*CFP* "THE SENSE OF AN ENDING AND THE IMAGINATION OF THE END: APOCALYPSE, DISASTER AND MESSIANIC TIME", Nº 11 (2022) ISSUE, COLLOQUIA HUMANISTICA

Colloquia Humanistica is the interdisciplinary journal of humanities of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Our aim is to introduce a variety of perspectives in discussing contemporary issues. We would like to propose a unique space that allows an intensive intellectual debate and a dynamic exchange of thoughts between researchers of different perspectives in humanities and social sciences. Colloquia Humanistica kindly invites submissions of manuscripts that address the topic:

The sense of an ending and the imagination of the end: apocalypse, disaster and messianic time

Deleuze calls the New Testament’s Apocalypse “the book of Zombies” highlighting not only its connection with death but the influence on the contemporaneity. Apocalyptical visions go beyond Christian eschatology and permeate our present imagination. Not as much with the already bygone symbolism or the terror of bloody carnage, as with the vague sense of an ending, fuelled by historical conditions – the Holocaust, nuclear crisis, or more contemporary global threats of viral pandemic or climate change.

*CFP* "LIFE NARRATIVES: PRISMATIC WORLD OF THE AUTHOR AND BEYOND", ISSUE 5.1, LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES

The interconnectedness between life and writing, explored in life narratives, subscribes to the axiom of endorsing a transparency regarding the nature of the self who is writing—not only to the readers, but to the author itself who may find a moment of oneness between life and writing. This generates multiple possibilities of interpretation embedded in the questions of truth, memory, and agency of the writing subject. While establishing the subject as the prism of narration, these narratives of subjectivity are punctuated with impulses to understand one’s own life, memorialize one’s experiences, record one’s encounters with the animate and the inanimate, or even a will to preserve the unity of one’s own identity. At the center of life narratives then are located the self-projections of the artist, either underscoring or playing with the apparent unity of author, narrator, and protagonist. But despite this focus on the artist-subject, life narratives keep engaging with epistemological enquiries that often go beyond what the author intends to promote—the act of personal recollection offering unintended consequences despite the concerns being focused upon individuality, subjectivity, interiority, or authenticity associated with the specular figure of the author.

Though overtly committed to personal memory, life narratives also uncover performativity inscribed in the very form, seen as the element of deliberate stylization, that draws attention to the limits of self-expression when structural and creative considerations come into play. Representation of subject, style of writing, or the pattern of self-disclosure gets reflected in plurality of forms that are both sedimented and fluid in structure. 

*CFP* "POSTCOLONIALISM, POSTCOMMUNISM AND POSTMODERNISM", 3RD INTERNATIONAL INTERDISCIPLINARY ONLINE CONFERENCE

In our postmodern world there are a lot of questions that should be re-considered and re-defined. What does it mean to fight against colonialism and racism in the world of migration crisis and xenophobic attitudes towards minorities? What does it mean to be a postcommunist country in the face of the common nostalgia for order and rules? How is it possible to have a national identity being aware of the relative character of every national feature?

We want to examine the notions of postcolonialism, postcommunism and postmodernism as thoroughly as possible, from many perspectives and in variable aspects: in politics, society, psychology, culture, and many more. We also want to devote considerable attention to how these phenomena are represented in artistic practices: in literature, film, theatre or visual arts. We invite researchers representing various academic disciplines: history, politics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, economics, law, literary criticism, theatre studies, film studies, fine arts, memory studies, migration studies, consciousness studies, dream studies, gender studies, postcolonial studies, medical sciences, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, cognitive sciences et al.

*CFP* "AFTER DOUGLAS CRIMP", ISSUE 33, INVISIBLE CULTURE: AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL FOR VISUAL CULTURE

For its thirty-third issue, InVisible Culture invites scholarly articles and creative works that engage with the legacy of Douglas Crimp (1944-2019). Douglas was foundational to InVisible Culture and its institutional home, the Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester. The first issue of InVisible Culture included his essay “Getting the Warhol We Deserve,” in which Douglas used Warhol’s gayness as an interpretative hinge while also advocating for the importance of cultural studies’ contributions to art criticism. Besides his profound influence on art scholarship, Douglas’s pedagogy reverberates through the work of those he taught and mentored in various academic and art institutions. We invite contributors to reflect on the myriad ways in which Douglas’s legacy impacts the pasts, presents, and futures of art history and cultural criticism.

Throughout his career, Douglas made crucial contributions to art theory, queer theory, and cultural studies. In 1977, Douglas curated the seminal exhibition Pictures at New York’s Artists Space, which established him as one of postmodern art’s major interlocutors. He continued to spur critical engagements with art institutions and postmodernism with his many essays in October and his 1993 book On the Museum’s Ruins. During the rise of the AIDS crisis, Douglas turned to what he called “cultural activism”; his writings later collected in Melancholia and Moralism (2002) helped galvanize a generation of queer activists.

*CFP* "CINE ESPAÑOL ENTRE MILENIOS (1990 - 2010)", Nº 23 (2021), REVISTA FOTOCINEMA

La España situada entre la última década del siglo XX y la primera del siglo XXI es un país que sale de los gobiernos socialistas, con el desencanto de la disolución del estado del bienestar, que vino para no quedarse. Ese momento de vuelco hacia el gobierno del presidente José María Aznar, seguido por la etapa Rodríguez Zapatero, compone dos décadas de disolución progresiva de lo que parecía un país sólido, que derivan hacia la crisis económica y social  marcada por la vuelta al gobierno del PP y el movimiento 15M.

El cine, como producto de la sociedad de la que se nutre y a la que devuelve mensajes, refleja o huye de esas realidades. Esta etapa del cine español, próxima pero no lo suficiente como para no tener perspectiva analítica sobre ella, de igual modo presenta una serie de características dignas de monografía, focalizables social, estética y comercialmente. 

 

Son significativas las siguientes líneas de investigación en esta etapa de nuestro cine:

*CFP* "COMMUNICATION, GLOBALIZATION AND CULTURAL IDENTITY", CHAPTER BOOK

The Rowman Series explores and complicates the interlinked notions of “local’ and “global,” by integrating global dependency thinking, world-system theory and local, grassroots, interpretative, participatory theory, and research on social change.

In the current world state, globalization and localization are seen as interlinked processes and this marks a radical change in thinking about change and development. It could integrate macro- and micro-theory. It also marks the arising of a new range of problems. One of the central problems is that the link between the global and the local is not always made clear.

The debates in the general field of ‘international and intercultural communication’ have shifted and broadened. They have shifted in the sense that they are now focusing on issues related to ‘global culture,’ ‘local culture,’ ‘(post)modernity’ and ‘multiculturalism’ instead of their previous concern with ‘modernization,’ ‘synchronization’ and ‘cultural imperialism.’ 

*CFP* "THE CINEMA OF APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL", CHAPTER BOOK

One of the several elements with which Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul indulges himself, is the notion of the body—the various adventures and misadventures of bodilyness, the bliss, the pangs, the illnesses and the suffering. As memory (or the lack of it)takes the centre-stage in his oeuvre, bodies—young and old, male and female, rural and urban, real and ethereal— are often forgotten, remembered and re-remembered in quick succession. Such embodied characters, in their varied entanglements with mnemonic and topographical occupations, haunt and are haunted by the setting. More often, the rural Thailand features as the backdrop of Weerasethakul's films with its multitudes of life: the daily interactions, the humdrum affairs, the tedious tasks, the necessary rituals and customs. And all these reverberate with a distinct south-east Asian palette. On the surface, there are these local images of Isaan, the livelihood of villagers and the continuing migration: some of the recurring subjects of his films that give his works a “national” character, enabling a global audience to explore the society, culture, politics and practices of both rural and urban population of Thailand. While on the greater curve, his films unearth concerns that are universal and complex. As Matthew Barrington observes, “When Weerasethakul uses his camera to focus on Isaan and the exploration of the voiceless Thai inhabitants it becomes useful to place Weerasethakul as a transnational filmmaker whose films provide an international audience for the documenting of the marginalised individuals who populate Isaan”.

*CFP* "STANLEY CAVELL: A RETROSPECTIVE", CONFERENCE

Stanley Cavell: A Retrospective

Vita-Salute San Raffaele University

Milan, September 25th - 26th

Organizing institutions:

Department of Philosophy of the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University of Milan; Triennale di Milano.

Two years have passed since his death, and Stanley Cavell’s figure keeps growing in stature for philosophy, the humanities and the humanistic social sciences of our time. Courses and conferences devoted to his work have been and are being held regularly in universities all over the globe, while the amount of scholarly work on him shows no sign of diminishing. It is not only that few recent thinkers can count within their oeuvre masterworks of the importance of The Claim of Reason and The World Viewed. It is not even just the breadth of his research interests – encompassing topics as varied as Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Shakespeare, film, democracy, education and literature, to name just a few – that makes Cavell’s production so significant. It is his capacity to delve deeply into the technical debates of academic philosophy and humanities whilst, at the same time, attaining a truly distinctive voice. His prominence is due not only to his work as a scholar, but also as a writer and intellectual. For such reasons, Cavell invites us to problematize and reinvent philosophy in a manner important to our academic institutions as well as our society at large. 

*CFP* "LIFE STORIES IN COMMUNICATION: FROM STEREOTYPES TO (THE POSSIBILITY OF) HUMANIZATION", DOSSIER, THE OBSERVATORIO JOURNAL

The Observatório Journal  invites researchers to submit their papers to the dossier Life Stories in communication: from stereotypes to (the possibility of) humanization, expected to be published in the second half of 2020.

The dossier aims to gather papers, resulting from research projects that are either completed or in progress, addressing the presence of life stories in the various discursive genres of the field of Communication, with an emphasis on journalism, documentary films, corporate communication, advertising, and marketing. It will thus include studies that reflect on characters, whether or not fictional, seeking to comprehend the meanings attributed to the subjects depicted in such genres.

*CFP* “DRAGONS”, EDITED COLLECTIONS ON FILM, LITERATURE, GAMING AND ONLINE CULTURE

As the popularity of mythical creatures in films and literature grows, there is one creature that remains prominent: the dragon. Dragons have become most visible recently in the cinematic versions of The Hobbit and in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones Series). However, there are other films, such as Dragonslayer (1981), Reign of Fire (2002), Dragonheart (1996), and the How to Train Your Dragon series (2010-2019), and numerous adult and children’s literature series that feature dragons.

This call for papers will result in several themed volumes under each of these main headings:

• Dragons in Film and Television
• Dragons in Children’s Literature and Graphic Novels
• Dragons in Fiction and Mythology (literature aimed for adults and general myth)
• Dragon Games and Online Culture
• Dragons and Posthumanism
• Dragons and Pastoral
• Dragons and Ecocriticism

*CFP* "READING LOVECRAFT IN THE 21ST CENTURY", EDITED VOLUME

In the one hundred and twenty-nine years since his birth, H. P. Lovecraft’s reputation has grown beyond all expectation. Not only has he influenced generations of readers, but he has also influenced scores of people in areas such as filmmaking, television, comics, music, and literary theory. Because interest in Lovecraft continues to grow, our intention is to explore some of the reasons why he has become so influential—and so indispensable—since the early 1990s. From his stories of human degeneration that started with “The Tomb” and “Dagon” to the cosmic horror that culminated in The Shadow out of Time and “The Haunter of the Dark,” the less than 20 years that Lovecraft devoted to a career in fiction produced narratives that remain popular among a growing number of readers who follow his work from multiple areas of interest. Additionally, Lovecraft’s literary production in general has also become increasingly relevant from an academic perspective since at least the 1990s. 

In this volume, we want to reflect on the possible reasons for Lovecraft’s expanding popularity and the significance of his legacy as we entered the digital age. Consequently, we are interested in research that focuses on the significance of Lovecraft’s work from the 1990s to the present day.

*CFP* "KUBRICK'S MITTELEUROPA: THE CENTRAL EUROPEAN IMAGINARY IN THE FILMS OF STANLEY KUBRICK", EDITED VOLUME

Stanley Kubrick was arguably the most important American director of the post WWII era. He was born to a secular Jewish family and was never bar mitzva’d. However, his Jewish heritage is of great importance to the understanding of his oeuvre, and his was specifically a Central European Jewish background. As Kubrick told Michel Ciment, his parents had Romanian, Polish, and Austro-Hungarian backgrounds. Accordingly, while Jewishness runs throughout Kubrick’s oeuvre—albeit on a subsurface level—so does a Central European sensibility occupy a strong position in it. Kubrick married a German woman, Christiane, adopted her daughter, and Christiane’s brother Jan was his executive producer for over twenty years.

Like most American intellectuals of his time, Kubrick was exposed to the writings of Sigmund Freud, Stefan Zweig, Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, Hermann Hesse. The director was a keen admirer of Max Ophüls, whose adaptations of Arthur Schnitzler he adored. Fittingly, Kubrick ended his life and career by adapting Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle.

*CFP* “MATERIALIZING DIGITAL FUTURES: TOUCH, MOVEMENT, SOUND AND VISION”, EDITED COLLECTION

As the technological climate continually evolves, the implications for society and individuals are being drawn in stark relief. Globally, personal and industrial data collection, data sharing and increased self-tracking practices using social media applications on mobile screen devices that are linked to wearable devices or recorded data from ingestible sensors are becoming more prevalent. Today, small mobile screens together with computer networks and various networked digital technologies (such as smartphones and tablets or ‘phablets’) make it possible for individuals, corporations and governments to accumulate, curate and distribute data and information on an unprecedented scale. 

Algorithms and big data are increasingly shaping our socio-cultural and technical relations and our everyday experiences. Important questions are arising that concern the human impacts of emerging digital technologies as the advent of ‘big data’ (and small data) technologies and social media have inexorably altered the boundaries between private and public life, and profoundly altered our sense of self.

*CFP* "IMAGINARIES OF CONTEMPORARY CAPITALISM", CONFERENCE

Intersections AIS Imaginary meets Sociological Theories

Imaginaries of contemporary capitalism

Date and place: 20-21 June 2019, Pisa, Italy

Benedictine Congress Center

At least since the 2008 subprimes mortgage crisis, the term "capitalism" has once again made its appearance in the public, scientific and media lexicon. In the field of social sciences the need was felt to return to reflect again on "capitalism" - the AIS Sociological Theories conference held in Salerno in October 2018 represented an important step in this reflection in Italy - after starting from the the eighties the words of reference were "postmodern", "complexity", "globalization". The economic-social model of reference that for a long time - at least until the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 - represented the alternative (revolutionary or reformist) to capitalism, or "socialism", seems to reappear timidly even in the USA, where had been substantially banned from the political debate. This raises several questions of a scientific, political and cultural nature: is capitalism still a useful concept for analyzing the changes and the economic and symbolic processes we are going through? How are the recent "material" transformations symbolically represented in the products of popular and mass culture?