If you have a news item, please mail it to Sabine Barcatta.

Please see the following PDF for full details about this job posting: 2012 Job Description (Kobe City University)

Title: Full-Time Teaching Position
Institution: Kobe City University of Foreign Studies (http://www.kobe-cufs.ac.jp)
Department: Department of English Studies
Outline: Core English classes (Oral English, English composition etc), and academic subjects for English Majors. Day and evening class teaching required.
Research field: American Studies (History, Culture, Literature, Anthropology, Visual arts etc. )
Rank: Full-time (tenured)
Number of positions: One Assistant Professor or Associate Professor, depending on age and qualifications.
Qualification: (see PDF)
Deadline for application: 5:00pm 2012/5/16
Starting date: 2012/3/17
Please send all application materials to:

Keieikikaku- Group (The General Affairs Section)
Kobe City University of Foreign Studies
9-1 Gakuen-Higashi-Machi
Nishi-ku, Kobe 651-2187 Japan

Fax:81-78-792-9020
E-mail: kyouinsaiyou2012@office.kobe-cufs.ac.jp
*For more details, please fax or e-mail (not telephone) to the above numbers.

CFP on Charles Bowden for the 2012
Western Literature Association Conference, Lubbock, TX

We are accepting proposals for a panel or panels on Charles Bowden for the 2012 Western Literature Association Conference in Lubbock, Texas (November 7-10). The theme for this year’s conference is “Western Crossroads: Literature, Social Justice, and the Environment.” We are open to all critical approaches, including feminist, Marxist, critical regionalist, hemispheric, narratological, postcolonial, and ecocritical perspectives. Potential proposals may include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• · Apocalyptic southwest
• · Connections between Bowden and other writers (Abbey, McCarthy, Silko, etc.)
• · Environmental beauty and destruction
• · Genre tensions between the essay, the memoir, crime reporting, gonzo journalism, and history
• · Globalization and the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
• · Interplay of text and images in the Inferno, Exodus/Éxodo, and Trinity trilogy, and/or Juárez: Laboratory of Our Future, and/or Dreamland
• · Mexican North and the American West
• · Police state(s) vs. anarchism
• · Relationships between narcotraficantes and the war on drugs
• · Representations of the Mexican Army and/or the U.S. Border Patrol
• · Transnational social justice
• · Versions of El Sicario (film, articles, and books)

Please note that our panel(s) will be the first step towards the eventual publication of a scholarly collection of essays focused on Bowden, which we will edit throughout 2013. This volume appears almost certain to be the initial scholarly foray into Bowden, and we have already received interest from a major university press.

E-mail abstract proposals (350-500 words) with a working title and a brief biography or CV by April 1, 2012 to David Cremean (nialmccruimmen@gmail.com) and D. Seth Horton (dshorton@umd.edu).

Ricou_CFP

Announcing a special issue of Canadian Literature
Guest edited by Anne L. Kaufman and Robert Thacker

We seek essays and other responses for a special issue of Canadian Literature honoring the teaching, scholarship, and example of Laurie Ricou.

Since the publication of his path-breaking study of Canadian prairie fiction, Vertical Man/Horizontal World (1973) Laurie Ricou has been a unique and important presence in Canadian literature. Following the trajectory of place he has lived himself, his most recent books, Salal: Listening for the Northwest Understory (2007), The Arbutus/Madrone Files (2002), and A Field Guide to “A Guide to Dungeness Spit” (1997) are border-crossing works of literary ecocriticism as well as models for knowing a place, living responsibly in it, and attending to its demands—physical, psychic, and aesthetic. There, Ricou champions the Pacific Northwest bioregion, its people, its literature, its flora and fauna. He has been no less conscientious about these details in the classroom, as his students can attest. This understated scholar and his subversive approaches to facilitating intellectual growth have not yet received their critical due.

This collection of essays, sparked by a panel at the Western Literature Association meeting in Missoula in October 2011—a place of deep personal and professional commitment for Ricou himself–seeks to remedy this deficit.

Deadline 1 June, 2012

All submissions to Canadian Literature (CL) must be original, unpublished work. Submissions should be double-spaced in 12-point font. All accepted articles, reviews and poems must be available in Rich Text Format (.rtf), or Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx). Essays should follow current MLA bibliographic format. Maximum word length for articles is 6500 words which includes notes and works cited. Please include a short bio (50 words) and an abstract (150 words) with essay submission.

Submit papers to Canadian Literature’s online submission system, at www.Canlit.ca

Address questions to Anne L. Kaufman (Anne.l.kaufman@gmail.com) and Robert Thacker (rthacker@stlawu.edu)

In honor of Frederick Manfred’s 100th birthday, University of Nebraska Press has rereleased Lord Grizzly, his acclaimed novel about Hugh Glass. Click here for more information from UNP.

In addition, the Council for Arts and Humanities in Rock County (Minnesota) is honored to celebrate 2012 as the year – MANFRED: SCRIBE OF SIOUXLAND.

In partnership and consultation with family, friends and community volunteers….we have crafted a year filled with special events to honor this man whose literary legacy is larger than life…larger than the man himself.

Today we are honored to provide you with a comprehensive guide to the special events that we have scheduled. We hope that you will be able to celebrate this legacy with us!

We would be happy to provide digital or written materials for the events that take place. If you would like written copies, invitations, flyers and etc, please send us your mailing address. (PDF poster of scheduled events: ManfredBirthdayEvents)

HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY FREDERICK MANFRED…..THANKS FOR ALL YOU GAVE TO WORLD OF LITERATURE AND FINE ART!

Created through the generous support of former Texas Tech University Regent James Sowell, the Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community and the Natural World houses the personal papers of the United States’ most prominent writers on the natural world. Writing with a profound respect for the grandeur and fierceness of the land, these writers are deeply engaged with questions of land use and the nature of community; the conjunction of scientific and spiritual values; and the fragility of wilderness. In addition to published books, materials available for research purposes include correspondence; drafts of manuscripts; research notebooks; diaries and calendars; and photographs, computer files, and film. With this collection of natural history writers, The Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University is rapidly becoming one of the finest repositories of natural history materials in the world.

Writers of the Sowell Collection include Rick Bass, Max F. Crawford, David James Duncan, Gretel Ehrlich, Edward Hoagland, Clyde Jones, William Kittredge, John Lane, Barry Lopez, Walter McDonald, Bill McKibben, Susan Brind Morrow, Gary Paul Nabhan, Howard Norman, Doug Peacock, David Quammen, Pattiann Rogers, Sandra Scofield, Annick Smith, and Ro Wauer.

To celebrate this extraordinary group, the Sowell Collection is hosting a conference in Lubbock, TX, from Thursday, April 26th to Saturday, April 28th, 2012. David Quammen, Barry Lopez, and Gary Paul Nabhan will be in attendance. We invite proposals for individual presentations and panels that engage with the work(s) of any of the writers whose work the collection holds. Submissions from the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences are welcome.

For individual submissions, please include a 250-word abstract, your full name, affiliation, contact information, and A/V requests. Proposals for panels (three presenters) must include an abstract and all the above information for all presenters. No more than one presentation per conference please. The deadline for all submissions has been extended to February 5, 2012.

Submit abstracts to Diane Warner (diane.warner@ttu.edu) or Andrew Husband (andrew.husband@ttu.edu).

The Charles Redd Center for Western Studies is pleased to announce multiple awards for 2012 that are available for scholars conducting research related to the Intermountain West (defined as: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming). Please see the descriptions below or click here for further information and instructions for applying for each award. Applications for 2012 are due March 15. Please help us by forwarding this email to any of your colleagues in western studies who are not on the Redd Center’s distribution list. Also, please tell your students who are conducting research on the Intermountain West about our research awards for students.

The Redd Center offers the following awards:

• Faculty Research Awards provide up to $3,000 to faculty members at any academic institution to conduct research on any topic related to the Intermountain West. Research may be conducted at any location.
• Independent Research and Creative Awards provide up to $1,500 to researchers studying the Intermountain West who are not connected to an academic institution. Research may be conducted at any location.
• Summer Awards for Upper Division and Graduate Students at any academic institution provide up to $1,500 for research support for any topic related to the Intermountain West. Research may be conducted at any location.
• Annaley Naegle Redd Student Award in Women’s History provides up to $1,500 for research support concerning any aspect of women’s history in the American West (not limited to the Intermountain West.) Research may be conducted at any location.
• Public Programming Awards provide up to $3,000 to any organization planning a conference, museum exhibit or lecture series on a topic related to the Intermountain West.
• Fellowship Awards in Western American History provide up to $3,500 in research support for scholars who travel to BYU to use the L. Tom Perry Special Collections in the Harold B. Lee Library.
• Visiting Scholar Program provides a housing stipend and office facilities for 2-4 months to enable university faculty of all ranks, independent scholars, freelance authors and other public intellectuals to visit and conduct research at BYU.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMITTING AN APPLICATION:

To apply for an award, visit the Redd Center website (http://reddcenter.byu.edu), and click on “Apply for an Award” on the right hand side of the homepage. You will then be taken to our awards application page. Select the award for which you would like to apply from the drop-down menu and complete your application. After you have completed your application, you will be given the opportunity to submit with or without printing your application for your records. We strongly encourage you to print a copy for your records. You will then receive a message indicating that your application has been successfully submitted. In addition, you will receive and email confirmation at the email address you list on your application. If you have any questions about the application process, or submitting your application, please contact Mary Nelson at 801-422-4048 or by email at mary_nelson@byu.edu .

This special issue of Western American Literature showcases literary and cultural study work of younger scholars—graduate students and junior faculty. Of particular interest is work which engages current theoretical debate in the field. “West” is defined broadly here to refer to all of North America that either critically or historically has been considered “West” including comparative studies of the American West that cross regional or national boundaries.

Possible topics include:

• interdisciplinarity and western American studies (i.e. ethnography, philosophy, the biological sciences, and more familiar history/literature study)
• decolonizing the West
• the interface between the virtual and real in postregional cultural production (i.e. place issues as they intersect with the “local real” in practices of video gaming, digital humanities, social networking, and etc.)
• visuality and West: cinema, TV, photography, art
• cultural and postmodern geography and literatures of place
• affective geographies
• historicist practices and 19C contact zones on moving frontier
• animal studies and the posthuman in literature, film, culture
• environment, social justice, nature writing, ethics of place
• theoretical work engaging debates about conceptualizations of West including: notions of the rhizome or westness, forensic aesthetics, region as city-region in network of global world cities, translation, the local/global West, place ethics, feminist critical geographies, critical regionalism, comparative frontiers
• issues of sovereignty, settler colonalisms, and the question of “What constitutes legitimate settlement?”
• comparative work on the Global South, the US South, borderlands, and West
• marking gender/queer/race/class as ongoing strategy of engaging problems of power
• class, political economy, rural/urban/suburban
• other issues of critical significance not listed here

Proposals (500 words) for submissions are due March 1, 2012. Essays will be due July 1. Essays cannot exceed 25 pages double-spaced, including endnotes (no footnotes) and Works Cited. This special issue will be published in 2013. At the 2012 WLA annual conference in Lubbock, contributors will be invited to present their work in a plenary devoted to this special issue. Your manuscript should follow MLA style.

All submissions are electronic to guest editor Krista Comer. Questions and submissions should go to kcomer@rice.edu directly.

Affiliate Organization Session of the Western Literature Association

A group of western writers could almost be “expatriates” as they relied on their notes, sketches, and memories to produce the vivid narratives of the American West that became their literary homes while living in their literal homes in the American East.  And if the writers of the west weren’t living in the East, there was a time when they were writing for eastern publishers.  Such western literary icons as John Steinbeck, Willa Cather, and Mary Austin spent at least a portion of their lives living in New York.   Mari Sandoz, Loren Eisley, Wright Morris, and Mark Twain also lived in the East while writing about the West. How does working from memory and experiencing the separation from the literal landscape and people that make up the American West influence authors and publishers in the East when producing the West?

300-word abstracts to Max Despain, U.S. Air Force Academy (martha.despain@usafa.edu) by March 5, 2012.

Call for Papers
2012 Annual Meeting of the California American Studies Association
The Claremont  Colleges, California
April 20-21, 2012

The Program Committee for the 2012 Annual Meeting of the California American Studies Association invites proposals for presentations to the annual meeting, to be held Friday and Saturday, April 20 and 21, hosted by the Claremont Colleges.

Proposals for individual papers, conference panels (usually 3 papers, a commentator and a chair), roundtables (4-5 participants max), field trips, and other special sessions (films, performances) are welcome. CASA has a tradition of inclusiveness in representing American studies as practiced in multiple contexts; therefore we encourage proposals that highlight American Studies pedagogy and/or public engagement in K-12 and university classrooms, community settings, and other areas.

Rather than announce a specific theme this year, the program committee invites panels and individual papers addressing all major aspects of the critical study of U.S. cultures. Submissions are not limited to papers or panels focused on California.  Possible topics include—but are no means limited to—the globalization of American culture; ecological or environmental concerns; the phenomenon of crossing or transcending borders; material culture; childhood and youth studies; forms of oral or public history; academic and community-oriented collaborations; re-conceptualizations of key theoretical and methodological terms in American Studies; the state of American Studies as a discipline in the context of the nation’s crisis in higher education.

Proposals should include:  The organizer’s name, contact information (including email), and a session title; a 250 word abstract for EACH paper or proposed contribution (and a session abstract if a panel is being proposed); and a brief (1-2 page) CV for EACH participant.  These materials should be forwarded electronically or in hard copy, no later than February 1, 2012 to:

casa.claremont.2012@gmail.com OR

CASA Program Committee
c/o Matt Delmont
Scripps College
1030 Columbia Ave, #4085
Claremont, CA 91711

Inquiries may be directed to Matt Delmont at MDelmont@ScrippsCollege.edu

The California American Studies Association, founded in 1982, is a chapter of the American Studies Association, and is dedicated to the promotion of collegial dialogue and dissemination of current research.

Great Plains Research is a biannual, multidisciplinary, international journal that publishes peer-reviewed research on the natural and social sciences of the Great Plains. The editor is soliciting current manuscripts on important research results and synthetic reviews of critical scientific issues for the Great Plains. At this time page charges are subsidized by the UNL Center for Great Plains Studies, except for the costs of printing color images, which are paid by the author/s. For “Instructions to Authors,” discussion of potential articles, or subscription information, consult the website or the editorial office.

See flyer for more information: GPR Call for submissions 9-08 low res

GREAT PLAINS RESEARCH
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1155 Q Street, Hewit Place, Rm 404
PO Box 880246
Lincoln, NE 68588-0246
Tel.: (402) 472-6970
Fax: (402) 472-0463
E-mail: gpr@unl.edu

www.unl.edu/plains

Dear Friends,

Responding to an ongoing conversation here at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House regarding Taos and its draw for strong women like Mabel and many of her guests, we have created a blog site “Mabel and the Remarkable Women of Taos.”

The site was launched in August and is already creating a stir of interest and comments.  We would like to invite you to join in the conversation.  You can find us at mabeldodgeluhan.blogspot.com.

With Mabel Dodge Luhan as a focal point, we will profile her and other remarkable women in her circle and time; delve into stories of women who arrived before Mabel, like Francisca Quijosa who received a Spanish land grant in Taos in 1715; introduce contemporary women of Taos; inform blog visitors about happenings at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House and throughout the Taos community that link with issues congruent with Mabel’s life, idea, and activities.

One of the exciting bits of synchronicity stimulated by the blog is that Taos will be naming 2012 as the “Year of the Remarkable Women.”  Celebrations during the year will include workshops, exhibitions, lectures, theater and many other events…our moderator, Liz Cunningham, will  keep you aware of the planned happenings on the blog.

Enjoy, comment, and join us once again in Taos,

Karen Young
Consulting Director
www.mabeldodgeluhan.com