by the 10th April 2017. […]

CALL FOR PAPERS (extended deadline) “Before and after Beat exploded: Essential studies on ruth weiss.” ruth weiss has worked for almost seven decades – and at 88 continues to work – with a plurality of artistic forms: she has authored around twenty poetry books, performed and recorded Jazz & Poetry, written more than ten plays, exhibited her water-color haiku paintings, acted in films and even written and directed one. As such, weiss embodies the artistic confluence of the 1950s and 1960s bohemia, breaking down, as Randy Roark writes, “the barriers between word, film, song, painting, and theatre”. Despite her extensive poetry career and very active participation in the West Coast buzzing artistic community since the early 1950s, weiss has remained an essentially overlooked figure in poetry history. This neglect might be representative – or shall we say a consequence – of the overshadowing of female artists within the Beat Generation […]

Call for Papers Australia New Zealand American Studies Association (ANZASA) Conference Australian Catholic University, North Sydney Campus, Sydney, Australia 27 June – 29 June 2017 The 2017 ANZASA conference will be held in North Sydney, hosted by the Australian Catholic University’s National School of Arts. ANZASA is an association dedicated to the research of all aspects of U.S. culture, politics and society. Its biennial conferences are in keeping with this mission. They provide a forum for discussion across the broad spectrum of American studies, involving presenters from multiple disciplines. In this tumultuous year for American society and its place in the world, papers are invited from those in American studies – and also from others considering the place of American history, culture, literature, politics or foreign policy in global or transnational contexts. Proposals for panels and individual 20-minute papers are welcome, as are submissions for other formats such as roundtables […]

CALL FOR PAPERS: Magazines on the Move: North American Periodicals and Travel A one-day seminar hosted by the Centre for Travel Writing Studies, Nottingham Trent University, in collaboration with the Network for American Periodical Studies Tuesday 6th June 2017, Nottingham Trent University, Clifton Campus Keynote speaker: Professor Andrew Thacker (Nottingham Trent University) Organisers:      Prof Tim Youngs (Nottingham Trent University); Dr Victoria Bazin (Northumbria University); Dr Rebecca Butler (Nottingham Trent University); Dr Sue Currell (Sussex University). This 1 day-seminar will focus on the relationship between North American travel writing and the periodical format. Its primary purpose is to facilitate historical and critical discussion of narratives of travel in North American periodicals. We invite proposals for twenty-minute papers that examine accounts of travel to, within, or from North America, published in North American periodicals. Topics to be examined in considering the interplay between the travel experience, the written and/or visual record […]