• Programme
• Plenary Speakers
• Subplenary Lectures
• Seminars
• Round Tables
• Doctoral Sessions
• Poster Sessions
• Abstracts
• Academic Program Committee
• Local Organising Committee
• Venue Information
• Gala Dinner

SEMINARS

Procedure for submitting proposals for papers:
Those wishing to participate in the Conference are invited to submit 200-word abstracts of their proposed papers directly to all convenors of the seminar in question before 31 January 2012. The convenors will let the proponents know whether their proposals have been accepted by no later than 29 February 2012.

Please note that authors of seminar papers will be expected to give an oral presentation of not more than 15 minutes' duration, rather than simply reading their papers aloud. Convenors should ensure that reduced versions of the papers are circulated among all speakers in advance of the seminar in question. There will be a maximum of 5 papers in each two-hour seminar session, and convenors should plan so that there is time for discussion between speakers and with the audience. It is possible that we may be able to extend some seminars over two sessions, but this is very much dependent on the proposals received and on the way the programme as a whole develops, and cannot be determined until after all convenors have reported to the Academic Programme Committee.

S1) From Print to Web 2.0: What future for professional discourses?

The discursive practices of professional communities - business, academia, journalism - have their roots in contextual/extra-textual features. The Internet, and particularly the affordances of the Web 2.0 environment, has created a radically new context for professional communication, and triggered the creation of new online communities or realignments in existing ones.

A major issue which characterizes the exciting current debate in the Web 2.0 context is how pre-existing genres traditionally shaped by the written medium take new forms when transferred to the Web. This seminar welcomes papers that address these developments through comparisons between old and new forms of discourse: print newspapers/online versions, diaries/blogs, traditional encyclopedias/wikipedia, offline/online research or professional genres, etc. Possible avenues to be explored concern the reflexivity of users as they construct these new discursive forms, and the shifting relations between dimensions such as formality-informality, exposition-narrativity, impersonality-personalization, and stability-mutability.

Sandra Campagna (Università degli Studi di Torino, IT)
campagna@econ.unito.it
Elizabeth Rowley-Jolivet (Université d'Orléans, FR)
Elizabeth.Jolivet@univ-orleans.fr
elizabeth.jolivet@univ-orleans.fr

S2) Literature And Engraving: Print And Imprint Culture(S)

This interdisciplinary panel invites specialists in literature and cultural studies to submit papers on the relationship between literary texts and engraving as cultural productions belonging to a common material and aesthetic paradigm from the early modern period to the 21st century. Proposals for papers may address questions such as imprint as a trope; the relationship between printing techniques, the materiality of the medium and reader response to literary texts; the epistemological shifts foregrounding the use of reproductive processes, their cross-fertilisation and their relationship with texts. The circulation and exhibition of engravings will also be questioned in relation to reproductive constraints and museums.

Sophie Aymes Stokes (Université de Bourgogne in Dijon, FR)
sophieaymes@hotmail.com
Brigitte Friant Kessler (University of Valenciennes, FR)
b.friant@free.fr
Karen Elizabeth Brown (Trinity College, Dublin)
kabrown@tcd.ie
 
S3) Performances of The Body In The Renaissance Period

The seminar intends to analyze the concept of the "body" in the Renaissance period and its subsequent re-articulations and re-interpretations. Modernity considers the body as a place of regulation, shaped by social and political ideologies and specific networks of power; it is strictly connected with the representation of individual identity and the shaping of the juridical persona. Literature and the performing arts (through a language that is written on the body and with the body), can absorb and retain the effects of political power as well as resist the very effects they appear to incorporate in structures of parody, irony, and pastiche.

S4) New Sexualities and Gender Identities in Literature, History and Culture

The development of new sexualities and gender identities has become a crucial issue in the first years of the twenty-first century. However, this creative process has its origins in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the long twentieth century. The relationship between sexuality and gender identity has had a long tradition in the feminist theory and philosophical thinking of our contemporary world. In our current societies traditional concepts are being questioned, together with dominant representations of gender and sexuality, and new trends are being opened. We invite contributions that address the topic of new sexualities and gender identities and their representation in post-colonial and contemporary Anglophone literary, historical, and cultural productions.

Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz (University of Málaga, ES)
mirr@uma.es
Beatriz Domínguez García (University of Huelva, ES)
beat@uhu.es
beadeguez@yahoo.com
Manuela Coppola (University of Calabria, IT)
manu_coppola@yahoo.it

S5) The Creative Reshaping of Vocabulary: Pseudo-/False Borrowing from/into English

This seminar addresses the phenomenon of pseudo-/false borrowing, which occurs when genuine lexical borrowings are reinterpreted by different recipient languages, determining formal and/or semantic changes. The input of pseudo-/false borrowings is the result of the covert prestige attributed to the supposed donor culture.
The bidirectional focus is on both false borrowings from English into other languages, that is false Anglicisms (recordman for record holder), and false borrowings from other languages into English, e.g. false Gallicisms (rendez-vous for secret meeting), false Italianisms (stiletto for spike heel), false Hispanisms (desperado for violent criminal), false Germanisms (Blitz for sudden attack).

The aim of this seminar is to bring together research in this area of contact linguistics, welcoming contributions on specific languages, the definition of pseudo-/false borrowings, terminological issues, and categorization and systematization frameworks.

S6) Linguistic and rhetorical perspectives on argumentative discourse

Argumentation is intrinsic to human communication, verbal and visual, oral and written, monologic and dialogic, private and public. One of the challenges facing the study of argumentation is to find appropriate analytical tools that capture the complex and multi-level argumentation strategies used in a wide range of discourses (academic, political, organisational, legal, journalism, advertising, etc.). This task is made even more challenging in contemporary society, in a context where increasing recourse is made to web-mediated communication, and the new social media.

The aim of this seminar is to bring about a cross-fertilisation of linguistic and rhetorical approaches to answer the following questions: In what ways can linguistic and rhetorical studies of argumentation provide new and deeper insights into postmodern communication and miscommunication? In what ways are argumentation strategies adapted to the interactive, multimodal and hypertextual options offered by the new media?

Cornelia Ilie (Malmö University, ES)
cornelia.ilie@gmail.com
Giuliana Garzone (University of Milan, IT)
giuliana.garzone@unimi.it

S7) EHES: The case of Women's and Gender Studies
Since the 1970s, Continental English Studies have seen unprecedented growth and specialisation. Among the most important new sub-disciplines have been Women's Studies and Gender Studies. Starting from Anglophone influences, their development has varied greatly due to special national and local conditions. The seminar therefore aims at a first survey by highlighting countries from different parts of Europe. Particular attention is to be paid to institutional structures (cp. EHES 1+2), native traditions, specific forms and functions of Women's and Gender Studies, and the mediating role of English Studies in comparison with other disciplines (e.g. sociology).

Renate Haas (University of Kiel, GR)
haas@anglistik.uni-kiel.de
Reghina Dascăl (University of the West, RO)
reghina_dascal@yahoo.co.uk

S8) What Prospects for Feminist Theories?

The aim of this seminar will be to discuss feminist theories of the 21st century and their impact on academic research and the reshaping of gender roles in society. The following questions will be addressed: To what extent have gay, lesbian, transgender, queer or masculinity theories added to feminist theories? What impact have feminist theories had on other disciplines? What theories have influenced feminist theories? Do linguistic feminist theories change the way we speak and write?

What future for transnational, post-colonial feminism, eco-feminism etc.? Which analytical tools for feminism? Is there such a thing as feminine literature? What feminist approach to literature?

What feminist approach to (women's) history? How does feminist theory influence women's history or perception of it? Is there a place for religion in contemporary feminist theories? What place for biology or "hard sciences" in feminist theories?

Florence Binard (Université Paris Diderot , FR)
fbinard@eila.univ-paris-diderot.fr
Michel Prum (Université Paris Diderot, FR)
prum.michel@wanadoo.fr
Julie Gottlieb (University of Sheffield, UK)
julie.gottlieb@sheffield.ac.uk

S9) Media in English as a reflection / construction of contemporary social and cultural changes

Contemporary societies and cultures are characterized by the pervasive presence of the media. We are informed, educated and entertained by the media, the media shape the public opinion, we use them to get in touch with other people. Societies and cultures are changing very fast partly thanks to the media discourses and the media reflect the changes that are taking place in the cultural contexts. In this seminar we would like to highlight how the media, specifically those in English, reflect changes in contemporary societies and/or how constructed media discourses shape attitudes, habits, economy, political thinking, etc. Contributions could be focused on a wide range of media from, already, traditional ones (press, radio, television, cinema, advertising) on any support (written, analogue, digital) to the Internet and social networks.

S10) The Silent Life of Things: Representing and Reading Commodified "Objecthood"

This seminar will explore, in cross-disciplinary terms, how postmodern literature and art have responded to changing modes of representation of material objects as things as they are altered by the economic processes of excessive commodification. Objects - particularly those open to ideological and media-based interpretation - will be analysed as participants in what we hope will be a newly-defined negotiation between postmodern "subjectivity" and "objectivity". Do represented objects, when their thingness is engendered by consumerist culture, resist commodification, or surrender to it? What then is their cultural location? Topics to be discussed might include: literary and artistic representations of our "material habitus" and its relation to postmodern identity; objecthood situated on the threshold between everyday instrumentality and the aesthetic in museal spaces; the dissolution-assertion of objecthood in postmodern art; a post-Soja understanding of the "trialectics" of things, objects and fetishes..

Alan Munton (University of Exeter, UK)
A.Munton@exeter.ac.uk
Daniela Rogobete (University of Craiova, RO)
dani_rogobete@yahoo.com

S11) Lexical inventiveness in present-day English

This seminar invites papers on any aspect of lexical inventiveness in the widest sense, on all novel and remarkable (rule-governed) formations, (extragrammatical) creations and semantic shifts in the present-day English language. Possible topics of investigation include various creative nonce-formations and lexical metaphors and/or metonymies, neologisms and neonyms, the different motivations for and functions of lexical inventiveness, and also a focus on specific domains such as, for instance, computer-mediated communication. Contributions on all varieties of English, including New Englishes, and on hybrid (i.e. bilingual) formations are welcome.

Alexandra Bagasheva (University of Sofia, BG)
abagasheva@gmail.com
Vincent Renner (University of Lyon, FR)
vincent.renner@univ-lyon2.fr
Christo Stamenov (University of Sofia, BG)
chstamenov@abv.bg

S12) (Dis)Embodied Pasts: Sensed Traces and Perception in Contemporary Fiction

This seminar sets out to explore the multifaceted nature of the ‘trace' as understood in contemporary theory and literature. Both Paul Ricoeur's phenomenological hermeneutic approach, and Levinas's ethical philosophy situate the ‘trace' as a central concept in their thinking. This seminar intends to open up the critical debate over the notion of the trace, as a vestige and material connection of the past to the present by underlining the crucial relationship between time and space in it. Aspects such as the in/visibility of past histories and cultures in present fiction, the sense and perception of the past, as well as the ethical dimension of the ‘trace', are particularly encouraged.

Rosario Arias (University of Málaga, ES)
rarias@uma.es
Maria Grazia Nicolosi (University of Catania, IT)
mariagrazia.nicolosi@tin.it

S13) Contrastive linguistics: the construction of cohesion in English vs. other languages

The aim of this seminar will be to explore the various ways in which cohesion can be achieved in English as opposed to other languages. The following topics are particularly relevant: nominal / verbal determination (tense, aspect); deixis and/or anaphora; the distribution of full phrases vs. pronouns and pro-forms; ellipsis and anaphora; the use of connectives; information packaging. Other related topics may also be addressed. Papers will contrast English and at least one other language, and should present a clear corpus-based hypothesis.

Catherine Chauvin (University of Nancy, FR)
catherine.chauvin@univ-nancy2.fr
Jean-Marie Merle (University of Provence, FR)
jmmerle1@aliceadsl.fr

S14) Gothic Families: The Post-Age

This seminar proposes to investigate a range of 'family' issues within twentieth- and twenty-first-century Gothic literature and film. As well as seeking the possibility of psychoanalytical readings of recent Gothic texts, this seminar hopes to integrate wider considerations in relation to problematic notions of cultural origin relevant to late twentieth- and early twenty-first century culture, such as artificial reproduction, organ harvesting and cloning. The seminar will examine the theoretical implications of family in relation to Gothic re-production and problematic treatment of authenticity, particularly with reference to the pervasive use of technology and virtual environments in place of 'natural' reproduction and conventional blood relations, but also in relation to the postmodernist anxiety about 'simulacra'. Challenging conventional notions of genealogy and legacy within the contemporary context the seminar proposes to assess, the selected papers will incorporate investigations of 'other' families, including queer and postcolonial interrogations of the notion of nuclear family. Writers whose work will be likely to be considered will include Iain Banks, Stephen King, Margaret Atwood and Kazuo Ishiguro.

Topics could include:  Phantom Pregnancies and Organ Harvesting ; DNA and The Law of the Father; Cyborgs and Clones; Postmodern Genealogies and Genres; Technology, Maternal Bodies and Spectral Embryos; Queer Families; (Post)-Colonial Relationships: lost roots; Virtual Families

Monica Germanà (University of Westminster, UK)
m.germana@westminster.ac.uk
Maria Beville (Aarhus University, DK)
engmab@hum.au.dk

S15) Towards a History of the English Normative Tradition

Interlinguistic contact between codes never occurs 'in the void', but in the relations between members of different speech communities, either directly through the spoken medium, or indirectly through the written one. In both cases, speakers/writers carry linguistic norms and realize them in language usage. In 18th/19th-century Britain, these norms were codified through dictionaries, grammars and language manuals; language usage - dialectically related to such norms - may find its expression in diverse forms of text and discourse. This seminar invites papers that examine the way pronouncing or lexical dictionaries, on the one hand, and grammar books and manuals on the other, have prescribed, over the centuries, norms for a 'proper' pronunciation and a 'correct' use of English.

Joan C. Beal (University of Sheffield, UK)
j.c.beal@sheffield.ac.uk
Giovanni Iamartino (Università degli Studi di Milano, IT)
giovanni.iamartino@unimi.it
Massimo Sturiale (Università degli Studi di Catania, IT)
msturial@unict.it

S16) 2nd Series Cultures of Terror in South Asian Literature and Film

"However this notion of the 'clash of civilizations' has to be thoroughly rejected: what we are witnessing today are rather clashes WITHIN each civilization." Slavoj Zizek

"For fundamentalists on either side, the present is just a prelude to the past. Both sides dream of rolling back the clock - and rolling back the border." Amitava Kumar

Our first ESSE Conference in Turin established the polysemy of terror, the heterogeneity of terrorism and its manifold historical, sociological and territorial manifestations which could not be circumscribed by the Global War on Terror discourse deployed in the aftermath of 9/11. The US administration has since been accused of exaggerating the security threat and of fostering a climate of terror to justify its 2003 invasion of Iraq and its military intervention in Afghanistan. Contrary to the Manichean doxa of the Global War on Terror discourse deployed in the aftermath of 9/11, terrorists are not a new phenomenon nor are they all Jihadis. The "Axis of Evil" rhetoric and its stereotypical mapping of the world in terms of East versus West resonate well with cold-war polarisation and paranoia. Before declaring war on the United States in 1996 and becoming public enemy number one, Osama bin Laden had been bankrolled by the CIA. The reductive world view which prevails in the West is articulated around binaries such as democracy / feudalism, modernity/ archaism, secularism / fundamentalism.

The seminar of our second Conference in Istanbul will focus on demonization and Islamophobia, the result of the West's construct of the terrorist Other as illustrated in literature by novels such as Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist and on screen by films such as My Name is Khan or New York. The conference will discuss State Terror in the context of decolonisation and resistance to globalization. In so doing, it will try to account for the resurgence of ultra nationalism and Religion in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and consider how literature and film can shed new light on the ways in which South Asian states have embraced the Global War on Terror to "extirpate the enemy within" and terrorize their minorities into submission.

Veronica Thompson (University of Athabasca, CA)
thompson@athabascau.ca
Stephen Morton (University of Southampton, UK)
S.C.Morton@soton.ac.uk
Pascal Zinck (University of Lille, FR)
cap.zinck@wanadoo.fr

S17) Gender and Translation in Europe

In the last two decades the field of gender and translation has been growing in Europe exponentially. More women (and men) translators are concerned with gender-related aspects in literary as well as in non-literary texts, in an endless interrogation of gender definitions and identities. The papers should address gender and translation in an innovative and complex way, either at a theoretical or practical level, rethinking the connection between such categories as gender, sex, translation, and identity, among others. We would like this seminar to be an opportunity for scholars and translators coming from different countries to exchange ideas about the status of gender and translation in Europe and to discuss the controversial gap between theory and practice. The topics could include -but no limited to- the following: women vs men as translators- women vs women as translators; women and men as translated; identification between author and translator in terms of gender/sex; the reception of women authors and/or translators in Europe from the Middle Ages onwards; feminist translation and translators in Europe; the existence of different European (or national, cultural or linguistic) traditions in the study of gender and translation; the existence of different European practices of translation (with a focus on gender); women, men, translation and globalization

Eleonora Federici (Università della Calabria, IT)
eleonora.federici@unical.it
José Santaemilia (Universitat de València, ES)
jose.santaemilia@uv.es

S18) The Ethics of Form in Contemporary Limit-case Trauma Narratives

The seminar will investigate the ways in which contemporary British trauma narratives, whether fictional or not, inscribe and perform ethical options in their very form. Trauma theory and criticism will thus be considered along with issues predicated on thematic, generic or modal traits (the resurgence of the fairy/ghost tale, of the diary, etc.), on structural characteristics (how narratives thwart linearity by conflating heterogeneous temporal hypostases to evoke traumatic belatedness), on the way in which point of view is resorted to so as to blur the limits between autobiography and fiction (which could address the collaboration between autofiction and testimony), etc.

S19) The role on English in the construction of national identities

The hegemonic role of English as an international language has come under severe criticism. A number of writers have spoken of imperialism both within the boundaries of the European Union (Phillipson 1992; 2003) and beyond (Canagarajah 1999; Phillipson 2003). English has colonised the worlds of business, politics, tourism, academia and the media. In fact, as a consequence of the globalisation trends characteristic of the 21st century, English is instrumental in the construction of national images and identities thanks to its pervasiveness in news media. This seminar aims to explore its role in the construction of those images, not only of Anglophone countries but of other nations as well, and to examine the interdisciplinary connections between language, communication, the media and translation.

Roberto A. Valdeón (Universidad de Oviedo, ES)
roberto.valdeon@gmail.com
Luc Van Doorslaer (Lessius University College, BE)
Luc.Vandoorslaer@lessius.eu

S20) Performing Identity, Performing Culture

Based upon an awareness of the constructedness of much human activity, and of the fluid, unstable, and fictive character of the postmodern subject, the theatrical metaphors of performance and performativity, with their emphasis on praxis and transformation, help define identity and culture on the contemporary world stage. According to Marvin Carlson, the popularity of these contested terms in recent years "reflects a major shift in many cultural fields from the what of culture to the how, from the accumulation of social, cultural, psychological, political, or linguistic data to a consideration of how this material is created, valorized, and changed, to how it lives and operates within the culture, by actions" (M. A. Carlson, Performance. A Critical Introduction, Routledge, 2004, p. ix). This seminar intends to discuss the issues raised by the definition of performance and performativity in relation to the politics of identity and culture in current cultural studies and literature. Themes and issues to be discussed may include: gender, race and ethnicity as they are enacted, idealized, negotiated and redefined on the contemporary British cultural stage; postmodern urban experience and identity; performativity and the arts; new technologies and the construction of new 'inauthentic' identities.

Silvia Caporale Bizzini (Universidad de Alicante, ES)
caporale@ua.es
Lucia Esposito (Università di Teramo, IT)
lesposito@unite.it

S21) Word formation and morphological creativity

This seminar invites papers on word formation, morphological creativity and productivity. Although this field has received much attention over the last 30 years, it remains a much contested area of study where the debate on productivity versus creativity and innovation is still unresolved. Suggested topics include (but are not limited to) new perspectives on word structure, neologisms versus nonce formations, lexical re-categorisation, the relation between neologisms and blocking, and the importance of context in lexical creativity. We also expect (re)definitions of key concepts, such as markedness or availability. All theoretical frameworks are welcome as well as papers in the field of the history of language, lexicography, contrastive linguistics, psycholinguistics and language acquisition.

Isabel Oltra-Massuet (Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, ES)
isabel.oltra@cchs.csic.es
Jean Albrespit (Université Michel de Montaigne, FR)
Jean.Albrespit@u-bordeaux3.fr

S22) British Women Writing the Ottoman Empire (18th and 19th centuries)

Perceived as an imperial (counter-)model and/or as part of the fabled Orient, the Ottoman Empire figures in writing by well- or lesser-known British women of the 18th and 19th centuries. The texts they produced exemplify a variety of formats and genres, ranging from travel writing to pseudo-Oriental tales. The seminar aims at doing justice to this exceptional variety and invites papers exploring the changing representations of the Ottoman Empire in contributions by female British authors over a period of 200 years. Discussion focuses on, but is not restricted to, the following topics: female authors and male fantasies of the Ottoman Empire; engagement with domestic politics and portrayal of sexual mores in the Ottoman Empire; imag(in)ing emblematic gendered spaces such as hammam and harem; cross-dressing and its cultural implications; politicized representations of the Ottoman Empire and its subject populations; the Ottoman Empire and "female" Orientalisms, Hellenisms and Balkanisms; inter-imperial comparisons and classification of forms of government; gender politics and representations of religious difference.

Ludmilla Kostova (University of Veliko Turnovo, BG)
lkostova@mbox.digsys.bg
Anja Müller (Universität Siegen, GR)
am.englit-si@muelleranja.eu

S23) Narrating Being vs. Narrative Being in Modernist Fiction

This seminar will focus on modernist fiction with the intention to inspire challenging perspectives that would move us towards considering modernism in the instances in which it transcends itself, moving, most broadly speaking, towards postmodernist self irony as a truest and most courageous way of expressing oneself. We invite participants interested in discussing any of the following: being in creation, narrativizing being and creation; being and narrative, being in narrative time and space; authority and narrative, authority of narrative; narrative and the other, the authority of the other; interferentiality of text and author.

Marija Knezevic (University of Montenegro, Montenegro)
marija13a@gmail.com
Armela Panajoti (University of Vlora, AL)
armelap@assenglish.org

S24) The Indiscipline of English

2012 marks the 250th anniversary of the appointment of Hugh Blair as Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Letters at Edinburgh and John Tompson as Professor of English at Goettingen. Drawing on the work of the European History of English Studies project and its insights into the institutional variety of English Studies across Europe, this seminar will address a number of problems in thinking about the history of a discipline that is far from unified. To what extent can the history of English be seen as the story of a single discipline, as opposed to a pseudo-discipline existing between other disciplinary protocols? How has the subject been variously inflected, and what might this tell us about the advantages and disadvantages of the indiscipline of English?

Bill Bell (University of Edinburgh, UK)
b.bell@ed.ac.uk
Barbara Schaff (Universität Göttingen, GR)
barbara.schaff@phil.uni-goettingen.de

S25) Sound Is/As Sense 2: The Sonnet, 1970-2010

Despite the seeming triumph of free verse in English-language poetry in the early twentieth century, fixed forms and traditional metrical genres have never lost their fascination for poets and readers. Among these forms/genres, the sonnet has proved particularly enduring throughout the twentieth century. This seminar will focus on the sonnet in English-language poetry over the last fifty years. The form/genre has attracted the interest of major modern and contemporary poets such as Kim Addonizio, John Berryman, Eavan Boland, Billy Collins, David Constantine, Carol Ann Duffy, Robert Duncan, Douglas Dunn, Tony Harrison, Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill, James Lasdun, Paula Meehan, Paul Muldoon, Alice Notley, Don Paterson, Timothy Steele, Anne Stevenson, and George Szirtes. We invite papers that consider the development of the sonnet since 1970. We welcome papers that look at the work of particular British, Irish and US poets within the genre, at technical innovations in the form, and at engagements with the rich tradition of the sonnet. As this seminar is a continuation of the seminar "Sound Is/As Sense" held at ESSE 10 in Turin in 2010, the organizers are particularly in search of papers that examine the uses of traditional and innovative metrical techniques in analysis and interpretation of the sonnet.

Wolfgang Görtschacher (University of Salzburg, AT)
wolfgang.goertschacher@sbg.ac.at
David Malcolm (University of Gdańsk, PL)
angmd@univ.gda.pl

S26) Thomas Hardy as a liminal writer

This seminar invites contributions centered on Thomas Hardy as a writer whose position may be described as liminal, and whose writings gave particular attention to the edge, the border-line, the boundary, the fringe, the frame, the horizon, etc... Hardy's tragic characters are perpetually wandering in a peripheral area, "the 'outer limit'—the place where order shades into chaos, light into darkness" (Kristeva). Like the Durbeyfields' Compleat Fortune Teller, whose margin has been worn through pocketing, the Hardyan world lacks a frame, a clear distinction between nature and culture, life and death, the human and the inhuman. As a man Hardy was always marginal, feeling at home neither in the humble rural class he was born in, nor in the London upper-class circles he was able to join. A poet and a writer of fiction, he remained "in-between", a "poet-novelist". Wandering on the uncertain fringe between two worlds, he belonged neither to the Victorian age nor to that of modernism. Perhaps that is the reason for his influence on the generation that followed him, and for his appeal to contemporary readers, who enjoy his work as well as reprises by "neo-Victorian" artists, in fields as diverse as the novel, the cinema or, more recently, the graphic novel. We welcome papers concerned with all these forms of liminality.

Annie Ramel (Emeritus at University Lumière-Lyon 2, FR)
Annie.Ramel@univ-lyon2.fr
Phillip Mallett (University of St Andrews, UK)
pvm@st-andrews.ac.uk
Isabelle Gadoin (University of Paris 3, FR)
isabeluis2@free.fr

S27) Gendering the Enlightenment: Female Novelists in the Eighteenth Century

The eighteenth-century is the century of several very gifted prose writers, especially females. Sarah Fielding, Eliza Haywood, Charlotte Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft are just the top of the iceberg. Starting with Ian Watt and up to Michael McKeon the eighteenth-century novel has received a lot of attention. There is, however, an area in its development that has been neglected and misinterpreted and that is the contribution of women writers. Although highly successful in the eightenth century, these Amazons of the pen have nevertheless lost the battle with history until some female critics, such as Dale Spender or Jane Todd, uncovered them in the 1980's. Still they are absent in the syllabi of most universities.
This seminar will analyze the work of eighteenth-century female novelists in relation to the Enlightenment ideas. Our panel will try to answer some questions which will include but will not be limited to: the relation between reason and emotion in the eighteenth century, the new construction of reasonable femininity, women's enlighten(ed)ing pragmatism, reason and matrimonial politics in the eighteenth century, female reason and the senses in the eighteenth century etc.

Michaela Mudure (Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania/Technical University, Liberec, Czech Republic)
mmudure@yahoo.com
Nilsen Gokcen (Dokuz Eylul University, TR)
nilsen.gokcen@deu.edu.tr

S28) The New Seventeenth Century: Literature and Genre in Britain and Ireland, 1603 - 1660

This session brings together recent work on the extensive range of seventeenth-century writing, juxtaposing critically established genres/authors with hitherto relatively understudied ones whose contemporary popularity prompts an interrogation of literary and critical canons as well as of the role of these genres/authors in the evolution of early-modern into modern across the North-East Atlantic Archipelago. In doing so, this session also explores the manner in which genre(s) became implicated in literary negotiations of variously troubled local and (inter-) national cultural-political loyalties. Papers might address (among others) sonnet sequences, romances, travel-writing, diaries and other ego-documents, sermons, historiography, plays, epistolary formats, broadsheets and ballads; engage in conceptual approaches, including book history; or analyse the seventeenth-century reception of pre-1600 texts..

Theo van Heijnsbergen (University of Glasgow, UK)
Theo.VanHeijnsbergen@glasgow.ac.uk
Patrick Hart (İstanbul Kültür Üniversitesi, TR)
p.hart@iku.edu.tr

S29) Redefining Britishness in Contemporary Black British Writing: British Identities and the Identity of Britain

The importance of negotiations as to what constitutes Britishness in present-day Britain can be seen in a variety of areas, from the "Britishness Test" introduced in 2005 for those who are applying for UK citizenship to scholarly works that attempt to categorize national identities or research projects such as "Britishness", undertaken by the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past at the University of York. In a recent essay (Wasafiri, 64, Winter 2010) John McLeod has registered a pronounced shift regarding the realms of nation and identity in the approach of contemporary Black British writing or rather 'contemporary black writing of Britain'. McLeod's slight adjustment of terminology highlights the altered concern in recent work by black British writers; a concern that is still partly informed but no longer solely governed by issues of discrimination and racism. Unlike earlier literary endeavours produced in the wake of the first generation of immigrants into Britain and that of the tumultuous 1980's and post-1980's, which were predominantly concerned with the troublesome issues of Black British identity and the issues of race and belonging, McLeod contends that "contemporary black writing of Britain offers a revisioned articulation of the nation that is distinctly polycultural, even post-racial - one that goes beyond the affective and political concerns of black Britons and demands adoption by all kinds of British subjects" (McLeod, 51). With this perspective in mind we invite contributions which trace but also critically interrogate post-racial modes of representation and of writing the nation in recent fiction, poetry and drama by British writers of colour.

Petra Tournay-Theodotou (European University, CY)
tournayp@spidernet.com.cy
Sofía Muňoz Valdivieso (Universidad de Málaga, ES)
simunoz@uma.es

S30) The Other Witness? Imagining the Perpetrator

This seminar will address the recent turn to the perpetrator's perspective in trauma, Holocaust, and genocide studies, fields that have traditionally advocated identification with victims. While the perpetrator had already been the subject of important studies by Hannah Arendt, Christopher Browning, Robert Jay Lifton, and others, a series of high-profile trials (including those of John Demjanjuk, Radovan Karadzic, Slobodan Milosevic, and Charles Taylor) and a spate of often controversial films (e.g., Downfall and The Grey Zone) and literary texts (e.g., novels by Jonathan Littell, Bernhard Schlink, and Rachel Seiffert) focusing on those responsible for extreme violence and suffering have propelled the complex and troubling issues surrounding the figure of the perpetrator to the centre of public and scholarly attention in recent years. Papers are invited that explore the aesthetic, historical, political, and ethical challenges faced by literary, cinematic, and other artistic treatments of the perpetrator experience, whether understood in terms of direct perpetration or of complicity, failure to prevent, or inherited guilt.

Stef Craps (Ghent University, BE)
stef.craps@ugent.be
Antony Rowland (University of Salford, UK)
a.c.rowland@salford.ac.uk

S31) Interconnections Between Literature and Science

Literature and science have constantly overlapped and interacted across the centuries, but the systematic study of their relationship has only recently emerged and come to dominate the scene of literary criticism. The contributions from scientific inquiries (from the areas of neurosciences, philosophy of the mind, physiology, psychology, evolutionary biology,…) are at the present fostering a revolution that encourages the syncretic re-examination of the history of literature in the light of both old and new scientific approaches (Turner, 1996; Richardson and Steen, 2002) which see the literary text as a privileged object of examination allowing narrative, philosophical and scientific theories to interact in the analysis of the "creative mind" (Hernadi, 2002). The seminar intends to explore recent and innovative outcomes in the field, as well as the foundation of the interdisciplinary relationship between literature and science, through the analysis of key topics and case-studies (i.e. the influence of scientific theories on literary works or currents, the interaction of single scientific disciplines with literature), and the productive dialogue, perhaps even convergence, between different approaches (cognitive, epistemological, linguistic).

Teresa Prudente (University of Torino, IT)
teresa.prudente@unito.it
Annalisa Volpone (University of Perugia, IT)
annalisa.volpone@unipg.it
Meltem Gürle (Boğaziçi University, TR)
mgurle@boun.edu.tr
m_gurle@yahoo.com

S32) Under Western Eyes: British travelers to Istanbul/Constantinople

This seminar will focus on the accounts of Istanbul/Constantinople made by British travellers from the early modern period to the 20th century. This broad time-span will make it possible to examine both the continuities and shifts in perspective in the travelers' accounts. Particular attention will be paid to the cultural and aesthetic perception of the city, as well as to its geopolitical significance. Male and female canonical authors ranging from Paul Ricaut in the 17th century or Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in the 18th century to Virginia Woolf in the 20th can be considered, as well as less well known writers such as John Auldjo (Journal of a Visit to Constantinople, 1835). Travelogues, journals, or handbooks for/by travelers can also be included (such as Murray's Handbook for travelers in Turkey, which went through several editions in the 19th century). Contributions on the pictorial depictions of the city are welcome as much as theoretical approaches within the Urban Studies panorama.

Pierre Lurbe (Université Paul-Valéry , FR)
pierre.lurbe@univ-montp3.fr
María Losada Friend (Universidad de Huelva, ES)
friend@dfing.uhu.es

S33) Mapping Writing - Literary Geography

This session will focus on new work being done in the area of literary geography, in particular by a number of colleagues for www.MappingWriting.com which will become freely available online in September 2011. Mapping Writing provides the means to display on Google maps the geography represented in texts and to offer scholarly commentary on particular representations and general issues in literary geography. The work already done by the group has raised questions such as what is at issue in the creation of "feigned" places which correlate with real places? Why is this procedure common at some times and not at others? Does it involve idealisation, or ideological reconfiguration? Why do some writers use both feigned and real places? How do writers use the presumed history of a real or feigned place to import significance to their writing? At the editorial level we also encounter questions regarding the procedures by which feigned places may be identified, and the ways in which a writer may anticipate the reader's act of identification.

Robert Clark (University of East Anglia, UK)
r.clark@uea.ac.uk
Kirsti Bohata (University of Swansea, UK)
k.bohata@swansea.ac.uk
Ana-Karina Schneider University Sibiu, RO)
karina.schneider@ulbsibiu.ro

S34) Translation, Globalization and Place

Drawing on the notion that translation is a practice carrying both ethical and aesthetic imperatives, the seminar will explore the role of translation and the function of translators vis-à-vis the homogenizing challenges posed by globalization, particularly in relation to the notion of "place”. Through the discussion of the translation of texts and discourses as they manifest themselves in contemporary literature, film, video installations, and other forms of artistic and cultural representation, we will analyze how the singularities attached to "place” (i.e. supposedly "essential” and idiosyncratic notions linked to the identification of one's territory, space, city, origins, roots, identity) are imported, adopted, adapted, appropriated and reconfigured as they cross boundaries and trespass cultural and linguistic borders. Some issues the seminar seeks to approach include the question whether globalization is somewhat limited to superficial and media-fuelled representation of place copied uncritically by translation. Does translation remove ("displace”) the particularities of place in order to conform to the homogeneous discourse of a uniform global world or, on the contrary, do certain translation practices insist on remarking the existence of "difference” through place? Does translation simply neutralize and "re-place” or does it negotiate alternatives? Finally, do utopian, hybrid, nostalgized, idealized, nonexistent ("placeless”) places (ultimately, what kind of places?) emerge through translation?

Teresa Caneda Cabrera (University of Vigo, ES)
tcaneda@uvigo.es
Andrzej Antoszek (Catholic University of Lublin, PL)
antoszek@kul.lublin.pl

S35) Literature and Buddhism in Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts

This seminar invites papers that explore the dialectical interchanges between various traditions of Buddhism, on one hand, and European and American literary and religious traditions, on the other. 'Dialectical' because as Buddhism changed the form, content, and context of British and American literature, so literature changed the 'Buddhisms' proliferating in the West. The focus is on literature from 1900 to the present day, and consequently the papers need to be contextualised within colonial and postcolonial frameworks. Explorations of the influence of mediating figures such as Heidegger, Suzuki, Jung, Watts, the Dalai Lama, etc. are welcomed.

Lawrence Normand (MiddlesexUniversity,UK)
l.normand@mdx.ac.uk
Bent Sørensen (AalborgUniversity, DK)
i12bent@cgs.aau.dk

S36) The Other Meets the Other: The Ethics of First Encounters in British Women's Exploration Narratives

Frederic Regard (Sorbonne, FR)
flook@orange.fr
Maria Lopez (University of Cordoba, ES)
ff2losam@uco.es

S37) Technology Implementation In Second Language Teaching

Modern language teaching increasingly involves an interactive environment as students communicate with people from all over the world. In this process, technology facilitates communication and is likely to make the learning process more effective. There is great potential in what we will be referring to as "Technology implementation in language teaching” (TILT) when it comes to promoting authentic communication, stimulating interpersonal and group skills, and generating positive interdependency while still valuing individual contributions. By putting new technologies—not only personal computers, but also smartphones, tablets, etc.—to good use in the language classroom, it is possible to improve student participation and promote autonomous learning, especially if these are clearly stated as learning objectives. We invite papers which present recent developments in TILT in tertiary education, relating to areas such as teaching methods, materials development, the application of corpus tools in the classroom, and continuing professional development in second language teaching.

María Luisa Carrió-Pastor (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia ES)
lcarrio@idm.upv.es
Annelie Ädel (Stockholm University, SE)
annelie.adel@english.su.se

S38) Offstage and Onstage: Liminal Forms of Theatre and Their Enactment in Early Modern English Drama

The seminar aims at investigating certain early modern 'theatrical' practices which normally took place in the square or on the fairground, and that have been the most popular forms of entertainment for centuries. Some of these (performances of mountebanks, jugglers, wrestlers or acrobats) were aimed exclusively at entertaining; others (the public 'shows' of healers or fortune-tellers) contained spectacular elements with aims of individual persuasion; a third group (executions, funerals, manifestations of religious sentiment) had apparently performative though edifying dimensions. Since these phenomena have not as yet received the necessary scholarly attention as forms of 'theatre', the seminar invites papers on such phenomena and on the way in which these practices were represented in canonical Early Modern drama.

Carla Dente (University of Pisa, IT)
dente@angl.unipi.it
Jesus Tronch Perez (University of Valencia, ES)
jesus.tronch@uv.es

S39) Evidentiality and Epistemic Modality in Academic and Journalistic Discourse: cross-linguistic perspectives

The seminar focuses on corpus-based studies on the expression of evidentiality and epistemic modality in journalistic and academic discourse in English as contrasted with other European languages. The aim is to reveal cross-linguistic/-cultural dimensions of variation in the realization and distribution of evidential and epistemic modal marking in the two types of discourse. Evidentiality pertains to the sources of knowledge whereby the author feels entitled to make an assertion, thus indicating his/her attitude towards the validity of the communicated information, while epistemic modality pertains to the author's estimation concerning the veracity of the event designated and the likelihood of its realization (Chafe and Nichols 1986; van der Auwera and Plungian 1998; de Haan 1999, Plungian 2001; Aikhenvald 2004; Boye and Harder 2009, Cornillie 2009, inter alia).

Juana I. Marin-Arrese (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, ES)
juana@filol.ucm.es
Aurelija Usoniene (Vilnius University, LT)
aurelia@usonis.lt

S40) Freudiana - the Psychotherapist as Character in Contemporary Fiction:Narrative and Ideological Functions

In spite of the renewed attacks on Freud and psychoanalysis in the 21st century and the seeming dominance of cognitive psychology and neurobiology, the figure of the psychoanalyst has remained very popular in contemporary fiction. Not only is there the iconic figure of Freud, who plays a role in three quite recent American novels - The Interpretation of Murder, by Jed Rubenfeld, 2006; Mrs. Freud, by Nicolle Rosen, 2005; Seduction, by Catherine Gildiner -as well as David Cronenberg´s recent movie A dangerous Method. In other novels, films and DVD series, the therapist-figure is modeled on other contemporary analysts, for instance Adam Phillips, Christopher Bollas or Darian Leader. Examples of `therapy´ narratives are numerous: Hanif Kureishi´s Something to tell you, Siri Hustvedt's The Sorrows of an American, the successful HBO series The Sopranos, and the Graphic novel Couch Fiction by Philippa Perry (2010). Last but not least, some psychoanalysts and psychiatrists - from Irvine Yalom and Oliver Sacks to Bruce Fink and Henry Bond - have turned to writing fiction themselves as a tool to render the clinical experience. In our panel, we would like to examine which features of Freudianism are still salient in fiction. What is the influence of the changes in therapy on literature and what is the specific narrative and ideological interest of the character of the therapist? We invite contributions focused on the English speaking world, with an aim at calmly re-considering/integrating the figure of the great Viennese scientist into the fictional persona of the contemporary analyst.

Dan H Popescu (Partium Christian University, RO)
dhpopescu@yahoo.com
Anneleen M. Masschelein (KuLeuven, Research Unit 'Literatuur en Cultuur, BE)
Anneleen.Masschelein@arts.kuleuven.be

S41) Corpus-based perspectives on discourse: Insights from cross-linguistic studies

In this seminar we explore a number of crosslinguistic aspects of discourse arising from corpus analysis and annotation. These include contrastive aspects of phenomena like cohesion and connectivity (Halliday and Hasan 1976, Hansen-Schirra et al. 2007, House 2007) thematisation and focalisation in different languages (Lavid 2010, Lavid, Arús and Moratón 2009; Lavid, Arús and Zamorano-Mansilla 2010; Steiner 2005, inter alia), and interpersonal issues such as modality and evidentiality under the lens of Appraisal Theory (Thompson and Hunston 2000; Martin and White 2005, inter alia). We also welcome cross-cultural corpus analyses which explore commonalities and differences in the multimodal construction of discourse.

Julia Lavid (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, ES)
lavid@filol.ucm.es
Erich Steiner (Universität des Saarlandes, GR)
e.steiner@mx.uni-saarland.de

S42) Deaf people's mastery of English as a second or foreign language

There is no single approach to the teaching of English to d/Deaf learners, who may approach it as a first, second or foreign language. The seminar invites contributions on topics related to:

1. Conceptual representation for words in English
2. Lexical and syntactic interference from the L1
3. Code-switching and code-mixing occurring among deaf learners of EFL
4. English as a lingua franca among Deaf users of sign and/or spoken languages
5. Interference of the native language in the learning of EFL and related subjects.

Elana Ochse (University of Torino, IT)
elanaochse@gmail.com
Ewa Domagala-Zysk (John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, PL)
ewadom@kul.pl

S43) Self-censorship in Translation

While the impact of institutional censorship on translation has been a frequent research topic, less attention has been paid to self-censorship in translation. Both translators and publishers often face the internal or external constraints of working under various kinds of pressures from political, religious, cultural or market forces, and they have to soften the tone of their translation or purge their own work of any unpleasant or controversial issue. Papers are invited which investigate the extent of self-censorship and its principal causes in the translation of literary works from English into European languages.

Alberto Lázaro (Universidad de Alcalá, ES)
alberto.lazaro@uah.es
Hortensia Pârlog (Universitatea de Vest din Timisoara, RO)
abaparlog@gmail.co

S44) Language Of Medicine: Features Of English, Serbian And Croatian Languages Of Medicine

The aim of the seminar is to show that the modern languages of medicine are not exclusively based on Greek and Latin, but have been building and developing their own national terminologies. Language of medicine is a language for special purposes aimed at communication among physicians and/or other health professionals and patients. Medical language has its own features and rules. English medical language developed from Greek/Latin, but French left its traces, too (e.g. poison, jaundice). Modern medical English creates new terms using its own language. Serbian and Croatian medical languages are also based on Greek/Latin, but during the last decades, the influence of English has been noticed affecting not only the lexical system (where English terms are aimed at filling a void in the lexical field), but the syntactic system, too.

Sofija Micic (University of Belgrade, Serbia)
smicic@ptt.rs
Anamarija Gjuran-Coha (University of Rijeka, Croatia)
agjuran@medri.hr

S45) Word/ Image : (Re)Defining Intermedial Criticism

This seminar will focus on fictional texts which include ekphraseis, pictorial descriptions, and writings on art. The generic ambiguity and hybridity of such texts will be addressed in relation to the status of both the words and the images that they contain. As a consequence, the status of the reader/viewer of such texts will also be examined, thus broadening the emphasis on formal issues to cultural and historical issues of power and gender, within a perspective that borrows from both semiotics and poststructuralism. Through discussions of innovative "iconotextual" or "intermedial" strategies that attempt to break the boundaries between the verbal and the visual, we will seek to define, or redefine, the tenets of a truly intermedial criticism.

Liliane Louvel (Poitiers University, FR)
liliane.louvel@univ-poitiers.fr
Pia Brinzeu (University of Timisoara, RO)
piabrinzeu@gmail.com
Laurence Petit (University of Montpellier, FR)
laurence.petit@univ-montp3.fr

S46) Fashionable Subjects/Fashionable Identities - In Law, Literature And Society

The aim of the session is to explore the ways in which clothing performs in literature -aesthetically, legally and politically. Clothes have more important offices than merely to keep us warm; they change our view of the world and the world's view of us" (Virginia Woolf). Therefore fashion is a language written with and on the body that simultaneously makes the subject visible and/or covers his/her body. An analysis of literary texts in the perspective of fashion studies reveals how fashion is a language strictly linked with law as it absorbs and represents the effects of politico-legal power and the ideological construction of the body in society.

Leif Dahlberg (University of Stockholm, SE )
dahlberg@csc.kth.se
Chiara Battisti (University of Verona, IT)
chiara.battisti@univr.it

S47) Linguistic Interaction and Participation in Media Discourses

Various media forms and genres offer new modes of communication, necessitating modifications in the participation framework underlying interactions. The classic dyadic (speaker-hearer) model of communication appears to be obsolescent in reference to the diversified communicative genres, whether private or public, facilitated by the media and technology.

We invite papers concerning mainly the following areas: (1) participation framework and participation in traditional media discourses (e.g. televised/film/radio discourse) and other public discourses, whether or not mediatised, and (2) the nature of interaction and conversation in novel discourses related to computer-mediated-communication (e.g. social media such as Facebook and Twitter, instant messaging and chat, blogs, or new forms of online journalism). More specifically, we wish to address such issues as: fictional, scripted and natural conversation; the status of TV viewers; linguistic traces of (un)ratified participants beyond the dyad; and (mis)comprehension of meaning within/beyond the dyad.

The seminar is open to various analytic perspectives, including pragmatics of interaction, conversation and discourse analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, and multimodality.

Marta Dynel (Łódź University, PL)
marta.dynel@yahoo.com
Jan Chovanec (Masaryk University, CZ)
chovanec@phil.muni.cz

S48) Sociolinguistic Issues in Language Education

Recent studies have highlighted a number of uncomfortable issues in language education, such as the question of access to language education in settings where the language of academic literacy and socio-economic power is that of the former colonial / current economic power, or the role of English as a lingua franca in a globalized postcolonial world. The seminar aims to provide a forum for reflection and discussion on various aspects of language education policies, such as their objectives and their need to meet local / regional / global requirements, and how they impact on complex questions such as linguistic pluralism, language rights, multiculturalism, marginalization.

Edith Esch (University of Cambridge, UK)
eme10@cam.ac.uk
Martin Solly (University of Florence, IT)
Martin.Solly@unifi.it

S49) Literary canon(s) for the Atlantic Archipelago: towards a de-centring of English Studies

Drawing from Hugh MacDiarmid's pioneering call for a canon based "on all the diverse cultural elements and the splendid variety of languages and dialects of the British Isles" and from recent theorisations of connected 'archipelagic identities' (e.g. Pocock 1973, Kerrigan 2008) as opposed to Anglo-centric notions of Britishness sidelining, subsuming or erasing devolved minor/national/local identities, the present seminar proposes a revision of the paradigm for the study of 'English literature' as a constellation of social, political and cultural structures, globally connected and yet autonomously and dignifiedly local. We invite both theoretical or empirical contributions from a postcolonial, Irish, Scottish or Welsh studies perspective. The comparative approach of our proposed topic, intersecting well-established areas of study, no doubt promotes a fruitful cross-cultural, interdisciplinary debate. We both have worked in the fields of Scottish and Postcolonial studies and we both are, from different perspectives, investigating issues of canonicity.

Carla Sassi (University of Verona, IT)
carla.sassi@univr.it
Bashabi Fraser (EdinburghNapierUniversity, UK)
b.fraser@napier.ac.uk

S50) Crowd Control in the Renaissance

This seminar will discuss the notion of ‘crowd control' from various viewpoints, distinguishing ‘crowd controllers' and the ‘crowds controlled' in different loci : on the stage, in the Church, the royal entourage, urban/rural milieus, in the British Isles or elsewhere.

The seminar seeks to build on ideological and Foucauldian-based approaches to notions and instances of rebellion and social control, favored by critics in the 80s and 90s, by taking into account recent interdisciplinary research on manuscripts, law, iconography, film and performance studies, among others. Papers will discuss instances of crowd control, based on historical accounts, pamphlets, legal precedents, moral recommendations, or take fictional accounts from the stage or print culture. Theoretical approaches to the topic will also be welcome.

Pascale Drouet (Université de Poitiers, FR)
pascale.drouet@neuf.fr
Yan Brailowsky (Université Paris, FR)
yan.brailowsky@u-paris10.fr
Zenon Luis Marinez (Universidad de Huelva, ES)
luis@dfing.uhu.es

S51) Myth, Memory, Culture and Female (Post-)Modernists

The seminar will explore a cross-section, comprised of a theoretical, thematic cum historical focus, and addressing questions of how female (post-)modernists and their texts are positioned in relation to dominant cultural myths; how they engage in a dialogue with mainstream cultural memory; to what extent the literary historical position and interpretation of these texts and authors (understood as the Foucauldian author-function) is "tainted" by their gendered inscriptions of myths and cultural memory; what differences are noticeable between modernist and post-modernist women writers in their rewritings of, or compliance with, myth, memory and culture concerning their themes, textuality and gender politics.

Janka Kaščáková (Catholic University of Ružomberok, Slovakia)
janka.kascakova@ff.ku.sk
Nóra Séllei (University of Debrecen, Hungary)
sellei.nora@arts.unideb.hu

S52) Gendering the nation in British and American novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth century

Eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century novels, on either side of the Atlantic, participated in the construction of personal experience as a function of both nation and gender. This seminar will give scholars the chance to explore how these two important novel themes intersect in British and American fiction of the period. The novel genre's particular function as both representation and agent of social attitudes makes it a useful site to explore the - perhaps simultaneous, perhaps cross-pollinating - emergence of gender roles and national sentiment. We invite paper proposals that examine this issue in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British and American novels. Focus could be on: the gendered national body; procreation, education and the nation; the gendered Other within or outside the nation; the gendered representative of the nation (e.g. Britannia, Columbia); endangering the national and the gendered body; the language of nationhood.

Elizabeth Kukorelly (University of Geneva, CH)
Elizabeth.Kukorelly@unige.ch
Gabriella Vöő (University of Pecs, HU)
voo.gabriella@pte.hu

S53) Literary and non-literary genres in the history of English

Genres play an important part in the history of English, but 'genre' is a heterogeneous category: most genres have fuzzy boundaries, though some nearly satisfy 'Fregean' (classical) criteria; others show prototype or family-resemblance structures. Remarkably, the concept seems less at home in Linguistics proper (which prefers 'text type') than in Applied Linguistics (ESP) and Literary Studies. Participants should position their own definitions in relation to other papers of the seminar (abstracts will be circulated). Above all they should clearly identify whatever contribution (e.g. vocabulary, meaning, style, metaphors, syntax) to the history of English they may claim as particularly relevant for their chosen genre(s).

Hans-Jürgen Diller (University of Bochum, GR)
hans-juergen.diller@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
Monika Fludernik (University of Freiburg, GR)
sekretariat.fludernik@anglistik.uni-freiburg.de
Jukka Tyrkkö (University of Helsinki, FI)
jtyrkko@mappi.helsinki.fi

S54) Anglophone African Cultures: Post-Millennium Continuity and Transition in Fiction and Film

At the start of the 21st century, as the world economic order shifts focus from the familiarity of the (broadly) Anglophone West to new dialects of existence and survival, writers and film-makers in African societies continue to contend with remnants of their colonial pasts as well as with undefined futures.  Contributions are welcome related to all aspects of literary and filmic representations of the ongoing processes of transculturation in Africa.

John A Stotesbury (University of Eastern Finland, FI)
john.stotesbury@uef.fi
David W. Bell (University of Umeå, SE)
dwbell@telia.com

S55) Postmetropolis: New Approaches To The City In Literature And Film

'World cities' and 'global cities' have increasingly attracted the attention of urban-focused arts and humanities research. Literary and cultural studies scholars are now viewing city networks as constituting an important structural dimension of the world system. We propose to focus on the literature and film of the global cities to examine the centrality of the urban in the English-speaking world. If, in the field of critical urban studies, scholars use the term "urban restructuring" to describe the drastic transformation that all metropolitan regions of the world have gone through since the 1960s, in many English-speaking countries, we believe, this phenomenon has been accompanied by a process of "literary restructuring," often consisting of a gradual shift of focus from a wild or rural to an urban aesthetic. The term "postmetropolis" alludes to the nature of those changes in contemporary cities and locates our theoretical framework within a critical postmodern paradigm. At the same time, however, we intend to push that framework forward, suggesting the need for new tools of analysis and interpretation.

Eva Darias-Beautell (University of La Laguna, ES)
edariasb@ull.es
Justin Edwards (University of Surrey, UK)
justin.edwards@surrey.ac.uk

S56) Sleeping Beauties in Victorian Britain: cultural, artistic and literary explorations of a myth

The figure of the beautiful reclining female sleeper is a recurring topic in the Victorian imagination which calls on visual, literary and erotic connotations, all contributing to a complex density of readings involving aesthetics, gender definition and medical assumptions of the age.

From the Preraphaelites and late Victorian aesthetes to the adaptors of fairy tales, from the explorers of sleep theory to the fascinated crowds who visited Ellen Sadler - the real-life "Sleeping Maid" who is reported to have slept from 1871 to 1880 -, artists, scientists and the larger public seem to have shared a common interest in the myth of the Briar Rose and its contemporary implications. This seminar seeks to bring together and examine a corpus of Sleeping Beauties drawn from Victorian art, literature and medical reports and to explore the significance of the enduring revival of the myth.

S57) Vocabulary for ESL Academic Writing: A Multifaceted Challenge

A growing amount of research on L2 writing, including the morphosyntactic and lexical attributes of L2 English texts, the everyday teaching practice with ESL and EFL students and the academic text production experience of all who are involved in English studies have led to a better understanding of what is involved in L2 academic writing from teaching, learning, research and production points of view. This seminar welcomes contributions on: the acquisition and use of L2 vocabulary, grammar, and cohesion skills; the language challenge of publishing academic texts in English; and assessing the vocabulary content of native and non-native academic texts.

Katalin DORÓ (University of Szeged, HU)
dorokati@lit.u-szeged.hu
Päivi PIETILÄ (University of Turku, FI)
paipi@utu.fi

S58) Food and Drink, Drugs and Medicine: Gothic Images of Ingestion from 19th century Fin de Siècle to Early 21st Century (Literature and Film)

In 19th-century culture the idea of ingesting substances became a pivot of many anxieties which were produced by specific problems: food adulteration, drunkenness, widespread consumption of opium, the large-scale production of medicines fostered by a competitive market. All these phenomena laid stress on the danger of consuming and ingesting substances that instead of providing nutrition (or healing) corrupted the body. These dangers were fictionalised by late-Victorian novelists who used Gothic paraphernalia to turn a positive image into a threatening one. Authors such as Stevenson, Machen, Wilde etc. make use of food and poison. The vampire motif is pregnant with references to drugs and blood is seen as a perverse source of nourishment. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries these motifs have been exploited in literary fiction and on screen. In "gothic melodramas" poison is a major motif and drug addiction is recurrent in neo-Victorian literature and cinema. The aim of this seminar is to explore the various modes of representation of food and drugs and see how they can be related at various stages of cultural history to such issues as manipulation, the human paradigm, otherness and gender relationships. Kristeva's concept of "abjection" and Derrida's theory (among others) may be useful in that respect.

Gilles Menegaldo (University of Poitiers, FR)
gilles.menegaldo@univ-poitiers.fr
Mariaconcetta Costantini (Università G. d'Annunzio, IT)
m.costantini@unich.it
mc_costantini@hotmail.com

S59) Rhetoric Of Science: Linguistic Approaches To National Traditions and Global Norms

The "globalisation" and "virtualisation" of academic discourse has given new meanings to the old discipline of rhetoric. Since English as a lingua franca has been expanding through science disciplines in many European countries, the question of old "national" traditions and new "global" adaptations has become more and more eminent. This seminar provides a forum for scholars from all ESSE member countries to present their own experience and research to interested colleagues and to compare developments through qualitative and quantitative research approaches. Linguistic variables may range from writer-reader interaction expressed through modal auxiliaries (may vs. must) or personal pronouns (I vs. we vs. impersonal constructions/passive) to argumentation structure expressed through adverbials or cohesive devices in general. Social variables can be author(s) backgrounds as well as intended audience/readership. Textual variables include traditional genres (like research articles) and new media forms used for conference presentations (e.g. Prezi vs. Powerpoint). Contributions on multimodal aspects of scientific texts, the verbal-visual interaction and development of eRhetoric are also welcome.

Josef Schmied (Chemnitz University of Technology, GR)
josef.schmied@phil.tu-chemnitz.de
Maria Freddi (University of Pavia, IT)
maria.freddi@unipv.it
Marina Bondi (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, IT)
marina.bondi@unimore.it

S60) Mediterranean Heritage in transit - (mis-)representations via English

In the same years of the McDonaldization/Starbuckization of society (Ritzer 1993; 2008), awareness-raising  initiatives  endeavour to encourage peoples to repossess and safeguard their own unique, ‘indigenous' cultures;  Euromed Heritage Programme IV (2008-2012) and UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention (2003) are in this vein. ICH encompasses "the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills - as well the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces […] - that communities recognize as part of their cultural heritage”. In between, aspects of Mediterranean cultures have both survived and reached beyond their natural boundaries, frequently acquiring new connotations/meanings through the medium of communication in English. In this dynamic, cross-cultural perspective, contributions should investigate the domains of advertising, films, myths and festivals, culture bound terms,  music, food and gastrolingo.

Flavia Cavaliere(Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, IT)
fcavalie@unina.it
Lucia Abbamonte (Seconda Università di Napoli, IT)
lucia.abbamonte@unina2.it
Gabrina Pounds (University of East Anglia, UK)
g.pounds@uea.ac.uk

S61) Galactic Empires and Cultures SF Visions from Asimov to Iain M. Banks
One of the hallmarks of SF literature has been for a long time to offer a vision of future history, the predictable development of human society in the age of hyperspace travel, together with implications of characteristics of statecraft and culture. Classic examples of epic dimensions are Asimov's Foundation and Robot series and Frank Herbert's Dune Saga. These visions show strong kinship with the genres of utopia and distopia, at the same time equipped with adventure-based grand scale narratives. While there earlier works were built on the supposition that the human race will populate the galaxy without rival species, more recent sagas offer visions about biologically multiracial or hybrid worlds, trying to assess prospects of clash or cooperation. In recent SF literature notable examples are Marry Doria Russel's The Sparrow and Children of God and on a more grandoise scale Iain M. Banks' ‘Culture' novels. Our seminar aims at examining the social, ethical, and philosophical challenges these novels try to respond to -together with questions of ‘the fictive and the imaginary' (Wolfgang Iser), ‘worldmaking' (Nelson Goodman), genre as well as literary craftsmanship, in order to facilitate the canonization of this class of cultural representations in English Studies.

Martin Prochazka (Charles University, CZ)
martin.prochazka@ff.cuni.cz
György E. Szönyi (University Of Szeged, HU)
Geszonyi@freemail.hu
Rowland Wymer (Anglia Ruskin University, UK)
Rowland.Wymer@anglia.ac.uk

S62) Shakespeare's Language
With the development of computer technology and the increasing availability of electronic texts, exciting new possibilities for research into Shakespeare's language have opened up. Following the success of the seminar held in Turin we would like to take further the question of approaches to the study of Shakespeare's language. The discussion would address both the methods of research and the questions that they seek to answer: questions, for instance, of authorship and chronology, but also of language and ‘character' (class/gender), linguistic ideology and the politics of style/grammar.

Margaret Tudeau-Clayton (University of Neuchâtel, CH)
margaret.tudeau-clayton@unine.ch
Jonathan Hope (Strathclyde University, UK)
jonathan.r.hope@strath.ac.uk

S63) Formulaic language in the history of English
Prefabricated or semi-fabricated strings of words can be distinguished from non-formulae in a number of ways. They are acquired and stored holistically, and they behave differently in language change situations. Many words that have otherwise disappeared from the language survive in formulae, and similarly pronunciations, constructions and meanings that have become archaic in individual word use can still be found when these words occur in formulae. For these reasons, formulaic language is an area of major interest for historical linguistics. However, so far, research on formulaic language has been largely restricted to present-day native and non-native English. This seminar aims to bring together scholars working on aspects of formulaic language of earlier periods of the English language, from Old English to the nineteenth century. This includes the study of types of formulae such as proverbs and formulaic language in specific text types; work on colligations and collocations, syntactic constructions, spelling and meaning; and research into borrowing and transliteration of formulae and the teaching of formulae.

Kathryn Allan (University College London, UK)
kathryn.allan@ucl.ac.uk
Martina Häcker (Universitat Siegen, GR)
martina.haecker@uni-siegen.de

S64) Towards a Theory of Global Translation? The Impact of Globalization on Translation
Globalization causes processes which are simultaneously happening in modern cultures, yet in different ways and with a different degree of intensity. Globalization affects communication and this is not only reflected in the way the English language is used around the world but also in the practice and quality of translations. If globalization is partly held responsible for the fragmentation of the English language, would it be hazardous or provocative to suggest that it can also be responsible for the way in which translations are perceived and carried out in the world? Many translation scholars, nowadays, claim that translation is split into two opposing forces, 1) a centripetal force (adoption of a global language) and 2) a centrifugal force (desire to preserve people's own national language). The purpose of this seminar is to examine whether and how translation has been affected by the new global economy.

Vanessa Leonardi (University of Ferrara, IT)
vanessa.leonardi@unife.it
Irina Khoutyz (Kuban State University, RU)
ir_khoutyz@hotmail.com

S65) Mapping Here, There, and Elsewhere in Alice Munro's Short Stories
We invite proposals on any aspects of travel, exploration, mapping, space/place, the urban vs. the rural in Alice Munro's work. Place can be understood socially and culturally for people who feel alienated, rejected, or "out of place". How do characters make sense of the place they are seeking or fleeing? What makes a place a "home"? Or a suffocating prison? Papers are invited to explore these subject areas: the intersections between memory and place, how the notion of "place" is reconstructed by memory, imagination, fantasy, desire, language and myth; the issue of "remembering" place as a process of recreation, the re-appropriation of the past and of collective myth; the absence of space or representations of fragmented space or of "non places" (Augé) which convey a sense of separatedness, social, political, ideological or mythical.

Eleonora Rao (University of Salerno, IT)
erao@unisa.it
Christine Lorre (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, FR)
christine.lorre@noos.fr

S66) The Arts of Attention
Attention is increasingly regarded by cognitive scientists and evolutionary anthropologists as a faculty whose development in human animals is constitutive of what it means to be human. This seminar invites papers on (1) the ways in which literary texts encode this faculty (tropologically, discursively, narratologically, ideologically) and/or (2) the ways in which theories of reading have recognised or underestimated the arts and techniques of attention. We particularly invite contributions developing or dismissing the suggestion that literature offers privileged insight into the function of attention as a possibility condition for the imagination, for agency, and for community formation.

Ortwin de Graef (University of Leuven, BE)
ortwin.degraef@arts.kuleuven.be
Katalin G. Kállay (Károli Gáspár University, HU)
katalin_g_kallay@yahoo.com

S67) Corpus-based studies of language in Scotland
This seminar aims to explore the linguistic research made possible by corpora of the languages of Scotland, including the Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots (1450-1700), the Corpus of Modern Scottish Writing (CMSW, 1700-1945, www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk/cmsw), and the Scottish Corpus of Texts & Speech (SCOTS, 1945-present, www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk). Corpora allow a new perspective on the Scots language: one characterised by reliable quantification, easy verification, and the identification of linguistic patterning to which intuition or analysis of isolated texts cannot give access. The seminar invites contributions which take a corpus approach to historical or modern Scottish languages, or which consider the development and exploitation of corpora or other online linguistic resources, such as the Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk), and the Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots (http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laos1/laos1.html).

Marina Dossena (Università degli Studi di Bergamo, IT) Marina.Dossena@unibg.it
Wendy Anderson (University of Glasgow, UK) Wendy.Anderson@glasgow.ac.uk

S68) Seminar title: "'Turks of Tartary'? Images of Islam in Scottish Writing"

This seminar will explore the relationship between Islam and Scottish culture - a highly topical issue not only at a conference taking place in a city which straddles ‘East' and ‘West', but also in the context of current international debates about the role of multiculture, ‘East'/'West' connections and divisions, and the role of religion and secularism in politics, in an increasingly globalised world.

We will trace continuities and changes in the representation of Scottish East/West encounters from the time of the Crusades to Leila Aboulela, interrogating discourses that have ranged from the manifestation of hostility, cultural binarism and essentialism, to the envisioning of hybridity, solidarity and transculturalism. Key questions are: How have non-Muslim Scottish writers represented Islam and Muslims, both in Scotland and abroad? And how have Muslim writers (in Scotland and further afield) represented Scotland?

Examples of possible topics include: Othering in William Dunbar's poetry (alluded to in the seminar title), images of 'the East' in Enlightenment philosophy and culture, Orientalism, travel writing, and assimilations of Scots into Islamic culture. Then there is also the question of Scottish (post)colonialism: Has Scotland's own position as margin and 'Other' vis-à-vis Britain's anglocentric mainstream engendered greater sympathy for cultural difference, and has Scotland's 'junior partnership' in imperialism at the same time fostered complicity in colonial discourse?

The seminar should likewise address post-World-War-Two immigration, and the growth of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian diasporic cultures in Scotland. How has Scotland positioned itself in the changing debates about multiculture and national identity in Britain as a whole - has its separate national identity given rise to specificities? And how have explorations of the relationship between religious, national and cultural identity intersected with issues of gender, race and class?

We welcome papers on any field of writing in the wider sense, i.e. not only including 'literature proper', but also journalism, screen-writing, and new media.

Silke Stroh (Muenster University, GR)
silke.stroh@uni-muenster.de
Manfred Malzahn (United Arab Emirates University, AE)
mmalzahn@uaeu.ac.ae

S69) Feminist (In) visible Alliances

The recent critical reading, in the English- speaking world and Europe, of the political and social discourses on both men and women responsible for informing male and female identities, has contributed to a better understanding of the process of sex differentiation and to a more constructive interpretation of its causes, manifestations and aims. From rigid Victorian codes and stringent definitions of masculinity and femininity in the 19th century to more and more complex conceptions in the 21st, it makes no doubt that gender distinctions have evolved according to shifting socio-economic contexts upon which they depended. Drawing upon late male feminist criticism and studies of masculinity which have anatomized the mechanisms of cultural masculinization, the seminar will welcome papers which continue to look beyond the gynocentric concerns of radical feminists or the traditional notion of the sexes as opposites, explore new relationships to the concept of power itself and bring out the (in)visible alliance between the sexes at work in feminism from its beginnings to this day.

Martine M. Faraut (University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, FR)
mmonacelli.faraut@aliceadsl.fr
Dr Adelina Sanchez Espinosa (University of Granada)
adelina@ugr.es
Helene Quanquin
helene.quanquin@univ-paris3.fr

S70) The Art of Autobiography
Given the booming interest in the genre of autobiography on both an academic and a popular level, and the ongoing changes in the art of self-representation, this seminar seeks to re-examine some constitutive features of the genre, the advancement and limits of autobiography, and cultural assumptions underlying self-narratives. We will discuss autobiography across cultures, social groups and historical periods. Suggested topics may include, but are not limited to various relations between autobiography and: life writing, memory (individual, collective, cultural), confession, identity formation (gendered, hybrid, transnational, etc.), ethnic literature, women's literature, history-making, visual culture (autobiography of artists, visual art in autobiography), the role of the author, authority, authorship; self-invention; self-representation; fiction and truth; ethics; the art of lying; politics of style; popular culture; canon, etc. We also welcome papers highlighting these and similar issues in diaries, journals, memoirs, testimonials and fictional autobiographies.

Aoife LEAHY (President of NAES, IE)
aoife.leahy@ireland.com
Irena GRUBICA (University of Rijeka, HR)
igrubica@ffri.hr

S71) Charles Dickens: The Other Voice of Victorian England
In his novels Charles Dickens presents a kaleidoscopic vision of Victorian England, which deconstructs the optimistic and positive perception that the Victorian élite had of the progress and achievements of the age. While writers such as Thackeray and Trollope set their scenes mostly within aristocratic circles and presented a somewhat romanticized and elegant picture of Victorian society, Dickens was primarily concerned with social realism. In his fiction he represented, through a wide range of graphic scenes and characters, the poverty, deprivations, high crime rate, inadequate urban infrastructure, environmental pollution, and the moral extremities of his age . In other words, in his novels he reflected the appalling plight of the underprivileged, and problematized with a reformist attitude the values, norms, manners, classes, institutions, and practices of Victorian England. Metaphorically, he became the 'other voice' that subverted and deconstructed Victorian optimism, its vision of progress and its dream of an imperial civilization. So, since 2012 is the bicentenary of Dickens's birth, we, as convenors, believe that it would be most appropriate to have a seminar on Charles Dickens at the XIth ESSE Conference. We would thus like to examine Dickens and his work and age from various perspectives.

• Dickens and the art of the novel
• Dickens and narrative techniques
• London, the imperial metropolis, in Dickens
• Dickens and the 'other London'.
• Dickens as a social critic and reformer
• Dickens's environmental awareness
• Crime and punishment in Victorian England
• Dickens's depiction of the Victorian prison
• Children, orphans and orphanage in Victorian England
• Dickens as a letter writer
• Dickens's representation of the underprivileged (the poor and destitute, children, working women, beggars, life in the backstreets, and so on)
• Dickens's representation of class mobility in Victorian England
• Dickens and institutional corruption in Victorian England
• Gender relations in Dickens...
• Dickens and science.
• Dickens and the law

Himmet UMUNÇ (Başkent University, TR)
umunch@baskent.edu.tr
Yvonne BEZRUCKA (University of Verona, IT)
yvonne.bezrucka@univr.it
Alev KARADUMAN (Hacettepe University, TR)
karaduman@hacettepe.edu.tr

S72) "Have We Devils Here? : Exclusion In Shakespeare Studies
Cultural, social and political exclusion/inclusion, generated by e.g. race, age, gender, religion, ethnicity, has been a facet of existence since the inception of civilization. Drawing on work by Byrne, 2005; Young, 2002; Fraser, 2000, we propose to use 'exclusion' as a conceptual and critical category to negotiate Shakespeare works, their translations, adaptations, productions and criticism by investigating their causal and instrumental links with deprivation, disentitlement and market inaccessibility. We believe that by focusing on exclusion and the struggles for emancipation promised through the recognition of difference, both the marginalised and the occluded will be highlighted, facilitating innovative readings of Shakespeare.

Krystyna KUJAWINSKA-COURTNEY (The University of Lodz, PL)
krystyna.kujawinska52@gmail.com
Sarbani CHAUDHURY (University of Kalyani, IN)
sarbanich@gmail.com

S73) English Language Education Policies And Practice: A Mediterannean Perspective

In this seminar, we aim to give a Mediterranean Perspective on the English language education policies, i.e., formal educational guidelines and orientations in the form of published curricula and teacher education documents, as well as practice, i.e., procedures related to teaching, learning, assessment and testing routines that spring from everyday classroom experience. We endeavor to elicit informed input from as many regions in the broader Mediterranean territory as possible, in the hope that we can draw conclusions about shared, or at least comparable, policies and practices regarding ESOL (English for speakers of other languages). We also give a historical account of the development of English language teaching policies and illustrate the current practices through the examples of empirical studies conducted in the field. Although the research context is Mediterannean countries, we claim that the findings are not confined to the these cultural settings only. We believe, the issues discussed and presented in the seminar have important implications for similar ESOL contexts in the world.

Yasemin BAYYURT (Bogazici University, TR)
bayyurty@boun.edu.tr
Nicos SIFAKIS (Hellenic Open University, GR)
sifakis@eap.gr

S74) Representations of Political/Ethical Concerns in post-1989 British Theatre

The renaissance in new writing for the stage that took place in Britain in the early 1990s, which included but was not limited to 'in-year-face' theatre, was accompanied by a public debate on the nature of political theatre. While some objected to the work of the new generations of playwrights - including Martin Crimp, Tim Crouch, David Eldridge, David Greig, Nick Grosso, Tanika Gupta, Sarah Kane, Tracy Letts, Martin McDonagh, Patrick Marber, Conor McPherson, Phyllis Nagy, Anthony Neilson, Joe Penhall, Rebecca Prichard, Mark Ravenhill, Philip Ridley, debbie tucker green [sic] or Judy Upton among many others - on the grounds that it did not address 'big' public issues and could not therefore be considered political, other voices pointed out that the general retreat from political certainties and alignments in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and Margaret Thatcher's resignation underpinned a turn in British theatre to concerns that have been described as ethical. This seminar invites papers that examine the ways in which the contemporary British stage since 1989 has addressed the question of the representation of political/ethical concerns. How does the work of playwrights who have emerged since the early 1990s compare in this respect to the work of those whose careers stretch back to the 1970s or even the 1960s (including, among others, John Arden, Howard Barker, Edward Bond Howard Brenton, Caryl Churchill, Trevor Griffith, David Hare, John McGrath, Harold Pinter and Arnold Wesker)? In what ways, if any, has the 'ethical turn' of the 1990s been instrumental in reshaping the representation of political concerns in recent British theatre? What place do specific forms of theatre, such as documentary theatre, occupy within this debate? And how do phenomena such as globalisation or the emergence of transnational identities intersect with it? Papers on these and related questions are all welcome.

Deniz BOZER (Hacettepe University, TR)
dbozer@superonline.com
Ibrahim YEREBAKAN (Rize University, TR)
yerebak25@hotmail.com
Mireia ARAGAY (University of Barcelona, ES)
aragay@ub.edu

S75) Medieval English Historical Writing: Representations of Violence / Violence in Representation
Violence is possibly among the most common stereotypical associations with the Middle Ages. This appears to be the result not only of copious pop-cultural representations, but also of the numerous historical and literary instances of violence, from Brunanburh to Bosworth field, from Hengest's conquest to Henry V's campaigns. Many of these also show evidence of radical shaping of complex historical situations into authoritative accounts of a community's past. The seminar should thus offer a meeting ground for papers discussing all aspects of violence in representation in medieval English historical writing, encompassing fictitious elements, generic fashioning, narrative strategies etc. We also invite papers (re)viewing post-medieval depictions of historical or historicized medieval violence irrespective of medium.

Helena Znojemská (Charles University, CZ)
helena.znojemska@ff.cuni.cz
Rafał Borysławski (University of Silesia Sosnowiec, PL)
rafal.boryslawski@us.edu.pl

S76) Literature and Cognition

The last twenty years has seen a growth in the area of "cognitive science and literature" in English departments (often called 'cognitive poetics' or 'cognitive stylistics'). It is now time to reflect on what the field has achieved, where it is now, and perhaps, most important of all, where it may be going in the future. We are interested in proposals from across the spectrum investigating the theory, the practice and the teachability of cognitive approaches to literature.

Michael Burke (Roosevelt Academy, Utrecht University, NL)
m.burke@roac.nl
John Douthwaite (University of Genoa, IT)
j.douthw@virgilio.it

S77) Dramatic expressions of social identity/ies since 1945

One of the cultural imperatives of recent political changes in Scotland has been the ways Scottish society and languages are expressed on the stage. This seminar will focus on the different ways in which drama - not just in Scotland, but in the rest of Britain and Ireland - over the last sixty-five years has expressed the dynamics of cultural and political change. It will consider how theatre, and specifically writing for theatre, has reflected developing attitudes to issues of gender, class, race and national identity in the more-or-less United Kingdom and disunited Ireland.

Ian Brown (Kingston University, UK)
ijmbrown@hotmail.com
Gioia Angeletti (University of Parma, IT)
gioia.angeletti@unipr.it