Reality Television Southwest/Texas Popular & American Culture Associations 30th Annual Conference
Conference Theme: Reeling in the Years: 30 Years of Film, TV, and Popular Culture
Hyatt Regency Albuquerque 330
Tijeras Albuquerque, NM 87102
24-28 February 2009

The Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Associations will hold their 30th annual meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on February 24-28, 2009. Proposals are now being accepted for panels on Reality Television. In keeping with this year’s theme, "Reeling in the Years: 30 Years of Film, TV, and Popular Culture," papers are particularly sought on aspects of film, TV, and popular culture of the last 30 years with an emphasis on the popular culture of 1979. As always, papers on any facet of reality television are also welcome.

Previous years’ presentations have explored the place of reality television in modern culture; the ways in which reality television programs are shaped as narrative; the development of reality television programs as genres; the psychological, sociological, and philosophical appeal of reality television; the ways in which reality television series subvert and/or reinforce cultural, regional, and gender stereotypes; the genesis, development (and decline?) of the reality television program; and, the application of literary critical approaches to unpack reality television programs.

Topics not included here are also welcome. Abstracts of 150-250 words may be sent to Dr. James Bell (bell@cofo.edu) by a priority deadline of November 15, 2008. The final deadline for submissions is December 1, 2008. Please include a working title and a brief biography of 100 words with your submission. Email submissions are preferred. Email: bell@cofo.edu Telephone: (417) 690-3263

Registration and conference information is available at http://swtxpca.org/documents/home.html.

James Bell
College of the Ozarks
Point Lookout, Missouri 65726
417.690.3263
Phone: 1.505.842.1234 Fax: 1.505.766.6710
Email: bell@cofo.edu

Vincent Buckley 20 Years after: Life, Work, Politics and Times.
Newman College, University of Melbourne.
February 10-11, 2009.
 
Original 20 minute papers are sought for the 2009 mini-conference of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL).  The conference will consider all aspects of the life of Vincent Buckley (1925-1988), including his poetry, criticism, polemics and influence, and the importance of his Irish background and religion.  The organising committee invites papers and panel discussions that consider, but are not limited to, the following:

• Poetry
• Metaphor
• Imagination
• Poetics
• Poetry and the sacred
• Australian literary history
• Cold War politics
• The Church and politics
• Australian Catholicism
• Australian postcolonialism
• Ireland and Australia
• Local and global
• Irish and Australian nationalism
• Modernism in Australian poetry
• Peace, violence and civil rights
• The country and the city

The organising committee would be interested in creative responses as well as academic papers. Please send a 200-300 word abstract and a brief biographical note as an email attachment to bridie.mccarthy@vu.edu.au or by post to: Bridie McCarthy, SCA, Arts, Victoria University, PO Box 14428, Melbourne 8001.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: Friday November 14, 2008.
Notification of acceptance: Friday November 28, 2008.
 
Participating Keynote Speakers and Poets include: Peter Steele, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Aileen Kelly & Lisa Gorton.
 
Organising committee: John McLaren, Penelope Buckley, Lyn McCredden, Charon Freebody, Damien Barlow & Bridie McCarthy.
 
Presented by Victoria University
Supported by Newman College
Sponsored by ASAL
 
Conference website: http://www.staff.vu.edu.au/mclaren/Vincent%20Buckley%20Conference.asp

The Department of French Studies 3rd Annual Graduate Student Conference
Sexuality, Eroticism, and Gender
30-31 January 2009
Louisiana State University
Bâton Rouge, LA

The Department of French Studies Graduate Student Association at Louisiana State University invites paper proposals from any century or genre of French and Francophone literature and linguistics pertaining to sexuality, eroticism, and/or gender. We urge you to explore and challenge one or all of these questions and its effects on literature, linguistics, history of ideas, context, rhetoric, and gender studies. Possible themes include but are not limited to the following:

• What role do these topics play in literature and linguistics, and how has that role changed or been challenged in the past?
• How has the treatment of these topics evolved?
• What outside influences have affected these topics and their roles within literature and language?
• What subtleties in language do authors and speakers employ to allude to sexuality, eroticism, and gender?
• How do these topics relate to or influence the treatment of women?

We also encourage comparative studies between authors, genres, centuries, and subjects. Abstracts for 15-minute papers written in English or French should be approximately 200 words and must include the title of the paper and contact information. Our keynote speaker will be Gaëtan Brulotte, Distinguished University Professor of French and Francophone Literature at the University of South Florida (author of the Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature). Professor Brulotte studied at Laval University (Quebec City) and earned his PhD at the University de Paris VII – Ecole des hates Etudes en Sciences Socials (France) under the direction of the renowned French critic Roland Barthes (on modern French Erotic Literature). He is the author of a dozen books, and his fiction works (among them: Le Surveillant and L’Emprise ) have won over fifteen literary awards and have been translated into several languages.

Deadline for submission: Friday, 21 November 2008.
Send Paper Proposal Abstract to:

Melanie Hackney
404 Hodges Hall
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA 70803
Email: frenchconference@gmail.com
Visit the website at http://lsu.edu/frenchstudies 

The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP) conference will take place at St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto, 23-27 June 2009.

The conference theme, Tradition & InnovatioN, provides an opportunity to explore developments in the field of Book History. Professor Natalie Zemon Davis (Princeton and the University of Toronto) and Professor Dominique Kalifa (Paris 1) will deliver plenary addresses.

In keeping with previous SHARP conferences, we welcome proposals on all aspects of book history and print culture, but especially those that address issues related to the conference theme, such as:

• the future of the discipline
• methodologies: theory versus case studies?
• the legacy of material bibliography
• the “new media” and book culture
• transnational approaches
• the technologies of reading / assessing readerships
• the evolving nature of authorship
• book history and publishing studies

Presenters must be members of SHARP (by the time of registration) in order to present at the conference. For information on membership, please visit the SHARP website at http://www.sharpweb.org/

Proposals may be submitted in English or French for: individual papers of 20 minutes, which will be combined into 90 minute panel sessions by the Programme Committee; or, organized panels of three papers. Deadline for submission is 30 November 2008.