The New Languages of American Democracy
In the past twenty years, American democracy had to face a number of high impact events which have heavily affected its domestic scene, as well as the delicate balance of its world-wide political relations—from the final years of the Clinton administration to the election of George Bush and the tragedy of Ground Zero from the second Gulf War, to the election of an African American President like Barack Obama, to the emergence of a female candidate for the White House, to the recent election of the highly controversial President currently in charge, these are just a few of the crucial passages the U. S. democratic system has suffered in its recent past. Costellazioni, the new quarterly of languages and literatures of Sapienza’s School of Letters and Philosophy is dedicating its sizable monographic section of its 8th number (Feb. 2019) to a multi-voice debate on how the different linguistic systems − from the media to literature and fiction, from cinema to TV series, from the visual arts to comics − have registered those occurrences, what types of representations of power have they offered, how have they contributed to shape their course, and to influence the public opinion, as well as their specific audiences.
In view of the publication of the issue entitled The New Languages of American Democracy, the editorial board of Costellazioni is issuing a CFP inviting scholars from Italy and abroad to submit a 250 word proposal for an essay or article, preferably addressing one or more of the following subjects, or suggesting a different topic related to the following list:
– Political Rhetorics: cliches vs. new provocations
– TV series: some bad examples
– Contemporary fiction and the evolution of war rhetoric
– Political insights in non-English languages in the U. S.
– Linguistic sophistication and abysmal downfalls
– The language of the President(s)
– New perspectives in the language of fiction
– A comparison between the speeches of three Presidents
– Trump and the net: reciprocal nightmares
– “Ready for a new Bartleby?”: Melville and the Trump administration
– Female writers and the language of violence
– Southern writers’ attitudes towards a violent administration
– The myth of American democracy today
– A truly noir situation: the dissolving of literary genres
Abstracts, together with a short vita, should be addressed to the editorial board of Costellazioni ( rivistacostellazioni@gmail.com) which will forward the material to Ugo Rubeo, the guest editor of the issue. All essays should be written in English, and their lenght should average 6.000 words, or approximately 40.000 strokes. Deadline for the submission of abstracts: October 15, 2017. Accepted essays should be received by the editors not later than Septembre 30, 2018. For further details, please refer to the journal’s site
https://www.rivistacostellazioni.org/procedure-di-redazione