We are pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the Seventh and Eighth International Conferences on Food Studies. We invite proposals for paper presentations, workshops/interactive sessions, posters/exhibits, colloquia, virtual posters, or virtual lightning talks.

Founded in 2011, the International Conference on Food Studies provides a forum for research and practice-based discussions in a time of growing public and research awareness of the relations among diet, health, and social well-being. The conference provides an interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of agricultural, environmental, nutritional, social, economic, and cultural perspectives on food. The conference features research addressing the annual themes.

For more information regarding the conference, use the links below to explore our conference website.

2017 Conference – Rome, Italy
The Seventh International Conference on Food Studies will be held 26–27 October 2017 hosted by Gustolab International Institute for Food Studies and Roma Tre University in Rome, Italy.
Submit your proposal to the 2017 conference by 26 June 2017.
Full call for papers: http://food-studies.com/2017-conference/call-for-papers

2018 Conference – Vancouver, Canada
The Eighth International Conference on Food Studies will be held 25–26 October 2018 at University of British Columbia – Robson Square in Vancouver, Canada.
Submit your proposal to the 2018 conference by 25 June 2017.
Full call for papers: http://food-studies.com/2018-conference/call-for-papers

The Past and the Curious: Re(viewing) History
The University of Sydney Postgraduate History Conference
Quadrangle, The University of Sydney
30 November-1 December, 2017

Some people call historians the detectives of the past. At the University of Sydney’s 2017 postgraduate history conference, we want to know: what are the mysteries you’re uncovering? What are you curiously (and furiously) researching? How are you re-framing our understanding of the established, and seemingly ordinary, past? This two-day conference will allow postgraduate historians from across Australia, and beyond, to share their investigations of the past — and to share in the spirit of historical curiosity.

Possible themes, covering the ancient to the twenty-first century, include (but are not limited to):

• (Re)viewing history through a transnational lens;
• Investigations through Oral History;
• (Re)viewing Race
• Delving into Digital Histories
• (Re)viewing Histories of Sexuality
• (Re)viewing Gender
• (Re)viewing Indigenous Histories
• Public Histories
• Histories of Emotion
• History and (Auto)Biography
• (Re)viewing Labor Histories

We invite proposals for twenty-minute papers exploring any of the above themes.

We welcome abstracts from honours students, postgraduates and early-career researchers involved in history, although they may take an interdisciplinary approach. Applicants from other states and universities are also encouraged to apply. Abstracts should be no more than 200 words accompanied by a 100 word bio, and are to be submitted via our website: http://usydhistoryconference.wordpress.com.

The deadline for submissions is by close of business on 1 August, 2017.

Please note that we have some funds available for travel bursaries for honours and Masters students travelling from outside the Sydney area. More information is available on our website.

We also warmly welcome those who simply wish to attend but ask that you go to the website and register for catering purposes. There is no registration fee levied.

Please direct any related inquiries to historypgconference@gmail.com.

The Literary Interface
2018 Literary Studies Convention
Australian National University, Canberra
4-7 July, 2018

Jointly held by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, the Australasian Association for Literature, the Australasian Universities Languages and Literature Association, and the Australian University Heads of English

An interface describes a surface or plane that lies between or joins two points in space, but it also refers to ‘a means or place of interaction between two systems’ and ‘an apparatus designed to connect two scientific instruments so that they can be operated jointly’ (OED).

This convention will bring together scholars working across the broad field of literary studies to discuss the literary as an interface between different forms of knowledge and processes of
knowledge formation, looking at questions of how and through what means the literary is communicated, represented, negotiated, and remade. By placing the concept of the literary centre-stage while at the same time interrogating its role as an interface, we wish to open up for discussion questions about the role, dynamism, and value of the literary in a time of institutional change and ongoing disciplinary formation. We would also like to debate the role of the literary text – and literary studies as a discipline – as a site of encounter between diverse languages and potentially alien modes of reading and writing.

We invite papers and panel proposals, including but not limited to the following topics:

• Mediation, remediation, and transmediation
• Literary Formalism – its past, present and/or future
• Multimedia forms as interfaces
• The relationship between forms, networks, and hierarchies
• Encounters between readers and modes of reading
• Translation
• The relationship between literary studies and other disciplines, e.g., environmental studies, maths, ethnography, science
• The interface between academic and public critical cultures
• Spaces of reading (online and otherwise)
• The negotiation of literary value
• The classroom as literary interface
• Literary objects as interfaces: circulation, reception, paratexts
• The stage and other spaces of performance as interface between temporalities, bodies, performers, writers and audiences
• Cultural interfaces
• Languages of colonialists/postcoloniality
• Transnationalism and minor transnationalism.

Submissions due 1 July, 2017.

Abstract of 150 words Biographical note of 100 words to: julieanne.lamond@anu.edu.au.

University of Otago Centre for the Book 2017 Symposium: Books and Users
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
28–29 November, and 30 November–1 December 2017

The University of Otago Centre for the Book is pleased to announce our sixth annual research symposium. In 2017, we are teaming up with Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature to offer a 3-day extravaganza engagement with books and culture.

The Centre for the Book Symposium will start on Tuesday evening, November 28th, with our usual public lecture at the Dunedin City Library. The lecture will feature Warwick Jordan, proprietor of Hard to Find Books, talking about his wide experience as a bookseller and the variety of book users that he supplies.

The symposium proper will take place on the University campus all day Wednesday, November 29th, at the College of Education and will feature a slate of presentations on the theme “Books and Users.”

The two-day UNESCO Creative Cities symposium will follow, with international and local keynote speakers on Thursday November 30th, followed on Friday by facilitated workshops at the Dunedin Athenaeum in the Octagon.

Please note: Thanks to generous support from the University of Otago Centre for the Book, the NZ National Commission for UNESCO and the Dunedin City Council, both of these events will be free to attend, with delegates responsible for providing their own lunch. Delegates are welcome to register for specific days or all three days.

The theme for the Centre for the Book 2017 Symposium is “Books and Users.”

Before the advent of electronic text storage, a whole realm of print existed to record and store information. From instruction manuals to phone books and encyclopedias, these publications were to be consulted rather than read. Today, increasingly, many of these works are no longer printed on paper. They are instead disseminated to users in electronic formats, often only when they are requested. This shift in media has made readers more conscious of how they use books. It also raises questions about which sort of books work well in electronic format and which do not.

This symposium seeks to investigate all the ways people use books, not just consciously or as intended, but for any purpose. Some may be propping up an item of furniture in the corner; some used for artistic design; some for elegant wallpaper. Even those books that are actually read are used in many different ways: for self-exploration; for escape; for gifts to others; for inspiration. And there are the readers, an equally diverse lot: some fold down corners; some write in books (some even in ink); some insert all sorts of items such as bookmarks or for storage; others handle a book so delicately that a second reader cannot tell the book has ever been opened. Indeed, in medical contexts, ‘users’ may refer to those in control of their habit or to those harmfully addicted. Is this also true in the book world?

Traditionally, libraries recorded the frequency with which books were used. Today, especially because of increased privacy concerns, such information is less publicly available, but is still being used. Indeed, publishers often place restrictions on how many times an e-text may be loaned. Institutions face pressure, often having to buy another copy after the set number of loans has been reached.

The variety of uses for books and of users of books creates areas both of mutual benefit and of potential conflict. The codex is a superbly efficient and highly evolved technology with a well-established set of design conventions that permit quite distinctive uses. Change is in the wind, and the book beyond the codex is evolving in new directions, some of which will no doubt succeed and others of which are bound to fail.

Call For Papers

All of these topics are of potential interest for the Centre for the Book symposium. Whether you are an adept or an addict, whether books for you are primarily physical, spiritual or cerebral, and whether you prefer to look up information online or in print, you undoubtedly have thoughts on this topic. So please email a 250-300 word abstract of your ideas to books@otago.ac.nz and set aside the end of November for a thought-provoking few days of reflection and engagement with books and users of books. In short – sharpen those pencils!

Abstracts must be received by 1 October 2017, with a final programme announced by mid-October. If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Donald Kerr (donald.kerr@otago.ac.nz) or Dr. Shef Rogers (shef.rogers@otago.ac.nz).

Digital Intimacies 3.0: Connections & Disconnections
RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
November 13-15, 2017

Conference Website

Convenors: Jenny Kennedy (RMIT), Brady Robards (Monash), and Tania Lewis
(RMIT)

Keynotes: Prof. Kath Albury (Swinburne) and more to be announced

Digital media have come to occupy a central role in the mediation, recording, and remembering of intimate lives: from geolocative traces, romantic relationships on Facebook, private Snapchats, pictures of newborns on Instagram, and hook-ups on Tinder or Grindr, to shared survival stories of assault and sexual violence on Reddit.

Going beyond the logic of connectivity and sharing that dominates much of the research into digital media, Light (2014) has drawn attention to the various ways in which digital media can also operate as sites of disconnection. As digital traces of lives mediated in digital spaces bleed and permeate, echoes of intimacies are regularly resurfaced: untagged photos, archived emails, unfriended people, deleted apps. These traces evidence episodes of disconnection as much as connection.

• What can the study of digital media reveal about disconnections in our intimate lives?
• In what ways do digital media shape both our connections and disconnections?
• What questions are raised about what (or who) we delete and how we remember?
• What is the role of automation in intimate connections and disconnections?

Following the success of the first two Digital Intimacies symposia, held at UQ and hosted by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), convened by Amy Dobson, Nic Carah, and Brady Robards, this year we are bringing the event to Melbourne, to be hosted at RMIT by the School of Media and Communication.

The single stream symposium will run for two days, November 13 and 14, 2017. This year, there will be an optional third day (November 15) of collaborative workshops. The idea here is to capture the energy from the symposium and provide space for collaborative work and further discussions.

We are again calling for paper abstracts on the themes of digital media and intimate lives, with particular interest around the theme of connection and disconnection.

Please submit abstracts of 250-300 words to jenny.kennedy@rmit.edu.au by June 30, 2017. We will send notifications of acceptances out by mid-July. We are hoping to make this a low-cost event, especially for students, but there may be a small registration fee to cover costs.

Twenty-First Biennial New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Sarasota, Florida
8–10 March, 2018

Conference Website

The program committee invites 250-word abstracts of proposed twenty-minute papers on topics in European and Mediterranean history, literature, art, music and religion from the fourth to the seventeenth centuries. Interdisciplinary work is particularly appropriate to the conference’s broad historical and disciplinary scope. Planned sessions are also welcome.

Junior scholars whose abstracts are accepted are encouraged to submit their papers for consideration for the Snyder Prize (named in honor of conference founder Lee Snyder), which carries an honorarium of $400. More details: http://www.newcollegeconference.org/snyderprize.

Abstract Submission Guidelines:

If you are considering submitting an abstract or session proposal, please be aware of the following:

1) So that we can accommodate as many scholars as possible, no one may present a paper in more than one session of the conference. Furthermore, no one should commit to more than two out of the following three activities: 1) presenting a paper; 2) chairing a session; and 3) participating in a roundtable. Organizing sessions does not count in these calculations, but session organizers are subject to them along with everyone else (i.e. you may organize as many sessions as you like, but you may only present one paper, and chair a separate session).

2) Session chairs should not also present in the panel they are chairing. Session organizers may either chair or present in a panel that they have arranged, but not both. If you are organizing a planned session, you may either arrange for a chair and include him/her in your proposal, or submit your panel without a chair and conference organizers will assign one. (The acceptance of your panel will not depend on whether or not your planned session already has a chair.)

3) Those organizing planned sessions should also know that the organizing committee strongly prefers sessions that include participants from more than one institution.

Please submit abstracts online: http://www.newcollegeconference.org/cfp.

The deadline for all abstracts is 15 September, 2017.

Please email info@newcollegeconference.org with any questions.

Thirteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society
Emily Carr University of Art + Design
Vancouver, Canada
27–29 June 2018

We invite proposals for paper presentations, workshops/interactive sessions, posters/exhibits, virtual lightning talks, virtual posters, or colloquia addressing one of the following themes:

• Theme 1: Arts Education
• Theme 2: Arts Theory and History
• Theme 3: New Media, Technology, and the Arts
• Theme 4: Social, Political, and Community Agendas in the Arts

Current proposal submission deadline: 20 June, 2017. Proposals are reviewed in rounds based on our corresponding registration deadlines. Check the website often to see the current review round. Use the button below to submit a proposal for review.

For the full CFP please visit the conference website: http://artsinsociety.com/2018-conference.