Author: modernistudies

The Science Fiction “New Wave” At Fifty

In May 1964
New Worlds #142 hits the newsstands. It is the first edition edited by Michael Moorcock and ushers in a creative, and much debated, reinterpretation of the aesthetics of Science Fiction. The “New Wave” has begun. This period of aesthetic innovation connected a great many of the pressing concerns of the day, from the apocalyptic threat of the Cold War to the potential of the Space Age, but it also preceded the concerns of subsequent generations including postmodernism, questions of identity and subjectivity, and the nature of history.

Fifty years after that landmark issue the ripples continue to be felt, washing through various modes of fantastic literature from slipstream to the New Weird, from cyberpunk to steampunk.
As a way of celebrating and acknowledging the influence of Moorcock’s tenure as editor of
New Worlds starting with that seminal May/June issue, the University of East Anglia will be hosting a conference, The Science Fiction New Wave at Fifty over the weekend of 31st May – 1st June 2014.
Papers are invited on any aspect of “New Wave” Science Fiction related to
New Worlds, from key writers such as J G Ballard, Hilary Baily and M. John Harrison, to Moorcock himself, or comparisons between the British and American versions of “New Wave” and their relationships with Science Fiction as a mode.

Abstracts of up to 500 words are welcomed, together with an author’s bio of 50 words. The deadline for receipt of this is 15th February 2014 sent to Dr Mark P. Williams (Mark.Williams@uea.ac.uk) ; Dr Jacob Huntley (Jacob.huntley@uea.ac.uk) ; Dr Matthew Taunton (M.Taunton@uea.ac.uk).

This conference emphasises the international and culturally dialogic qualities of “New Wave” SF and is particularly interested in papers exploring how the themes and concepts which drive the movement have been transformed in the intervening decades, and how they manifest in contemporary fiction today.

Topics for discussion might include but are not limited to:
 Inner Space versus Outer Space
 The “New Wave” and the “New Weird”
 New Worlds as inspiration for Steampunk and/or Cyberpunk
 Time Travel and Subjectivity
 Synthesis of the avant-garde and populism in the “New Wave”
 Apocalypse and ecological catastrophe
 “New Wave” and transgression

Authors for discussion might include but are not limited to:
Hilary Bailey
J.G. Ballard
Samuel R. Delany
M. John Harrison
Michael Moorcock
Pamela Zoline

Information
Further information and updates will be posted to the UEA Events page —
Click here or copy and paste the URL from below:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/literature/news-and-events/events/- /asset_publisher/Ka8ymwr5xxD0/blog/call-for-papers-the-science-fiction-new-wave-at-fifty

Organiser Profiles

Dr Mark P. Williams
| https://independent.academia.edu/MarkPWilliams

Dr Jacob Huntley
| https://www.uea.ac.uk/literature/people/profile/jacob-huntley

Dr Matthew Taunton
| http://www.uea.ac.uk/literature/people/profile/m-taunton

Hart Crane Panels at ALA 2014

ALA 2014 will be an inaugural year for the formation of the Hart Crane Society, and there will be two panels and an organizing meeting to mark the occasion.

Panel 1: Hart Crane: Inheritance and Influence

Even as Crane can seem a marginal presence among his peers—a poet of epic ambition in an era of self-conscious fragmentation, a romantic alongside the modernists, a queer voice alongside a more conservative criticism—he is also a poet who deliberately aligned himself with past literary traditions and poets, and a poet who has, in turn, been an important influence on subsequent poets and artists. This panel seeks proposals from critics and poets whose work engages any aspect of Crane’s inheritance or influence. Please send 250-word proposals by January 20 to dlhester@g.cofc.edu.

Panel 2: New Directions in Hart Crane Scholarship

Chaired by Langdon Hammer—editor, reviewer, and author of numerous books and essays that engage Hart Crane along with a range of modern and contemporary poets—this panel / roundtable seeks proposals addressing any aspect of Crane’s life and work. Preference will be given to proposals charting out new directions in Crane scholarship. Possible topics include reevaluations of Crane’s work in relation to sexuality, race, popular culture, form and (new) formalism, or the transnational; reconsiderations of Crane alongside his modernist peers; and reflections on Crane’s critical reception and possible critical futures. Please send 250-word proposals by January 20 to vanderzeeal@cofc.edu.

The Modernist Studies Association is pleased to announce the Call For Papers for MSA16. You may read or download the CFP at: http://msa.press.jhu.edu/conferences/msa16/cfp.html

All queries concerning the conference should be directed to msasixteen@gmail.com

Modernism and the Moral Life
A Symposium | Manchester, 30 May 2014

Keynote speakers:
Professor Jay Bernstein (New School for Social Research)
Professor Esther Leslie (Birkbeck College, University of London)

Call for papers

No engagement with modernist works can fail to be struck be their ethical intensity. Often considered solely in terms of a radical break with aesthetic norms and existing socio-cultural institutions and relationships, modernism also demonstrates a marked preoccupation with questions of how to live, the nature of the good, the status of the subject and the social bond, and the relation between ethics, aesthetics and politics. While recent years have seen a renewed interest in the relationship between modernism and ethics, much of the work in this field has tended to (i) conceive of ethics simply in terms of an openness to ‘otherness’, or (ii) suggest that modernism signals an ‘overcoming’ of the ethical as such. While important work has been carried out from these perspectives, this conference invites participants to radically rethink the ways in which it is possible to understand the relation between modernism and the moral life. We invite papers that investigate the multiple ways in which the struggle to lead a human life is undertaken and articulated within modernist cultural production. At the same time, we are interested in the ethical and political investments—whether declared or presupposed—of modernism’s ongoing critical reception. Of particular interest, therefore, are papers which reflect upon their own historical moment and connections with current political, economic and ecological debates.

The conference is designed as an opportunity for rigorous interdisciplinary exchange between the spheres of critical theory, cultural studies, philosophy, politics, literature, sociology, history, theology, the visual arts, architecture and music. We invite proposals for papers from scholars whose work looks to analyse the connections between aesthetics, ethics and politics in any and all of these fields. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

– the relation between style, form and ethics in modernist cultural production
– the extent to which ‘life’ entails or excludes the ‘moral’ in modernist thought
– theory and/as ethics
– ethics and language
– modernism and revolution
– utopia
– gender, ethics and critique
– modernism, vision and ethics
– violence and war
– after ‘otherness’
– The limits of liberal humanist approaches to literature and ethics
– perfectionism, authenticity, sincerity, bullshit, narcissism, hedonism, elitism, virtue, duty, commitment, loss of sensitivity, happiness, loneliness, anxiety, inequality, humanism and anti-humanism in the discourses of modernism

Proposals for twenty-minute papers should be directed to the convenors, Ben Ware and Iain Bailey, at morallife@gmx.co.uk, by 10 January 2014. Participants will be notified by 20 January. Additional information is posted at our conference website, modernismmorallife.wordpress.com.

Call for papers

A Valentine To Gertrude Stein:
The Reception of Gertrude Stein in the Arts and Humanities

8 – 10 May 2014

Hosted by the University of Copenhagen, Denmark
and co-organized with Ghent University and Linköping University

As a writer and famous art collector, Gertrude Stein inspired generations of poets and painters; as a cultural icon she inspired feminist and gay activists, and her influence seems to be increasing still. Today, Stein’s impact is felt and recognized across such diverse fields as literature, theatre, film, visual arts, dance, performance, etc.
Because Stein’s influence has manifested itself to a wide extent through artistic appropriations and re-mediations, academic research has had troubles catching up with this diverse, cross-disciplinary reception. In recent years, however, we have seen how artists and scholars working in the crossover field between artistic practice and academic research have increasingly reflected the interdisciplinary reception of Gertrude Stein.
Several large conferences host well-attended panels on Gertrude Stein each year but Stein, in contrast to her modernist peers, has only rarely been the subject of a multiple-day scholarly gathering and thus has not received the same attention and scrutiny as her (male) contemporaries.

This conference will focus on the interdisciplinary reception of Stein among artists and academics, and create a platform for in-depth and extended Stein discussion. The event celebrates the 100th anniversary of the publication of Stein’s seminal poetry collection, Tender Buttons. This book of prose poems is itself an interdisciplinary work of literary still lifes, collage texts obsessed with issues from the visual arts like perspective, visuality, texture, space, materiality and physical objects.

The conference will be located in Copenhagen and reflect the growing Scandinavian interest in Gertrude Stein, while at the same time reaching out to a broader European and US community. During the last decade a community around the Danish Gertrude Stein Society and the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen has initiated, inspired and supported a number of new translations, readings, presentations as well as stage productions of Stein’s writing, making Copenhagen the perfect site for a conference focused on the exchange between artists and scholars.
In connection with the conference, an artistic program will take place with performances of theatrical and musical pieces based on Stein’s work, as well as readings of Stein’s work and works by poets inspired by Stein.

It is a major goal of the conference to establish a meeting between European and American Stein research. Stein herself made a great point of staging herself as a truly American writer – perhaps even the quintessential American writer. However, her influence on European art and thinking has been substantial, and alongside American academic scholarship, a strong European Stein research community has developed. And of course, her own work was written in a European environment and formed by her first-hand experience of European movements in art and culture.
The aim of this conference is threefold:
We wish to bring together European and American research on Stein, and create a meeting between different generations of researchers.
We wish to focus on the interdisciplinary reception and impact of Stein’s work.
We want to reflect exchanges between theory and practice, i.e. between academic and artistic approaches to Stein’s work.

We are very proud to welcome six keynote speakers, all of whom are distinguished representatives of Gertrude Stein’s diverse and transatlantic reception in the arts as well as humanities:
Marjorie Perloff
Heiner Goebbels
Catharine Stimpson
Isabelle Alfandary
Steven Meyer
and Juliana Spahr

Proposals
We welcome paper and panel proposals reflecting one or several of these five interdisciplinary perspectives:

Performance in the broadest, cross-disciplinary sense: theatrical, artistic, literary, and social (e.g. performing as a male genius)
Literary thinking: Gertrude Stein and/in philosophy and aesthetic theory
Remediation/re-enactment: Gertrude Stein in modern or contemporary art and literature
Gender, history and politics: biographical and historical approaches to Stein’s life and work
Transatlantic perspectives: Europe and America in Gertrude Stein’s work and the reception of it.

The conference language is English. Proposals are welcome from individuals, and from panels of three or four. We especially welcome panel proposals.

Panel proposals should include the following information:
Title of panel
A summary of the panel topic (300 words)
A summary of each individual contribution (300 words)
Name, address and email contact of individual contributors
Short biography of individual contributors

Individual proposals should include the following information:
Title of paper
Name, address and email of contributor
A summary of the contribution (300 words)
Short biography of the contributor

Refereering of proposals will be conducted by the conference organizers.
Extended deadline:
Please submit proposals to the conference email address gertrudestein@hum.ku.dk by
20 January 2013. Participants will be notified of their acceptance by 14 February 2014.

Conference organizers:
Laura Luise Schultz, Associate Professor, Dept. of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen, laura@hum.ku.dk
Sarah Posman, Postdoctoral Researcher, FWO, Dept. of Literature, Ghent University, Belgium
Solveig Daugaard, PhD Student, Dept. of Culture and Communication, Linköping University
Tania Ørum, Associate Professor, Dept. of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen
Mette Tranholm, PhD Student, Dept. of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen

REGISTRATION FEE: 50 €

IMPORTANT NOTE
Recently, it has been decided that the finals of The EuroVision Song Contest are to take place in Copenhagen at the exact time of the conference. This event, which attracts an audience of more than 20.000 lovers of popular music from all over Europe, will surely provide a lively international atmosphere in the city during the conference, but it unfortunately also puts an extreme pressure on city hotels. We therefore urge all participants to book accommodation as soon as possible. As prices are rising with the demand, we advise you to look for alternatives to traditional hotel accommodation such as https://www.airbnb.dk/ or http://www.hay4you.com/da/

Please do not hesitate to contact the conference organizers by e-mail gertrudestein@hum.ku.dk for assistance!

Please also consult our homepage: http://artsandculturalstudies.ku.dk/gertrudestein

The conference is supported by
The Carlsberg Foundation
The Danish Council for Independent Research