Call for Papers

The Department of English and American Studies, Masaryk University, Brno is pleased to announce a virtual student conference of Anglophone literary and cultural studies in English, titled New Pathways in Anglophone Literary and Cultural Studies in Pandemic Times.

The current pandemic has dramatically altered the manner in which we work and pursue our daily routines, it has made us painfully aware of the condition of uncertainty our lives are marked by. While such conditions cause enormous problems to our economies, they also bring about unexpected opportunities. With the usual patterns of institutional functioning disrupted, a radical transformation is called for: one that is predicated on our willingness to be flexible, creative, and capable of adaptation. The crisis we find ourselves in calls for a radical reassessment of our most basic values as well as of the methods by which we pursue our trades.

The graduate studies conference New Pathways in Anglophone Literary and Cultural Studies in Pandemic Times aims to offer an opportunity to consider these developments in relation to the present, as well as to the future of our disciplines. We are hoping to explore the various institutional aspects of the current pandemic and their possible future impact, we are interested in the representations of the current pandemic in contemporary anglophone cultures and their various uses. We are also seeking contributions focusing on the themes of health, contagion, and epidemics, and their possible cultural significance in the past.

In addition to these specific themes we would welcome contributions that explore new pathways in anglophone literary and cultural studies beyond the narrow confines outlined above: possibly as harbingers of post epidemic times when our collective values will (hopefully) have evolved,
our institutions will be (successfully) adjusting to the challenges of 21st century, and Covid-19 will not be the only topic to deal with, turning us blind to other grave problems of our globalized world.

 Following the tradition established at the previous Brno conferences, we invite proposals for individual papers (20 min + 5 min discussion) in the fields of literature and cultural studies. Please send your abstracts (250 words) including affiliation to the conference organizers, newpathways2020@mail.muni.cz. The deadline has been prolonged until October 2, 2020.

Keynote speakers:

Dr Don Sparling, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

Dr Sagar Deva, University of Leeds, UK

Mathias Clasen, Aarhus University, Denmark