Call for Papers: Networks (Issue 2, Summer 2015)
‘The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the title, the first lines, and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network’ (Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge)
Oxford Research in English (ORE) is an online journal for postgraduate students in English, Film Studies, Creative Writing, and related disciplines. All submissions are peer-reviewed by current graduate students at the University of Oxford. The journal is currently seeking papers of 5-8,000 words for its second issue, to be released in Summer 2015, which will be exploring the theme of ‘Networks’.
Networks have been a shared focus for literature and history scholars alike: while, in twentieth-century studies, an increased focus on interconnected literary coteries has enhanced our knowledge of a period rich in social and publishing networks, early modern and eighteenth-century scholarship has long been interested in expanding networks of patronage and influence in literary production and dissemination. In postcolonial studies, diasporic networks of authors have provided a way of engaging with the politics of globalization and transnationalism, whilst Victorian literary studies mirror such concerns through their interest in imperial and colonial structures.
New technologies have now brought not only new meanings, but also new tools to uncover networks, as mass digitisation made both texts and criticism more accessible than ever, spurring debates on the dangers and benefits of this new medium, and uncovering new modes of analysis such as topic modelling and other forms of computational criticism. This issue seeks to explore these different interpretations of networks, and welcomes papers investigating, but not limited to, any of the following themes:
·        Networks of knowledge and cultural networks
·        Influence and patronage
·        Diasporas
·        Text and textuality
·        Fictional representations of networks: groups; clubs; communities; societies.
·        Issues surrounding (or representations of) sociability, belonging, inclusion. Equally, and conversely: isolation, alienation, and exclusion.
·        Literary networks within different mediums: epistolary networks; networks in journalism; networks in the digital age.
·        Networks that span boundaries: cross-cultural networks; international networks; invisible networks; networks across time.
·        Genealogies (both familial and textual)
·        Networking
·        Book production, readership and dissemination
·        Networks and coteries
·        Networks of influence/power
·        Nets, works, and any other interpretations of the theme
Please submit papers for consideration to ore@ell.ox.ac.uk by the deadline of 17/04/15.
Papers should be between 5-8,000 words in length, and should be formatted according to the journal’s house style, details of which can be found on our website:http://english.ohgn.org/journal