The academic Holy Grail

We're back, trying to steer the floundering ship of the humanities through the turbulent waters of the global crisis...In other words, we're back and the coffee in Webb is still terrible.

Let's open the new year with congratulating two graduate students who have reached the Holy Grail of the academy: publications!

Shawn Edrei has two essays accepted for inclusion in two prestigious anthologies:
The first is The Devil that We Know: Evil in American Pop Culture, to be published by Praeger/ABC-Clio, 2013. His paper is on evil video games, the subject that seems to me a little tautological since as my kids were growing up, I believed ALL video games were evil.

The second is Issues of Control: Reading and Playing Video Games, probably from McFarland. Shawn's essay, not surprisinly, deals with the narratological aspects of the player's control.

Tom Shapira's book The Cure for Postmodern Blues is slated to be published by Sequart Research and Publication Group. Tom also gave a very interesting talk at the Future of Humanity conference at Van Leer Institute.

I invite both Shawn and Tom to share details of their work with our community. But I just wanted to say that we are very proud of you. Way to go, guys!  

Scientism, Evaluation, Persecution

Tel Aviv University Faculty of Humanities Department of English and American Literature Department of French

Universite Populaire Jacques Lacan Founded by Jacques-Alain Miller Workshop "Shoah, Zionism and the 'Extreme Lacanian Left'"

Invite you to an encounter with

Agnes Aflalo, Psychoanalyst
Member of the ECF and AMP
Author of L'Assassinat manqué de la psychanalyse

and

Gil Caroz, Psychoanalyst
Member of the NLS, ECF, and AMP
President, Euro-Federation of Psychoanalysis

On the topic
"Scientism, Evaluation, Persecution"

Sunday, November 13, 2011
10:00 - 14:00
Tel Aviv University
Gilman Building Room 496

Will look forward to greeting you

Professor Shirley Sharon-Zisser Chair, Department of English and American Studies Tel Aviv University	Marco Mauas Coordinator, UPJL Workshop on "Shoah, Zionism and the 'Extreme Lacanian Left'"
Professor Hava Bat Zeev Shyldkrot Chair, Department of French Tel Aviv University

The Return To The Assembly Line

The line has begun to move again, and we're constructing degrees one lesson at a time. This assembly line will have beer on tap, tea and cookies - and an opportunity to meet and greet your comrades on the factory floor.

Bring blankets! Bring munchies! Bring drinks! But far more important than anything else: bring yourselves! This is a perfect opportunity to get to know your fellow English / American Studies students, from all degrees.

We will be gathering from around 15:45 between Webb and Rosenberg, and probably packing up around 17:30. Come whenever you can, for as long as you like, the important thing is to clock in and take your place at the assembly line we all call home :)

the Post-Humanism conference at the Van Leer Institute

You're all invited!

The Future of Humanity: Post-Humanism and Trans-Humanism




Monday, October 24, 2011
at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
43 Jabotinsky St., Jerusalem Tel. 02-5605222 http://www.vanleer.org.il/


10:00 – 10:30 Opening Remarks

10.30 – 12:15 Theoretical Approaches
Chair: Dr. Keren Omry, Dept. of English Language and Literature, University of Haifa
The Question of Voice: Can a Post-Human Speak?
Prof. Elana Gomel, Dept. of English and American Studies, University of Tel Aviv
Toward a Post-Human Aesthetic
Prof. Yael Levin, Dept. of English Culture and Literature, University of Tromso
Putting the Impossible to Work: Post-Humanism and the Future of Humanity
Prof. Ruben Borg, Dept. of English, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

12:15 – 12:30 Coffee Break

12:30 – 14:00 Representations in Popular Culture
Chair: Prof. Elana Gomel, Dept. of English and American Studies, Tel Aviv University
Above and Beyond: Super Heroes as Popular Representation of Post-Humanism
Mr. Tom Shapira, Dept. of English and American Studies, Tel Aviv University
Non-Human Humanity
Mr. Ehud Maimon, Lecturer, Translator and Editor, Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy
Post-Humanism Post 9/11
Dr. Keren Omry, Dept. of English Language and Literature, University of Haifa

14:00 – 15:30 Lunch Break

15:30 – 17:00 Technology and Life
Chair: Ms. Kochi Cohen
Society for Life Extension? Some Ideological Justifications for the Pursuit of Longevity

Dr. Ilia Stambler, Dept. of Science, Technology and Society, Bar-Ilan University
Incorporation: Game-World Habitation and Post-Humanism
Prof. Gordon Calleja, Head of the Centre for Computer Games Research IT, University of Copenhagen
Why Quantum Computers?
Dr. Boaz Tamir, Dept. of Science, Technology and Society, Bar-Ilan University

17:00 – 17:30 Coffee Break

17:30 – 19:00 The Singularity
Chair: Dr. Joshua Fox, Development Manager, IBM
Mr. Michael Vassar, President, US Singularity Institute

19:00 – 20:30 Post-Human Apocalypse: Biopolitics, Contagion and End Times
Keynote Speaker: Prof. Sheryl Vint, Dept. of English Language and Literature, Brock University



Admission is free
Parking is not available at the VLJI.

ICON - The Israeli International SF Festival

http://www.icon.org.il/2011/

If You've never been to ICON before - now it's your chance! It's an amazing event, one of the best of its kind in the world.

Conference on childhood - CFP

2nd Global Conference The Child: A Persons Project Saturday 7th July 2012 – Monday 9th July 2012 Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom Call for Papers: After a hiatus of one year, the Childhood Project is returning. This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary conference project seeks to investigate and explore all aspects of childhood. The period of life prior to adulthood is one of dramatic change and development of physical, intellectual, psychological, and many other types of characteristics. The nature of childhood and its significance as a separate phase of life, however, is viewed quite differently in different cultures and in different historical eras. This conference will look at all aspects of the experience of childhood as well as the social and cultural perceptions of children and childhood. We encourage submissions on any theme to do with the nature of childhood, including, but not limited to the ones listed below. 1. Definitions of Childhood * How has the concept of childhood developed over time? * How is childhood viewed differently across different cultures and eras? * What are the boundaries of childhood? (Are children made to grow up too fast? Are mature people infantilized by definitions of the boundaries of childhood?) * Is ‘childhood’ a singular category or is it composed of quite distinct multiple categories? How does defining childhood also define adulthood and vice versa? 2. Childhood and Development * What are the important aspects of physical, psychological, emotional, intellectual, moral, social, etc. development in childhood? * How do institutions (like schools, medical centres, and even legal systems) effectively nurture the unique developmental needs of children? * How has our understanding of childhood as a period of development changed over time? Are there ways we are still getting it significantly wrong? 3. Children and Relationships * What are the dynamics of children’s relationships with their family, peers, and their community? * How are children’s social relationships either experienced positively or negatively? * What are the dynamics of children’s relationships with social institutions (like schools and religious organizations)? * What is the nature of children’s relationships with animals and nature? 4. Perceptions and Depictions of Childhood * How do adults perceive children and childhood? * How do they perceive the capabilities, responsibilities, and privileges of childhood? * How do they perceive their own experiences of childhood? (With nostalgia? embarrassment? amusement?) * How do children perceive themselves? * How are children and childhood depicted in academia and in the media such as art, literature, film, television, advertising, etc.? 5. Other Issues of Childhood * Children and education: What issues are the concerning how children are educated? * Children and leisure: How is involvement in recreational activities (including sports) either beneficial or harmful to children? * Children and the law: Does the criminal justice system effectively deal with children both as victims of crime and as perpetrators of crime? * Children and rights: What rights do children have in virtue of being children? To what extent must the choices of children be respected? * Children and gender: How are children socialized into gender-specific roles? What are the issues and concerns connected to how children form gender and sexual identities? * What is the nature of children’s relationship to the world of work? * Childhood in transition: how does adolescence bridge the child/adult world and to what extent are adolescents caught in a double-bind of being children and being adults? The Steering Group welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 13th January 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 11th May 2012. 300 word abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order: a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 key words E-mails should be entitled: CHILD2 Abstract Submission. Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend. Joint Organising Chairs: Wendy Turgeon Project Leader St. Joseph’s College, New York, USA Email: turgeon@optonline.net Rob Fisher Network Founder and Leader Inter-Disciplinary.Net Freeland, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom Email: child2@inter-disciplinary.net The conference is part of the Probing the Boundaries programme of research projects. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers maybe invited for development for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s) For further details of the project, please visit: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/persons/childhood/ For further details of the conference, please visit:http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/persons/childhood/call-for-papers/ Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.

A new conference at the University of Kent, Canterbury

A new and interesting conference on apocalyptic images in cinema and literature designed for graduate students.

http://www.kent.ac.uk/arts/film/filmcentre/materials/CFP_The_End_Of_2012.pdf