[Discussion] 5 calls for papers

[sule tarakcioglu]

I. Call for Papers for a special session of the 2004 MLA in Philadelphia

The Eurovision Song Contest: Popular Music, Media, and Politics

With the 50th anniversary of the Eurovision Song Contest approaching, we
invite submissions for an MLA panel dealing with this popular
culture phenomenon from a wide range of historical, sociological, and
theoretical perspectives.

Founded in 1956 as an annual televised event unifying Europe through music,
Eurovision is widely celebrated by its fans and just as widely 
disparaged by
its critics. The event is replete with contradictions and border-crossings
of all kinds. A French minister of culture called it "a monument to 
drivel,"
while one contestant later became the Norwegian minister of culture. Voting
patterns reveal deep-seated alliances and animosities (Turkey often votes
for Germany’s song, but never for Greece), while recent wins by Estonia and
Latvia demonstrate the arrival of "new Europe." In 1979, Eurovision was 
held
for the first time outside of Europe, in Jerusalem; twenty years later an
Israeli transsexual’s victory crossed the borders of gender identity as
well. Significantly perhaps, Eurovision is one of Europe’s largest and
longest-running media productions that has never been broadcast in the
United States.

Specific historical, sociological, and theoretical perspectives might
address the following:

- How are changing aspects of "Europe" reflected in the Eurovision Song
Contest since its founding in the post-war decade, or since Europe’s
post-Wall expansion?

- Case studies on participating countries, performers, songs, musical
styles, language choice, cultural references, voting results, critical
reception

- The notion of border-crossing: political, musical, linguistic, aesthetic,
or otherwise

- Theoretical approaches to media spectacle, popular music, nationality,
performativity

- Technologies of fan culture: television broadcasting, telephone voting,
record collecting, Internet websites

- Europop aesthetics: kitsch or camp, humor and parody, tribute bands

- Comparable institutions: The San Remo Song Festival (founded in 1951),
Intervision (the former East Bloc answer to Eurovision), World Pop Idol


Please send abstracts and a brief vitae, or any questions, to both Ivan
Raykoff (raykoffi@newschool.edu) and Robert Tobin (tobin@whitman.edu).

Ivan Raykoff
Prof. of Arts in Context (Music)
Eugene Lang College/New School University
65 West 11th St.
New York, NY 10011

Robert Tobin
Prof. of Foreign Languages and Literature (German)
Whitman College
Walla Walla, WA 99362
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II. Call For Papers:

MATERIAL CULTURES AND THE CREATION OF KNOWLEDGE

A three-day conference at The University of Edinburgh (July 22-24, 2005)

Speakers will include: PETER BURKE, ROGER CHARTIER, and ROBERT DARNTON

Topics will include:

LIBRARIES AND THE ORDER OF KNOWLEDGE
CENSORSHIP AND REGULATION
THE CREATION OF DISCIPLINES
THE INTELLECTUAL AND THE CIRCULATION OF IDEAS
THE CULTURES OF COLLECTING
READERS AND READING PRACTICES
THE KNOWLEDGE INDUSTRIES
THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND THE HISTORY OF IDEAS
THE INFORMATION REVOLUTION
THE CARTOGRAPHIC IMAGINATION
GEOGRAPHIES OF THE BOOK

Proposals of 200-300 words are invited on these and
related topics, to be sent no later than NOVEMBER 1, 2004,
to Material Cultures, OLL, University of Edinburgh,
11 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9LW or by email to
materialcultures@ed.ac.uk

For further information, please contact materialcultures@ed.ac.uk

The conference is organised by The Centre for the History of the Book
http://www.arts.ed.ac.uk/chb

-------------------------------------
III. The 1st Annual Emporia SU Undergraduate and Graduate Student 
Cultural and Literary Studies Conference: "On the Margins of it All"

Conference Date: Saturday, April 24, 2004

The conference organizers are delighted to announce that Noel Sturgeon, 
Chair of Women’s Studies, Washington State University, and T.V. Reed, 
Director of American Studies, Washington State University, have 
confirmed as keynote speakers.

Although all topics that qualify for cultural and literary studies are 
encouraged, the following provides an idea of what the conference 
organizers have in mind.
Suggested panel topics:
Cleaning Out the Closet: Theoretically Emancipating Human Sexuality
Orientalism: Said's Legacy
Attack of the Killer Rhizome: Cultural Lines of Flight
Asian American Women Writers: Nameless Organic Intellectuals of the Margins
Hiking Through the Desert of the Real: Postmodernism and the 
Representation of Nature
Killing Tradition and Individual Talent: Postmodern Poetics
Gangsters and Cultural Studies: Understanding Popular Culture through 
Quentin Tarantino
Articulating Global Identities in Popular Culture: Sports, Music and Film
Creative Writing: Poetry, Short-Short, and Creative Nonfiction.
Suggested areas include:
Structuralism and Poststructuralism
Queer Theory and Body Theory
Poetics
Marxism
Feminism
Popular Culture
Whiteness Studies
Disability Studies
Minority Studies
Countercultures/Subcultures
Postcolonialism
Anti-Theory

We invite proposals for other areas and panels. The new deadline is 
March 1, 2004.
Registration fee for students: $10 by March 19 or $15 at the door.
Registration fee for non-students and independent scholars: $20 by March 
19 or $25 at the door.
Fee includes dinner.

Proceedings will be published on CD ROM, as well as on the Internet. An 
extra $5 will be charged for a copy of the proceedings.

Send a 200-word abstract and check/money order to:
Jack Hutchens
C/O Dept. of English
Campus Box 4019
Emporia State University
Emporia, KS 66801-5087
Make check/money order payable to: ESU/Department of English

Or send as an email to cult_litstudiesconference@yahoo.com, with 
"Cult/Lit Conference" in the subject line.
The abstract must include contact information for the author and a short 
biography. All abstracts are due by Feb 27, 2004.

Two awards will be available for best undergraduate and graduate papers.

For the most current information and updates check the web page:
http://www.geocities.com/cult_litstudiesconference/

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IV. I am pleased to announce our international research conference on
"Tourism & Literature: Travel, Imagination & Myth" which will take
place from 22 to 26 July 2004 in Harrogate, UK. TOURISM & LITERATURE
is the second conference in a series initiated with TOURISM &
PHOTOGRAPHY last July when more than 120 delegates from 21 countries
with academic backgrounds in sociology, anthropology, history,
geography, arts and tourism studies met in Sheffield, UK. The overall
aim of this conference series is a critical approach to the relationship
between the touristic construction and experience of the world, and the
challenge this represents for the social, spatial, economic, aesthetic
and political organisation patterns and symbolic elements of social
existence. This raises fundamental anthropological, sociological,
political, economic, geographical and cognitive-psychological issues
related to the way we communicate and exchange in the contemporary
world, and how this has historically developed.

This second academic event emphasises on literature which, through both
texts and authors, has long been an inspiration for tourists. Travel and
tourist experiences have, in turn, long inspired literature. This
inter-relationship between tourist, tourism and literature will be at
the heart of this international conference. How does literature
construct tourist histories and identities? How do tourists 'read'
fictional texts? How does literature produce, prescribe and legitimate
spaces for tourists? How are tourist expectations and experiences
mediated by literature? What is the significance of imagined worlds,
fantastic landscapes and mythic characters for tourism? Why do some
authors hold a fascination for tourists? Who are literary pilgrims and
what experiences do they have?

The conference seeks to explore and deepen our understanding of tourism
and literature relations by bringing together an international audience
of academics, curators, writers, professionals and tourism managers to
discuss this increasingly important field. The conference will be
multi-disciplinary drawing from literary criticism, history,
linguistics, sociology, anthropology, cultural and political geography,
etc. I am personally interested in developing the discussion on
'perception' and 'cognition' that I feel needs to be further introduced
in the field of tourism research and would welcome abstracts from
neuro-scientists, philosophers, linguists, aestheticians and
psycho-analysts. From a social anthropological perspective, I would like
to continue the critical debate on the meaning of tourism as an
international phenomena - a hypothetic form of 'sacrality' of the
contemporary worlds - which a number of younger researchers refreshed
through ethnographic approaches of tourists presented in last July's
event. From a political economy and geography perspective, I think our
last conference permitted a very fruitful discussion on the 'imagery' of
places as a way to create familiarity, to 'know' the world through
conventionalised compositions, an argument which bears important
conceptual and political implications.

I would be pleased if you could circulate this information widely and
include it on your website. A second call for papers has been sent out
recently and we have still a number of speaker timeslots available.
Please send your abstract of no more than 300 words with full address
details as an electronic file to Dr. David Picard (d.picard@shu.ac.uk )
as soon as possible but by March 1st 2004 at the latest.

Please find more information on our website www.tourism-culture.com


Thank you in advance.
With best regards,

Frederick Revaz
Executive Producer


Conference Convenors: Mike Robinson, David Picard, William Culver-Dodds

Centre for Tourism & Cultural Change
Sheffield Hallam University
Howard Street - Owen Building
Sheffield, SW1 1WB
United Kingdom
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V. The University of Bahçeşehir, in collaboration with
Richmond, the American International University in
London, announce the 2nd Annual, “Media and Cultural
Studies” Conference:

Globalization, Americanization and Contemporary
Popular Culture

Istanbul, Turkey
May 20-22, 2004

Conference URL:
http://www.iletisim.bahcesehir.edu.tr/globconf

This year, the theme of the “Media and Cultural
Studies” conference will be Globalization,
Americanization and Contemporary Popular Culture. The
conference will be held at the Goethe Institute,
located in central Istanbul. The organizers invite
paper proposals addressing any aspect of the
conference theme. Papers from a wide variety of
disciplines (Media Studies, Gender Studies, Cultural
Studies, Sociology, Political Economy, American
Studies, Urban Studies, History, Anthropology, etc.),
and of varying methodologies, are welcome. Possible
topics include, but are not limited to:

·the global and the local in popular culture
·non-American and/or non-Western influences on global
culture
·new directions in the cultural imperialism debate
·postmodern culture & hyper-reality
·popular culture after “9-11”
·electronic communications and transnational networks
in contemporary popular culture
·methodological approaches to the study of popular
culture
·the role of economics in
globalization/Americanization
·local, regional, national and/or transnational
efforts to regulate the spread of
globalization/Americanization

In addition to paper presentations, there will be a
number of keynote speeches. Speakers scheduled to
attend include:

·David Morley, Professor of Communications, Goldsmiths
College, University of London.
·Gunter H. Lenz, Professor of American Literary and
Cultural Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin.

There will be a conference registration fee of 50
Euros. Graduate students and participants from
institutions located in low-income and
lower-middle-income economies are eligible for a
reduced conference fee. See
http://www.worldbank.org/data/countryclass/classgroups.htm
for a list of low-income and lower-middle-income
economies. A list of hotels, located in close
proximity to the conference location and with
specially negotiated prices, will also be posted to
the conference website.

Abstracts should be 500 words in length, and should
give some indication as to the theoretical grounding
of the paper. The deadline for abstracts is February
15, 2004. Notification of acceptance/rejection will
be no later than March 6, 2004.

Submissions must contain the following information:
(1) name, (2) title/position, (3) institutional
affiliation, (4) email, telephone and postal address,
(5) abstract. Abstracts should be sent in main body of
the email (NOT as attachments) to BOTH of the
following:

Süheyla Kırca Schroeder (skirca@bahcesehir.edu.tr)
Christian Christensen (cochristensen@yahoo.com)

Conference Organizers:
Süheyla Kırca Schroeder, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Communication
University of Bahçeşehir, Istanbul.

Christian Christensen, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Communication
University of Bahçeşehir, Istanbul

Alex Seago, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Chair
Dept. of Humanities & Social Sciences
Richmond, The American International University in
London

This conference is made possible through generous
support from the following:
·The Goethe Institute – Istanbul
·The Consulate General of Sweden in Istanbul
·The British Council – Istanbul