Workshop at the Department of Greek and Latin Studies,
Philosophical Faculty of the Charles University in Prague
August 24-26, 2009

The term miscellany is a wide one and can refer to a number of concepts. On the one hand, medieval catalogues of manuscripts often use the term miscellanea for the 'leftovers' impossible to classify in a simple way. Many of the miscellaneous codices might have originated in this way – by binding together various 'remaining' texts. On the other hand, a miscellany can be a very carefully designed codex with a clear idea behind and serving a particular purpose. Clearly, the most frequent cases are those inbetween, that is, miscellanies which may be interpreted as designed but whose origin might have also included the aspect of the random. Thus, analysing miscellanies, one encounters also the problems of interpretability.

Case studies on particular medieval manuscript miscellanies written in any language are welcome at the workshop concentrating especially on three aspects: Composition: How do the contents fit together in specific cases? Is there a plan or a reason behind? If so, what does the selection tells about the compiler’s interests? Authorship: To what degree are the miscellany compilers and gatherers authors? Is there a personal touch discernable and interpretable? Use: How were these manuscripts actually used? Can a specific use of a particular miscellany be detected?

Keynote lectures will be given by Kimberly Rivers (Univ. of Wiskonsin, Oshkosh, U.S.A.) and Greti Dinkova-Bruun (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, Canada). Workshop languages are English, French, and German. There will be no conference fee. Limited funds are available to support the travel and accommodation expenses of selected participants (priority will be given to scholars from Eastern Europe). Please, send a brief (300-400 words) abstract of the proposed 20-minute paper together with information on your affiliation and research interests to Lucie Doležalová at dolezalova@cts.cuni.cz by December 31, 2008.
 
Lucie Dolezalova
Jilska 1
110 00 Prague
Czech Republic
phone: + 420-605-75-80-79
Email: dolezalova@cts.cuni.cz

A Day of Philo-Sophia:
Friendship and Philosophical Discussion
Murdoch University, 1 December, 2008
  
Keynote speaker:  Prof. Genevieve Lloyd 
  
In choosing Philosophical Futures as the theme of this year's Colloquium, we hope to encourage contributions that consider questions relating to the connections between philosophy and the future, for example, future directions for philosophy, links between philosophical pasts and futures, the role of philosophy in shaping the future, and the relevance of philosophy for future generations of theory and practice, life and reflection.
  
The Colloquium will be held at Murdoch University on Tuesday, December 2nd and is open to academics, undergraduate and postgraduate students. Papers will be refereed, and a certificate will be awarded for the best student paper.
  
Our goal is once again to provide a forum for the vital exchange of ideas in a supportive, collegial atmosphere, as well as to foster ties between philosophy departments, staff and students. It is our hope that this year we can continue to build upon the achievements of previous Colloquia by engaging in an ongoing philosophical conversation within the wider philosophy community.
  
The Colloquium is kindly sponsored by:

• Philosophy Program, Murdoch University
• The Krishna Somers Foundation for Diaspora Studies
• Department of Philosophy, UWA
• Centre for Applied Philosophy and Ethics, Curtin University of Technology
• Research Ethics Office, Murdoch University
• School of Social Sciences & Humanities and Faculty of Arts & Education, Murdoch University 

Contact:
Dr Lubica Ucnik
Philosophy Program
School of Social Sciences and Humanities
Murdoch University, Western Australia 6150
L.Ucnik@murdoch.edu.au

The Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara invites graduate students and emerging scholars (recent PhDs and junior faculty) to submit paper proposals for The Limits of Knowledge, a one-day symposium scheduled for February 20, 2009. This conference will address the ways in which skepticism, doubt, and uncertainty delineate the boundaries of what is knowable, and what is true in the history of art, architecture, and visual culture.

The visual representation of ideas and of objects is inextricably bound to concepts of truth and objectivity. If, however, these concepts are historically variable, dependent on engrained social practices and moral cultures, so too is the definition of an image with claims to truth or objectivity. What are the possibilities of knowledge in the visual field? What are its limitations? How can skepticism inform, complicate, question, or reject claims to the representation of truth through visual artifacts? To what end?

We conceive of skepticism in its broad range of applications -- moral, scientific, metaphysical, and religious as they relate to the visual arts. We invite papers from a wide range of thematic, methodological, and philosophical perspectives, and we encourage submissions across a variety of time periods and geographical designations. Possible topics include discussions of visual representation and the history of science and technology, landscape and the environment, the history of religion, and archaeologies of knowledge. Our keynote speakers are Peter Galison, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University, and Gail Wight, conceptual artist and Associate Professor at Stanford University.

Abstracts of 300 words or less for 20 minute papers should be sent to limitsofknowledge@gmail.com by December 1st. We will notify participants by December 15th.

Catherine Howe
Department of the History of Art and Architecture
University of California, Santa Barbara
Arts 1234
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Email: limitsofknowledge@gmail.com
Visit the website at http://www.arthistory.ucsb.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=50&Itemid=128 

The Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) has declared 2009 as the Year of Science. This event provides opportunities for discussion about issues currently facing our society, the role of science in addressing those issues, and the boundaries and intersections between science and other domains of human knowledge, including religion, economics, ethics and politics.

Museums & Social Issues is currently seeking submissions and individuals interested in serving as advisors, reviewers, or authors for both issues of Volume 4. For a full Call for Papers for either issue, contact Kris Morrissey (Editor) at Morriss8@u.washington.edu. Museums & Social Issues is a peer-reviewed journal published by Left Coast Press, Inc. The journal provides a forum for discourse about social issues and the engagement of museums. Each journal includes theoretical, philosophical, and practical perspectives.

Vol. 4, Issue 1 Science in Civic Life (working title) Robert Garfinkle, Co-editor (garfinkle@smm.org) Director, Science and Social Change Program, Science Museum of Minnesota. Articles or book and exhibit reviews are encouraged that address the nexus where the enterprise of science, urgent social issues, institutions of public trust, and the civic life of our country come together. What are the assumptions, intentions, power relationships, and effectiveness of the communication between science educators and communicators in many realms, and the stakeholders, citizens, visitors, and policymakers with which they communicate? And what role can and should institutions of public trust such as museums, zoos, aquaria, and science advocacy organizations play in our civic life? Articles are due December 1. Authors should request a full call for papers and send an “Intent to Submit” notice to Kris Morrissey (Morriss8@u.washington.edu) by October 30 with articles due in December.

Vol. 4, Issue 2 Losing Touch with Nature (working title) Elizabeth Baird, Co-editor (liz.baird@ncmail.net), North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. This publication will provide a forum to bring together diverse areas of study relevant to understanding our human connection with nature, implications of losing that connection and role of museums in facilitating connections with the natural environment. Insightful articles addressing (synthesizing and analyzing) any aspect of the interaction between museums and nature welcome. Authors are encouraged to request full call for papers and to send an “Intent to Submit” notice to Kris Morrissey (Morriss8@u.washington.edu) by December 10, 2008 with articles due March 2009.

• For information about submitting material: Kris Morrissey Editor, Museums & Social Issues, Morriss8@u.washington.edu
• For information about subscribing: Left Coast Press, Inc. http://www.lcoastpress.com/, Phone & Fax: 925-935-3380

Kris Morrissey
Director, Department of Museology
University of Washington
Box 353010
Seattle, Washington 98195

Email: morriss8@u.washington.edu

30th Anniversary Meeting!
Southwest/Texas Popular and American Culture Associations
February 25-28, 2009
Hyatt Regency Albuquerque
Albuquerque, New Mexico

Papers presently being sought for SHAKESPEARE ON FILM AND TELEVISION.  The Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Associations Conference will again be held in beautiful Albuquerque, NM, at the Hyatt Regency downtown (http://swtxpca.org/documents/107.html) on February 25-28, 2009. We have previously had panels on the following topics and invite new ideas all the time.

• What is a Shakespeare Adaptation?
• Shakespeare and the Genre Film
• Shakespearean Auteurs
• Bollywood Shakespeare
• Global Shakespeares
• Latino Shakespeare
• Sitcom Shakespeare
• Apocalyptic Shakespeare/Millennial Shakespeare
• Metatheatrical Shakespeare: Putting on the Plays
• Transgressive Shakespeare
• Shakespeare Films: Additions and Omissions
• The Future of Shakespeare Adaptations
• Shakespeare in Silent Film
• Shakespeare and Technology: The DVD
• Acting Shakespeare
• Shakespeare and Sexuality
• Shakespeare's Families

Send abstract to: Please send a 250 word proposal and a brief CV by November 15, 2008 (preferred) and no later than December 1, 2008 (proposal deadline) to: Richard Vela, Area Chair, Shakespeare on Film and Television richard.vela@uncp.edu. Please note that all registration must be completed by December 31, 2008.
 
Richard Vela
The University of North Carolina at Pembroke
122 Dial Building
Pembroke, NC 28360
Email: richard.vela@uncp.edu
For complete information on the conference, including registration, go online to http://SWTXPCA.ORG

International Conference
Perth, Western Australia
2-4 December 2008
In association with the National Academy of Screen & Sound, Murdoch University and the Faculty of Media, Society and Culture, Curtin University

Keynote Speakers:

• Felicity Collins, Humanities & Social Sciences, La Trobe University
• Suvendrini Perera, Media, Society and Culture, Curtin University
• Susannah Radstone, Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies, University of East London
• Janet Walker, Film and Media Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

The humanities have had a long-standing interest in the social and cultural dimensions of human suffering caused by catastrophic events.  Contributions made in this area by traditional disciplines such as philosophy, aesthetics, literature, and history have been complemented by the health and human sciences throughout the 20th century. Since the 1980s the degree of attention given by scholars in the humanities to experiences of and responses to such life-shattering events as incest, war, genocide, torture, and terror has increased at a pace described by some as "explosive". As a result, several interrelated, inter-disciplinary fields, such as trauma, memory, and genocide studies, have emerged to constitute an encompassing, rapidly-evolving, and hyper-productive network of studies. In the midst of such developments, cultural, media and film studies, as well as the creative arts, have also paid increasing attention to the literary, visual and performative engagement with human suffering and resilience.

As we quickly approach the second decade of the 21st century the historical events that constitute the ultimate referent of so much theoretical and creative endeavour have unfortunately not waned. It is for the same reason more crucial than ever to open spaces for the considered reflection about the potentials and limitations of myriad, sometimes competing, methodological approaches and modes of creative engagement with human pain and trauma. Interrogating Trauma seeks to provide such a space. Keynote speakers, panels and presenters, as well as the accompanying exhibition and performance of art and media works, will consider methodologies, orthodoxies, and openings in order to articulate strategies for imagining the 'beyond' of trauma through arts and media responses.

Themes include but are not limited to:

Apartheid, Apology, Architecture, Asia-Pacific, Art, Atrocity, Audiences, Bodies, Borders, Catastrophe, Child Soldiers, Cinema, Colonialism, Commemoration, Compensation, Conflict, Counselling, Crime, Death, Desire, Depression, Diasporas, Dictatorships, Disease, Documentary, Education, Everyday, Executions, Exile, Experimental, Exploitation, Famine, Fantasy, Forgiveness, Gender, Genocide, Globalisation, Grief, Havoc, Healing, History, Human Rights, Identities, Illness, Image, Incest, Incitement, Independence, Indigenes, Internet, Invasion, Journalism, Justice, Literature, Location, Media, Memorials, Memory, Migrants, Minorities, Museums, Music, New Media, NGOs, Nostalgia, Oppression, Oral Histories, Pain, People Smuggling, Performance, Perpetrators, Photography, Place, Politics, Post-Colonialism, Post-Memory, PTSD, Poverty, Power, Propaganda, Queer, Racism, Radio, Rape, Reception, Recognition, Reconciliation, Refugees, Reparations, Reportage, Representation, Repression, Resilience, Resistance, Revolt, Revolution, Slavery, Social Suffering, Space, Sublime, Suicide, Survivors, Television, Terror, Testimony, Therapy, Third World, Torture, Tourism, Translation, Trauma, Truth, Victims, Violence, Visual Culture, War, Witnessing, Xenophobia.

For more information:

• Mick Broderick, m.broderick@murdoch.edu or
• Antonio Traverso, a.traverso@curtin.edu.au
• Downloadable one-page conference flier at http://nass.murdoch.edu.au/docs/CFP1page.pdf
• http://nass.murdoch.edu.au/nass_conf_fest_trauma.htm

Melbourne, 3-5 December 2008

Keynote Speakers:

• ANN LAURA STOLER, New School for Social Research
• AILEEN MORETON-ROBINSON, Queensland University of Technology
• LYNETTE RUSSELL, Monash University
• PATRICK WOLFE, La Trobe University
• MATT WRAY, Harvard University

Following the success of the Historicising Whiteness conference of 2006, Re-Orienting Whiteness continues the critical engagement with whiteness studies. In conjunction with the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association, Re-Orienting Whiteness 2008 invites scholars to explore the potential, or otherwise, of 'whiteness' to analyse the operations of 'race', past and present.

Our central aim is to bring whiteness studies into a closer conversation with other approaches to 'race', particularly those which have emerged from studies of colonialism and postcolonial theory. There has been remarkably little cross fertilisation between these areas of scholarship, despite the many obvious synergies between them. We seek to foreground this tension as a fundamental challenge for the field. We envision the conference traversing a variety of countries, periods, methodologies and theoretical concepts, bringing together scholars of diverse backgrounds and interests. Broadening out from the (settler colonial) context of the United States, we wish to explore how whiteness operated in colonial and non-colonial contexts across the globe.

Possible themes include:

• Indigenous perspectives on whiteness
• The politics of apology/assimilation/sovereignty/restitution/power
• Whiteness in the colonial/settler colonial encounter Whiteness in non-colonial contexts
• The gendered privileges of whiteness
• The chronology of whiteness: visibility/invisibility
• Cultures, representations, borderlands, bodies, transformations
• How important were global imperial processes to the operation of white power?
• Does whiteness even matter?

Please send 200 word abstracts, along with a brief half-page CV, by 29 August 2008 to: reorientingwhiteness@gmail.com

Proposals for panels of up to three speakers are most welcome.  Website coming soon to
http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/historical-studies/news-and-events/index.php

Conference Convenors:

• Leigh Boucher (Monash University),
• Jane Carey (University of Melbourne),
• Kat Ellinghaus (Monash University).

In association with the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association.  Supported by the School of Historical Studies, Monash University and the School of Historical Studies, University of Melbourne.

Sponsored by Australian literature @ the University of Sydney and AustLit
The University of Sydney
4-5 December 2008

On 4-5 December 2008, Australian Literature @ the University of Sydney will host a symposium on eResearch and Australian Literary Culture. Plenary speakers include digital humanities specialist Professor Hugh Craig, University of Newcastle, NSW.
 
Digital archives and eResearch more generally have become increasingly important in humanities research internationally. Influential examples include Franco Morettis method of distant reading and William St. Clairs political economy of reading. In Australian research, the ARC call for network funding in 2002-3 saw the formation of an eHumanities Network and the Cultural Research Network (CRN). A central premise of the successfully-funded CRN is that since the 1960s and 70s, theoretically-driven research in the humanities has somehow come adrift from the empirical research techniques of the social sciences and humanities, and that there is scope for a reconnection of these approaches that is at once post-theoretical and new-empirical. 
 
A series of papers given at the 2007 conference of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) at the University of Queensland, the coming to maturity of data bases like AustLit, and the rise of new on-line projects such as the Australian Poetry Resources Internet Library (APRIL) indicate that the techniques of eResearch and the use of digital archives have also reached a critical moment in research into Australian literary culture. This is evident not only in fields such as the history of the book and the history of publishing, but also in the ARC-funded Resourceful Reading project, which seeks to use eResearch methods and digital archives to revise the legacy of theoretically-driven literary history and criticism, and to generate new ways of writing literary history and reading texts. Such projects often bring together researchers from more than one discipline, and from different kinds of institution, creating fruitful partnerships between academics, librarians, writers and publishing professionals. Topics include: 

• Synoptic papers or case studies involving exemplary
• eResearch
• History of the book
• History of publishing
• History of reading
• Representations of reading
• Distant reading, close reading, resourceful reading
• Bibliographic research and digital editing
• Text and data mining
• Geo-spatial mapping
• Digital archives
• Data sets and quantitative analysis

For more information, please contact.

Dr Katherine Bode
ARC Postdoctoral Fellow
English Department
University of Sydney
Sydney 2006
Australia
Tel: +61 2 9351 7448
Email: katherine.bode@usyd.edu.au
 
Professor Robert Dixon, FAHA
Professor of Australian Literature
Department of English
University of Sydney
Sydney 2006
Australia
Tel: +61 2 9036 7231
Email: robert.dixon@usyd.edu.au

2008 Annual conference of the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia
Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, 6-9 December 2008

Cultural studies has historically concerned itself with the cultural practices of the everyday and the now. However, as a politically motivated discipline, cultural studies has an ongoing preoccupation with cultural, economic, and political change, and thus with futures. The 2008 Cultural Studies Association of Australasia National Conference will interrogate possible and impossible local, national, regional, and global futures.

Our imaginings of the future shape the lived experience of the present and our cultural memory of the past. These imaginings are usually polarised towards the deeply nihilistic or the jubilantly utopian. This conference will address the spaces between real and fictional futures, and the hopes and anxieties that emerge from those spaces.

Confirmed speakers

• Professor Mieke Bal, TBC
• Fred Chaney, Order of Australia, Co-chairman of Reconciliation Australia, former Deputy Chairman of the Australian Native Title Tribunal
• Kim Scott, Australian novelist, winner of the Miles Franklin Award, WA Premier’s Literary Award, and RAKA Kate Challis Award.

Conference themes and topics might include the future of:

• Landscapes: popular cultural responses to global warming; discourses of evolution; the aesthetics of entropy, erosion, ruins, and wastelands; ghost towns;
• Urbanscapes: retro and futuristic 'burbscapes and cityscapes; future advertising and graffiti; new soundscapes; liquid architectures (modular, programmable, and nanotech);
• Movement: the culture of mobile lifestyles (backpackers, tourists, and caravan parks); animal and human migrations;
• Community: the fate(s) of indigenous and regional communities; future ethnicities and subcultures; ageing and overpopulation;
• Politics: future social movements; neo-imperialism; post-civil society; the collective commons; utopian and preventative policies;
• History: (personal and national) collections, museums and archives; the atrophy of language; life stories; the media as a future archive of the present;
• Bodies: sexualities; genders; virtual; post-human; cyborg;
• The Child: children's utopias; future parenting and pedagogy; changing cultural constructions of childhood; future infantalism;
• Technology - new trends in media and entertainment; emerging trends in, and discourses of, game culture; regional engagements with online communities; fringe cyberculture; future ethnographics;
• Economy - blue sky futures; future food systems; popular representations of gold and instant wealth; trends and discourses of exploration, discovery, and exploitation;
• Aesthetics - popular imaginings of messianic, apocalyptic and utopian futures; new forms of art and art funding.

The conference will be held in the unique regional environment of Kalgoorlie at Western Australia's School of Mines. Kalgoorlie is the historic centre of mining in Western Australia. The Perth-Kalgoorlie pipeline, completed in 1903, was a contentious development that opened up the goldfields and signified a commitment to the future of WA. The town's growth gave rise to satellite industries such as tourism, beer brewing, and sex work, and today Kalgoorlie is a thriving regional city. However, like any industry centred around natural resources, the mining industry there has a finite future. The choice of Kalgoorlie as a venue therefore not only puts into practice the Association's policy of addressing the needs of regional communities, it emphasises that the future is a dynamic driven by tensions between development and sustainability.

A selection of papers from the conference will be published in a special issue of Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies.  A further publication possiblity will be through Black Swan Press, the imprint of The Centre for Advanced Studies in Australia, Asia and the Pacific (CASAAP)

For all conference enquiries please contact either Leigh Brennan (l.brennan@curtin.edu.au) or Amanda Third (a.third@murdoch.edu.au). 

Visit the conference website at:
http://www.csaa2008.curtin.edu.au/

Monash University, Caulfield Campus
6 December 2008

A symposium to mark the occasion of the 60th anniversary of doctoral education in Australia and celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Monash University.

The phrase ‘doctoral subjects’ embraces both the kind and nature of research undertaken in Australia at doctoral level in humanities, arts and social science disciplines (that is, the subject or content of the work); and the kinds of subjects, in the sense of research subjectivities, produced through this work.

Our aim with this symposium is to add to the growing body of Australian research on the doctorate which deals almost exclusively with the (albeit valuable) issues of educational process by addressing more substantive academic, epistemological and cultural issues surrounding the doctorate which are rarely, if ever, taken up. We hope that this symposium will begin to address this gap and open up a space in which we can talk about the doctorate in relation to the disciplines, interdisciplinary fields, innovation, and the nature of researchers being produced through Australian doctoral programs.

This symposium gathers together a number of researchers prominent in the humanities and social sciences in Australia who have made significant contributions throughout their careers to the shaping of disciplines and interdisciplinary fields through both research and research training. Speakers include:

• John Frow
• Ross Gibson
• Rachel Fensham
• Johanna Wynn
• Graeme Davison
• Karen Green & John Bigelow

For further details about speakers and registration please visit our website: Doctoral Subjects Symposium 
http://arts.monash.edu.au/news-and-events/conferences/doctoral-subjects/

The Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies and SEFTMS are organising a conference to be held on 11 and 12 December, 2008, at Victoria University of Wellington.  

Cultural nationalism has been at the centre of literary history in New Zealand, as in other literatures. In New Zealand the intense period of literary activity of the 1930s and 40s produced a body of work that sharply influenced thinking about national identity. The 1890s shaped thinking about the defining characteristics of an assertively nationalistic Australian literature, while Canada after World War II sought a cultural identity separate from the overpowering proximity of US nationalism. These nationalist moments still influence critical discussion and cultural formations but are now being challenged by alternative nationalisms, the outward gaze of contemporary writers, the growth of fantasy and other genres, and, above all, globalism. Questions about the relevance of nationalism in literature are relevant everywhere.

The keynote speaker will be Professor Leela Gandhi, Department of English, University of Chicago, who will address the conference title. Professor Gandhi is the author of Affective Communities: Anticolonial Thought, Fin de Siecle Radicalism, and the Politics of Friendship (Duke University Press, 2006) and Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction (Columbia University Press, 1998).  Other speakers will be announced.  Topics include:

• The nation in literature
• The ‘canon’
• Globalism and literature
• Book markets and readerships
• Alternative literary nationalisms
• Contemporary postcolonial and critical theory on the nation
• Culture and literature
• Dispossessed nationalisms
• Fantasy and the nation
• Minority literatures
• Diasporic literatures and nations

For more information, please contact Lydia.Wevers@vuw.ac.nz.

The goal of this issue is to make a contribution to recent attempts to "de-colonize" early cinema and modern visual cultural studies. These fields have been very productive in film studies and cultural studies since the late 1970s, producing many groundbreaking works that introduce innovative historiographical methods and theoretical approaches. Yet their main discourses have rarely deviated from Euro-American contexts. In the same vein, the cinema's role and function in projects of imperialist expansions remains seriously understudied.

Considering that since its inception the development of cinema has been indebted to the commodification of "Others", the commercial advantages of various imperial wars, and the uses of penetrative powers of imperial networks for developing film distribution and exhibition systems, the marginalized status of this issue effectively eclipses one of the formative aspects of the medium's early history. Academic essays and book reviews that pursue to interrogate this historiographical void and the constitutive relationship between cinema/visual media and imperialism are encouraged for submission.

The deadline for submissions:
15 December 2008

Spectator, a biannual publication of the Division of Critical Studies of the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, now invites submissions that address the above topic in areas including, but not limited to:

• A Shared Film History of Imperial and Colonial Cinemas
• Cinema and Colonial/Imperial Modernity
• Early Cinema and Nationalism
• Film Policies and Imperialism
• Film Co-productions across British, French, Japanese, or Other Imperial Territories
• American Film and "Internal" Colonialism
• Colonial Film Culture and the Reception of Hollywood Movies
• Travelogues, Ethnographic Documentaries, and War Actualities
• Gender/Sexuality and Colonial Film Culture
• Representation of "Others"
• Colonialism, Post-colonialism and Film Archive

Submission Guidelines:

Submissions and queries should be emailed to the issue editor Dong Hoon Kim at donghkim@usc.edu (attn: Spectator Submission)

Essay contributions should not be more than 5,000 words. They should also include a brief abstract (200 words) and a brief biographic statement (150 words). All pages should be numbered consecutively. Rejected manuscripts will not be returned. Articles submitted to the Spectator should not be under consideration by any other journal.

Book Reviews are also accepted, and may vary in length from 300 to 1,000 words. Please include title of book, retail price and ISBN at the beginning of the review. Forum or Additional Section contributions can include works on new archival or research facilities or methods as well as other relevant works related to the field.

For electronic submissions (preferred): authors should send copies of their work via e-mail as electronic attachments. Please keep backup files of all disks. Files should be MS Word in PC or Mac format.

For mailed submission: one paper copy of manuscript should be submitted as well as a copy on disk. Manuscripts should include the title of the contribution and the name(s) of authors, as well as the postal address, e-mail address, and phone numbers for author who will work with the editor on any revisions. Manuscripts to be considered for publication should be sent to:

Dong Hoon Kim
Critical Studies, School of Cinematic Arts
University of Southern California
Email: donghkim@usc.edu

Upon acceptance, a format guideline will be forwarded to all contributors as to image and text requirements.

Annual Meeting of the Society for Values in Higher Education
Elmhurst College (Illinois)
22-26 July 2009

The university is an institution that functions within a marketplace yet often finds itself in tension with the values of the marketplace. This tension has existed for centuries. In the 19th century, John Henry Newman famously grappled with this tension in The Idea of a University, a work that has shaped greatly the conversation about higher education in Europe and the United States. Newman juxtaposed university education to education in professional skills, claiming that faculty should teach universal knowledge not simply vocational skills. This juxtaposition remains at the heart of American colleges and universities, manifesting itself in tensions between the humanities and professional education, between aesthetic values and instrumental rationality, and between the liberal arts education (often represented through the General Education program) and specialized majors.

For 2009, the Society for Values in Higher Education (an interdisciplinary organization committed to the role of higher education in promoting citizenship and the common good) is organizing two afternoon working groups for scholars, educators, and civic and business leaders to present work that both discerns the nature of these tensions in higher education and constructively poses solutions to them. Working groups will meet for 1.5 hours each afternoon for three days and will deal with one of two sets of questions:

• What are the practical consequences of thinking of higher education in market terms? Are there any viable alternatives or will some form of instrumental rationality always determine decision making in higher education? Do consumer culture and its associated values threaten liberal education? If not, why not? If so, can anything be done to preserve liberal education within the predominant consumer culture?
• What are the successes and failures of revolutionary or radical pedagogy in the 20th century? What are the prospects for alternative pedagogies for the future, and how do they challenge traditional ideas about educational experience and its assessment?

Proposals for papers should be sent to Eric Bain-Selbo, Department Head, Philosophy and Religion, Western Kentucky University, 1906 College Heights Blvd., Bowling Green, KY 42101. Inquiries may be made to eric.bain-selbo@wku.edu. Proposals should not exceed 1000 words in length. Proposals are due by December 15, 2008. In keeping with the mission of the SVHE, interdisciplinary and/or practice-oriented proposals are especially encouraged.

Awards
Each participant in a working group will have the $200 registration fee waived for the 2009 Fellows Meeting. In addition, the program committee of the SVHE will select three papers for special recognition at the meeting. To be eligible for an award, completed drafts of the papers must be submitted by June 1, 2009 and authors must attend the SVHE meeting to present their papers. Each winning author will receive $500.

Distribution and Publications
Participants will have the option to post their completed work on the SVHE website. They also will be encouraged to submit their manuscripts for possible publication in Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal.
 
Eric Bain-Selbo
Department Head
Philosophy and Religion
Western Kentucky University
1906 College Heights Blvd.
Bowling Green, KY 42101
(270) 745-5744
Email: eric.bain-selbo@wku.edu
Visit the website at http://www.svhe.org

The Second Conference of the International Society for Cultural History
Hosted by the Cultural History Project
The University of Queensland, Brisbane Australia
20-23 July 2009

The second conference of the International Society for Cultural History (ISCH) will address a broad series of questions pertaining to cultures of violence and conflict. For scholars across a range of disciplines the origins, nature, and impact of violence and conflict have been of fundamental concern, as highlighted by recent publications including Joanna Bourke’s Rape: A History from 1860 to the Present, and Slavoj Žižek’s Violence. Given that ongoing scholarly interest, and the urgency of such matters in the contemporary world, it is appropriate that this assembly encourages research and discussion on these topics as seen through the diverse perspectives of cultural history. Possible themes and topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Histories and memories of trauma.
• The enabling and legitimizing of violent social relations through popular consent and common national identities.
• Spaces and places of violence: the geography and memorialization of war and conflict.
• The visualization, narrativization, and aesthetics of violence and conflict in art, fiction, film, television, video games, and new media.
• Relationships between war and science, medicine, and technology.
• Everyday violence and gendered conflict.
• Comedies of violence.
• The manipulation of cultural phenomena and propaganda to create or sustain genocide, ethnic cleansing, racial violence, or religious conflict.
• The role of culture in the avoidance or amelioration of violence and conflict.
• The relative importance of cultural phenomena in the foreign policies of ancient and modern societies.

Paper proposals (300 words max.), or proposals for panels of three speakers, should be sent to isch2009@uq.edu.au by 19 December 2008. Those invited to speak at the conference will be expected to become members of the ISCH (only 5GBP) before 29 May 2009, when the final program will be posted. They, and other participants in the conference who are members of the ISCH, will be entitled to an equivalent reduction in the conference fee. Further information on the ISCH, including how to join, is available at: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/isch/

For additional information on the University of Queensland’s Cultural History Project see: http://www.arts.uq.edu.au/index.html?page=82701 For information on Brisbane and Queensland, refer to: http://www.tq.com.au/ and http://www.tq.com.au/destinations/brisbane/brisbane_home.cfm Co-convenors: Associate Professor Chris Dixon and Associate Professor Jason Jacobs

The Centre for Postcolonial Writing (CPW) is the Editor of the Postcolonial Literary Studies Section of Routledge’s On-line bibliography, the Annotated Bibliography of English Studies (ABES), which commended in 1999 and has just been remodelled and relaunched for 2008.  The CPW is expanding its network of annotators in the area of Postcolonial Literature. 

Our contributors write short annotated bibliographies of articles, monographs, edited collections and online products, that they consider to be valuable and necessary reading in the field.  We are seeking interested postgraduates, early career researchers and established scholars who specialise in:

• Postcolonial literature in English from the non-Western world (Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the South Pacific)
• Postcolonial literature in the settler colonies (Australia, Canada, Unites States of America)
• Indigenous, ethnic, minority and migrant literatures
• Postcolonial literary criticism
• Postcolonial creative writing
• Postcolonial life writing

Contributors will be required to provide short (200 word) annotations for 10-15 texts per year and be credited for their work. Contributors will keep the texts they annotate (if in hard copy) in lieu of payment.  Prospective annotators should visit the following website for application forms and further information on the project:

http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/postcolonial-writing/research/index.php

For inquiries contact:

Devika Goonewardene and Isabella Ofner,
Project Managers, ABES – Postcolonial Literary Studies,
CPW – cpw@arts.monash.edu.au