Call for Papers – Volume 2 Issue 1

Call for Papers and Reviews
The Scattered Pelican, Volume 2, Issue 1 (Spring 2017)

 

 No-Fly Zones and Molotov Cocktails

The Graduate Programs in Comparative Literature,

Hispanic Studies, and Theory & Criticism

at Western University invite you to take up the topic “No-Fly Zones and Molotov Cocktails” at the 18th Annual Graduate Student Conference to be held from March 10-12, 2016 in London, Ontario, Canada.

While the reign of Stephen Harper as Prime Minister becomes defined by the suppression and prohibition of debate and dissention, the Academy itself is also prone to fall prey to the formation of No-Fly Zones, wherein the institution and its ideas are sheltered from its adversaries, thereby containing and controlling the creative flights of language and discourse.

Whereas collective assemblages of protests of power tend to be globally inhibited, Molotov Cocktails are incendiary weapons that defy the professionalization and militarization of social manifestations – whether they are political, literary, linguistic, philosophical or artistic, these tools resist the occupied territory and set it ablaze.

In a literary context, Emir Rodríguez Monegal writes “There is another group of novelists, younger than García Márquez or Cabrera, that are committed to the act of writing novels with the greatest possible freedom, without respecting any visible or known principle save that of experimentation. There are many, and they are scattered all over the continent. Their names mean little outside their own places, but they are, already the masters of tomorrow´s novel.”

This conference will therefore examine minoritarian literatures, languages, and theories which resist the standardized or dominant models and create new lines of flight. Some possible concepts to be discussed are the novel, language, government, aesthetics, gender, art, or science, among others, as submissions are asked to investigate the less examined or marginalized aspects of the arts and humanities. We encourage interdisciplinary submissions, including but not limited to literature, critical theory, cultural studies, digital humanities, linguistics, film studies, visual arts, history, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy. We invite submissions on:

  1. No-Fly Zones
    1. Authors, languages, theories, cultures, texts, films, and artworks that are subject to conquest and not objects of main-trend academic endeavours (Indigenous and ethnic studies, immigrant studies, gender theories, disability studies, etc.)
    2. Breakdowns in communication: linguistic and cultural barriers, miscommunication, silence, dead languages, practices and cultures
    3. Theories on and representations of exclusion, alienation, and isolation
  2. Molotov Cocktails
    1. Application of non-traditional and pioneering theories or approaches to the study of the arts and humanities that differ from dominant views or perspectives (i.e., non-Western thought, minority studies, digital humanities, the Anthropocene, etc.)
    2. the collapse of religious, political, social, or economic systems, institutions, norms, values, or ideas
    3. resistance to finality, ways of expressing absence, coping mechanisms, and resolutions to seemingly dead-ends

Related areas of study may include but are not limited to:

  • Non-Western thought
  • Feminist studies
  • Cultural studies
  • Children’s literature
  • Queer studies
  • Ethnic studies
  • Indigenous studies
  • Disability studies
  • Minority groups
  • Digital humanities
  • Experimental literature
  • Avant-Garde
  • Colonialism and post-colonialism
  • History
  • Philosophy
  • Music
  • Visual Arts
  • Film studies

Please forward all submissions or inquiries to thescatteredpelican@gmail.com.