Category: Conferences/Seminars

Deadline: July 1; August 15, 2021

In light of the controversial events related to issues of policing and incarceration that we have witnessed in the past year in the U.S Eastern Europe and Russia this proposed stream aims to examine the field’s understanding and teaching of/in prisons. The powerful legacy of Russian and Eastern European authoritarian regimes and their historical practices of unjust detention imprisonment and exile also offer the opportunity to consider how the past inflects more recent conflicts between the state and its citizens and immigrants. Our panel will showcase new research on prison literature a category that includes but is not limited to fictional depictions of prison and labor camps autobiography memoirs and letters from a range of eras. Our roundtable will address approaches to teaching prison literature and academics teaching literature in prisons a growing practice in general and within Slavic Studies in particular. Operating on the principle that prisons are institutions which are intricately tied to society despite their fortified walls obscuring what happens therein this stream seeks to illuminate an array of carceral states understood both as governmental biopolitical regimes of punishment and control and the experiences of captivity and coercion.

AATSEEL’s two deadlines are July 1 and August 15. If you are interested in joining our stream, please be sure to indicate this intention when submitting a paper or roundtable proposal here.

Deadline: August 15, 2021

Soliciting papers for the panel stream on Uneven and Combined Development for the upcoming AATSEEL conference. Deadline for abstracts is August 15th (please indicate interest in joining our stream when you submit here.)

Here is the description for the stream: The theory of Uneven and Combined Development(UCD) was famously formulated by Lev Trotsky to explain the Russian Revolutions of 1917. More broadly, UCD has reemerged in recent years as both a theoretical problem and a scholarly methodology in fields such as history and international relations. This stream is interested in UCD as a concept in cultural analysis. If, as some have argued, Pyotr Chaadaev’s diagnosis of Russia’s unique position with respect to world culture anticipates the idea of UCD, then how can UCD help locate the particularity of Slavic and East European cultures through their historical development, rather than a timeless essence? How does UCD give shape to specific cultural (artistic, literary, cinematic, etc.) forms, whether of specific works or genres and national traditions? In turn, how might cultural production give form to the experience of UCD? How might UCD allow fora reframing of familiar tropes like cultural “belatedness”? What kinds of “unevenness” or multiple zones can be observed within our region’s engagement with the rest of the world (for example, the non-aligned movement during the Cold War alongside Soviet involvement in anti-colonial movements)? How does UCD shed light on dynamics of translation and reception of imported cultural forms? We invite abstracts dealing with any period and area of REEES considered through the lens of UCD. We are also open to related fields of inquiry such as Ernst Bloch’s “non-synchronicity”, World-Systems Theory, and Dependency Theory.

Deadline: August 15, 2021

“The political struggle is also a cultural struggle, a struggle for the reappropriation and
transformation of symbols of the dominant” wrote Christine Bard in her work Une histoire
politique du pantalon revisiting the methodology of history of fashion and highlighting the
symbolic function of clothes (Bard 2010). Since the 1980s, the material culture studies have developed into a solid forum of interdisciplinary research in which anthropologists,
archeologists, geographers, sociologists, literary scholars, and more recently historians, play a central role. Scholars have theorized the role of things in power relations (Bourdieu 1979), agency of material things (Gell 1998), and the ability of objects to construct, maintain, reinforce and transform social identities (Miller and Tilley 1996). Objects are important notably because we do not “see” them, the less we notice them, the more important they are in the way they determine our expectations by setting the scene and defining and ensuring normative behavior (Miller 2005 5). Thus, objects that constitute the material culture have the capacity to determine our behavior and identity by remaining at the same time peripheral to our vision.

Deadline: September 30, 2021

The Classics have exerted a profound influence on world culture from the medieval period to the present day. Scores of literary works have drawn upon the intellectual and literary models of Classical authors as well as the rich trove of pagan legends and myths. This appropriation of classical and mythological themes and personalities allows authors to exploit deep hermeneutical potential and invest their works with cultural resonance, often endowing the original exemplar with a novel, vivid representation. The figures of Antiquity, both historical and mythological, have endured to serve as exemplars to many ends. Authors use these exemplars to praise or criticize their literary subjects’ actions, invite their readers to engage emotionally with the text, subvert traditional associations with these figures, and fashion new identities for their literary subjects or for themselves. All of these uses and many more demonstrate the enduring influence of the Classics and the exemplarity of the figures of Antiquity through the modern day.

Deadline: June 30, 2021

The Duke Slavic and Eurasian Language Resource Center will host a summer workshop from July 29 to July 31, 2021 on Pedagogy, Diversity and Equitable Teaching and Learning of Languages and Cultures across the Curriculum and Platforms. We are pleased to call for papers by interested scholars, graduate students, and professionals on workshop-related topics and that focus on teaching/learning ANY language.
Workshop topics have included, but are not limited to:

-Neuroimaging and multilingualism
-Teaching language and culture through film
-Language proficiency testing
-Specialized language instruction at the advanced and superior levels
-The use of technology in the language classroom
-Integrating heritage students in the language classroom
-Addressing the needs of differently-abled students
-Using computer technologies to create pedagogical materials
-The role of grammar in proficiency-based instruction
-Popular culture and language instruction
-Web resources for language teachers
-Edifying Minority Voices in the Urban STEM Classroom and Beyond
-Use of Social Emotional Learning and Culturally Responsive Teaching During COVID-19
-Unmasking the Trauma of COVID-19 and George Floyd in Pre-Service Teacher Preparation
-Reimagining Language and Curriculum to Lever Equitable Classrooms and Schools