Debt: Money, Narrative, Belief - Call for Papers

Call for Papers

Debt: Money/Narrative/Belief
Department of English
Graduate Student Conference
Dalhousie University, Halifax N.S.
August 17-19, 2012

In her 2008 Massey Lectures, Margaret Atwood calls debt “that peculiar nexus where money, narrative or story, and religious belief intersect, often with explosive force.” Today, we are facing an explosion of discourses foregrounding financial debt. Whether in the Euro Zone Debt Crisis, the Occupy Wall Street Movement, or rising student loan debt, narrative and debt cannot be decoupled, nor can they be detached from a given political or affective investment. In addition to the obvious economic concerns, we are also interested in widening the discussion of debt: How do literature and cultural products help us make sense of these issues? In what ways are individual authors and texts indebted to the social, cultural, or historical moment in which they are situated? How are current and historic discourses—be they social, literary, or philosophical—shaped by representations of debt and indebtedness?

Since few know more about debt than graduate students, the Dalhousie Association of Graduate Students in English (DAGSE) invites submissions for paper presentations for
its interdisciplinary graduate student conference: “Debt: Money/Narrative/Belief.” We welcome proposals from students at all levels and in all areas of graduate study. This three-day conference will be held August 17-19, 2012 at Dalhousie University, located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and will investigate the ways in which literature, history, art, and culture shape and are shaped by discourses and experiences of debt.

We invite proposals for papers (15-20 minutes) on themes and subjects including, but not limited to:

• Literary and cultural debts: mentors, movements, sources of influence
• Marxist literary theory; the sociology of literature; cultural materialism
• The Great Depression; the current Depression
• Gambles, speculation, debtors’ prison
• Wills, inheritance, legacies
• Crashes, scams and financial scandals
• Deals with the Devil
• Religious debts (alms giving, sacrifice, forgiveness, etc.)
• Colonial aftermaths; reparations
• Genre literature, genre studies
• Plagiarism, quotation, “borrowing”
• Worlds without capitalism: utopias and speculative fiction

Submission: 250-word abstract plus cover letter with name, current level of graduate study, affiliated university, and email address to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Include the words “conference abstract” in subject line, and include name on the cover letter only.

Deadline: March 15, 2012. Accepted presenters will receive notification by the end of April.

Contact the Organizers at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if you have questions about the conference.

Call for Papers: Narrative and Semiosis

Special panel at the 11th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, Nanjing, China (5 – 9 October 2012)

Convened by Henry Yiheng Zhao (Sichuan University),
Paul Cobley (London Metropolitan University),
and Marina Grishakova (University of Tartu).

In tandem with the increasing awareness of the omnipresence of narrative in human environments, the conditions are ripe for a general semiotics of narrative. Clearly, this does not simply entail narratology, or a semiology of narrative in which merely the internal mechanisms of narratives are identified and analysed. Rather, in the face of contemporary studies of narrative - in the social sciences, cognitive science, postclassical narratology and systems theory - the relations between narrative and semiosis need to be considered on a much wider basis, including those to do with cognition, networks and systems.

This panel therefore seeks to address the following questions:

• What are the current relations between semiotics and narrative?
• Does narrative theory have a wider semiotic (rather than just a semiological/narratological) background?
• What are the details of this background?

We will be particularly interested to receive abstracts for papers which are concerned with the following issues:

• the role of semiotics in helping to find pre-conditions for narrative creativity/production – semiotic environments, conditions, tools;
• the nature of narrative as a networked phenomenon;
• the development of multi-tracking, navigating, networking, blending and enactivism in current narrative theory;
• the specific character of networking – distributed and blended (the idea that ‘there is nothing in the mind’; that ‘everything is networked’);
• proposals for solutions to the difficulty found by cognitive science in identifying the locations of network functions;
• the role of emotions in nodal points of networks (e.g. narrative and game-playing)
• the condition of narrative as experienced within a network;
• narrative and distributed cognition;
remediation – current uses of narrative and contemporary ‘content’ of narratives.

Papers on narrative in any medium will be welcomed.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words, as a Rich Text Format document attached to an email, to the panel organizers

zhaoyiheng2011 @ 163.com
marina.grisakova @ ut.ee
p.cobley @ londonmet.ac.uk

by 27 February 2012

Main Congress website: http://www.semio2012.com

International Conference on Narrative: Call for Papers

2012 International Conference on Narrative

March 15-17, Harrah’s Las Vegas Hotel and Casino Las Vegas, Nevada

Plenary Speakers
Steven Mailloux, Loyola Marymount University
Ramón Saldívar, Stanford University
Vanessa Schwartz, University of Southern California

Contemporary Narrative Theory Session Speakers
Heather Dubrow, Fordham University
Margaret Homans, Yale University
Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois Chicago
Mark McGurl, UCLA
Alan Nadel, University of Kentucky
Peggy Phelan, Stanford University

Conference Coordinators
Eddie Maloney, Alan Nadel, James Phelan, Robyn Warhol

Call for Papers

We welcome proposals for papers and panels on all aspects of narrative in any genre, period, discipline, language, and medium.

Deadline for Receipt of Proposals
Monday, October 17, 2011

Proposals for Individual Papers
Please provide the title and a 300-word abstract of the paper you are proposing; your name, institutional affiliation, and email address; and a brief statement (no more than 100 words) about your work and your publications.

Proposals for Panels
Please provide a 700-word (maximum) description of the topic of the panel and of each panelist’s contribution; the title of the panel and the titles of the individual papers; and for each participant the name, institutional affiliation, email address, and a brief statement (no more than 100 words) about the person’s work and publications.

Please send proposals by email in PDF, Word, or WordPerfect to: narrative [at] georgetown [dot] edu

All participants must join the International Society for the Study of Narrative.

For more information on the ISSN, please visit: http://narrative.georgetown.edu

Call for Papers, Narrative Matters 2012: Life and Narrative

Call for Papers, Narrative Matters 2012: Life and Narrative

The American University of Paris

CONFERENCE DATES: May 29th to June 1st 2012

DEADLINE FOR SUBMITTING ABSTRACTS: November 15, 2011

The American University of Paris, The University of Paris Diderot-Paris 7, and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Narrative at St. Thomas University, invite scholars from all disciplines to reflect upon the productive interplay between life and narrative.

What is the relationship between life and narrative? As noted by Jerome Bruner in his article on “Life as Narrative” (1987), this is one of the central intellectual questions facing narrative inquiry and narrative practice across multiple disciplines – psychology, narratology and literary theory, digital media, sociology, history, sociolinguistics, philosophy, medicine, education, gerontology, communications, social work, ethics, religious studies, etc. Indeed, there is broad agreement that narrative representations (from novels to histories, biographies, websites, films, museums) and life are essential to each other. Narrative draws upon life for inspiration to create an imagined world that has substance, color, texture, and meaning. Meanwhile, life draws upon narrative for resources to imagine our identity and to interpret others, situations, and the “real” world. Both are involved in an intricate exchange, playing off one another, informing and creating one another. However, the relationship between life and narrative – between experience and story - is not merely theoretical in nature but practical as well. Narrative has a profound impact on our understanding of what it means to be human; of the choices we make as persons; of the nature of health and wellness, teaching and learning; of the meaning of history; of how social groups work through conflict; and of how the cultural and political world is ordered.

Panels and papers
Scholars are invited to organize panel sessions and present papers on various aspects of the broad theme of “Life and Narrative.” Possible questions include:

• What is the relationship between telling and living?
• How can the narrative concept help us to better understand experience, interpretation and action?
• What does literature teach us about aspects of life, experience, mind, and social relationships?
• How can narrative research have a greater impact on the lives of real persons and institutions? How can narrative theory and practice better inform one another?
• Can there be a “true” narrative? What are the boundaries between fact and fiction, between autobiography and autofiction?
• How is identity storied, restoried, even de-storied across the lifespan?
• What is the effect of the media (new and old) on identity?
• What is the relationship between what is archived in individual memories and social institutions and the stories that we tell?

Conversations
Two plenary sessions will ask prominent scholars from different disciplines to present a short paper and discuss a central question related to life and narrative. Time will be given for debate and interaction between the presenters and the audience.

Confirmed Plenary speakers
Mark Freeman, College of The Holy Cross
Alexandra Georgakopoulou-Nunes, Kings College London
James Phelan, Ohio State University

Comparing interpretations
A final plenary will compare and contrast approaches to the study of narrative. Our plenary speakers will discuss approaches to the study of research interviews and literature. The audience will be provided with the texts in advance of the plenary and will be given ample opportunity to exchange ideas with the panelists.

Language
Although the language of the conference will be in English, papers delivered in French are welcome. Scholars presenting papers in French are requested to bring a translated copy of their paper to the conference for distribution to the audience.

Workshops
Preconference workshops will be organized, principally for graduate students and beginning scholars, along the following themes:

1. Translating narrative theory
2. Doing narrative inquiry
3. Digital narratives
4. Narrative and social change

Guidelines for submissions
We welcome proposals for individual papers (20 minutes plus ten minutes for questions) and panels (90 minutes). Submissions should be in the language of presentation (English or French). Please submit your proposal, including an abstract of less than 250 words, on-line at: http://my.aup.edu/conference/narrative-matters-2012

Abstracts are due on November 15, 2011.

Publications
An edited book will be published including the best submissions from the conference. If you would like your paper to be considered, please submit a complete draft no later than May 30, 2012.

Conference website
Coming soon.

Contact information
If you have questions, please email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Organizing committee
Brian Schiff. The American University of Paris.
Sylvie Patron.The University of Paris Diderot-Paris 7.
Claudia Roda. The American University of Paris.
William Randall. St. Thomas University.
Elizabeth McKim. St. Thomas University.
Andrea Olguin. The American University of Paris.

Contemporary Uses of Narrative Online Course

Contemporary Uses of Narrative
Internet based course at master level, 7,5 ECTS
Fall semester 2011: 1 September through 3 November
Course language: English
Course code HG-NE350
Course fee for students outside EU/ESS: 10 000 SEK

In our contemporary world, narrative seems to have become something of a key symbol for interpreting phenomena from various fields of society.

Producing companies no longer sell products; after having for some time merchandized brands, today they trade stories about their brands. Political parties nowadays feed their potential electors with narratives instead of with ideologies. Business leaders use various form of storytelling as techniques of leadership. Mass media have obviously left their traditional role of neutral reporting in favor of describing reality in terms of dramatic and emotionally engaging stories.

The process of meaning creation involves severe reductionist elements. Intricate social, political or cultural situations are reduced to simple dichotomies, complex personalities are rendered in the form of stereotyped role characters, and slow, composite, undramatic processes are simply disregarded.

To be able to understand the mechanisms of this development, one has to be familiar with the basic structural elements of narrative making it an efficient cultural form for creating meaning in individual and collective experiences.

Drawing its examples from the fields of politics, business management, marketing, and tourism, the course invites the student to reflect over the possible cultural, social and political consequences of the changing uses of narrative in contemporary society.

More information: Professor Ulf Palmenfelt .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Welcome to submit your application at http://www.hgo.se/utbud/hgo/HET802

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