Florida Conference of Historians: Comics and Comic Book Culture
Wakula Springs, Florida
18-20 February 2010
From the debut of Superman in 1938 through recent tales of narrative crisis and politically divided superheroes, superhero comic books have made an indelible mark on American culture. The current popularity of stories and characters originating in comic books has expanded interest in the medium and in the superhero genre which itself incorporates a mixture of other genres. Recent scholarship has striven to define the superhero’s unique relationship to American culture. Submissions that address the ways the comic book superhero represents, constructs, and distorts American culture are welcomed. Submissions on comic culture, characters, and comics-inspired media are welcomed at the FCH annual meeting. The Media Arts and Culture SIS welcomes graduate students, undergraduates, and independent scholars who wish to participate. All conference invitees are eligible for review for inclusion in the FCH refereed published proceedings.
1. Paper title and abstract/proposal (300-500 words)
2. Brief vita or biography (one page max)
3. Complete personal information: name, department, academic affiliation, mailing address, and e-mail address.
Worthwhile topics include (but are not limited to):
Race and the Superhero
Gender and the Superhero
Superheroes and Nationalism
Religion and the Superhero
The Superhero in the Media
Superhero and Identity
Class and the Superhero
Abstracts and panel proposal should be sent to William Svitavsky: bsvitavsky@rollins.edu
William (Bill) Svitavsky
Rollins College
1000 Holt Avenue, Winter Park, FL
Email: bsvitavsky@rollins.edu
DEADLINE: 18 DECEMBER 2008
Friendship and the Nation
Luxembourg
3-7 March 2010
We are inviting proposals for an interdisciplinary workshop and a subsequent volume on “Friendship and the Nation.” The goal of the workshop is to explore how friendship, as both a social tie and a cultural construct, is involved in the shaping of national cultures, and in turn how the national shapes the ties friendship. Current scholarship on modern nationalism underscores the emergence of national identity in terms of the transformations of face-to-face interactions into ties between distant others. Some have also documented the significance of friendship and fraternity as a forceful metaphor for national ties. Yet by emphasizing anonymous or metaphorical aspects of national solidarity, researchers have ignored the impact of face-to-face relationships, organizational-social networks and public events on the development, the organization and the attraction of modern nation states and national movements.
Where current scholarship often focuses on the ways that the nation produces exclusionary practices with relation to its others perceived as strangers and enemies we seek to uncover the taken for granted cultural mechanisms of inclusion that render members of the nation into companions and friends. Reminding of Aristotle’s famous argument that friendship can serve as a model for the practice of citizenship, we seek for discussions that explore how individual expressions of friendship affect the public-political sphere and in turn how emotions of friendship are induced, managed and constrained by state institutions, the media, the education system, military and other agents of national socialization.
We invite related proposals from the social sciences and humanities that present a case-study or address a theoretical debate. We are particularly interested in contrasting innovative research from different regions of the world and different time periods since the 18th century. Possible frameworks and questions include: Sociology and politics of emotions. The nation-state distinguished itself from earlier forms of rule by building a more intimate relationship with its population, encouraging public interactions based on an authentic expression of the self. Contemporary therapeutic discourse further encourages manifestation of emotionality in the public sphere. How do expressions of friendship mediate between the stress on the emotional self and national modes of identification?
Collective memory. We invite studies in collective memory that explore the emotional economy of commemoration through the role of friendship in rituals of commemoration and public events (including media events). Whereas Benedict Anderson suggests that the anonymity of the sacrificial dead represents the abstract quality of “imaging the nation,” we ask how familiarizing with the dead, the living and the living-dead has become central to national identification.
Social Networks: Following studies on the historical role played by civic associations and social networks in promoting civic society we ask how interactions of sociability at the mezzo-level of organizations affect the national sphere, including networks in governance, work and commercial settings, military and social activism.
The conference is designed to prepare an edited volume. Paper givers will be asked to present first drafts of their book chapters for pre-circulation among participants and for intensive discussion at the conference. Funds for accommodation and modest travel reimbursement are provided by the generosity of Henry J. Leir, the Leir Foundation and the Henry J. Leir Luxembourg Program--Clark University. Interested applicants should submit: (1) title and one-page abstract of their paper; (2) CV and list of publications; (3) institutional affiliation or place of residence; (4) optionally a publication sample related to the current topic.
Website: http://www.clarku.edu/departments/holocaust/faculty/facultybio.cfm?id=471&progid=5&
Please submit materials by 30 July 2009 to both emails below:
Danny Kaplan
Gender Studies and Sociology
Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
http://www.dannykaplan.org/
Email: danny@dannykaplan.org
Thomas Kühne
Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Clark University, Worcester, Mass., U.S.A.
http://www.clarku.edu/departments/holocaust/faculty
/facultybio.cfm?id=471&progid=5&
Email: tkuehne@clarku.edu
DEADLINE: 30 JULY 2009
Mysticism, Myth, Nationalism
University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus, United Kingdom
23-24 July 2010
Mythical and mystical localities figure prominently in canonical literature and popular culture. This conference will explore how notions of the mystic past inflect current debates about nationhood and/or regionalism. We seek to engage with a wide range of approaches, and therefore invite proposals from disciplines including (but not limited to) archaeology, history, Celtic studies, anthropology, and literature. The conference aims to address such questions as: How are some places, such as Cornwall, felt to be particularly ‘haunted’ by a mythologized, mystic past? What impact does this perception have on their identity politics? How do different nations and regions compare? We are especially interested in how ‘Celtic’ areas such as Wales and Scotland compare to the rest of Britain, but are also keen to explore other locations.
Possible topics include:
* Archaeology and its role in the construction of nations
* The history of spirituality
* Nationalist and regional writing
* Gothic literature and fantasy
* Oral history and traditions
* Romanticized regions
* Memory and place
* Nationalism and globalization
We are also publishing an edited collection that will draw on selected papers of the conference.
Please send enquiries and proposals of 200-250 words to s.j.trower@exeter.ac.uk
Shelley Trower
University of Exeter,
Cornwall Campus
Email: s.j.trower@exeter.ac.uk
DEADLINE: 20 DECEMBER 2009
English and German Nationalist and anti-Semitic Discourse
Queen Mary College, University of London, United Kingdom
10-11 September 2010
The Historical Discourse Working Group would like to announce its first international conference English and German Nationalist and Anti-Semitic Discourse to be held at Queen Mary, University of London on 10-11 September 2010.
The conference organizers, Professor Felicity Rash and Dr Stefan Baumgarten, invite proposals in the form of abstracts of about 150-200 words on relevant topics in the analysis of pre-1945 nationalist, colonialist or anti-Semitic discourse. We welcome contributions that discuss issues of methodology or which adopt interdisciplinary approaches, and we hope to foster debate on points of contact between linguistics and the historical analysis of political and ideological discourse. We would be particularly interested in contributions on nationalist figures who are less well-represented in discourse research. It is hoped that academic colleagues at all levels of their careers, including postgraduate students, will offer to present papers or lead workshops.
The conference will be one of the events organized as part of the major research project, The Discourse of German Nationalism and Anti-Semitism 1871-1924, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and led by Prof. Felicity Rash and Dr Geraldine Horan. The project web-site will be live from 1 June 2009.
Key note speakers will include Ruth Wodak and Andreas Musolff.
It is intended that the conference proceedings will be published.
Please send expression of interest and abstracts to Dr Stefan Baumgarten by 15 January 2010; email: s.baumgarten@qmul.ac.uk
Website: http://www.sllf.qmul.ac.uk/research/nationalismproject/
Dr Stefan Baumgarten
Historical Discourse Working Group
School of Languages, Linguistics and Film
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
Phone: 0044-(0)20-7882-5284
Fax: 0044-(0)20-8980-5400
email: s.baumgarten@qmul.ac.uk
DEADLINE: 15 JANUARY 2010
