call for papers
The Louisiana Conference on Language, Literature and Culture
March 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 2013
What’s in a Castle of Murder?
Fairy Tales across Time and Place: Celebrating Our Deepest Language
The Louisiana Conference invites papers and creative work on the timeless and universal place of fairy tales in the world of communication and education. We are interested in how fairy tales are and have been used to bridge cultures and time, connecting diverse peoples by means of easily translatable concepts. Of particular interest might be violence, fear, entrapment and salvation; the battles of truth and deception, reality and illusion, honesty and trickery; character altering/forming cryptozoological sightings; and happiness deferred, denied, and occasionally delivered. The conference seeks to focus on the barrier-shattering communicability of fairy tales and thereby emphasize their importance to the intellectual development of thinkers at all levels, as well as emphasize the many uses of fairy tales in the classroom. Topics might include but are not limited to: problems of origin; highbrow vs. lowbrow controversies; questions of definition; cruelty and violence and over-the-top violence; contemporary adaptations (film, television, comics, graphic novels, theatre); the fairy tale in the works of Stephen King; fairy tales, horror and ghost stories; fascination with the grotesque and gothic; fairy tales in early and modern American fiction; uses of fairy tales in philosophy; revisionist takes; uses in contemporary poetry and novels; fairy tales in music; Walt Disney adaptations; feminist theory and the fairy tale; children’s literature; pedagogical uses. If our list of possible topics does not stir your imagination, please feel free to submit work that in any way pertains to fairy tales.
Guidelines for Submission:
•350-500 word proposals for 20 min papers should be submitted via email as attachment in rich text (.rtf) format by November 30th, 2012, ----- to (laconference2013@gmail.com) Do not include name on abstract. Include name, affiliation, email address, phone number, and title of paper, as well as a brief biographical statement in the body of the email. Indicate possible A/V needs.
• Panel proposals (three presenters) should explain in 500 words the panel topic and include a 500- word abstract and biographical statement for each presenter.
• Creative submissions should include a short, descriptive abstract as well as a sample of the work to be considered. Please specify “Creative Submission” in your proposal.
Darrell Bourque Award: For information please visit our website:
Creative Writing Award: For information please visit our website:
The Louisiana Conference on Language, Literature, and Culture is a professional conference but welcomes contributions from academics at all levels.
We hope to hear from you soon.
Maia and Dan
Download a .pdf version of this Call for Papers here.
updates
Since it is all but impossible to talk about fairy tales without the mind casting at least a few tendrils back to childhood, this conference will thankfully lie heavily on the imaginative side of things. Needless to say, creative submissions are welcome. This welcoming is not meant to deepen the current unnecessary and unfortunate line dividing creative and scholarly writers, but to invite new approaches to both the creative and the critical. In order to encourage a spirit of play, or at the very least a new-eyes child-like enthusiasm (do we not enjoy our work?), the Louisiana Conference on Language, Literature and Culture will be hosting a masquerade ball (that’s right, folks: masks, wine and dancing). There will also be a kayak/canoe tour of our very own Lake Martin (quite a haunted place if the history is true (and when isn’t it?)), a ghost story reading mid-lake and by British electrical torch light (this lake reading is the form our creative writing competition will take), followed by a bonfire side gumbo feast and musical entertainment. If this doesn’t sound appealing then consider donating your body to science as evidence for the non-existence of the soul. So come to present your papers, your own fairy tales, or come to try and put a frown on the process and fail. We welcome all motives.
The Louisiana Conference on Language, Literature, and Culture is especially welcoming to creative submissions this year. To encourage a creative spirit of play, we will be hosting a masquerade ball (that’s right, folks: masks, wine and dancing). There will also be a kayak/canoe tour on nearby Lake Martin, a ghost story reading mid-lake, followed by a bonfire-side gumbo feast and musical entertainment. So come to present your critical papers or fairy tales, or your own interesting combinations of the two. We welcome all motives.
Summer Fundraising has gone swimmingly. Over the course of 6 Jambalaya Thursdays held right here in Griffin Hall, we raised a total of $470.00 toward conference expenses. Thanks to a small group of committed volunteers, we are ahead of the game before the academic year has even begun.
Volunteers are needed for Fundraising Events in Fall and Spring semesters, and with a solid crew of help, we will have more fun earning more money to fund some of our goals. For instance, we look forward to the possibility of offering more, and more substantial graduate student travel assistance, offering honoraria that will attract prestigious speakers, and including a Creative Submissions award that is equal to the Critical award already in existence.
Also, we are approaching this conference with plans to propose a publication of the proceedings, so that professionals and graduate level students will have an opportunity to publish revisions of their conference presentations as academic articles.
Stay tuned, there is much more to come!
Maia Butler
Dan Williams