CFPs: The Erotic; Sentimentalism; Shakespeare

Laura Vivanco

None of these calls for papers are explicitly asking for work on the romance genre, but I thought they might nonetheless be of interest to some romance scholars.

6th Global Conference on The Erotic (November, 2011; Prague, Czech Republic)

This inter- and trans- disciplinary project seeks to explore critical issues in relation to eroticism and the erotic through its history, its emergence in human development, both individual and phylogenetic, as well as its expression in national and cultural histories across the world, including issues of transgression and censorship. The project will also explore erotic imagination and its representation in art, art history, literature, film and music. These explorations inevitably touch on the relationship between sexualities, gender and bodies, along with questions concerning the perverse, fetishism and fantasy, pornography and obscenity.

300-word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 17th June 2011. More details here. Details of previous global conferences on this theme can be found here.

Edited Collection: 20th Century Sentimentalism: From Modernism to Media

This collection will feature essays that examine how authors of the twentieth and twenty-first century continue the use of sentimental forms and tropes of nineteenth-century literature. Current literary and cultural criticism maintains that American culture engaged in a turn-of-the-century refutation of the sentimental mode; however, the analysis of twentieth- and twenty-first-century narratives contained within these essays reveals ongoing use of sentimental expression that draws upon its ability to instruct and influence readers through emotional identification.

This more recent sentimentalism, however, operates in a supposedly “anti-sentimental” age—one that rejects the sentimental as feminized and embraces what may appear to be more masculine modes of naturalism, realism, and modernism.

Abstracts should be submitted by 30 June 2011. More details here.

Shakespearean Echoes

I am seeking chapter abstracts for a proposed volume on Shakespeare in popular culture. The tentative title for this project is Shakespearean Echoes: Shakespeare in Contemporary Culture. [...]
Understandably, the vast majority of work on Shakespeare’s contemporary life has focused on direct adaptations of the playwright’s work. What I propose with this volume, however, is to exclusively study “echoes” of Shakespeare rather than adaptations, the less tangible and precise ways in which Shakespeare has appeared within contemporary culture. Authors might address echoes of Shakespeare in contemporary music, film, literature, television, advertising, new media or any other worthwhile venue.
I am particularly interested in essays exploring relatively untouched interconnections between Shakespeare and contemporary culture. [...] Essays should address texts no older than 1980. [...] Importantly, authors should say something rewarding about both Shakespeare and the contemporary text/context being studied.

Abstracts and CVs should be submitted by 20 July 2011. More details here. Shakespeare may not be the most frequently cited influence on the romance genre, but "echoes" of his work do appear in many romances, as Laurie Osborne has demonstrated in her "Romancing the Bard" (1999), "Sweet, Savage Shakespeare" (2000), "Harlequin Presents: That '70s Shakespeare and Beyond" (2002), and the Romancing the Bard project.

Pascalbovet's image of "3 sheets of yellow, orange and red paper" was made available via Flickr under a Creative Commons licence.