—FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS AND EXTENDED DEADLINE—

Seventh International Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative (CMN’16)

Advancing the Science of Narrative

Special Focus: Computational Narrative and the Humanities

a satellite workshop of:

Digital Humanities 2016 (DH2016)

11-13 July 2016

Kraków, Poland

http://narrative.csail.mit.edu/cmn16/

—IMPORTANT DATES—

15 March 2016.  Submission deadline (EXTENDED).

11 April 2016.  Notification of acceptance.

16 May 2016.  Final Camera Ready Versions Due.

11-13 July 2016.  CMN’16.

11-16 July 2016.  DH2016.

—WORKSHOP AIMS—

The workshop series, Computational Models of Narrative (CMN) is dedicated to advancing the computationally-grounded scientific study of narrative.  Now in its seventh iteration, the workshop has a tradition of crossing academic borders and bringing together researchers from different disciplines on a common object of study.  Narrative provides a model for organizing and communicating experience, knowledge, and culture.  Investigations of narrative operations in textual, aural, and visual media have been systematically pursued in the humanities since before the early structural linguistics and folklorist inspired work of the Russian Formalists, and in the computing sciences since before the early cognitive science inspired work on scripts and frames.  Research continues on computational approaches across the humanities and sciences.  In order to appreciate the various domains and approaches connected to the computationally enabled study of narratives and narrative theory, it is becoming increasingly clear that research in this area requires engagement from many communities of interest.  Peer-reviewed full proceedings from CMN’13, ‘14, and ‘15 are each available in the OpenAccess Series in Informatics (OASIcs) published by Schloss Dagstuhl; peer-reviewed proceedings from CMN’11 and CMN’12 were published by AAAI and LREC, respectively. 

—SPECIAL FOCUS: COMPUTATIONAL NARRATIVE AND THE HUMANITIES—

This inter-disciplinary workshop will be an appropriate venue for papers addressing fundamental topics and questions regarding narrative.  Papers should be relevant to the computational modeling, and scientific or humanistic understanding of narrative. The workshop will have a special focus on how the computational modeling, analysis, or generation of narrative has affected approaches in the humanities for studying and generating narrative in or across textual, aural, or visual media.  Possible themes could connect to the representation of narrative, connections between cognition and narrative or knowledge representation and narrative, the use of heuristics to handle complexity, incorporation of insights about human thinking, the use of narrative to organize information in the humanities, the relationship between top-down and bottom-up approaches for narrative understanding, or how narrative is seen to function differently depending upon the medium.  Regardless of its topic, reported work should provide insight of use to the scientific understanding or computational modeling of narratives. Discussing technological applications or motivations is not prohibited, but is not required. We accept both finished research and more tentative exploratory work.

We invite and encourage submissions either as full papers or position papers, through the workshop’s EasyChair website:

    https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cmn16

We also invite you to submit an abstract soon so that we can gauge the number of submissions we can expect. (Submitting an abstract is possible without submitting the full paper at the same time.)  Full papers should contain original research and have to fit within 16 pages; position papers can report on work-in-progress, research plans or projects and have to fit within four pages plus one page of references.

Illustrative Topics and Questions

– How can computational narratives be studied from a humanities point of view?

– Are generative models of narrative texts, movies or video games possible, desirable, and useful?

– What comprises the set of possible narrative arcs? Is there such a set? How many possible story lines are there?

– Is narrative structure universal, or are there systematic differences in narratives from different cultures?

– How are narratives affected by the media used to convey them?

– What aspects of cross-linguistic work has narrative research neglected?

– What opportunities are there for narrative analysis across languages?

– What makes narrative different from a list of events or facts?

– How do conceptions and models of spatiality or temporality influence narrative and narrative theory?

– What are the details of the relationship between narrative and language, image, or sound?

– How is narrative knowledge captured and represented?

– How are narratives indexed and retrieved? Is there a universal scheme for encoding episodic information?

– What shared resources are required for the computational study of narrative? What should a “Story Bank” contain?

– What shared resources and tools are available, or how can already-extant resources be adapted to the study of narrative?

– What are appropriate formal or computational representations for narrative?

– How should we evaluate computational and formal models of narrative?

– Can narrative be subsumed by current models of higher-level cognition, or does it require new approaches?

– How do narratives mediate our cognitive experiences, or affect our cognitive abilities?

– How can narrative systems be applied to problem-solving?

– How far are we from a theory of narrative adaptation across media?

—ORGANIZING COMMITTEE—

– Antonio Lieto (University of Turin, Italy)

– Ben Miller (Georgia State University, USA)

– Rémi Ronfard (Inria, LJK, University of Grenoble, France)

– Stephen Ware (University of New Orleans, USA)

– Mark A. Finlayson (Florida International University, USA)

—Keynote Speaker—

– John Bateman, University of Bremen, Germany

—PROGRAM COMMITTEE—

David Elson, Columbia University & Google

Floris Bex, Utrecht University

Rossana Damiano, University of Turin

Kerstin Dautenhahn, University of Hertfordshire

Pablo Gervás, Complutense University of Madrid

Andrew Gordon, ICT

Livia Polanyi, LDM Associates

Marie-Laure Ryan, University of Colorado Boulder

Tim Tangherlini, UCLA

Mariet Theune, University of Twente

Atif Waraich, Manchester Metropolitan University

Mehul Bhatt, University of Bremen

Emmett Tomai, University of Texas-Pan American

Neil Cohn, UCSD

Inderjeet Mani, Yahoo Labs

Loizos Michael, Open University of Cyprus

Chris Meister, Hamburg University

Fritz Breithaupt, Indiana University

Benedikt Löwe, Universität Hamburg

The Stylistics Research Group at Sheffield Hallam University (UK) are pleased to announce the CFP for our upcoming conference Style and Response: Minds, Media, Methods which will take place on Friday 11th and Saturday 12th November 2016. 

Keynote Speakers:

Dr. Ranjana Das, University of Leicester.

Prof. Melanie Green, University of Buffalo.

Dr. David Peplow, Sheffield Hallam University and Dr. Sara Whiteley, University of Sheffield.

Dr. Bronwen Thomas, Bournemouth University.

For more information about the conference including how to submit an abstract, please visit the conference website: https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/styleandresponse/ 

Style and Response: Minds, Media, Methods is hosted by the Stylistics Research Group at Sheffield Hallam University and sponsored by Sheffield Hallam University’s Humanities Research Centre and the international Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA).

C F P

International Society for the Study of Narrative

Philadelphia, January 5-8, 2017

MLA Guaranteed Session

“Cultural Narratives”

A “cultural narrative” is defined not by its structure but by its function, which is to locate time; it

is grounded in the premise that, in this sense, the functions of a narrative are historically specific

and culturally delimited; and it is presumed that historically specific conditions render specific

narratives cogent and others absurd, such that, at any given moment, at any given social site (the

family, the community, the state, the nation), some cogent narratives are tacitly accepted as

universally true, others as viable possibilities, and others as untenable absurdities. Any specific

culture or subculture, therefore, comprises the map of the untenably absurd, the tacitly true, and

the viably cogent, and thus that culture’s imaginative works reflect its cogent narratives and also

are, through acts of iteration and reinforcement, (re)productive of that culture.

In this context, the panel on “Cultural Narratives” seeks papers:

•  reading specific texts as reflections or interpretations of culture or as negotiating or failing to

negotiate conflicting cultural narratives that vie for cogency at a given historical moment.

•  Identifying, through an analysis of contemporaneous texts, emerging cultural narratives or

reinterpretations and modifications of existing cultural narratives. (The Hurt Locker, for

example, portrays soldiering as an occupation rather than a movement, reflecting America’s

narrative of global engagement as one about an occupying force rather than asengaged in

wars with fronts, advances, and battles, in the same way that, at the same moment, American

anti-military narratives emerge as occupy activities, not anti-war movements.)

•  showing how literary texts in any genre theorize the relationship of culture to narrative or

identify the informing cultural narrative in the work of a specific theorist or theoretical text.

(Said’s Beginnings, for example, could be read as reflecting a Palestinian narrative about the

notion of origins and originary claims, and about the acts of power that legitimizes a

•  looking at performative aspects of narrative by examining, for example, how they constitute

historical and/or ideological subject positions that perpetuate (or undermine) notions of

ethnicity, nation, gender, class, family, health, normality, democracy, education, equality, or

•  theorizing the concept of “cultural narrative,” situating it in a genealogy or drawing on one of

many theoretical traditions to complicate the concept or extrapolate its implications.

Send 300-word abstract and short bio to Alan.Nadel@uku.edu by March 8.

The ISSN Program Committee (Frederick Aldama, Liesbeth Korthals Altes, and Jan Alber) invites proposals for the Society’s guaranteed session at the 2017 MLA, scheduled for 5–8 January in Philadelphia. A topic may be proposed by any current member(s) of ISSN, who would also chair or co-chair the chosen panel. Participation on the panel will be open to all members of MLA. Proposals for the ISSN session at MLA 2017 should include a session title and a brief rationale not to exceed one page.

Please submit your proposal to Jan Alber (janalber@anglistik.uni-freiburg.de) by November 1, 2015. The Program Committee will announce its selection by December 1, 2015.

The ISSN Program Committee (Frederick Aldama, Liesbeth Korthals Altes, and Jan Alber) invites proposals for the Society’s guaranteed session at the 2017 MLA, scheduled for 5–8 January in Philadelphia. A topic may be proposed by any current member(s) of ISSN, who would also chair or co-chair the chosen panel.
Participation on the panel will be open to all members of MLA. Proposals for the ISSN session at MLA 2017 should include a session title and a brief rationale not to exceed one page.

Please submit your proposal to Jan Alber (jan.alber@anglistik.uni-freiburg.de) by November 1, 2015.

The Program Committee will announce its selection by December 1, 2015.

Dear all,

The deadline for this year’s Best Graduate Student Essay presented at the 2015 Narrative Conference is April 1. Please submit!

All graduate students who present papers at the conference are invited to compete for the prize for the best graduate student essay. The winner will receive a copy of a Perkins Prize-winning book of his or her choice and will be encouraged to expand the winning paper for consideration by Narrative. In addition, the 2015 award winner will be eligible for $500 toward expenses to attend the 2016 conference. Submit papers electronically as attachments (Word or PDF) to both of the judges: Amy Elias (aelias2@utk.edu) and Sue J. Kim (sue_kim@uml.edu). Papers must be received by April 1, 2015. Papers must be unrevised conference presentations. While formatting changes, correction of typos, and the addition of a Works Cited page are acceptable, changes to the substance of the argument are not.

Best,

Sue & Amy

Colleagues,

The ISSN Program Committee (Kurt Koenigsberger, Erin McGlothlin, Brian McHale) invites proposals for the Society’s guaranteed session at the 2016 MLA, scheduled for January 4-7 in Austin, Texas.  A topic may be proposed by any current member(s) of ISSN, who would also chair or co-chair the chosen panel.   Participation on the panel will be open to all members of MLA.  Proposals for the ISSN session at MLA 2016 should include a session title and a brief rationale not to exceed one page. Please submit your proposal to Brian McHale (mchale.11@osu.edu) by November 1, 2014.  The Program Committee will announce its selection by December 1, 2014.

** CALL FOR PAPERS **

The 4th Conference of the European Narratology Network (ENN)
Modelling Narrative across Borders
April 16 to 18, 2015
Ghent University, Belgium
http://www.enn4.ugent.be

Keynote speakers:
Thomas Pavel (University of Chicago)
Monika Fludernik (University of Freiburg)
Elena Semino (Lancaster University)
David Herman (Durham University)

Pre-Conference Doctoral Master Class
April 14 and 15, 2015
Confirmed speaker: Jan Christoph Meister (University of Hamburg)

Modelling Narrative across Borders

Narratologists are increasingly faced with the situation that the concept of narrative varies widely across borders. This is a happy circumstance for the relevance and vitality of narratological concepts. At the same time, however, this situation means that any easy “lateral compatibility” of concepts such as “narrator,” “(un)reliability,” “focalization,” etc. can no longer be taken for granted. Concepts have a different bearing across different media such as the printed book, film or the digital media. Carrying on with the debates that got underway at the 2013 Paris conference, ENN 4 will address these issues by exploring conceptual models and inputs from various disciplines and methodologies such as rhetoric and stylistics, but also more recent developments including the cognitive sciences, media studies, the digital humanities and many more. In doing so, the ENN aims to act as an on-going forum for discussing narrative theory across borders – conceptual, disciplinary, national, cultural, historical.

Paper submission and selection procedure

Deadline for submission of panels: September 1, 2014
Deadline for submission of proposed papers or posters (200 words): October 1, 2014

• Abstracts should contain title, author’s name and affiliation and an outline proposing a theoretical .
• Pre-organized panels for consideration should additionally contain

– a summary paragraph along with proposed session title
– name of a panel chair (this may be one of the speakers)
– max 3 or 4 papers per panel

• For a poster, please submit a 200-word abstract and a CV. There will be separate poster sessions.

Send submissions to the conference organisation committee via enn4@ugent.be (please write “ENN Conference: Submission” in the subject line.)

Acceptances will be sent out on November 15, 2014
Registration for the Conference will open on November 15, 2014
Deadline for registration: January 10, 2015
Registration fee: 165 € – Students: 85 €

In order to present a paper at the conference, participants must be members of the ENN.
To register as a member, please consult the ENN website – “How to join the ENN”
http://www.narratology.net/join-ENN

The official languages of the Conference are English, French and German.
The Pre-conference and Conference will take place at Ghent University, Belgium.

Pre-Conference Doctoral Seminar – April 14 and 15, 2015

In conjunction with the 4th Conference of the European Narratology Network, a new pre-conference doctoral seminar on interdisciplinary narrative theory will be offered. The seminar will feature as confirmed speaker Professor Jan Christoph Meister (Hamburg University). The master class will be devoted partly to the theoretical discussion of narratological parameters and partly to the application of these parameters to (automated) narrative analysis. It will involve a hands-on introduction to tools for computational narratology and collaborative narratological annotation (in cooperation with the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities @GhentCDH).

Applicants for participation in the seminar (who must be enrolled as doctoral students in a degree-granting institution during the 2014-2015 academic year) doing research on any topic of narrative in any medium are eligible.
Prospective participants are asked to send a 2- to 3-page description of their doctoral research together with their résumés and name of institution to the following address: enn4@ugent.be. Please write “ENN Conference: Master Class” in the subject line. The deadline for submissions is October 1, 2014.

Ph.D. students completing the course will receive a diploma. The course counts as 2 ECTS.
Price: The course is free of charge, but participants will need to pay the (student) conference registration fee to

Further information and links

Inquiries concerning the conference can be sent to enn4@ugent.be

Main conference convenor: Prof. Gunther Martens (Ghent University).

For more information, visit the conference website (under construction):

http://www.enn4.ugent.be

Check back soon for additional information concerning accommodation etc.

Social media links
http://www.facebook.com/Narratology
http://www.twitter.com/ENN_Europe

Hashtag
#ENN4
Feel free to spread this CFP via the link http://www.enn4.ugent.be/CFP

The ISSN Program Committee (Kurt Koenigsberger, Erin McGlothlin, Brian McHale) invites proposals for the Society’s guaranteed session at the 2016 MLA, scheduled for January 4-7 in Austin, Texas. A topic may be proposed by any current member(s) of ISSN, who would also chair or co-chair the chosen panel. Participation on the panel will be open to all members of MLA. Proposals for the ISSN session at MLA 2016 should include a session title and a brief rationale not to exceed one page. Please submit your proposal to Brian McHale (mchale.11@osu.edu) by November 1, 2014. The Program Committee will announce its selection by December 1, 2014.