The deadline for submissions for New Scholar 2.1 has been extended until Friday 17 February 2012.

Please see the original call for papers for further details about the issue: http://www.newscholar.org.au/index.php/ns/announcement/view/4.

Asiatic invites papers on poetry and poetics and their relations and connections to popular culture in all its forms in the context of Asia-Pacific/Australasian region.

As an influential and intellectual discourse, poetry’s presence and influence can be found in all forms of pop culture and everyday life, from the general presence of poetry in popular film and TV, to the role and presence of poets as characters, to the prominence of particular poets in the popular realm, to the poetics of popular media forms.

Similarly, pop culture is equally a presence in poetry, with poets embracing not only its ubiquitous presence as a topic, but also delving into its personal individual resonances, and embracing its forms and structures.

Self-reflective papers based on poets’ own poetry are most welcome.

Papers are to be submitted for peer-review by 30 April 2012.  For submission guidelines please refer to the Asiatic webpage: http://asiatic.iium.edu.my/submission.htm.

All email queries, abstracts and articles should be sent to the editors of the issue: Dr. Ioana Petrescu, University of South Australia (Ioana.Petrescu@unisa.edu.au) or Professor Mohammad A. Quayum (mquayum@gamil.com).   

Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Please note that the conference will now take place from Thursday 5 to Saturday 7 July 2012 inclusive.

Before there was Australia and New Zealand there were the colonies - NSW, Victoria, Van Diemen’s Land, Queensland, South Australia, New Zealand.  Now there are competing nationalisms (including internal ones), but countless filiations continue to span the Tasman - people, language, politics, sentiment, ecology, history, art, sport and literature.  Can we revisit the literary history of our two nations and uncover the ways in which the ‘Tasman World’, as James Belich terms it, continues into the twenty-first century?

The theme for the 2012 ASAL conference is inspired by Grace Karsken’s history of early Sydney, The Colony, praised for its outstanding sense of place.  Is it possible to disaggregate contemporary national binaries in ways that allow us to see the many continuities as well as the divergences with which we generate our sense of place?  As critical writing shifts focus and gear - to eco-criticism, transnationalism, ‘field’, curriculum and emotion - do the old postcolonial verities and paradigms become less important?

Papers are invited on any aspect of the broad theme above, including:
- Colonial literature
- Eco-criticism
- Spatial theory
- Indigenous theory and methodology
- The indigenous nation
- Literary history
- Maoriland
- Transnationalisms
- City literatures
- Readerships
- Print cultures
- Pasifika and Asian connections
- Cultural cringe
- Literary nationalisms
- Regions and their voices
- Literary economies

Please send abstracts of up to 150 words to Lydia.Wevers@vuw.ac.nz as soon as possible, and no later than 2 March.

The ASAL mini-conference, Literary Adelaide, will take place on Friday 10 February 2012 at the University of Adelaide.  Early bird registrations are open until 20 January.  A draft programme is available here.

To register, please go to http://hss.adelaide.edu.au/english/conference/asal/.

Università di Bologna at Forlì (Italy)
25-27 October 2012
http://taco2012.sitlec.unibo.it

In a world that seems continuously to be pushing the envelope of what is acceptable to the inhabitants of specific linguistic and cultural contexts, this interdisciplinary conference acknowledges the importance of investigating taboos and their reinforcement/breaking in various areas of language, culture and society, and across different cultures.  We propose to explore the delicate balance and subtle boundaries between the need for inclusion and respect for different ethnic, religious, sexual, etc. backgrounds - which seems to be at the basis of modern multicultural societies - and a (un)conscious push towards the breaking of existing taboos, for example for shock value, as in the case of humour.  In such context, investigation of the linguistic, cultural, social, institutional and personal implications of taboo reinforcement/breaking appears of extreme value. 

The Conference organizers welcome individual proposals or pre-organized panels from different disciplines pertaining - but by no means limited - to the following thematic areas: sex and sexuality, nudity, death and the afterlife, sickness and disability, scatology/bodily fluids, deformity/otherness, blasphemy, altered states/drug culture, body modifications, fat, prostitution etc.

The working language for The Taboo Conference is English.  Each paper presentation should be scheduled for 20 minutes followed by 10 minutes for questions. Abstracts should be submitted through the conference website http://taco2012.sitlec.unibo.it by 15 February 2012.  If you are interested in submitting a panel, please contact us by the same deadline at Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in Translation, Languages and Cultures (SITLEC), University of Bologna, C.so Diaz 64, 47100 Forlì, Italy.  Email: dipsitlec.taco2012@unibo.it.

Notification of acceptance for both abstracts and panels will be given by 15 March 2012.