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Thinking with Stories in Times of Conflict: A Conference in Fairy-Tale StudiesWayne State University, Detroit, MIAugust 2-5, 2017Website: http://clas.wayne.edu/languages/Thinking-with-Stories-in-Times-of-ConflictCall for papers for panel "Contemporary re-imaginings of human-animal entanglements in the fairy tale" - Deadline 30 December 2016The fairy tale has always been a privileged site for enacting, questioning and blurring the boundaries between the human and the animal. Its unceasing circulation across different cultures has allowed the genre to stay particularly attuned to the ever-changing configurations of those boundaries.Reflecting – and, in many ways, anticipating – the radical decentering of human subjectivity and the concomitant breakdown of the human/animal distinction at work in recent critical discourses, contemporary fairy-tale adaptations across different media have been engaging in a variety of re-imaginings of alternative “contact zones” for human-animal exchanges. While these imagined sites of multispecies encounter are not devoid of conflict, they attempt to go beyond traditional fairy-tale representations that marginalize animals as mere symbols of the human condition, by positioning animals as beings who manifest their own forms of agency, creativity and resistance, and who actively share their world with humans.We welcome proposals that explore such contemporary creative re-imaginings of human-animal entanglements in the fairy tale a cross different media – literature, film, painting, photography, sculpture, and performance, among others – and through a range of critical interdisciplinary perspectives. Potential topics of interest include:• Human-animal metamorphoses and hybrid creatures• Relations of predation – predatory powers, agents, anxieties, rituals• Forms of animal agency, resistance and revengePlease send an abstract of no more than 300 words for a 20-minute paper together with a short biographical note to Daniela Kato (danielakato@kit.ac.jp) and Mayako Murai (murai@kanagawa-u.ac.jp). The submission deadline for the abstracts is December 30, 2016.