Humour has been a vital ingredient of the print media since it emerged in the 17^th century, yet it has hardly featured in academic studies of media history. Contributions are called for a new text that is aiming to fill that gap with a collection of papers by international scholars. It will draw from a range of disciplines such as media history, international literary journalism, English/American studies, humour studies, media content analysis, cultural studies.

Abstracts of 200 words are invited by 2 September 2014. Please send to the editors, Richard Lance Keeble rkeeble@lincoln.ac.uk and David Swick david.swick@ukings.ca Final chapters of up to 7,000 words will be due by 2 January 2015. The publishers, Routledge, of Abingdon, Oxon, UK, are being approached, with publication planned for late 2015. To download the CFP, click here.

The investigation of things has comprised an important subject across many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences over the last thirty years. It is the subject of the 18th Annual WIP (Work-In-Progress) Conference 
in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland 
from 29-30 September 2014.

The organising committee invites proposals for 20-minute papers on any aspect of this theme. Please email abstracts (of 250 words) accompanied by a short biographical note (50 words) to:UQWiP2014@gmail.com by 31 JULY 2014.

The 18th annual Work In Progress (WIP) is a postgraduate conference addressing the theme of “The Life of Things” from disciplines within the humanities including literary and cultural studies, film, media and communication studies, drama, art history, and writing. Registration will be opening soon. Find more information at http://www.emsah.uq.edu.au/index.html?page=212309&pid=177854 or on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/wip2014thelifeofthings?ref=hl&ref_type=bookmark

The deadline for abstracts for the 19^th Annual Conference of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs has been extended. Abstracts for papers on the theme of Minding the gap: Writing across thresholds and fault lines will now be accepted until August 1.

Papers and presentations can reflect on creating, editing, teaching, and researching writing in any genre, including poetry, script, prose, fiction, non-fiction, creative non-fiction and journalism. For more info, go to the ‘Annual Conference’ tab above, or download the call for papers here. The Conference will be held at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand, from 30 November to 2 December, 2014.

Bukker Tillibul: the online journal of writing and practice-led research has been revamped. It’s an ERA listed publication and even creative works are refereed. Essays, fiction, poetry and a great look. Check it out at http://bukkertillibul.net  Submission are welcomed, and should be sent to dhecq@swin.edu.auwith your bio.

Bukker Tillibul has operated since 2004 to provide the discipline of Writing (both creative and professional) at Swinburne University of Technology with a much needed forum for discussion and debate. While all submissions are valued, it is especially aimed at postgraduate students and early career researchers. It fosters research quality framework outcomes for students and staff engaged in research in this discipline. Bukker Tillibul welcomes scholarly essays on practice-led research, fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry and reviews. It also encourages pieces of ‘creative research in action’ which foreground the act of art-making. Works are published online as soon as they are refereed. As an online journal Bukker Tillibul has the flexibility to reach across borders and to connect creators and researchers across the world.

The 19^th Annual Conference of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs will be held at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand, from 30 November to 2 December, 2014. Submissions of abstracts are now invited for papers on the theme of:

Minding the gap: Writing across thresholds and fault lines

Papers and presentations reflecting on creating, editing, teaching, and researching writing in any genre, including poetry, script, prose, fiction, non-fiction, creative non-fiction and journalism are invited. For more info, go to the ‘Annual Conference’ tab above, or download the call for papers here. Abstracts are due by 13 June, 2014.

‘The View from Above: Cosmopolitan Culture and its Critics’, a two-day interdisciplinary conference for post-graduate students and early career researchers, will begin at the University of Melbourne on Monday 22 September 2014.

This conference invites participants to explore cosmopolitanism, both as a utopian project and as an object of critique.  While the focus of the conference is on literature and literary criticism, the organisers welcome papers addressing theatre, the visual arts, popular culture, translation and other forms of cultural expression in either contemporary or historical settings. They also strongly encourage contributions from creative writers. Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to viewfromaboveconference@gmail.com by Monday, 19 May, 2014.

‘Cosmopolitanism’ connotes a dynamic, eclectic and sophisticated cultural sphere, one that transcends borders and national differences.  Although the term is an ancient one, deriving from the Greek word kosmopolitês, its meaning has never been stable.  The notion of the cosmopolitan is glamorous and in some respects elitist, suggesting a ‘luxuriously free-floating view from above’ (Bruce Robbins, Cosmopolitics, 1998).  At the same time, it has utopian connotations of pluralism and universality.

In the last decade or so, discourses of cosmopolitanism have experienced a resurgence.  The term is increasingly associated with multiculturalism, diasporic culture and the impact of globalisation.  Critics have advocated new forms of ‘rooted’, ‘vernacular’, postcolonial and even ‘refugee’ cosmopolitanism, in an attempt to break away from Eurocentric canons and outmoded nation-based identity politics.  But do these new accounts of cosmopolitanism resolve the tension between its egalitarian and elitist impulses?  Are aspirations to cosmopolitanism still, as Simon Gikandi suggests, ‘an essential mark of bourgeois identity and privilege’?

Topics for discussion might include:
·      –   old and new cosmopolitanisms (including the influence of classical, medieval and early modern texts on more recent understandings of the cosmopolitan)
·      –   cosmopolitan sensibilities in colonial, postcolonial and diasporic literatures
·       –  cosmopolitanism and class
·       –  cosmopolitanism and the metropolitan/regional
·       –  feminist engagements with cosmopolitanism
·       –  cosmopolitanism and sexuality
·       –  cosmopolitanism, advertising, popular culture and everyday life
·       –  transnationalism and globalisation, parochialism and provinciality
·       –  cosmopolitan readerships and polities; the role of translation
·       –  creative practice and the cosmopolitan
·       –  the text as a cosmopolitan space
·       –  utopianism and cosmopolitan futures
The convenors welcome abstracts from postgraduate and early career researchers working in any field of the humanities, particularly literary studies, creative writing, theatre studies, history (including art history), cultural studies and translation studies. Presenters may choose to focus on Australian cosmopolitanisms or address broader categories such as the postcolonial or the transnational.
Keynote speakers are Professor John M. Ganim, University of California, Riverside, on medieval cosmopolitanism; and
Dr Brigid Rooney, University of Sydney, on cosmopolitan suburbia.

Co-convenors:
Dr. Katie Hansord
Catherine Noske
Lucinda O’Brien
Dr. Jay Daniel Thompson

Supported by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature

The National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) in Britain is delighted to invite submissions for the first edition of a new UK journal: Writing in Practice: the UK Journal of Creative Writing in Academia.

This will be a peer-reviewed journal that aims to explore the nature of the art of writing, highlighting current academic thinking and practice, and reflecting on this with an international outlook. It also aims to encourage research in the field of Creative Writing, including practice-based and practice-led research. The first edition will be published in February, 2015, and the deadline for submissions is 10 July 2014.

Writing in Practice will encourage the investigation of a broad range of possible approaches to Creative Writing, focusing in particular on critical discussion of creative processes, and critical examination of the history and pedagogy of Creative Writing in all contexts. Creative Writing itself is welcomed when integral to an article. NAWE members with appropriate academic experience are invited to put themselves forward as peer reviewers. Further details about all the above are available on the NAWE website:
http://www.nawe.co.uk/DB/nawe-news/writing-in-practice.html
The deadline for submitting proposals for this year’s NAWE Conference is also approaching: 5 May, 2014. The Conference will take place in Bristol, 14-16 November, 2014, and booking is now open at
http://www.nawe.co.uk/writing-in-education/nawe-conference.html

The Creative Writing Program in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne is currently seeking an experienced creative writing practitioner at the level of Senior Lecturer or Lecturer in the areas of writing for screen or digital media with a developing research profile in their field. Applications close on 24 April. For more information, go to

http://jobs.unimelb.edu.au/caw/en/job/882158/lecturer-senior-lecturer-in-creative-writing