The 30th Annual Interdisciplinary Conference in the Humanities at UWG is on TRAVEL. We welcome abstracts and panels on TRAVEL and its many crossroads and intersections.

Send questions and abstracts to Yvonne Fuentes,uwgconference2015@gmail.com.

More information at http://www.westga.edu/forlang/2710_2846.php.

Deadline: June 12,…[Read more]

The MLA Executive Council has issued a statement against the censorship of controversial speech and reaffirmed its endorsement of academic freedom.

http://www.mla.org/ec_censorship_controversial

Help your students connect with the political system by codifying their own images of the future.  Please attend my special session at the 2016 MLA, Austin, TX: Conjuring Multi-Ethnic Futures and consider my new book, BLUE SKY FOR BLACK AMERICA,  for your classes.

This brief essay by Talal Asad gives a very economical account of the rationale and necessity of academic boycott:

Talal Asad: Why do I support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement?

See the ACLA website for the State of the Discipline Report, which includes an entry on “Academic Boycott” in the Ideas of the Decade section.

http://stateofthediscipline.acla.org/entry/academic-boycott

For anyone who doubts the apartheid nature of the Israeli occupation, this documentation from the respected Israeli Human Rights organization B’Tselem makes for disturbing viewing and reading.  http://www.btselem.org/hebron/20150401_separation_fence_in_hebron

Special Issue for Postcolonial Text

CFP: Translated Worlds: History, Diaspora, South Asia–Special Issue

(In Honour and Memory of Professor Chelva Kanaganayakam)

In honour of a dear mentor, teacher, and scholar–Professor Chelva Kanaganayakam–who recently passed away, we (former students of Prof. Kanaganayakam’s) will be editing and compil…[Read more]

In discussions of the boycott’s potential impact on “academic freedom”, one thing that is consistently ignored is the impact of occupation and colonization on Palestinian academics and students.  This report outlines some of the conditions in which they struggle to maintain the basic functions of a university.  As it remarks, “The grim realities e…[Read more]

Joining the Executive Committees of the West Asian Literatures Discussion Group, the Arabic Literature Division’s , and the Division on Marxism, Literature, and Society, the MLA’s Division on Ethnic Studies in Language and Literature Executive Committee has voted to support the resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions. MLA Members for J…[Read more]

http://www.salon.com/2015/02/25/its_ugly_it%E2%80%99s_vicious_it%E2%80%99s_brutal_cornel_west_on_israel_in_palestine_%E2%80%94_and_why_gaza_is_the_hood_on_steroids/

These documents are eye-opening, and remind us, as MLA members, that the occupation and siege of Palestine have direct consequences for education (among many other things).  In the most recent war on Gaza, more than a quarter of all Palestinian civilians killed were students. Fourteen institutions of higher education were damaged.  Read on…[Read more]

Hi All,

I am proposing a special session on literary and legal approaches to personhood for the 2016 MLA in Austin. I’m hoping to receive a few more abstracts by March 15. Please see the CFP and description below. Thank you.

Best regards,

Peter Leman

CFP: Legal and Literary Persons

Personhood, personality, impersonation,…[Read more]

Transnational Memories: 9/11 and South Asians (guaranteed panel)

Papers that engage with racial injury, anger, trauma, and grief of South Asians in post-9/11 US, Canada and Britain; representations of 9/11 in fiction, cinema, memoirs, etc. produced in South Asia and in the West; surveillance and securitization in South Asia and in the W…[Read more]

This Bridge Called My Back
In honor of This Bridge’s 35th anniversary, we invite engagements with its historical impact, attendant contexts, and continuing salience.  Brief CV & 300-word abstracts by 15 March 2015 to Laura Halperin lhalperi@email.unc.edu and Ruby Tapia rtapia@umich.edu.