K-12 Teaching Awards (2017 Conference)

The Western Literature Association and the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies will sponsor two K-12 Teaching Awards that will provide teachers with the opportunity to attend and present at the Western Literature Association Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota on October 25-28, 2017. The selected teachers will share their instructional plans and teaching approaches at the conference on a K-12 Teaching Panel on Saturday, October 28.

The prize will include conference registration, award banquet ticket, and $750 toward conference related costs such as hotel, airfare, and a WLA membership.

More information can be found on the WLA website:

http://www.westernlit.org/k-12-teaching-award/

Please feel free to forward this announcement to other listservs and to share this information on social media.

Randi Tanglen

Austin College

Sherman, Texas

Weird Western (deadline extended)

CFP: Race and Gender in the Weird Western (critical collection)

Deadline extended: May 30

Editors:Kerry Fine, Arizona State University, Michael K. Johnson, University of Maine-Farmington, Rebecca M. Lush, California State University San Marcos, Sara. L. Spurgeon, Texas Tech University

This proposed anthology explores the genre category of the Weird Western–a hybrid genre form that mixes western themes, iconography, settings, or conventions with elements drawn from horror, fantasy, supernatural, or science fiction genres. The particular focus of the anthology will be a critical analysis of race and gender in the Weird Western. We are interested in submissions that explore either how the Weird Western challenges the representation of race and gender in the conventional Western or how the Weird Western can serve as a way to reinforce existing gender and racial paradigms in the Western. We are especially interested in contributions that consider the inclusion and representation of African American and Native American characters in the Weird Western. We are seeking contributions that consider the following possible topics (but the volume’s scope is not necessarily limited to only these):

• Indigenous Futurism and the Western
• Afrofuturism and the Western
• The Queer West in the Weird Western
• Race and the Weird Western
• Gender and the Weird Western
• Sexuality and the Weird Western
• Weird Westerns by Native American authors
• Latinx/Chicanx Futurism and the West
• The Dark Tower (books and/or film)
• etc

Please send proposals to weirdwesterncollection@gmail.com by May 30, 2017. Proposals should be between 500-700 words. Those with accepted proposals will be expected to submit a full draft (6,000-8,000 words) in August 2017.

Beyond Local Color ( CFP_

Abstracts Invited for a panel titled

“Beyond Local Color: Late 19^th-century Regionalisms”

The occasion:

American Literature Association Symposium

“Regionalism and Place in American Literature”

September 7-9, 2017

Hotel Monteleone, New Orleans

The organizers of the Sept 2017 ALA Symposium on “Regionalism and Place in American Literature” have invited us to “question spatial boundaries and definitions” and to ask what it means “to publish or write ‘regionally.’” With these questions in mind, this proposed panel seeks to tease apart the terms “regionalism” and “local color” within the period most closely associated with the latter. Some regional scholars seek alternatives to “local color” by working in periods other than the late nineteenth century, but this panel seeks to discover varieties of regional expression as they coexisted and possibly competed for authority after the Civil War. Judith Fetterley and Marjorie Pryse have suggested gender differences as a key to recovering alternative regional forms; many other scholars continue to use the terms “regional” and “local color” more or less interchangeably in this period. This panel asks what new angles of vision and methods of study are required to make additional regionalisms visible or legible between 1870 and 1900?

Questions of interest may include:

• What regionalisms have been made visible by the proliferation of digital nineteenth-century materials?
• What genres besides the local color magazine sketch negotiated regional meaning and regional relations after the Civil War?
• Does research on nineteenth-century reading and publishing offer insight into the reception of local color and other regionalisms?
• Is the local color movement the product of an elite literary consciousness, popular taste, or both? What other regional forms are produced by class differentiation in the late nineteenth century?
• When local color = regionalism in the late nineteenth century, what exactly is lost?

Please submit 250-300-word paper proposals to Tara Penry, Professor of English, Boise State University (tpenry@boisestate.edu) by June 1 with a subject line of “ALA Panel Abstract.”

 

Western Literature Association Session at MLA 2018 (CFP)

Western Literature Association Session at MLA 2018 (January 4-7, NYC)

Please consider submitting a proposal for our allied organization session with the MLA, and feel free to pass the cfp on to anyone who might be interested.

In keeping with the Presidential Theme, States of Insecurity, this proposed session seeks to explore the many ways in which insecurity, broadly defined, has shaped literatures of the North American West. Potential presentations should investigate how literatures aid in the work of stabilizing, destabilizing, exploring, challenging, interpreting, and otherwise navigating states of political, cultural, economic, and environmental insecurity. Both time period and genre are open as long as the works pertain to the North American West. Please submit a 250 word proposal to Dr. Kerry Fine by March 29th: kerry.fine@asu.edu. Queries welcome.

Morbid Fascination (CFP)

I invite submissions to a book collection entitled Morbid Fascination: Dark Tourism in the American West.

Editor: Dr. Jennifer Dawes Adkison, Associate Professor of English, Henderson State University, Arkadelphia, Arkansas, adkisoj@hsu.edu<mailto:adkisoj@hsu.edu>

Overview:

Places of death, suffering, and disaster compel our attention; they both intrigue and repel us. Morbid fascination draws tourists to sites as diverse as Pompeii, Auschwitz, and Chernobyl. A growing body of scholarship considers the impulse to visit these places of misfortune and catastrophe and, especially, the mediation and shaping of these sites into touristic destinations. Much of this work, however, has focused on places outside the geographical boundaries of the American West. This collection of essays aims to expand our understanding of Dark Tourism within the context of the West. I invite proposals exploring a range of Western Dark Tourism sites and topics.

Submission details: Proposals for submissions to this collection should include a title, contact information (email, phone, address, including preferred means of contact), and a 500-word abstract. Proposals are due via email to adkisoj@hsu.edu by February 15, 2016. I welcome queries and questions.

—
Dr. Jennifer Dawes Adkison
Associate Professor of English
Department of English, Foreign Languages, and Philosophy
Henderson State University
1100 Henderson Street, Box 7673
Arkadelphia, AR 71999

CFP: Left in the West

Seeking 1-2 essays to complete Left in the West, a collection of critical essays I’m editing about the literary left in the American West.  I am explicitly seeking work that considers the literary/political left in relation to environmental justice/environmental literature. 300-word abstract and author biography due February 1; deadline for completed essays is April 1, 2017. Please send material or queries to Gioia.Woods@nau.edu. 

CFP: Race and Gender in the Weird Western

CFP: Race and Gender in the Weird Western (critical collection)

Editors:Kerry Fine, Arizona State University, Michael K. Johnson, University of Maine-Farmington, Rebecca M. Lush, California State University San Marcos, Sara. L. Spurgeon, Texas Tech University

This proposed anthology explores the genre category of the Weird Western–a hybrid genre form that mixes western themes, iconography, settings, or conventions with elements drawn from horror, fantasy, supernatural, or science fiction genres. The particular focus of the anthology will be a critical analysis of race and gender in the Weird Western. We are interested in submissions that explore either how the Weird Western challenges the representation of race and gender in the conventional Western or how the Weird Western can serve as a way to reinforce existing gender and racial paradigms in the Western. We are especially interested in contributions that consider the inclusion and representation of African American and Native American characters in the Weird Western. We are seeking contributions that consider the following possible topics (but the volume’s scope is not necessarily limited to only these):

• Indigenous Futurism and the Western
• Afrofuturism and the Western
• The Queer West in the Weird Western
• Race and the Weird Western
• Gender and the Weird Western
• Sexuality and the Weird Western
• Weird Westerns by Native American authors
• Latinx/Chicanx Futurism and the West
• The Dark Tower (books and/or film)
• etc

Please send proposals to weirdwesterncollection@gmail.com by April 3, 2017. Proposals should be between 500-700 words. Those with accepted proposals will be expected to submit a full draft (6,000-8,000 words) in August 2017.