Call for Book Chapter Proposals On Names, Naming, and Diversity
in Youth Literature
LAST CALL
Recent years have seen a significant increase in works of fiction that champion and celebrate diversity and inclusion for young readers. This literary evolutionary literature has also introduced children, to the enormous diversity of. The current call is for book chapters that examine how youth literature use names to present that child, adolescent, teen, and tween readers ethnic, cultural, linguistic, neurological, religious, diversity. Proposals centered on the use of names and naming in youth literature dealing with individuals, families, and communities from the following groupings are particularly, but by no means exclusively welcomed:
ethnoracial minorities, including those with mixed heritage
The differently abled
LGBTQ+
communities of faith
Immigrants and asylum-seekers
Although the proposals must be in English, the works selected for examination may include other languages. Proposals will be judged upon their thematic fit and potential to make a substantive contribution to the fields of onomastics and literary studies. All Interested authors are asked to submit formal proposals using the following guidelines.
Proposal Submission Process
Abstract proposals (max. 500 words, excluding the title and references) should be sent as a PDF email attachment to Professor I. M. Nick (nameseditor@gmail.com)
For organizational purposes, the proposals must include “DIVERSITY” in the subject line of the email
All proposals must include an abstract, title, and a preliminary list of references;
The full name(s) of the author(s) and their affiliation(s) must appear in the body of the email. These details should NOT appear in the attached proposal.
In the case of multi-authored submissions, one person must be clearly designated as the primary contact
The DEADLINE for proposal submissions is August 15, 2024. All proposals will be submitted to a double-blind review process. Authors will be notified about acceptance on or by September 15, 2024
Final chapters (max 7,000 words, excluding abstracts and references) will be due February 15, 2025
For further information about this call, please feel free to contact Professor I. M. Nick (nameseditor@gmail.com). We look forward to receiving your proposals!
Due to an unexpected issue with the draft submission email address, we are extending the deadline for the call for papers for the 2025 Annual Meeting.
The American Name Society is now inviting proposals for papers for its next annual conference. The one-day event will be held virtually via Zoom, allowing for the attendance of onomastics scholars from around the world. The 2025 ANS conference will not be held in conjunction with the Linguistics Society of America conference.
Abstracts in any area of onomastic research are welcome: personal names, place names, business and institutional names, names theory, names in literature, among others.
Proposals require these elements:
Title of proposed paper
250-word abstract
Shorter 100-word abstract suitable for inclusion in conference program
50-word biography suitable for inclusion in conference program
To submit a proposal, complete the 2025 Author Information Form found here:
For organizational purposes, place “ANS2025” in the subject of your email.
The DEADLINE for receipt of abstracts is August 26, 2024.
All proposals will be subjected to blind review. Notification of proposal acceptances will be sent by September 30, 2024. Authors whose papers have been accepted must be current members of ANS and must register for the annual meeting. Please contact us at the above email address if you have any questions or concerns.
According to a recent NPR article, a white buffalo has been named as part of a ceremony celebrating its birth near Yellowstone National Park. The name Wakan Gli was chosen, which means ‘Returned Sacred’ in Lakota. White buffalo are remarkably rare and carry spiritual significance to a number of Native American tribes; Wakan Gli is the first white buffalo ever recorded in Yellowstone Park.
The American Name Society is now inviting proposals for papers for its next annual conference. The one-day event will be held virtually via Zoom, allowing for the attendance of onomastics scholars from around the world. The 2025 ANS conference will not be held in conjunction with the Linguistics Society of America conference.
Abstracts in any area of onomastic research are welcome: personal names, place names, business and institutional names, names theory, names in literature, among others.
Proposals require these elements:
Title of proposed paper
250-word abstract
Shorter 100-word abstract suitable for inclusion in conference program
50-word biography suitable for inclusion in conference program
To submit a proposal, complete the 2025 Author Information Form found here:
For organizational purposes, place “ANS2025” in the subject of your email.
The DEADLINE for receipt of abstracts is July 31, 2024. (LAST CALL)
All proposals will be subjected to blind review. Notification of proposal acceptances will be sent by September 30, 2024. Authors whose papers have been accepted must be current members of ANS and must register for the annual meeting. Please contact Dr. Michel Nguessan at the above email address if you have any questions or concerns.
Names and World-building in Fantasy & Science Fictional Universes
an organized session at the 2025 annual meeting of the
Linguistic Society of America
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
9-12 January 2025
The American Name Society is now inviting proposals for an organized session at the 2025 annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. The theme of this session is “Names and World-building in Fantasy & Science Fictional Universes.” The organizing committee is especially interested in papers that address how names impact the creation of worlds in works of literature, music, film, and games (table-top role-playing games, board games, video games, and others). Sample topics might include, but are not limited to:
Names and their function in world-building
Naming conventions of fantasy and science fiction authors
Personal names in literary worlds: how the names of protagonists and antagonists contribute to the overall story told
Place names in created universes
Names and naming in games and gaming: whether video games, table top role-playing games, board games, or others
Abstracts in any area of onomastic research related to the fantasy or science fiction genres are welcome.
Proposals require these elements:
Name and affiliation of presenter(s)
Title of proposed paper
Up to 250-word abstract
Proposals should be submitted to the American Name Society via email at: abstracts@americannamesociety.org. For organizational purposes, place “LSA2025” in the subject of your email.
The DEADLINE for receipt of abstracts is August 15, 2024.
All proposals will be subjected to blind review. Notification of proposal acceptances will be sent by September 1, 2024. Following acceptance, authors must be current members of the ANS and register for the Linguistic Society of America annual meeting. Please contact us at the above email address if you have any questions or concerns.
Scheduling of the symposium by the LSA will be announced in October. Pre-registration for the meeting will open in late September.
Recently presented at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Name Society, collaborative work by Cari Didion and Michel Nguessan explores restaurant and grocery store names in the greater Chicago metro area. You can watch the full presentation here:
The paper is an analysis of restaurant and grocery store names in Greater Chicago. In the USA, the dominant culture is the Anglo-Saxon and/or European culture. Any other culture that is different from this dominant one is considered ethnic. Restaurants and food stores that are not part of the dominant culture are considered ethnic. With the increase and diversification of immigration to the USA in recent decades, new restaurants/grocery stores emerge with distinctive names that reveal cultural identities and/or national origins. The study’s purpose is to find out about cultural/national origins and identities, immigration trends and spatial distribution of these restaurants/food stores in the Greater Chicago area.
These ethnic restaurants/grocery stores come from diverse cultural and national origins including Asia, Latin America, Africa, Middle East, pacific islands, and others. Some ethnic restaurants/grocery store names are Fogo de Chão (Brazilian), Taste of Lebanon (Lebanese), Nhà Hàng Vietnam (Vietnamese), Ay Ay Picante (Peruvian), Denden Eritrean restaurant (Eritrea). The first part of the paper discusses the relationship between immigration trends and the emergence of ethnic restaurants/grocery stores. The second part of the paper presents and discusses ethnic restaurants and grocery store names. The third part of the paper discusses the relationship between immigration trends, ethnic restaurant names and diversity of cultures and national origins in Greater Chicago. The study concludes that ethnic restaurant and grocery store names reveal immigration trends, national and cultural origins and identities and point out the cultural diversity and spatial distribution of immigrant populations in Greater Chicago.
Biography:
Professor Michel Nguessan is an Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at Governors State University, in Illinois. He has academic background and research interest in linguistics/onomastics, software engineering and computer science, library and information science and port/maritime management. He graduated from universities in Côte-d’Ivoire, the USA and Canada.
Professor Cari Didion is an Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at Governors State University, in Illinois. She has an academic background in science education, library and information science, and higher education leadership. She holds master’s degrees from the University of Georgia and San Jose State University and is currently pursuing a doctorate in Interdisciplinary Leadership Studies.
Call for Book Chapter Proposals On Names, Naming, and Diversity
in Youth Literature
Recent years have seen a significant increase in works of fiction that champion and celebrate diversity and inclusion for young readers. This literary evolutionary literature has also introduced children, to the enormous diversity of. The current call is for book chapters that examine how youth literature use names to present that child, adolescent, teen, and tween readers ethnic, cultural, linguistic, neurological, religious, diversity. Proposals centered on the use of names and naming in youth literature dealing with individuals, families, and communities from the following groupings are particularly, but by no means exclusively welcomed:
ethnoracial minorities, including those with mixed heritage
The differently abled
LGBTQ+
communities of faith
Immigrants and asylum-seekers
Although the proposals must be in English, the works selected for examination may include other languages. Proposals will be judged upon their thematic fit and potential to make a substantive contribution to the fields of onomastics and literary studies. All Interested authors are asked to submit formal proposals using the following guidelines.
Proposal Submission Process
Abstract proposals (max. 500 words, excluding the title and references) should be sent as a PDF email attachment to Professor I. M. Nick (nameseditor@gmail.com)
For organizational purposes, the proposals must include “DIVERSITY” in the subject line of the email
All proposals must include an abstract, title, and a preliminary list of references;
The full name(s) of the author(s) and their affiliation(s) must appear in the body of the email. These details should NOT appear in the attached proposal.
In the case of multi-authored submissions, one person must be clearly designated as the primary contact
The DEADLINE for proposal submissions is August 15, 2024. All proposals will be submitted to a double-blind review process. Authors will be notified about acceptance on or by September 15, 2024
Final chapters (max 7,000 words, excluding abstracts and references) will be due February 15, 2025
For further information about this call, please feel free to contact Professor I. M. Nick (nameseditor@gmail.com). We look forward to receiving your proposals!
Recently presented at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Name Society, Jane Pilcher’s work explores surnames and surnaming in adoption. You can watch the full presentation here:
In this talk, we present new data about adoptive family surnames drawn from our qualitative study in the UK which examines names in the experiences of adults who are either adoptees or adopters. Our findings suggest that adoptees and adopters can feel differently about surnames and how these link them – or otherwise – to familial lineages and to their own individual identities. Some adoptees may feel that their adoptive family surname does not link them authentically to that genealogical familial line or at least is disruptive for their sense of family identity. At marriage, some women adoptees were pleased to change their surname to that of their husband, as this meant they were able to exercise choice about their name-based familial identity and affiliation that had been denied them in the past. Yet other adoptees reported feeling happily connected to their adoptive family surname. For adoptees who had become parents themselves, sharing a surname with their child (and so across another generation) had made their adoptive surname meaningful to them in a way that it had not been previously. For participants who were adopters, sharing a surname with their child(ren) was also a key part of their family identity, including through extending the genealogical line. In examining these types of experiences of and feelings about family names amongst adult adoptees and amongst adopters, our article highlights the complexities of meanings of surnames for adoptive family life and for adoptees’ identities.
Biography:
Dr. Jane Pilcher is Associate Professor of Sociology at Nottingham Trent University in the UK. As a self-described sociological names nerd, Jane studies people’s names to analyse, understand and deconstruct identities and inequalities. Her current project examines names and naming in experiences of adoption.
The American Name Society (ANS) is now issuing its first call for abstracts for an upcoming Special issue of the Society’s journal, NAMES: A Journal of Onomastics. The theme for the 2024 Special Issue is “Name Bias and Prejudice”. From anthroponyms to commercial names, toponyms to zoonyms, proposals focusing on any name type, in any language or culture, from any time period, and utilizing any analytical method are welcome. Proposals examining name bias and prejudice in the arts (e.g., literature, music, film, etc.) are also strongly encouraged. However, all proposals must include a clearly articulated theoretical framework, research question(s), and a preliminary reference list. All submissions will be subjected to blind review. The following criteria will be used in the review process: innovation; writing style and organization; argumentation; potential to make a substantive contribution to onomastic research; and adherence to the NAMES Style Sheet. Detailed instructions for the submission process are provided below.
Proposal Submission Process
Abstract proposals (max. 800 words, not including references) should be sent as an email attachment (PDF format) to Professor I. M. Nick (nameseditor@gmail.com);
Proposals must include a preliminary reference list that follows the formatting regulations of the NAMES Style Sheet;
Proposals must include “Bias” in the subject line of the email;
All proposals must include an abstract, a tentative title, the full name(s) of the author(s), the author(s) affiliation(s), and email address(s) in the accompanying email and NOT within the body of the abstract;
DEADLINE: Proposals must be received by 15 July 2024. Authors will be notified about the results of the blind review on or by 15 August 2024.
For further information about this call, please feel free to contact Professor I. M. Nick (nameseditor@gmail.com).