Calls for Conference Papers

Event Dates

May

BAS 2023.
Timișoara, 11-13 May 2023.
Deadline for proposals: 15 February 2023.

Organiser
The English Department of the Faculty of Letters, West University of Timişoara, in partnership with The Romanian Society for English and American Studies (RSEAS) and The European Society for the Study of English (ESSE)

Date
11-13 May 2023

Venue
Timișoara, in hybrid format (face-to-face and online)

Deadline for Proposals
15 February 2023

Conference website
https://litere.uvt.ro/cs-events/32nd-conference-on-british-and-american-studies-2023/

CFP

Call-for-papers-BAS-2023

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Constructions of Identity 11 – Transmission.
Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca (Romania), 18-20 May 2023.
Extended deadline for proposals: 10 April 2023.

Literature

In a book published in English in 2015, the German media theorist and philosopher Sybille Krämer attempts to provide a model for transmission that preserves the possibility of community without succumbing to notions of communication as the imposition of sameness (Medium, Messenger, Transmission. An Approach to Media Philosophy). As Krämer insists, it is essential to safeguard the difference that emerges during the process of transmission, defined as “an external, corporeal, and material process that can be conceived as a kind of embodiment” which is “also associated with a ‘disembodiment’ – namely, the way in which media ‘become invisible’ in their (interference-free) usage” (75). Transmission “lets appear”, or makes difference perceptible, and as such renders culture and community possible, in Nancean terms, as loci of both connection and separation. As Krämer and many others point out, transmission does not amount to neutral repetition of information, but implies “creativity,” distortion and noise, which means transformation is just as important as reiteration. Krämer’s model successfully reminds us that transmission, through the persistence of the medium – whose materiality, even if self-effacing, never ceases to intrude – makes the world “appear.” This may never have been so clear as at the time of the Covid pandemic, of social media, fake news and (perhaps crucially) climate crisis.

In the age of viral dissemination (digital, informational, biological), transmission can outstep the bounds of direct, unilinear flows between some fixed points of departure and destination. (Dis)articulated across complex, tangled and unstable nets, the multiscalar trajectories of transmission can drift across the micro- and the macroscopic, or the local and the planetary, as seen in the transference of plastic molecules into the human bloodstream or in the even vaster phenomenon of ocean plastification. Transmission, conveyed as both transference and transformation, is also a commonplace literary scenario in contemporary fictions that tap into what Marco Caracciolo calls the fragile yet dynamic “mesh” of interconnected human and nonhuman realities (Narrating the Mesh. Form and Story in the Anthropocene, 2021). With its attendant anxieties of loss and retrieval, transmission – which, etymologically speaking, is a process of sending forth and putting across – has always been a feature of literature’s intersections and enmeshments with the technosocial and the biopolitical. Not least, narrative transmission, especially in its literary instantiations, can also relay a possibility to better grasp the ethics of difference that should guide our way across the predicaments of today’s world.

We welcome proposals for papers and sessions addressing any aspect of our conference theme. Possible topics include:

• mediality, intermediality, liminality, exchange and the production of difference;
• communication, noise, entropy, interference, distortion: the dissemination of information, disinformation, knowledge;
• contagion, immunity, community, purity, security: the individual body and the body politic; literature and biopolitics;
• ecosystemic communication, environmental propagation, interspecies contiguity: transmission in the age of climate change;
• literature and medical discourses: discourses of infection, hygiene, contamination, origins; epidemics, pandemics and culture;
• circulation and recirculation of ideas: cultural transmission from manuscripts to social media;
• technologies of storage, archiving, recording; forms of cultural memory in the age of flow and virtualisation; 
• authorship and dispersal: collaborative texts, joint authorship, participatory writing; from texts to co-texts, paratexts, metatexts;
• citations, borrowings, influences, interpretation, reception; precession and succession in literary history: copies, originals, (af)filiations, genealogies
• transmission, dissemination & transformation; interlinguistic, intercultural traffic & contact zones; transnational literature;
• linguistic/cultural hybridization: hybrid texts, genre hybridity; from discourses of hybridity to worlding/planetarity;
• translation and adaptation.

Confirmed keynote speakers

• Professor Ros Ballaster (University of Oxford)
• Professor Eve Patten (Trinity College Dublin)
• Associate Professor Ana-Karina Schneider (Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu)
• Hugo Hamilton (Irish novelist)

Round table: “Ulysses in Transmission:” 2022 marked the centennial of Ulysses, as well as the publication of a new translation into Romanian. This roundtable aims to bring together Joyce scholars, translators and translation specialists, to discuss various aspects of the novel in translation, the novel and its translations etc.

Confirmed participants:

• Professor Mircea Mihăieș (Universitatea de Vest, Timișoara)
• Hugo Hamilton (Irish novelist)
• Dr. Rareș Moldovan (Babeș-Bolyai University, translator of the new Romanian edition)
• Dr. Erika Mihalycsa (Babeș-Bolyai University, editor of the new translation)
• Dr. Adriana Șerban (Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier 3)
• Armağan Ekici, independent scholar and translator

Proposals

For individual 20-minute papers, 150-word abstracts and a short bio note should be submitted to Dr. Petronia Petrar (petronia.petrar@ubbcluj.ro) and Dr. Carmen Borbely (carmen.borbely@ubbcluj.ro). Extended deadline: 10 April 2023

For tentative panels, please send a title and a 100-word description of the topic, along with details of the chair.

For fully formed panels, please send 150-word abstracts for each paper, accompanied by details of the proposed topic, the chair and the speakers.

Registration

The participants will be notified of their proposal’s acceptance by 15 April 2023 at the latest.
Registration link: https://plati.ubbcluj.ro/en/Event/Details/155.
Registration starts on 20 March 2023.

Conference registration fee

90 euro; 50 euro for postgraduate students and young researchers (under 26).

There will be an additional optional fee of 30 euro for a final dinner.

Publication plans: selected papers will be published in either a special issue of Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai, seria Philologia (2024), or a conference volume. Publication details will be available on the conference website.

Linguistics

Theoretical linguistics and language acquisition

Research from various theoretical perspectives are welcome on topics in phonetics and phonology, morphology, lexicology semantics/ pragmatics, syntax and language acquisition. Aside from disciplinary approaches, this year we especially encourage inter-disciplinary perspectives that explore the complexities of human language from biological, psychological, historical, cultural, educational, etc. perspectives.

Internet linguistics

This section welcomes papers with a general approach to Internet linguistics, id est, a discourse analysis of sorts of the linguistic displays, patterns and behaviours within communication via the Internet, but mainly the cultural sociolinguistic perspective, where text (language, discourse and semiotic architecture) both signals and negotiates individual or group identities as well as covertly regulating communities of digital communication practice. The latter is a relatively recent paradigm as prompted by the fact that ideological affiliations and reciprocity have come to bear critically on digital communication behaviour, especially in the Social Network Sites. On the one hand, by and large, group identities have become hybrid, nebulous, fluid, tribal, particularly under the impact of integrated digital actions. On the other hand, increasingly ideologized virtual communities (see echo-chambers) have been having the opposite effect of coalescing and temporarily homogenising varied individuals opting to converse within these exclusive virtual liminal spaces. And since technology affordances have enabled individuals to explore, exercise and express their identity repertoires in a threefold capacity: online content users, consumers and creators, the aspects abovementioned will additionally lend themselves to a multidisciplinary approach that may variably include elements from semantics, pragmatics, semiotics and social psychology.

Confirmed keynote speaker

Prof. dr. Lieven Buysse (KU Leuven Campus Brussel, Belgium)

Proposals

For individual 20-minute papers, 150-word abstracts and a short bio note should be submitted to Dr. Petronia Petrar (petronia.petrar@ubbcluj.ro) and Dr. Carmen Borbely (carmen.borbely@ubbcluj.ro). Extended deadline: 10 April 2023.

For tentative panels, please send a title and a 100-word description of the topic, along with details of the chair.

For fully formed panels, please send 150-word abstracts for each paper, accompanied by details of the proposed topic, the chair and the speakers.

Registration

The participants will be notified of their proposal’s acceptance by 15 April 2023 at the latest.
Registration link: https://plati.ubbcluj.ro/en/Event/Details/155.
Registration starts on 20 March 2023.

Conference registration fee

90 euro; 50 euro for postgraduate students and young researchers (under 26).

There will be an additional optional fee of 30 euro for a final dinner.

Publication plans: selected papers will be published in either a special issue of Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai, seria Philologia (2024), or a conference volume. Publication details will be available on the conference website.

CFP

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June

Humour and Pathos in Literature and the Arts: 24th Annual International Conference of The English Department, Literature and Cultural Studies Section.
University of Bucharest (Romania), 9-11 June 2023.
Deadline for proposals: 10 April 2023.

The English Department of the University of Bucharest (Romania) invites proposals for the Literature and Cultural Studies section of its 24^th Annual International Conference:

Humour and Pathos in Literature and the Arts 
In memoriam Mihaela Irimia, Irina Pană and Octavian Roske

To be held in hybrid format at 

The University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, 7-13 Pitar Moș St., Bucharest, Romania

and online.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

• Professor Annie Gagiano (Stellenbosch University)
• Professor Flavio Gregori (Università Ca’ Foscari, Venice)
• Professor Valentina Sandu-Dediu (National University of Music, Bucharest and New Europe College)
• Professor Bogdan Ștefănescu (University of Bucharest)
• Professor Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) 

Humour and pathos have been essential elements of literature and the arts – and of life – from ancient times to the twenty-first century and they pose many fascinating questions for literary and cultural criticism, theory and practice and for a range of related fields of intellectual inquiry such as aesthetics, anthropology, musicology, philosophy, psychology and sociology. They present an especially intriguing challenge to intellectual analysis because they are bound up with fundamental human emotions and the physical expression of these through laughter and tears and their impact on readers and audiences is greatest when they are immediately and intuitively understood – when we “get the joke” laugh or grasp at once at the pity of a particular situation and feel moved to tears. This intrinsic connection with physiological manifestations is reflected by the etymology of the two terms. Humour comes from the Latin humor (moisture) and the original meaning was bodily fluid, which led to its being used for the cardinal humours and subsequently for mood and whim. On the other hand, pathos was the Greek word for suffering and the word passion, derived from its Latin counterpart, came to be associated with Christ’s crucifixion and His bleeding wounds. But as pain and pleasure are sometimes so close to each other, passion came to denote a form of excessive love.

The emotional, immediate and intuitive aspects of humour and pathos, however, mean that the attempt to analyse them can seem to diminish, dissipate and even destroy their impact and essence – explaining a joke or a scene of pathos may reduce or remove its capacity to produce amusement or pity. What language and concepts can we find or formulate that will enable us to write and speak of humour and pathos in the arts in ways that adequately encompass both their experiential quality and their intellectual significance?

Through the ages, many writers and thinkers have addressed these and related questions: key examples include Aristotle in Rhetoric [ῥητορική], which sees pathos [πάθοςas] as a means of persuasion that uses language to arouse emotion (and, in Plato’s view, is therefore suspect); the Earl of Shaftesbury’s Sensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour (1709); Ben Jonson in his comedies Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Every Man out of His Humour (1600), which play on the sense of “humour” as an inclination to behave in a certain way that produces “humour” in the sense of amusement; Alexander Pope’s prose piece “Peri Bathous or The Art of Sinking in Poetry” (1928), which introduces the term “bathos” (meaning a failed attempt at pathos) into the English language; Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872); Henri Bergson’s Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic [Le Rire. Essai sur la signification du comique] (1900); Sigmund Freud’s Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious [Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten] (1905); and Trevor Griffith’s play Comedians (first performed 1975), which, set in an evening class for would-be comedians, dramatises issues around the nature, ethics and politics of humour. There is also a vast swathe of literary criticism that examines humour and pathos in specific writers and texts, perhaps most extensively in relation to Charles Dickens, who makes copious use of both elements in his novels and short stories in ways that have attracted a host of readers but troubled some literary critics who feel that they detract from the stature of serious literature.

The challenging questions raised by the theme of humour and pathos in the arts include: What makes us laugh and cry? What is going on (cognitively, emotionally, physically, semiotically) when we do either or both? What is the relationship between humour and the genre of comedy, and pathos and the genre of tragedy? What is the relationship between humour and satire (a satire aims to be humorous, but not all humour is satire)? How does humour work in comic subgenres such as “low comedy” (a term coined by the seventeenth-century English poet and playwright John Dryden), black comedy (which jokes about serious matters and is akin to the “sick joke” and dark comedy (a term developed by Shakespeare critics for plays such as Measure for Measure, which come dangerously close to full-blown tragedy). How does humour work in popular modes like burlesque, farce, musical comedy and vaudeville? How does pathos work in popular genres such as melodrama and romantic comedy? What distinctions might there be between humour and wit? How culturally and temporally specific are humour and pathos (a joke or scene that may make one kind of audience laugh and cry may fall flat with another, or indeed with the same audience at different times). How far can humour or pathos be conveyed through translation (one of the texts mentioned above, Freud’s Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious presents particular difficulties in translating the jokes it uses as examples, especially those that depend on wordplay)? What happens when attempts at humour and pathos inadvertently go wrong (a joke falls flat or results in a blunder, a scene of pathos seems funny, resulting in what Alexander Pope dubbed “bathos”)? What is the dividing line between pathos and bathos? What are the boundaries to humour and pathos at any given time (for example, some jokes that might once have been acceptable and amusing would now seem racist or sexist, such as the line in Noel Coward’s romantic comedy Private Lives: “Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs”, which might once have been thought witty but would now seem to make light of patriarchal violence; scenes that provoked tears in one generation may provoke laughter in another generation, as in the observation on Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop attributed to Oscar Wilde: “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing”). Why have the adjectives “pathetic” and “sentimental”, which originally had positive connotations connected with pathos and sympathy, acquired such derogatory meanings?

We invite papers that explore examples of humour and pathos in literature and the arts from the present or past and from across the world, whether in verbal, aural, visual or hybrid forms – for example, poetry, fiction, drama, music, opera, song, painting, sculpture, photography, film, dance, comics, graphic novels and multimedia work. Papers may focus upon individual works or bodies of work by one or more writers or artists and may also consider broader and more abstract issues around conceptualising, defining and theorising humour and pathos, drawing where appropriate on other disciplines that seem relevant and illuminating.

Possible topics may include (but are not confined to) the following:

• Humour and pathos as means of artistic expression in literature and the arts
• Humour and comedy
• Pathos and tragedy
• Humour as relief in tragedy
• Pathos and parody and caricature
• Humour and satire
• Humour, pathos and catharsis
• Humour and pathos seen from a historical perspective
• “Pathetic” as a positive and pejorative adjective
• “Sentimental” as a positive and pejorative adjective
• The boundaries of humour
• Humour, pathos and ethics
• Humour, pathos and aesthetics
• Humour and wit
• Humour as strategy of survival 
• Humour and comedy as vehicles of social criticism and catalysits of social change
• Women’s humour versus feminist humour
• Humour and gender
• Humour in relation to culture, society and historical period
• The double-edged sword of humour as healer and/or destroyer 

Conference presentations should be in English and will be allocated 20 minutes each, plus 10 minutes for discussion. Prospective participants are invited to submit abstracts of up to 200 words. Proposals should be in .doc or .docx format and should also include (within the same document) name and institutional affiliation, a short bio (no more than 100 words) and e-mail address. Proposals for panel discussions (to be organised by the participant) will also be considered.

A selection of papers from the conference will be published in University of Bucharest Review (ISSN 2069–8658) – listed on ERIH PLUS, Scopus, EBSCO (Literary Reference Centre Plus), CEEOL and Ulrichsweb. See the guidelines for contributors at https://ubr.rev.unibuc.ro/.

Deadline for proposals: 10 April 2023

Please send proposals through this form: https://bit.ly/3IZfOQJ

Enquiries may be sent to our email address: conf.eng.litcult@lls.unibuc.ro

Conference fee: 50 euro (or 250 lei if paid in Romanian currency) to be paid by bank transfer into the account of the Alumni association (IBAN TBA) by 15 May 2023

For further details and updates, see: https://engleza.lls.unibuc.ro/conferinte/

(Enquiries regarding the Theoretical and Applied Linguistics section of the conference, which will be running at the same time, should be sent to aiced.2023@gmail.com)

Organising and Selection Committee:

• Dr Alina Bottez 
• Dr Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru
• Dr Eliana Ionoaia
• Dr Dragoș Manea 
• Dr Andrei Nae
• Dr Andreea Paris-Popa
• Dr Oana-Alis Zaharia

Advisory Board:

• Dr Nazmi Ağıl (Koç University, Istanbul)
• Prof. Bart Eeckhout (University of Antwerp)
• Prof. José Manuel Estévez-Saá (University of A Coruña)
• Dr Felicity Hand (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
• Prof. Carl Lavery (University of Glasgow)
• Prof. Thomas Leitch (University of Delaware)
• Dr Chris Louttit (Radboud University, Nijmegen)
• Prof. Domnica Rădulescu (Washington and Lee University, Lexington)
• Prof. Kerstin Shands (Södertörn University)
• Prof. Nicolas Tredell (University of Sussex)

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AICED-24 – The 24th Annual International Conference of the English Department, University of Bucharest (Romania).
University of Bucharest (Romania), 9-11 June 2023.
Deadline for proposals: 15 May 2023.

Conference organiser(s)

The English Department of the University of Bucharest and the Center for the Study of Language Development and Linguistic Communication

Invited speakers:

• Ludovico Franco (University of Florence)
• Fabienne Martin (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)
• Tom Roeper (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

Papers are invited in:

• Theoretical Linguistics (syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics and the interfaces)
• Language acquisition
• Applied linguistics & translation studies

Conference venue

Hybrid format (both on-line and on-site)

Conference website

Contact details

aiced.2023@gmail.com

CFP

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Strange Atmospheres: The Seventh International Flann O’Brien Conference.
Babes-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca (Romania), 27–30 June 2023.
Deadline for abstracts: 31 January 2023.

Organised by

The Department of English at Babeş-Bolyai University Cluj, with the International Flann O’Brien Society

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

• Joseph Brooker (Birkbeck College, University of London)
• Flore Coulouma (Université Paris Nanterre)
• Paul Fagan (Maynooth University)
• Heather Laird (University College Cork)

Presentation

Since the first, centenary Vienna conference in 2011, this critical conversation has expanded and diversified, turning to the archive, to recontextualizing and rehistoricizing approaches, addressing the aesthetic, political and ethical dimensions of O’Nolan’s/Flann’s/Myles’ experimental texts, as well as their interfaces with questions of agency and authorship, technology and the material world, cultural memory, medicine and epidemiology. During the last decade numerous landmark volumes were added to the corpus available to O’Nolan’s readers—from the short fiction (edited by Neil Murphy and Keith Hopper), to the plays and teleplays (edited by Daniel Keith Jernigan), and, more recently, the Collected Letters (edited by Maebh Long). Reflecting the rapid growth of Flann O’Brien studies, The Parish Review, the first scholarly journal dedicated to this writer’s work, has published articles and special issues on a wide range of topics, including archival studies of O’Nolan’s library, the textual and publishing history of O’Nolan’s journalism, the writer’s fraught relationship with the civil service, as well as O’Nolan’s afterlives in translation, adaptation, and the culture industry. In line with its open-access policy, the journal is hosted by the Open Library of Humanities.

The conference title, ‘Strange Atmospheres,’ foregrounds a concept that sits uneasily on the semantic boundary between environment, embodied space, and mood. Often bending to the fantastic, the uncanny, the fake and unconvincing, O’Brien’s style is itself characterised by a constant apprehension of the ways in which the atmospheric and the literary fertilise each other. The symposium will provide the occasion to reflect more fully on these aspects of his work.

The conference organisers invite proposals for 20 minute presentations on any topic relevant to the symposium theme. Special consideration will be given to the following topics in Flann O’Brien studies:

• Reflections on atmosphere as setting and atmosphere as mood
• Pathetic fallacy and the correspondences between space, place and feeling 
• Ecocritical approaches
• Radio transmissions and wireless communication
• Ideas of extended agency and extended subjectivity
• Politicised environments
• Localised and universal spaces
• Gothic spaces, horror and the uncanny 
• Life without borders
• Apocalyptic overtones
• Ghost cities
• Social, professional and urban spaces
• Literary discourse and the weather
• Modernist environments and ecological thought
• Non-humans and posthumans in O’Nolan’s fiction

Please send abstracts and a short bionote to the organisers at seventhflanncluj@gmail.com by January 31st, 2023. Proposals will be read and evaluated by February 15th, 2023. The time of delivery for each paper should not exceed 20 minutes. Selected talks will be published in a special issue of The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies (open-access at the Open Library of Humanities).

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October

Synergies in Communication (SiC 2023).
Bucharest University of Economic Studies (ASE), 26 – 27 October 2023 (hybrid format).
Submission of abstracts deadline: 15 October 2023.

The Department of Modern Languages and Business Communication of the Bucharest University of  Economic Studies (ASE), Romania, is organizing the 11th annual international conference Synergies in  Communication (SiC 2023), to be held in a hybrid format on 26-27 October 2023. The event will  be organized under the auspices of the Faculty of International Business and Economics in partnership with  

Université d’Artois, University of Zaragoza, Aix-Marseille Université, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Hiroshima University, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan University (SOA), “Ovidius” University of Constanta and QUEST  Romania, PROSPER-ASE Language Centre, The Romanian Society for English and American Studies (RSEAS),  a member of The European Society for the Study of English (ESSE), Romanian Association for American Studies (RAAS) . 

The conference is organized around 6 thematic areas:  

SECTION 1: SYNERGIES IN LINGUISTICS, BUSINESS AND (INTER)CULTURAL COMMUNICATION.  (ONLINE) 

Communication is a synergistic field where effectiveness is given by knowledge from diverse domains and by the  ability to align best practice with the increasingly rapid pace of the world today. Moreover, today, universities face the  challenge of meeting their dual role as institutions of culture and higher education as well as providers of  knowledgeable, flexible, autonomous and self-determined graduates for the labour market. This section of our  conference welcomes discussions on topics related to the following main areas: 

▪ Current developments in academic and research communication 

▪ Linguistics, sociolinguistics and (inter)cultural communication 

▪ The language of modern media 

▪ Language and literature in the cultural and linguistic space 

▪ Literary and cultural studies; analyses of culturally determined values, mentalities, actions, attitudes etc.; ▪ Theory and practice in (inter)cultural education; 

▪ Business communication – intercultural dimensions and specific skills demanded on the labour market. ▪ The inter-disciplinary dimension of business communication – changing mentalities through environmental  education. 

▪ Translation studies;  

▪ Traductology and terminology in business and economics; 

Email: sic.section1@gmail.com

SECTION 2: INTERDEPENDENCES: ACADEMIC AND DIGITAL LITERACIES IN THE NEW EDUCATIONAL  AND RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT. REVISITING QUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION (ONLINE) 

This section provides an interdisciplinary forum for specialists in various fields to share expertise and to reflect  together on ways forward, in the current academic context, with all its challenges and opportunities. This section  will be organised in partnership with the University of Zaragoza, the Doctoral School of Humanities of “Ovidius” University Constanta, and the Romanian Association for Quality Language Services QUEST. Possible topics  include (but are not restricted to): 

▪ Academic literacy development – case studies from different international contexts; ▪ New developments in communication, study, teaching, assessment, and professional development in the  digital era; 

▪ Quality related aspects in the new educational and research environment; 

▪ New perspectives on academic networking, research and dissemination of research outcomes; ▪ Revisiting research methodologies in applied linguistics and education; 

▪ Current and upcoming challenges in multilingual education. 

Email: sic.section2@gmail.com 

SECTION 3: ROMANIAN CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC STUDIES (ONLINE) 

Romanian academia play an important role in building bridges between values, traditions and representations  attached to Romania and to other cultural areas – in Europe or worldwide. We propose to focus on the  presence of Romanian culture in other countries, to strengthening connections between Romania and other  cultures, to the teaching of Romanian culture and language to foreigners in Romania and abroad, with a view  to using such cultural and linguistic knowledge in a multicultural context. Papers are invited on, but not limited  to topics such as: 

▪ Romanian cultural studies – literary, translation, socio-linguistic, pragmatic studies; ▪ Teaching Romanian as a foreign language – theory and practice; 

▪ Enhancing Romanian and foreign students’ awareness of each other’s cultures, as a prerequisite for academic and professional mobility, as well as social and cultural inclusion. 

Email: sic.section3@gmail.com 

SECTION 4: GASTRONOMICAL FUSION AND FISSION IN BETWEEN EAST AND WEST (HYBRID) 

In either institutionalized or private contexts, food is both nourishment and pleasure for those interacting within  their community or the other in both east and west. More specifically, food and gastronomy go beyond notions of  mere survival, being embedded in spiritual practices through culture-specific rituals/rites. Considering the cultural  flows adjacent to the process of globalization, the circulation of food(s) and gastronomical discourses has led to  unexpected fusions that have eroded rigid notions of cultural belonging and national identity. This panel then  proposes a debate upon topics ranging from feasts (anniversaries, celebrations, festivals, rites of passage,  funeral ceremonies) to sociological or psychological effects/disorders such as crave, obsession or deprivation  and associated phenomena. Proposed papers may thus cover or expand beyond the following: 

• Gastronomy, the Self and the Other; 

• Cuisine, media, popular culture and visual anthropology; 

• Food, women’s identity and memory; 

• Food, psychology and trauma studies; 

• Meals, image, imagination and imaginary worlds; 

• Food, colonial and postcolonial studies / translation studies; 

• Gastronomy, literature and the socio-political context 

• Food, cultural globalisation and hybridity. 

• Food, diaspora and cross-cultural communication. 

Email: sic.section4@gmail.com

SECTION 5: MINDSCAPES AND CULTURAL INSIGHTS IN FAR EASTERN STUDIES (ONLINE) 

Focusing mainly on Far Eastern Studies, spanning from China and Korea to Japan, this section is designed not  only as a debating venue on tradition, cultural representations, and academic challenges in a volatile  contemporary context, but also as an interdisciplinary nexus for specialists willing to share their new ideas,  research results, and latest in-depth scholarship on various topics such as: 

• literary research and interpretation 

• comparative literary studies 

• translation studies 

• linguistics, education, and language teaching 

• cultural studies 

• gender studies 

• semiotics 

• anthropology, mythology, and folklore 

• media and pop-culture 

• communication 

• digital humanities etc. 

 Email: sic.section5@gmail.com 

SECTION 6: MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO HUMAN EXPERIENCE (ONLINE) 

What does it mean for each of us to be a human being? How do we perceive ourselves? How do we perceive  others? What makes us act in a certain way? How do we relate to the people around us or to the context in  which we live? This section of the conference tries to find the answer to all these simple, yet puzzling questions that touch all the intricacies, contradictions and mysteries of life. The panel intends to be a celebration of the  human experience, with all its complexities, thrills and wonders. We welcome submissions that explore all  aspects of this topic from various academic fields: literature, philosophy, religion, culture, arts and media,  psychology, pedagogy, etc. The themes for the session include, but are not limited to the following suggestions: 

• The human condition: destiny, free will, the meaning of life, life as a journey, the human nature • The construction of identity: self-discovery, belonging, language, memory, relationality, alterity, etc. • The individual experience: happiness, change, struggle, pain, suffering, loss, trauma, etc. • The collective experience: community life, collective identity, collective trauma, conflict, tolerance,  adaptation, migration, diaspora, boundaries, borders, etc. 

• Experiencing worlds: religious, utopian, dystopian, fantastic and mythical imaginaries; inner worlds,  levels of consciousness, types of realities, dreams, etc. 

• Experiencing complex human emotions: awe, sublime, compassion, love, altruism, hate, guilt, despair,  etc. 

• The captivating human behaviour: heroism, revenge, forgiveness, acts of solidarity, etc. • The complexities of human motivation: beliefs, attitudes, assumptions, thinking patterns, habits, choices,  decision-making, rules, etc. 

• Modalities of envisaging the human experience: storytelling, reading, translating, etc. 

The role of education in shaping the human experience/ human nature 

 Email: sic.section6@gmail.com 

INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS 

Conference languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, or Romanian. The abstracts will go  through a peer-review process, followed by a notification of acceptance or request for revision. 

The authors who are interested in publishing their papers are responsible for preparation of the manuscripts  according to the guidelines provided. Each participant can submit maximum 2 papers as author or co-author. 

Submitted full papers are subject to a double-blind peer-review process. All review comments and suggestions  should be addressed in the final submission, otherwise the manuscript might be rejected at the final review stage.  We request that you submit both a marked-up version (with revisions highlighted or indicated with ‘track  changes’) and a “clean” version of the manuscript. The papers submitted for publication must be original and  not previously published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. 

PUBLICATION The accepted articles will be published in the International Conference Synergies in Communication Conference Proceedings Series (with print and online ISSN) by ASE Publishing House and currently indexed  in the following IDB: CEEOL, EBSCO Discovery Service, Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek Regensburg (EZB), ROAD, The Linguist List, Crossref Database, Dimensions, Modern Language Association (MLA), Cosmos. (see:  https://sic.ase.ro/index.php/international-data-bases/)

Further details in the CFP below.

CFP

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November

Interconnected Learning and Teaching in the Post-Pandemic Era. Trends and Challenges in Teaching Foreign Languages International conference.
Iasi (Romania), 8-12 November 2023.
Submission of papers and workshop / seminar proposals: 15.03-15.07.2023.

Call for Papers

In the light of the latest technological and multimedia developments, as well as the post-pandemic context, educators have opened to new forms of intercultural communication, knowledge transfer, data illustration and data storage. The accelerated development of the digital media, as well as the labor market, influences the general framework for the transfer of knowledge and skills in the didactics of foreign languages, which entails a demand for interconnectedness in the expansion of intercultural skills in both schools and universities.

We are pleased to invite you to engage in a constructive dialogue about the current trends and challenges of interconnected learning in an international conference that aims to create a productive network of teachers of different foreign languages, representatives of various public and private educational institutions, and representatives of the labor market. In order to make this extensive and interconnected dialogue truly relevant, we welcome papers and scientific contributions that could provide not only an impulse to the inter-, and transdisciplinary foreign language research and teaching, but also an overview of the implications on the practice and of the regional, national and international trends in educational policies. The discussions should focus on, but are not limited to, current research and trends in foreign language teaching, theoretical frameworks, and challenges in educational policy and practice in the context of the latest technological and multimedia developments.

We welcome papers in the following topics:

• Section 1 – Trends and challenges in foreign language teaching – children and adult education:
  learning environment, social forms, internal differentiation, learner autonomy, hard and soft skills transfer etc.
  Preferred languages: English, German, French etc.
• Section 2 – Language and culture: cross-cultural communication, cultural awareness, linguistic landscapes, inter-, and transdisciplinary approaches
  Preferred languages: English, German, French etc.
• Section 3 – Media and technology in the foreign language course: adaptive learning, online / offline resources, augmented and virtual reality, gamification as part of the course, blended learning
  Preferred languages: English, German, French etcc
• Section 4 – University didactics: the role of teaching language, literature and cultural studies, knowledge vs. skills in university didactics, lesson planning, multimedia approaches, informal studying, inter-, and transdisciplinary approaches, tailoring to the needs of the labour market
  Preferred language: English
• Section 5 – LSP didactics: communication and language for specific purposes, translations and interpreting, cross-cultural communication, dual study
  Preferred language: English
• Section 6 – National and international educational policies for foreign language teaching: the role of foreign languages in school education and training, development of international, national and regional curricula, current trends in the practice of assessment, internal differentiation
  Preferred language: English

CFP

Call for Workshops

In the light of the latest technological and multimedia developments, as well as the post-pandemic context, educators have opened to new forms of intercultural communication, knowledge transfer, data illustration and data storage. The accelerated development of the digital media, as well as the labor market, influences the general framework for the transfer of knowledge and skills in the didactics of foreign languages, which entails a demand for interconnectedness in the expansion of intercultural skills in the foreign language classrooms.

We are pleased to invite you to engage in a constructive dialogue about the current trends and challenges of interconnected learning in an international conference that aims to create a productive network of teachers of different foreign languages, representatives of various public and private educational institutions, and representatives of the labor market. In order to make this extensive and interconnected dialogue truly relevant, we aim at three categories of audience with specific activities:

• Workshops for students and entry-level teachers. This section aims to promote the teaching profession among foreign language students in Romania, and provide some professional tips to young teachers who could benefit from our workshops at the beginning of their career.
• Workshops for experienced teachers of foreign languages in universities, public or private schools. The workshops are meant to provide specific practical teaching tips and further perspectives for the future of the teaching profession.
• Workshops for university teachers who deliver highly specialized knowledge and skills to foreign language students (training in teaching foreign languages, literary studies etc.). This section aims to develop teaching skills required in university contexts (adult learners, highly specialized content).

We look forward to workshop proposals in the following categories:

• Language and culture: Cross-cultural communication, Teaching cultural aspects, Linguistic landscapes
• Learner psychology: Motivation, Internal differentiation, Learner autonomy, Motivation, Hard and soft skills training
• Media and technology in the foreign language course: Adapted learning, Online / offline resources, Augmented and virtual realities, Gamification as part of the course, Blended learning
• Learning environment: Learning design, Informal learning, Alternative learning environments
• LSP didactics: Knowledge vs. competence, Interactive teaching methods, Multimedia approaches, Informal studying, Inter-, and transdisciplinary approaches
• Assessment strategies: Testing and assessment, Standard tests and national examinations, Self- assessment, Knowledge vs. competence

The workshops can be designed either for teachers of certain foreign languages, focusing on the specific features of those languages, or for foreign language teachers in general, in which case English is the preferred language of communication.

CFP

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