By Lisa Feklistova
Consider the witch. Why did she frighten Europeans, once upon a time?
Journée d’études / Study Day on Short Crime Fiction – 14 October 2022, Université Catholique de Lille
Call for Papers
Modern detective fiction is usually considered to have started with Edgar Allan Poe’s three Dupin short stories and it is certain that the Sherlock Holmes short stories in The Strand magazine brought the new genre to the attention of the world. Other notable writers who helped shape the genre in the early 20th century, including G. K. Chesterton and Melville Davisson Post, stuck to the short form and managed both to innovate and to produce works which are still appreciated today. For Ellery Queen, writing in 1942, it was still possible to state that “the original, the ‘legitimate’ form” of detective fiction “was the short story”[1] and to perceive the detective novel as an inflated short story. According to Catherine Ross Nickerson, “[t]he mechanisms of a detective narrative are more apparent in a short story, since there is less upholstery for hiding the ropes and pulleys. The shorter form also forces writers to make a more clear decision about whether to focus on the puzzle or on the character.”[2]
Call for Contributors: Handbook of the Short Story
We are editing a Handbook of the Short Story in the World for Brill as part of the series Handbooks of Literary and Cultural Studies, and we are looking for chapters on some specific topics (see below). We are well aware that the chapters are broad in their scope. Some of these chapters should have a comparativist approach that covers several countries. For that reason, we are looking for potential contributors who have expertise in the field to write a synthetical approach to the topic while at the same time being analytical in the discussion of concrete short stories. Ideally a chapter should offer an overview of the topic, and then discuss three or four authors and/ or stories.
The volume is aimed at non-specialist scholars and graduate (or otherwise advanced) students in literature and cultural studies and it offers balanced accounts, not axe-grinding or reckoning of grievances with other scholars. The chapters aim to provide full balanced accounts at an advanced undergraduate and graduate level, as well as a synthesis of debate, past and current methodologies, and the state of scholarship. As editors, we are seeking purpose-written contributions, book chapters, between 6,000 and 8,000 words, aiming to explain what sources there are, what methodologies and approaches are appropriate in dealing with them, what issues arise and how they have been treated, indicating also the room for disagreement. In conclusion the chapter must be a guide to the graduate student approaching the material for the first time (focused not marginal, orienting, providing contextual information, pointing out leading or provocative questions).
Contributors should send an abstract (300 – 500 words) and a brief CV to both editors by March 15th 2022. Confirmation of acceptance by April 15th 2022. Final versions should be submitted in December 2022.
If you have any query, please do not hesitate to email us.
Santiago Rodríguez Guerrero-Strachan (University of Valladolid) guerrero@fyl.uva.es and José Ramón Ibáñez Ibáñez (University of Almería) jibanez@ual.es
List of units to cover:
Theoretical approaches
The short story: from the Press to the Digital Age
The Folk Tale
The Fantastic/ Horror/ Gothic Short Fiction
The Science Fiction Short Story
History of Short Fiction
The Rise of the Modern Short Story: Poe, Hawthorne, ETA Hoffmann, J.P. Kleist, N. Gogol, Sir Walter Scott
The Realist Short Story: S. Crane, Henry James, G. Flaubert, G. Maupassant, I. Turgenev, T. Hardy, M. Twain, A. Chekhov
Fin-de-siècle Short Story: Gérard de Nerval, R. Kipling, R. L. Stevenson
The Modernist Short Story: James Joyce, V. Woolf, E. Hemingway, W. Faulkner, F.S. Fitzgerald, K. Mansfield, J. Conrad, Ford Maddox Ford
The Diasporic Short Story: Jhumpa Lahiri, Ha Jin, Sefi Atta, Ben Okri
Regions of the Short Story
The Hispanic and Francophone Caribbean Short Story: A. Carpentier, G. García Márquez, S. Ramírez, Marvel Moreno
The Río de la Plata Short Story: J. L. Borges and J. Cortázar
The North American Short Story in Spanish: J.J. Arreola and A. Monterroso
The Spanish Short Story: G.A. Bécquer, E. Pardo Bazán, I. Aldecoa, C. Fernández Cubas
Ethnic Fiction: M. Hong Kingston, H. M. Viramontes, Louise Erdrich
The Anglo-Indian Short Story: M. Raj Anard, R.K. Narajan and Raja Rao.
The Southeast Asian Short Story
The Arabic Short Story
The Short Story in German: F. Kafka, T. Mann, T. Bernhard
Eastern Europe Short Fiction: Sholom Aleichem, Shalom Asch, I. Bashevis Singer, I. Babel
The East Asian Short Story
The Israeli Short Story
LIST OF CHAPTERS:
Theoretical approaches: The short story: from the Press to the Digital Age
The Folk Tale
The Fantastic/ Horror/ Gothic Short Fiction
The Science Fiction Short Story
History of Short Fiction:
The Rise of the Modern Short Story.
The Realist Short Story.
Fin-de-siècle Short Story.
The Modernist Short Story.
The Diasporic Short Story.
Ethnic Short Fiction.
Regions of the Short Story:
The Hispanic and Francophone Caribbean Short Story.
The Río de la Plata Short Story.
The North American Short Story in Spanish.
The Spanish Short Story.
The Anglo-Indian Short Story.
The Arabic Short Story.
The Israeli Short Story.
The Short Story in German.
Eastern European Short Fiction.
The Southeast Asian Short Story.
The East Asian Short Story.