NEWS

If there was a lesson to be learnt from the recent celebrations of C.P. Cavafy’s anniversary is that his poetry, image and life have penetrated popular culture in ways that, even though largely unnoticed by critics, have nevertheless created a new frame for the circulation of his literary work. Cavafy’s poetry is not just to be read in books but also in a host of media, from animation to photography and from cinema to cartoons and pop songs. Cavafy’s contemporary globality cannot, therefore, be comprehended, unless we examine the popular aspects of (the reception of) his work and provide a genealogy for its cultural circulation.

With this in mind, The Journal of Greek Media and Culture will host a special issue on Cavafy in Pop Culture, edited by Dimitris Papanikolaou (Oxford) and Eleni Papargyriou (King’s College London), to appear in autumn 2015. We are looking for essays that will be addressing the reception, circulation and extraordinary polymorphy of republication and rewriting of Cavafy's poetry. We envisage this special issue to cover topics such as the making of a ‘Cavafy persona’ in English (from E.M. Forster to Mark Doty); the circulation of Cavafian poems and rewriting on the internet; Cavafy and photography; Cavafy photographed and the circulation of the Cavafy image; a discussion of the furore against Cavafy's poems on Greek public transport (2014); Cavafy in film. We would particularly like to invite proposals for articles related to the following subjects:

• Cavafy’s (and/or his poems’) visual representations in the fine arts
• Setting Cavafy to music
• Cavafy’s queer reception across media
• Cavafy in performance (theatre and dance)
• Cavafy as a world poet
• Cavafy’s poetry in public discourse
• The making and unmaking of ‘Cavafy canons’, official or unofficial

Qualified scholars who would wish to contribute to the special issue are welcome to send a proposal of circa 500 words accompanied by a short bio (circa 100 words) to Dimitris Papanikolaou (dimitris.papanikolaou@stx.ox.ac.uk) and Eleni Papargyriou (eleni.papargyriou@kcl.ac.uk) by 20 September 2014. We will invite authors of accepted proposals to send us their complete article by 20 December 2014. Even if a proposal has been accepted, the article will still be subject to peer-reviewing, as stipulated in the journal’s regulations.