Call For Publications: COLLECTED VOLUME “THE COMPLEXITY OF SOCIAL-CULTURAL EMERGENCE: BIOSEMIOTICS, SEMIOTICS AND TRANSLATION STUDIES”

“THE COMPLEXITY OF SOCIAL-CULTURAL EMERGENCE:

BIOSEMIOTICS, SEMIOTICS AND TRANSLATION STUDIES”

Editors:

Kobus Marais

Reine Meylaerts

Maud Gonne

1. Conceptualization

Since the emergence of complexity thinking, scholars from the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities are renewing efforts to construct a unified framework that would unite all scholarly activity.  The work of Terrence Deacon (2013), at the interface of (at least) physics, chemistry, biology, neurology, cognitive science, semiotics, anthropology and philosophy, is a great, though not the only, example of this kind of work. It is becoming clear that this paradigm of complex relational and process thinking means, among others, that the relationships between fields of study are more important than the differences between them. Deacon’s contribution, for instance, lies not (only) in original findings in any of the fields in which he works but (also) in the ways in which he relates bodies of knowledge to one another. An example would be his links between a theory of work (physics) and a theory of information (cybernetics) by means of a theory of meaning (semiotics). This line of thinking indeed situates semiotics and biosemiotics in the center of the abovementioned debate(also see Hoffmeyer, 2008; Kauffman, 2012).

In semiotics, Susan Petrilli’s (2003) thought-provoking collection covers a wide variety of chapters focused on translation, which she conceptualizes as semiotic process. Her work made it possible to link biosemiotics and semiotics through the notion of “translation”, which is what we aim to explore further in this book.  Michael Cronin’s work in translation studies links up with the above through his use of the notion of  “ecology”. To apprehend interconnectedness and vulnerability in the age of the Anthropocene, his work challenges text-oriented and linear approaches while engaging in eco-translational thinking. He calls tradosphere all translation systems on the planet, all the ways in which information circulates between living and non-living organisms and is translated into a language or a code that can be processed or understood by the receiving entity (Cronin, 2017, p. 71). The aptness of Cronin’s work on ecology finds a partner in that of Bruno Latour, whose development of a sociology of translation (2005) responds to the need to reconnect the social and natural worlds and to account for the multiple connections that make what he calls the ‘social’.

In an effort further to work out the implications of this new way of thinking, Marais (2019, p. 120)

conceptualized translation in terms of “negentropic semiotic work performed by the application of

constraints on the semiotic process” (see also Kress 2013). Building on Peirce, namely that the meaning of a sign is its translation into another sign, translation is defined as a process that entails semiotic work done by constraining semiotic possibilities. This conceptualization allows for the study of all forms of meaning making, i.e. translation, under a single conceptual framework, but it also allows for a unified ecological view for both the sciences and the humanities. “The long standing distinction between the human and social sciences and the natural and physical sciences is no longer tenable in a world where we cannot remain indifferent to the more than human” (Cronin, 2017, p. 3).

These kind of approaches open ample possibilities for a dialogue between Translation Studies, Semiotics and Biosemiotics, exploring translation not only in linguistic and anthropocentric terms, but as a semiotic

process that can take place in and between all (living) organisms – human and non-human organic and

inorganic, material and immaterial alike. Not only the translation of Hamlet into French, or of oral speech into subtitles, but also communication between dolphins or between a dog and its master, or moving a statue from one place to another, or rewatching a film are translation processes. However, many of the implications of this line of thinking still need to be explored, and if the references to Deacon, Petrilli and Cronin holds, this should be done in an interdisciplinary way that tests, transgresses and transforms scholarly boundaries. Based on the conference that took place in August 2021, we call for papers for an edited volume in which we hope to draw together biosemioticians, semioticians and translation studies scholars to discuss the interdisciplinary relations between these fields and the implications of these relations for the study of social and cultural reality as emerging from both matter and mind. We invite colleagues who presented at the conference as well as those who did not to submit either theoretical or data-driven or mixed proposals, reflecting on the complexity of social-cultural emergence as a translation process. 

Some of the Topics that

colleagues could consider would be the following:

• Is translation, as semiotic work and process, indeed able to link all of the biological world,

including humans, with the non-living world in one ecology, and if so how?

• What conceptual constructs in each of the three fields are relevant for the other fields, and how?

• Could the fields learn methodological and epistemological lessons from one another? If so, what

would these entail?

• Could collaborative scholarship enhance an understanding of social-cultural emergence, and if so,

what would this scholarship entail?

• How, if at all, does entropy and negentropy play out differently in social-cultural systems

compared to biological and/or physical systems?

• How does social-cultural emergence differ from biological and even physical emergence? Systems

thinking tends to ignore differences like the intentionality of biological agents in contrast to

physical agents. Thus, if one were to consider the possibility that intention has causal effect, how

does one factor intention into thinking about complex adaptive systems?

References

Cronin, M., 2017. Eco-translation: Translation and ecology in the age of the anthropocene. New York:Routledge.

Deacon, T. W., 2013. Incomplete nature: How mind emerged from matter. New York: WW Norman & Company.

Hoffmeyer, J., 2008. Biosemiotics: An examination into the signs of life and the life of signs. London:University of Scranton Press.

Kauffman, S., 2012. From physics to semiotics. In: S. Rattasepp & T. Bennet, eds. Biosemiotic gatherings.Tartu: University of Tartu Press, pp. 30-46.

Kress, G., 2013. Multimodal discourse analysis. In: J. P. Gee & M. Handford, eds. The Routledge handbook of discourse analysis. New York: Routledge, pp. 35-50.

Latour, B., 2005. Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Marais, K., 2019. A (bio)semiotic theory of translation: The emergence of social-cultural reality. New York: Routledge.

Petrilli, S., ed., 2003. Translation Translation. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

2. Timeline

We are currently in negotiations with a pre-eminent publisher who is interested in this proposal, but we need to submit a list of abstracts with the proposal. In order to achieve this, we foresee the following timeline:

Submission of abstracts: 1 April 2022

Decision on abstracts: 15 April 2022

Submission of papers for peer review (if proposal is accepted): 1 December 2022

Feedback from peer reviewers: 1 February 2023

Submission of reworked papers: 1 April 2023

Submission of manuscript: 1 June 2023

Publication: End of 2023

Contact: 

Kobus Marais

Professor and Head of Department: Linguistics and Language Practice
Faculty: The Humanities
PO Box 339, Bloemfontein 9300, Republic of South Africa
 JMarais@ufs.ac.za

Call for Chapters: The Routledge Research Companion to Toni Morrison

The Routledge Research Companion to Toni Morrison

Editor:  Maureen E. Ruprecht Fadem, CUNY

 Call for Chapters:

This is the final draft of the call for chapter proposals for a volume I was commissioned to edit, The Routledge Research Companion to Toni Morrison. (I posted an earlier draft; it is now, here, finalized.) This companion text is intended for a scholarly audience and as support for newer Morrison scholars as they approach their research.

Different from some companions, the Routledge Research Companion series publishes cutting-edge research rather than mostly or entirely secondary material. The secondary nature of a companion—that it informs readers about scholarly trends and history or generally accepted understandings of an author and her work—is to be built into each chapter. Each chapter is to point the way forward in terms of new directions in the study, interpretation, and theorization of Morrison’s oeuvre and they are to review, in a thoroughgoing manner, existing scholarship on their topic area or theme, to fill out the picture in terms of where and what Morrison studies has been, what scholars have been thinking, writing, and arguing for since she started publishing.

Largely what we want to accomplish here is to tell the history of Morrison studies, through those reviews, and importantly to create a vision for it going forward or for the 21st Century. That is, to think beyond some of the more or less entrenched, perhaps restrictive, borders surrounding the reception and interpretation of Morrison, some of the givens that “live” in the knowledge produced to date on this oeuvre. The research on Morrison has, to a certain extent, been controlled, one might say, or too much “owned” by too few voices and perspectives. Going forward, how do we think beyond those limits or outside accustomed responses to Morrison? How create new and fruitful passages, meanings, readings, interpretive leaps and new knowledges inspired by the work of this Black woman writer and thinker, this universally celebrated Nobel Laureate?

If this is helpful to know in developing your proposal, I’ve already received excellent proposals on the following general topics:

--(homoerotic) colonial desire and carcerality

--queerness, fugitivity, and futurity

--a study in the recently opened archive, The Toni Morrison Papers, and projected impacts

--a chapter taking on the gargantuan area of mothers and mothering

--and, a chapter on the figure of the daughter

--I’m likely to have a chapter on the character “Beloved” in multiple guises across multiple novels

I hope to see several additional responses, mostly from today’s Morrison scholars—that is, for the book to be comprised of their work, though not entirely. I say “not entirely” in that this call is open to junior scholars, perhaps “dissertators” working on Morrison and doing excellent, innovative thinking. Importantly, too, the volume is to feature work from a diverse group of scholars around the world, to be international and varied both in terms of approach and in terms of contributor-authors. Routledge is known for its strength as a scholarly publisher with a remarkably (race, gender, geographic, and otherwise) ranging global authorship; this collection continues that legacy within the context of Toni Morrison studies.

Lastly, any chapter of this collection will be eligible for Open Access, for those interested in that or whose universities encourage it. Open Access can mean greater exposure, both for the book and for the individual scholar's contribution.

A one- or two-page proposal, including clear direction re: methodology and a bio, is due by 4/30/22. Email it to:  mfadem@kbcc.cuny.edu  (In terms of methodology: where, how, in what ways your chapter enters or fits into the conversation in progress, what you are innovating or primarily responding to, these should be clear as well as the theoretical scaffolding for the analysis. This can be achieved either through a separate statement, a working bibliography, or simply across/through the content of your proposal.)

In the meantime, questions or suggestions, if there is anything you would like to discuss, please don’t hesitate to reach out: mfadem@kbcc.cuny.edu  (My own bio is copied, below, if helpful.)

Bio:  Maureen E. Ruprecht Fadem (she/her) completed a Ph.D. in English at The Graduate Center-CUNY under the mentorship of Wayne Koestenbaum. She is Professor of English at Kingsborough-CUNY and has taught at The Graduate Center-CUNY, Drew University, Hunter College-CUNY, and Eugene Lang. She is a postcolonial scholar working on Anglophone writing of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Maureen specializes in historical literature, particularly that of Ireland and African America, as well as the wider literatures of partition. Her research looks at imperial borders, like those imposed through partition schemes, at political justice, especially reparations, at social justice of race, class, and gender, and at the poetics, in poetry and prose, of conflict, trauma, and silence. Maureen’s first book The Literature of Northern Ireland appeared from Palgrave in 2015. In 2019, a second book-length study titled Silence and Articulacy in the Poetry of Medbh McGuckian was brought out by Rowman and Littlefield. In 2020, Routledge published Maureen’s third monograph, Objects and Intertexts in Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’: The Case for Reparations, and a collection she co-edited and for which she wrote the introduction, The Economics of Empire. The article “Architecting the Carceral State: The Fragment in Medbh McGuckian’s Diaries and Walter Benjamin’s ‘Theses’” appeared in a special issue of Review of Irish Studies in Europe (RISE), Vol. 4, no. 2 (Dec. 2021), along with an interview with McGuckian. Other recent articles include “A Consciousness of Streets: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Partition” (Synthesis, 2016) and “Drawing the Border, Queering the Nation: Nation Trouble in Breakfast on Pluto and The Crying Game” (Gender Forum, 2016). Maureen is at work on three monographs: the collection Imperial Debt, on reparations for empire; she was commissioned to edit The Routledge Research Companion to Toni Morrison; and, she’s writing a single-author volume, Poetics of the Fragment. Also under development is a chapter on Joyce’s “The Dead” and other postcolonial fiction (Coetzee, Pamuk, Naipaul, Beckett) that uses the triptych: snow, silence, and sleep as central allegory. Maureen is now serving a three-year term on the MLA Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities (CAFPRR). 

[end]

Contact Info: 

mfadem@kbcc.cuny.edu

Contact Email: 

mfadem@kbcc.cuny.edu

URL: 

https://maureeneruprechtfadem.academia.edu/

Publication -Call For Papers on Ambedkar: A Journal on Theory and Praxis-2022

Ambedkar: A Journal on Theory and Praxis

Call For Papers :

All About Ambedkar: A Journal on Theory and Praxis invites original and previously unpublished articles for its upcoming general issue to be published in 2022. 

​

The suggested topics are follows:

• ​Critical reading of Ambedkar’s texts

• Reviews of recent books on Ambedkar and Caste Studies

• Analysis of caste-related discrimination and violence

• Exploration of the theme of caste in literature, cinema, music, painting, photography and social media

• Reflections on caste and contemporary Indian politics

• Exploring the intersectionality of caste, class, gender, race, and religion

• Rethinking leftist politics

• Interviews with anti-caste activists and intellectuals

• Reviews of books and films

• Any other relevant topics.

​

​Basic information for prospective authors:

• Abstract (with a title & four keywords): 150-200 words

• Word limit of full papers: 5000-7000 words 

• Style of citation: MLA 9th Edition (Sample citation instructions are available at  Purdue Online Writing Lab.) 

• All submissions have to be drafted as per the Formatting Rules of AAA.

• Deadline of submission: 30 March 2022

• Email your submissions at ambedkarintouch@gmail.com.

Contact Info: ambedkarintouch@gmail.com

Contact Email: ambedkarintouch@gmail.com

URL: https://www.allaboutambedkaronline.com/

Call For Articles-Transgressive Teaching & Learning: Critical Essays on bell hooks’ Engaged Pedagogy

Call For  Papers

Almost thirty years after the publication of Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994), bell hooks’ theory of radical engaged pedagogy continues to offer vision and hope for students and pedagogues who find themselves navigating insurgent antiblackness, the ongoing pandemic, and the quotidian violence of the state. For hooks, “education as the practice of freedom,” as she describes it, informs and animates her critical pedagogical praxis—what does it mean to lead others toward freedom, to encourage freedom as an intellectual practice, to practice freedom ourselves as teachers and learners? hooks’ collection of pedagogical strategies and reflections on the practice of freedom works to counter the devaluation of pedagogy, particularly in relation to the teaching of writing, embraces the possibilities of an informed and critical classroom praxis, and centers pleasure in communal learning as an act of resistance. What strategies does hooks offer us to engage the possibility—or even necessity—of pleasure and freedom in classroom spaces, from face-to-face to online to community? In our current era of social distancing, ceaseless intra- and interpersonal anxiety, and political apathy, what does hooks teach us about pedagogical praxes that can help us survive these moments? 

Hooks’ subsequent collections—Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (2003) and Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom (2010)—shift the mode to personal reflections on teaching outside of academia and brief “teachings” that center action and activity. By urging us to (re)commit to making revolutionary ideas accessible and “expand our communities of resistance,” hooks reminds us of our imperative to engage with and in public narratives concerning the development of critical ethnic and cultural studies programs that promote justice in education. Framing the exigent need for practical wisdom in our time, hooks’ recollections of her own foray into college education during the civil rights struggle remind us that, even in moments that foment equality in education, old hierarchies of race, class, and gender remain. We recognize this continuing paradox, particularly as our universities scramble to respond to student demands for access, equity, and justice. hooks’ recognition of teaching as a fundamentally political act, and her call for the creation of transformative learning spaces that center counter-hegemonic and anticolonial praxis provides educators with the roadmaps to co-create participatory spaces of self-recovery and collective liberation.

Transgressive Teaching & Learning: Critical Essays on bell hooks’ Engaged Pedagogy is the first sustained collection of critical essays to engage hooks’ teaching trilogy. This volume seeks to explore how teachers and learners across all educational levels and disciplines, in locations inside and outside of the university, employ hooks’ engaged pedagogical praxes. We seek contributions from both learners and practitioners who actively resist antiblack, imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist, abled, cisheteronorative patriarchal pedagogical praxes, and who remain deeply committed to the work of “educat[ing] people to heal this world into what it might become.” In the spirit of hooks’ trilogy, crafted in community across decades with people who inhabit various positionalities within both academic and public learning communities, we invite learner-scholars and teacher-scholars alike to submit proposals for critical chapters on educational praxes (3000-5500 words), personal reflections on pedagogy from learners and practitioners (1500-3000 words), and “teachings” describing pedagogical activities designed to facilitate dialogue following hooks’ idiom in Teaching Critical Thinking and Teaching Community (1000-2000 words).

We especially welcome submissions from emerging and multiply-marginalized learners and scholars; work from community educators and learners in underserved communities; and co-authored essays with students and/or community education justice collectives.

Possible topics include:

• Pedagogies of hope
• Theory as liberatory practice
• Engaged pedagogies
• Anticolonial pedagogies and practices
• Intersectional feminist pedagogies
• Teaching and learning communities
• Eros and pedagogy
• Pedagogies of (self-)care
• Critical thinking & democratic education
• Teaching as “Prophetic Vocation”
• Spirituality and pedagogy
• Feminist/queer pedagogies
• Antiracist praxis
• Affective pedagogies and the politics of emotion
• Pedagogies of love, sorrow, grief, and joy
• Practical wisdom of pedagogy
• Conflict, aggression, fear
• Resistance and revolution
• Disability politics in the classroom

Please send abstract (300 words) and a short author bio (150 words) by May 2nd, 2022 to: bhookscollection@gmail.com. Notification of accepted essays by June 3rd, 2022. Completed pieces due by January 15th, 2023.

Contact Info: 

Maia L. Butler, Assistant Professor of African American Literature at University of North Carolina Wilmington in the Department of English

Joanna Davis-McElligatt, Assistant Professor of Black Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of North Texas, where she is also affiliate faculty in Women’s and Gender Studies

Megan Feifer, Teacher-Scholar in Residence at the bell hooks center at Berea College

 

Contact Email: 

bhookscollection@gmail.com

[Call for Book Proposals] ADVANCES IN THE STUDY OF ISLAM (Edinburgh UP)

 Advances in the Study of Islam

Editors: Abbas Aghdassi & Aaron W. Hughes

Edinburgh University Press

 

CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS

Advances in the Study of Islam welcomes book proposals (scholarly monographs and edited volumes) that focus explicitly on new, original and creative approaches to understand, analyse and critically revisit Islamic studies. The series,

• Highlights both disciplinary and inter-disciplinary approaches to Islamic studies from religious studies, theology, philosophy, law, history, cultural anthropology and linguistics
• Challenges existing paradigms and norms by providing alternatives for the study of Islam
• Pushes the study of Islam to the forefront of larger conversations in the Humanities and Social Sciences

 

Advances in the Study of Islam will publish cutting-edge research that reflects the long history and geographic breadth of Islam. It seeks to rethink traditional literary canons while simultaneously offering innovative and alternative approaches to push beyond traditional understandings of Islam. The series provides a platform for creative studies spanning:

• Disciplines including religious studies, legal studies, archaeology and anthropology
• Theoretical questions including historical, philological, ethnographic, comparative and redescriptive
• Time periods from late antiquity to the present
• Geographical regions including the so-called Arab World, South Asia, Africa, Iran and the Persian World, Europe and North America

 

WRITE FOR THE SERIES

If you have a proposal suitable for this series, we would love to hear from you. If you have any questions before submitting, or would like to discuss your ideas, please contact the series editors Abbas Aghdassi (aghdassi@um.ac.ir) & Aaron W. Hughes (aaron.hughes@rochester.edu).

Once you’re ready to submit, email your book proposal to Emma House, Commissioning Editor for Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies (emma.house@eup.ed.ac.uk).

 

For more information, please, visit: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-advances-in-the-study-of-islam

 

Download the CALL

Download the POSTER

 

Contact Info: 

Abbas Aghdassi, PhD

Contact Email: 

aghdassi@um.ac.ir

URL: 

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-advances-in-the-study-of-islam