Confirmed speakers:
• Amy J. Elias (Tennessee, Knoxville; English Literature)
• Daniel Innerarity (Ikerbasque; Political Philosophy)
• Sandra Kemp (Lancaster/Imperial; Director of the Ruskin Library/Museum)
• Iain Stewart (Plymouth; Geoscience and Communication)

Thinking about the future often focuses on its ‘content’: what might happen. Similarly, thinking about ‘future studies’ often concentrates on its goals, concepts and methods. But what about the forms in which the future comes couched? How does the medium in which the future is presented – its genres, structures, conventions – shape or influence what the future might include? What forms do representations of the future currently take in different disciplines and fields of practice – from fiction to non-fiction, the visual to the textual, science to politics – and to what effect? Can we make our representations of the future more efficacious, with a view to the current world situation? And what might different fields learn from each other, or how might they combine, in order to do this?
This conference sets out to investigate these and related questions, and to trigger dialogue within and across different areas in which the future is being ‘formed’.
Starting points may include, but are not restricted to:
• forms old and new (e.g. report, roadmap, fiction, manifesto, visual media, software …)
• fact/fiction, realistic/unrealistic, mind/heart …
• a future without apocalypse? continuity/break?
• updating key terms (e.g. hope, optimism, pessimism, utopia, horizons …)
• instrumentality/openness, prognostication/becoming, fixed/alterable
• the problems of scale (e.g. individual/collective, local/global, multiplicity/unity …)
• interdisciplinary practice, thinking, potential
• history future

Please send proposals for 20 minute papers or presentations to david.sergeant@plymouth.ac.uk Proposals are welcome from researchers across the humanities, social sciences and STEM disciplines, as well as from those working outside the university sector.
Deadline for proposals: 1 May 2019.

Two £150 bursaries are available for those without institutional funding or equivalent; please describe in your proposal how you qualify.

This conference is made possible by funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and is organised by Dr David Sergeant, Lecturer in English and AHRC ECR Leadership Fellow, University of Plymouth.Forming the Future CfP

We are pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the

VI th International Congress Word in Education:
Intelligence in Education. Between Nature and Technique.

to be held at IPC- Facultés Libres de Philosophie et de Psychologie, Paris (France), 4-5 July, 2019

Submission deadline for abstracts: December 14, 2018.

Further information in the Newsletter attached. 1st Newsletter 2019.Paris

Bilingual Event in English & Chinese
With 2018 BCLA Dryden Translation Prize Winners

Wen-chi Li (利文祺) and Colin Bramwell

Taiwan in Poetry, Poetry in Taiwan: Readings of Taiwanese Poetry
Mon, November 12, 2018
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM GMT
SWLT, Paul Webley Wing, SOAS University of London

The event will be followed by a Q&A

Register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/taiwan-in-poetry-poetry-in-taiwan-readings-of-taiwanese-poetry-tickets-52156152456

Taiwan’s journey as a country is reflected in, and shaped by the remarkable literary output of its citizens. Many of the finest poets currently writing in Chinese are from Taiwan. The readings introduce Western readers to four such poets: Yang Mu (楊牧), Chen Li (陳黎), Hsia Yu (夏宇), and Ching Hsiang Hai (鯨向海).

The speakers will focus largely on Yang Mu (楊牧), a towering figure in Taiwanese literature. Our selections from the poetry of Yang Mu will comprise a geographical and formal journey from west to east, beginning with a sonnet set in the contemporary USA, with stops in Ireland, Hong Kong, mythical China, and beyond. In Yang Mu’s work, Taiwan casts long shadows. His poetry will be the vessel for our return to the island.

Once we have reached Taiwan, the speakers will dip into the work of three other excellent contemporary poets. We will hear their work performed in its original language, and in English translation.

Please note: this event will be filmed. If you wish to not be included please make a member of staff aware.

In collaboration with British Comparative Literature Association (BCLA) and SOAS Centre for Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies (CCLPS)

Supported by the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan & the Cultural Division, Taipei Representative Office in the UK.

Speaker Bios:

Wen-chi Li (利文祺) is pursuing a PhD in Sinology at the University of Zurich, having completed a MA in Comparative and General Literature and MSc Research in Chinese at the University of Edinburgh. Li’s publications include critical essays in journals in Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as three books of poetry in Chinese.

Colin Bramwell is a Scottish poet, translator, theatre-maker and musician from the Black Isle, near Inverness. He studied English Literature at the universities of Edinburgh, McGill and Oxford. Working with Wen-chi Li, he co-translates Taiwan’s most important living poet, Yang Mu. He contributed translations to a recently published Collected Works of Yang Mu: his most recent translations won first prize in the John Dryden Translation Competition. Colin also translates poetry from various European languages into Scots. He recently performed his fourth spoken-word theatre show, Umbrella Man, at the Prague and Edinburgh fringe festivals. Umbrella Man will be touring theatres nationally and internationally in 2019.

Guest Editors: Antonella Braida-Laplace, Jeremy Tranmer and Céline Sabiron (Lorraine)

At a time of crisis concerning Europe’s identity and ideals, commemorations are not only intended as a nation-building process. They can also be appropriated by various actors at national, regional, and local levels, such as cultural institutions, political parties and social media. Increasing mobility and instability trigger off tendencies to go back to the past, to search for one’s roots and to emphasise the importance of heritage. Governments and lobbies/corporations such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple use landmarks to impose their readings of political, cultural and literary events, while grassroot communities organise their own remembrance events or commemorate differently and sometimes more informally and spontaneously.
The years 2018 and 2019 mark multiple anniversaries that will be commemorated transnationally, including the Armistice (1918) and the Treaty of Versailles (1919), the events of May 1968 in France, women’s suffrage in the UK (1918), the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), the release of the Beatles’ album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) or the Woodstock Festival (1969). This EJES issue explores why and how these historical events, cultural productions and literary figures will be remembered across Europe. It intends to investigate in what ways and to what extent these commemorations are transferred from one cultural space to another, across and beyond the British Isles. It will also examine their transformations in the contemporary digital age and the shift towards new forms of democratic participation.

Topics
The editors invite proposals for articles dealing with transregional and/or transnational commemorations. Essays should account for the relationship between two or more regions or countries, one of them being the United Kingdom. Theoretical or practical approaches to the following topics, from different disciplinary perspectives, are welcomed:
forms and modes of commemorating commemoration as an expression of soft power or a means of empowerment commemoration and technology in the digital age commemoration and cultural policies commemoration and hyphenated/conflicting identities (bi-nationals, and European nationals) in the UK due to Devolution and Brexit posterity and the literary canon literary and visual adaptations publishing policies commemorations as a way of asserting human rights

Detailed proposals (up to 1,000 words) for full essays (7,500 words), as well as all inquiries regarding this issue, should be sent to all three editors by 30 November 2018:

Antonella Braida-Laplace: antonella.braida-laplace@univ-lorraine.fr Jeremy Tranmer: jeremy.tranmer@univ-lorraine.fr Céline Sabiron: celine.sabiron@univ-lorraine.fr

Saturday 10th November

5.00 – 7.00 Reception, with a celebration of the John Dryden Translation Prize and the Arthur Terry Postgraduate Essay Prize

***This year’s prizes will be awarded in a ceremony at 5 pm in Room 116, SOAS main building, after the BCLA Malcolm Bowie Memorial Lecture.***