CFP: Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies

Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies is inviting submissions for its forthcoming issues. We encourage contributions from both Taiwan and international communities addressing our special topics; articles on other aspects of literature and culture are also welcome. If your manuscript is intended as a special topic submission, please so indicate. All correspondence should be addressed to Editor, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University, 162 Hoping East Road, Section 1, Taipei 106, Taiwan. [e-mail: concentric.lit @deps.ntnu.edu.tw]

Forthcoming Special Topics
Vol. 34 No. 1: "Water" (March 2008)
Guest Editor: Scott Slovic
University of Nevada, Reno
Deadline for Submissions: October 20, 2007

Water is necessary for life; likewise, the motif of water has nourished countless works of literature. The properties of water make it an excellent literary device: Water ebbs and flows, enabling an endless circulation. It can carry a vessel, or take the shape of any vessel that holds it. It occurs in various forms-vapor, rain, snow, ice-and differing intensities, from the gentle drizzle, the thunder storm to the devastating tsunami. Water has the power to give life and take it away: it quenches people's thirst and nourishes crops, yet it also floods fields and farms and homes. It is baptism and balm from Heaven; water is also the form divine retribution took to wipe Noah's contemporaries from the earth. As a major literary motif, water brings succor to T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, serves as a testing ground in Melville's Moby-Dick, and opens a path to spiritual healing in Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Kate Chopin and Virginia Woolf both use water as symbol of rebirth and a pathway to creativity-but also as the site of a deadly finale, both for Chopin's protagonist in The Awakening and for Woolf herself. In recent decades, water has emerged as an important metaphor for theoretical discourses, including those of diaspora, migrations, globalization, and eco- criticism. As water is shapeless and yet able to take any shape, possibilities for investigations into the literary and cultural uses of water are fluid and multiple. The editors welcome explorations of the topic from a broad range of viewpoints.

Vol. 34 No. 2: Asia and the Other
a special issue in conjunction with the international conference on "Asia and the Other"

Date of Publication: September 2008
Deadline for Submissions: April 25, 2008

The year 1984 witnessed the taking place of a pioneering conference entitled "Europe and Its Others." With the publication of Edward W. Said's Orientalism only a few years apart, the conference organized by the University of Essex engaged in discussions heralded in Said's monumental work and presented some of the most groundbreaking writings in the then emerging field of "postcolonial theory," with the participation of numerous thought-provoking scholars, Said himself included. Now, two decades later, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies invites proposals for a special issue on "Asia and the Other," in conjunction with the international conference on the same topic, organized by the Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University, to solicit input on Asia's positioning in light of the question of the other.

Presenting a similar-sounding theme with slight revision to the Essex conference, we would like to examine whether or not the idiom of the self/other demarcation is still relevant in the context of Asia. If yes, relevant in what ways? Is the present-day Asia still imagined in the same fashion as the Orient once was? Does the rising economic force of Asia grant Asian countries the "Occidentalist" optics through which they represent their others as Orientalists did them? Without fixed conceptual presumptions, "Asia and the Other" is interested not only in Asia's relations with "its" others, but also in Asia's relations with "the Other/other" as an ethical, political, epistemo- logical, or ontological problematic. "Asia and the Other" seeks to revisit issues taken up by earlier postcolonialist theorists with a different geo- political focus; reexamine and update theoretical apparatuses often adopted in the discussions of the self/other issue, employing the realities of Asia, past and present, as examples; and stimulate conversations regarding the tensions or mutual productivity in cross-cultural, cross-national encounters.

We welcome proposals from various disciplines, including (but not limited to) anthropology, art history and theory, cultural studies, film and media studies, gender studies, geography, history, linguistics, literary studies, performance studies, philosophy, political science, religion studies, and sociology. We are particularly interested in submissions that not only provide historically- grounded reflections, but also boldly reassess predominant theoretical concerns in their specific fields.

Manuscript Submission Guidelines

1. Manuscripts should be submitted in English. Please send the manuscript, an abstract, a list of keywords, and a vita as Word-attachments to concentric.lit@deps.ntnu.edu.tw. Alternatively, please mail us two hard copies and an IBM-compatible diskette copy. Concentric will acknowledge receipt of the submission but will not return it after review.
2. Manuscripts should be prepared according to the latest edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Except for footnotes in single space, manuscripts must be double-spaced, typeset in 12-point Times New Roman.
3. To facilitate the Journal's anonymous refereeing process, there must be no indication of personal identity or institutional affiliation in the manuscript proper. The name and institution of the author should appear on a separate title page or in the vita. The author may cite his/her previous works, but only in the third person.
4. The Journal will not consider for publication manuscripts being simultaneously submitted elsewhere.
5. If the paper has been published or submitted elsewhere in a language other than English, please make available two copies of the non-English version. Concentric may not consider submissions already available in other languages.
6. One copy of the Journal and fifteen off-prints of the article will be provided to the author(s) on publication.
7. It is the Journal's policy to require assignment of copyrights form by all authors.