Editing a cluster on our Mermaid Craze

Excited to be organizing a CFP for short pieces so that I can see who’s working in my current and learn from others about my new research topic.. for ASAP!

Cluster Call for Papers: Our Mermaid Craze

We are in the midst of a mermaid craze. Everywhere you look—from literature to film, social media to fashion, digital art to commodity kitsch—mermaids are omnipresent. Disney’s new live-action The Little Mermaid arrives in theaters in May, but it is part of a global phenomenon marked by the opening of two museums in the U.S. claiming to be the world’s first mermaid museum (both in 2021, in WA and MD), a slew of mermaid titles in book and film form, mermaid conventions, and more.  A 2021 CNN article titled “Why so many people in China are becoming mermaids” and a simple Google n-gram graphing the dramatic increase in the word “mermaid” in published books (below), with a tipping point around 2010, both mark a cultural movement.

Yet, we lack serious attention to how and why mermaid tales mean so much to us now. This lack is especially troubling when we recognize that today’s mermaids are Black and Brown, sexually fluid, and grounded in indigeneity; they rage against human destruction of the oceans and global capitalism. These narratives span readerships and multimedia formats—from novels and poetry to film and television, massive web-based fan fiction to arthouse films. They explore our culture’s most pressing anxieties and concerns—climate change, racial and social justice, global capitalism, genetic science, AI and algorithmic culture—and they do so across genres and affective registers.

This cluster invites essays that approach our mermaid craze from different perspectives and methodologies, including creative-critical work and big data analytics. We aim to address different mermaid content, media formats, and communities in ways that collectively offer insight into this cultural, literary, and artistic phenomenon.

Contact Professor Jessica Pressman (San Diego State University) jpressman [at] sdsu.edu to submit a proposal of no more than 300 words and a short biographical statement, by May 30, 2023. Potential contributors will be notified by June 15 and they will then have to submit their essays (1000-2000 words) by August 1.

Choice Award for Bookishness!

Bookishness was named one of the Outstanding Academic Titles by Choice, a publishing unit of the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association!

“In December of each year Choice publishes its list of Outstanding Academic Titles. This prestigious list reflects the best in scholarly titles, both print and digital, reviewed by Choice during the previous year and brings with it the extraordinary recognition of the academic library community. The list is quite selective, containing approximately ten percent of some 5,000 works reviewed annually in Choice.

In naming a work an Outstanding Academic Title, the editors apply several criteria:
-overall excellence in presentation and scholarship
-importance relative to other literature in the field
-distinction as a first treatment of a given subject in book or electronic form
-originality or uniqueness of treatment
-value to undergraduate students
-importance in building undergraduate library collections”

Joining the faculty of Harvard’s Institute for World Literature (Summer 2023)

I am honored and excited to teach at Harvard University’s prestigious Institute for World Literature (IWL), which trains scholars and teachers in the study of literature in a globalizing world. Meeting for four weeks each summer, in locations from Beijing to Istanbul to Harvard and beyond, the Institute meets returns to Harvard this summer (July 2023), where I will teach a two-week seminar titled “Global Digital Literature: Histories, Theories, Methods”