EGSA Symposium Invitation and Schedule

Please join us on February 15 for the annual EGSA Symposium! This is one of our most important annual events, and your participation is key to its success. Please consider scheduling time to attend the panels, enjoy the department community, and support your fellow graduate students! We have a lot of exciting panels and paper topics, not to mention three wonderful keynote speakers: Dr. Gil Harris, Dr. Tony Lopez, and Dr. Daniel DeWispelare. Take a moment to RSVP so we can be sure to order enough refreshments (email Molly Lewis mclewis@gwu.edu or rsvp on Facebook).

Temporal Slippages and Spatial Slidings: A Symposium on Failed Fixities

February 15, 2013

Rome Hall 771

9:00 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.

RSVP NOW!  to: mclewis@gwu.edu

panels:

9:10 – 10:10 am: Attitudes, Affects, & Alliences in Scholarship: A Round-Table

M. Bychowski, Patrick Henry, Sukshma Vadere, Tawnya Ravy, Leigha McReynolds

10:20 – 11:20 am: Dissecting the Gaze: Corporeality, Spectacle, and Performance in the Theater

M Bychowski, “Dark Bodies & Absent Parts”

Lubaaba Al-Azami, “‘What a goodly outside falsehood hath’: Identity and the Interfaith Encounter in The Merchant of Venice”

Sukshma Vedere, “‘Othering’ in the Mughal Court: The ‘Firang’ Physician and the White Mughal Emperor”

11:30 am – 12:30 pm: Spectral Encounters

William Quiterio: "The Uberpsycho as Alternative Historical Memory: A Consideration of the film My Bloody Valentine"

Erin Sheley:  "Faerie Hauntings in 'Christabel' and 'The Eve of St. Agnes'"

Haylie and Emily: "Herla's Haunting Hound: Spectral Intimacies in Walter Map's Tale of King Herla"

1:40 pm – 2:40 pm: “Exploration and Enlargement Make the World Smaller: On the Prospects of Transnational Encounter”

Lori Brister, “‘A little orange flag of ostentation’: Posters, Luggage Labels, and Tourism in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”

James Francis, “Fraud, Pleasure and Travail: Theatrical Economies of The Travels of the Three English Brothers”

Sreyoshi Sarkar, "Of Films and Therapy: The Lebanon War, the Holocaust and the Vietnam War in Waltz with Basheer"

2:50 – 3:50 pm: Nationalism, or Specters of Identity

Molly Lewis, “Racialized Time: Formulating the Medieval Jew through English Chrononormativity”

Patrick Henry, “Edgar Allan Poe, Curator of the American Identity:  Anxieties of Nationalism in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket”

Nora Alfaiz, “The Patients ‘Etherized Upon a Table’: Societal Alienation of T.S. Eliot and Prufrock”

Maia Gil’Adi, “‘Erase the stains’: Racial Hauntings and the Browning of America in Colson Whitehead’s Zone One”

4:00 – 5:30 pm: Key Note Panel

Jonathan Gil Harris, “Hi Mho Jhi Kudd: Thomas Stevens'/Tomás Estêvão's/Pâtri Guru's Translated Body in Goa, 1616.”

Antonio Lopez, “On a Bus, in a Trunk: States of Transit and U.S. Latino Poetry.”

Daniel DeWispelare, “Of Sovereignty and Bondage, or, this translation which is not one.”

5:30-6:30 Wine and Cheese Party 

Symposium CFP 2013 Officially Here!

We are very excited to announce the third annual GW EGSA symposium entitled Temporal Slippages and Spatial Slidings: A Symposium on Failed Fixities that will take place on February 15, 2013. We look forward to seeing the wonderful submissions you all send in!

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EGSA Symposium 2013 CFP

Temporal Slippages and Spatial Slidings: A Symposium on Failed Fixities 

  

A Palimpsest of Street Posters in Puducherry, India

In his book Provincializing Europe, Dipesh Chakrabarty suggests that “[w]e need to

consider why we find anachronism productive.” And in this symposium on slippages

and slidings of time, place, space, and identity, we hope to explore just that. Despite our discipline’s best efforts to encode certain texts to specific temporalities and geographies, graduate students of GWU English recognize that figures and objects are not static relics of time, and any attempt to keep them as such will only result in failure. By embracing that Halberstamian failure, though, as a site of productivity, we hope to explore the possibilities that lie within those literary, historical, artistic anachronisms that remain dynamically in flux.

Thus, the GWU EGSA board is excited to announce our third annual symposium entitled Temporal Slippages and Spatial Slidings: A Symposium on Failed Fixities. We invite panels and papers that explore subject matter on race, space, nationality, identity, queerness, translation, transitional figures, ghosts, and all manner of things that cannot and will not remain still. Further, what do these failures tell us about space, place, identity, and time, and in what ways do they tell us? In this symposium, we hope to foster conversation between presenters and participants across concentrations and even disciplines through the intersections of current graduate student work to explore Chakrabarty’s suggestions as a question: what productivity will we find in exploring anachronism?

Panel Submission Guidelines

The GWU EGSA board will first be accepting panel submissions for our symposium, then individual panel organizers will be accepting paper abstracts. Panel submissions should be sent, along with your contact information, to Molly Lewis at mclewis@gwu.edu by 11:59 on October 26. Submissions must be 250 words or less and must be submitted as a Microsoft Word document or PDF.  Please include the words “EGSA Panel Submissions” in the subject line of your e-mail. Information on how to submit abstracts will be soon to follow.  

Conferences and Abstracts

Thank you for those of you who could make Maia's "Writing Abstracts and Attending Conferences" session on Monday. For those of you who couldn't make it, we recommend checking out our blog post on Conferences and Abstracts. Also, Erin announced her plans to run a Public Speaking workshop this semester, so stay tuned for more information on that. In the meantime, please feel free to send us interesting CFPs that we can share with everyone. We also want to know which conferences you are attending so that you can carpool/room share with other grads!

Note: the deadline for abstracts for the NeMLA is coming up! Check out their site for more information.

Conventions, CFP web resources, and upcoming CFP Deadlines

In the past year, we have repeatedly emphasized the importance of applying to conferences. Even as a new graduate student, it is useful to apply for graduate and local conferences to get used to the process, and to thinking about your work in larger contexts. It is also useful to consider at what point you will attend large national conventions. Even if you do not have work to present, it is valuable to attend at least once to experience the convention and network. This year, the MLA is hosting its convention in Boston January 3-6, 2012. Consider attending if you can because it is so close this year and it is fairly affordable for student members (become a member as soon as you can!). We have also included links below to other large conventions, and those we know have upcoming CFPs. We also want to share two great CFP links that will allow you to stay on top of CFPs over the summer:
Penn U (a comprehensive and searchable archive of CFPs)
CFPList (allows you to sort by upcoming deadlines, location, and subject)

NEMLA - Northeast MLA with a convention in 2013 (CFPs will be posted in June)
SAMLA - South Atlantic Modern Language Association's Convention November 9-11, North Carolina. This convention features a wide variety of panels and special sessions. Deadlines range from May to July. Click on the link to access all the available information on the extensive list of CFPs.

June 1 Crossroads III: Deadends, Delays, and Detours  Massachusetts, October 5-7, 2012.

Upcoming CFPs for April and May

A few more CFPs have come across our desk with deadlines in April and May. Remember that these are not organized by conference date, but by Abstract Deadline date. Click on the links for more information about the CFPs. Please let us know if you have a CFP to share! Also, we will be posting the notes from our Alternate Career Session this week and from Funding Your Dissertation, so stay tuned for those as well as a guest post from one of our own Graduate Students. Remember to "like" us on Facebook to receive updates, or follow us via email. 

April 27

2nd Global Conference Chronicity

Thursday 30th August – Saturday 1st September 2012

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

April 27

1st Global Conference

Punishment

Monday 3rd September – Wednesday 5th September 2012

Mansfield College, Oxford

May 4

2nd Global Conference: Storytelling: Global Reflections on Narrative

May 4

1st Global Conference (4^th of May)

Immersive Worlds and Transmedia Narratives

Tuesday 13th November – Thursday 15th November 2012

May 4

4th Global Conference

Bullying and the Abuse of Power

Sunday 4th November – Tuesday 6th November 2012

Salzburg, Austria

May 4

2nd Global Conference

Conflict and Communication

Sunday 4th November – Tuesday 6th November 2012

Salzburg, Austria

May 4

Fourteenth Annual British Graduate Conference

30 May

International Seminar on Ethnicity, Identity, and Literature 11-14 October 2012 in Sibsagar College, India.  Follow this link for conference and abstract submission guidelines.

Upcoming Calls-for-Papers

We have been collecting CFP notices for the past two months, and here are some additional CFPs with deadlines in March and May. Note: These are organized by Abstract Submission Deadline (not by conference date). Please click on the links to get full CFP details. If you have a CFP that you would like to share, please post it in a comment below or email us. And remember that you can "like" us on Facebook or subscribe to this blog via email to receive updates.

March 1 Deadline:

Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Middle Ages

March 17 Deadline: 

The St. John’s Humanities Review

The St. John’s Humanities Review is a graduate student-run journal at St John’s University in New York City that publishes book reviews, essays, and interviews on a broad range of topics in the arts and humanities. We encourage submissions from graduate students and accomplished scholars interested in these discussions locally and around the world.  

This year’s issue hopes to feature work that fits under the broad heading of Nationalism: Roots and Transgressions.  The focus is on the areas of national identity or transnationalism, acculturation, cultural diffusion, or culture shock.  The approach may be primarily sociological and historical, or literary in nature.   What we want are submissions that address these theme(s) in new and exciting ways that express the multiplicity of angles and issues these broad headings generate.

We seek scholarly essays, book reviews, and interviews suitable for a broad academic audience. Book reviews should be similar to The New York Review of Books and The New Republic and should be under 2000 words. Essays should be no longer than 25 pages and in Times New Roman 12 pt. font in MSWord and follow a citation system suitable to the pertinent discipline. Footnotes should be minimized, but use depends on the material.

Please send your submissions by March 17, 2012. 

Send them to:

Danielle Lee, editor

St John’s Humanities Review

sjuhumanities@gmail.com

danielle.lee10a@stjohns.edu

May 4^th Deadlines

Communication and Conflict

Immersive Worlds and Transmedia Narratives

Bullying and the Abuse of Power

14^th Annual British Graduate Conference

Rated X: Perversion and Exclusion - February CFP

Another interesting CFP with a deadline in February. Don't forget to r.s.v.p. to our first EGSA Happy Hour of the year. Visit our Facebook Page for more details. 


The Brandeis English Department is holding its sixth annual graduate
student conference. 
“Rated X: Perversion and Exclusion”
Keynote Speaker: Lee Edelman, Chair, English Department, Tufts University

In celebration of the 36th anniversary of the initial publication of
Foucault’s first volume of The History of Sexuality, the 6th Annual
Brandeis Graduate student conference will explore the ins and outs of
various forms of an X-Rating. Being Rated-X implies being marked as
other/as outside/as unacceptable as well as being marked as
desirable/as visible/as exceptional. Rated-X implies the nakedness of
porn and the openness that comes with that. For some there is
liberation in this openness. For others there is only exposure. This
necessitates the question of whether certain populations are made
disposable through exile or instead through visibility; through the
erasure or marking of bodies as other. We would like to use this
conference to explore some slippage—between these two (and more) types
of identification with otherness: the transgression that empowers and
enables pleasure versus the polarizing otherness that disenfranchises
and dehumanizes. Relevant questions include: Who is doing the marking?
Who draws the boundary lines? Does an “X” marking/rating make the
bodies of those so-rated untouchable or excessively available for use;
or does an “X” rating elevate a body to exceptional status or release
it from the strictures of its prescribed social identities? Thus, we
will be accepting papers about the exiled body, porn, and anything in
between.


This conference will be held at Brandeis University, Department of
English, on Friday March 30. Abstracts of 250-500 words are due on
February 15th. Please submit abstracts via email:
brandeis.grad.conference@gmail.com.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions:
brandeis.grad.conference@gmail.com

Graduate Student Conferences - UMD GEO Conference

Last semester we hosted a round table on attending and applying to conferences. If you attended, you know that one of the best ways to "break in" to the world of academic conferences is to apply to and attend graduate student conferences. We have already heard of some success stories from some of our M.A.s, and we want to spread that success. Another opportunity has landed on our desk - the University of Maryland's English Department is hosting its annual GEO Conference on March 3, 2012. Of course our own symposium is coming up this February and we thank all of you who submitted an abstract. But don't stop there! The deadline has been extended to January 30 for the GEO CFP. I attended this conference last spring and it was a rewarding experience. Whether you are just beginning to apply to conferences or if you have been to several already, this is a great professional development and networking opportunity. Good luck!
We also want to remind you that you can subscribe to this blog via email using the box to the right. You can also find GW EGSA on Facebook and "like" us to keep up with the latest news and events.

GEO Conference CFP

The Graduate English Organization of the University of Maryland’s Department of English

invites graduate students to submit abstracts for our fifth annual interdisciplinary graduate

conference. The theme of this year’s conference is “The Body Electric.”

When Walt Whitman sang about the “body electric” he was thinking about a fantasy of

connectivity, a body at once charged and charging. Using the “body electric” as a focal point, this

conference hopes to highlight a broad spectrum of work from a variety of fields, literary and

otherwise. Abstracts that focus on studies of the body, connectivity, persuasion, electricity,

philosophy/philosophy of mind, morality, politics/the body politic, and affect theory are welcome

and encouraged. Similarly, “The Body Electric” may tap into discourses of historical and

emerging technologies—allowing us to think of writers like Whitman, Mary Shelley, Charles

Dickens, and Virginia Woolf as possessing a clear stake in the popular science of their respective

ages. “The Body Electric” creates connectivity and allows for an unbounded self—just as

Clarissa Dalloway “felt herself everywhere; not ‘here, here, here’…but everywhere.”

In considering the way language and literature tenuously work to bridge the gaps they often

create, the category of an electric body becomes useful in thinking of affect, rhetoric, social

change, mediation, enlightenment, subjectivity, and technology. For instance, thinking of social

movements in the journalistic commonplace of “electric” allows us to examine the currents of

communication that make them possible. Rhetorically, these currents of communication may

consider the bodies of work we create and shape; in doing so, one might explore the discourse of

writing as performance that provides a space to help (our students) develop a vital connection to

the delivery of texts; the “body electric” becomes a central consideration as we perform written,

spoken, and multimodal works. Likewise, thinking about the affective scene as implicitly electric

allows us to articulate a genealogy of the emotions.

In its broadest sense, “The Body Electric” lends itself to a number of opportunities for

interrogation. How do these connections happen? Does considering the body as electric allow for

reformulations of the relationship between the body and the mind? between populace and

politician? between society and morality? Do burgeoning social media technologies like Twitter

and Facebook extend or inhibit Whitman’s dream of expansive connectivity?

The conference committee invites proposals for fifteen-minute papers from a broad range of

disciplines and theoretical backgrounds. Presentations of creative work are also welcome. Panel

submissions (3-4 participants) are highly encouraged. Please limit individual abstracts to 300

words and panel abstracts to 500 words. Full papers may accompany abstracts. Please include

three keywords at the end of the abstract to assist panel formation.

The deadline for submissions is January 30th, 2011. Please send all proposals to

conference.geo@gmail.com.

EGSA CFP Extension

Borrowed Image

Please read the following message from the EGSA VP for Academic Enrichment:

Hi everyone.  

I hope you had a relaxing break.  I'm writing to let you know that the deadline for the call for papers to the EGSA conference "Bodies in Space" has been extended until Monday, January 23 at midnight. This is a great opportunity to test conference papers out [for instance, in a happy accident, the UMD graduate conference is also focused on bodies this year] in a relaxed environment and a chance to share your work with your classmates, (plus a nice line on your cv for those of us who think about such things).  I highly encourage you to submit an abstract to support our second annual conference.

Thanks

Peyton

Here's the CFP again:

Call for Papers: Bodies in Space: Emerging Scholarship in Literary and Cultural Studies

[The Panopticon] is a type of location of bodies in space, of distribution of individuals in relation to one another, of hierarchal organization, of disposition of centres and channels of power, of definition of the instruments and modes of power ... – Michel Foucault

The English Graduate Student Association is pleased to announce the call for papers for oursecond annual graduate student symposium Bodies in Space: Emerging Scholarship in Literary andCultural Studies to be held Friday, February 10, 2012.

Foucault’s reading of the production of docile bodies notwithstanding, the aim of this conferenceis not to consider the ways that the multiplicity of concentrations in the fields of Literature andCultural Studies stand in relation to each other, but instead consider how they stand in relationwith each other (and the ways that these relationships are always promiscuous and overlapping).Thus, rather than an image of a body pinned to a specific space, the title alludes to the many waysthat bodies and spatiality might be productively considered in literary criticism. More generally, wemean to provide a frame large enough to encompass all of the interesting work going on in the GWEnglish department. In this symposium, we hope to foster conversation between presenters andparticipants across concentrations and even disciplines through the intersections of currentgraduate student work. We welcome any and all submissions and encourage submissions frompreviously written course work or works in progress, including dissertation chapters andconference papers.

Submission Guidelines

Abstracts should be submitted, along with your contact information, to gwegsa@gmail.com by 11:59pm on Monday, January 23, 2012. Submissions must be 250 words or less and must be submitted as a Microsoft Word document or PDF. Please include 2-3 keywords at the bottom of your submission and include the words “Conference Submission” in the subject line of your email. Conference presentations will be approximately 15 minutes, and panels will be organized after submissions have been accepted.

We also welcome any volunteers who would like to be involved in the organizational / logisticalside of the symposium, be it chairing a panel or assisting with lunch.

Another January CFP

Another CFP with a January Deadline came across our desk...




Call for Papers:
5th Annual GEO Conference
“The Body Electric”
University of Maryland, College Park
March 3, 2012 

The Graduate English Organization of the University of Maryland’s Department of English invites graduate students to submit abstracts for our fifth annual interdisciplinary graduate conference. The theme of this year’s conference is “The Body Electric.”

When Walt Whitman sang about the “body electric” he was thinking about a fantasy of connectivity, a body at once charged and charging. Using the “body electric” as a focal point, this conference hopes to highlight a broad spectrum of work from a variety of fields, literary and otherwise. Abstracts that focus on studies of the body, connectivity, persuasion, electricity, philosophy/philosophy of mind, morality, politics/the body politic, and affect theory are welcome and encouraged. Similarly, “The Body Electric” may tap into discourses of historical and emerging technologies—allowing us to think of writers like Whitman, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, and Virginia Woolf as possessing a clear stake in the popular science of their respective ages. “The Body Electric” creates connectivity and allows for an unbounded self—just as Clarissa Dalloway “felt herself everywhere; not ‘here, here, here’…but everywhere.”

In considering the way language and literature tenuously work to bridge the gaps they often create, the category of an electric body becomes useful in thinking of affect, rhetoric, social change, mediation, enlightenment, subjectivity, and technology. For instance, thinking of social movements in the journalistic commonplace of “electric” allows us to examine the currents of communication that make them possible. Rhetorically, these currents of communication may consider the bodies of work we create and shape; in doing so, one might explore the discourse of writing as performance that provides a space to help (our students) develop a vital connection to the delivery of texts; the “body electric” becomes a central consideration as we perform written, spoken, and multimodal works. Likewise, thinking about the affective scene as implicitly electric allows us to articulate a genealogy of the emotions.

In its broadest sense, “The Body Electric” lends itself to a number of opportunities for interrogation. How do these connections happen? Does considering the body as electric allow for reformulations of the relationship between the body and the mind? between populace and politician? between society and morality? Do burgeoning social media technologies like Twitter and Facebook extend or inhibit Whitman’s dream of expansive connectivity?

The conference committee invites proposals for fifteen-minute papers from a broad range of disciplines and theoretical backgrounds. Presentations of creative work are also welcome. Panel submissions (3-4 participants) are highly encouraged. Please limit individual abstracts to 300 words and panel abstracts to 500 words. Full papers may accompany abstracts. Please include three keywords at the end of the abstract to assist panel formation.

The deadline for submissions has been extended to January 30th, 2011. Please send all proposals to conference.geo@gmail.com.

Upcoming CFPs: March Deadlines

Check out these upcoming Calls for Papers. Remember that these are organized by Abstract Deadline, not by the conference date. If you have additional CFPs to share, please email us or leave a comment below. You can also subscribe to this blog via email using the bar on the right of this page.

March 16, 2012

·         2nd Global Conference: Beauty: Exploring Critical Issues
Friday 21st September – Sunday 23rd September 2012; Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for papers:
“The first real problem I faced in my life was that of beauty,”
wrote the poet-playwright- novelist Yukio Mishima, in Temple of the
Golden Pavilion as he pondered beauty’s relevance, meanings, and the
spell it cast over him. Beauty is complicated by the word beauty
itself. Limited or overloaded, beauty has been celebrated as essential
or denounced as irrelevant. The existence of beauty has been
challenged, called a search for El Dorado. Some find no beauty in
life, a recurring motif in subcultures, music lyrics, and the notes
left by suicides. Others dismiss that perspective, arguing that common
sense, experience, and multidisciplinary research reveal the reality
and centrality of beauty in our lives. But what exactly is beauty?
Speculations about the nature of beauty are various and contradictory.
Some philosophers have argued that it will remain a mystery. Other
theorists have held less modest beliefs, arguing that beauty expresses
a basic spiritual reality, has universal physical properties, or is an
experience and construction of mind and culture. The beauty
‘project’ will explore, assess, and map a number of key core
themes.These will include:

1. Understanding Beauty

- Defining beauty

- Theorising beauty

- Power of beauty

- History of beauty

- Politics of beauty

- Culture of beauty

- Religion of beauty

2. Experiences of and Representations of Beauty

- Pursuit of beauty

- Expressions of beauty

- Appearance of beauty

- Making beauty

- Documenting beauty

- Emotion and beauty

- Beauty and seduction

- Representing beauty in art, literature and popular culture

3. Beauty and Nature

-Beauty and the natural world

-Beauty and the Sublime

-Beauty and desire

-Science and mathematics of beauty

-Medical aspects of beauty

4. Beauty, Culture, and Identity

- Beauty subcultures

- Beauty and social stratification: gender, sexuality, class, race,
ethnicity, age, etc.

- Beauty collectors

- Beauty specialists

- Beauty disciples

-Enhancing the body beautiful: cosmetics, tattoos, piercings,
surgical interventions, and other forms of body modification

5. The Business of Beauty

-Beauty and consumer culture

-Beauty and cultural capital

-Beauty professions and trades

-Beauty cities

-Beauty marketing and forecasting

-Professional beauties (models, actors, celebrities, beauty pageants
etc.)

-Fashion and beauty

-Glamour and beauty

6. Diminishing the Beautiful

-Beauty and transgression

-Beauty and ugliness

-Beauty and aging

-Defiling the beautiful

-Destroying the beautiful

-Beauty and death

-Beauty and decay

The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed
panel proposals. Papers will also be considered on any related theme.
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 16th March 2012. If
an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should
be submitted by Friday 22nd June 2012. Abstracts should be submitted
simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word,
WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this
order: a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract,
e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords
E-mails should be entitled: Beauty Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using
footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as
bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is
planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be
included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all
paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a
week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be
lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative
electronic route or resend.

The conference is part of the Critical Issues series of research
projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from
different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various
discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for
and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an
ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for
development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/beauty/

March 16

·         4th Global Conference Strangers, Aliens and Foreigners
Friday 21st September 2012 – Sunday 23rd September 2012
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers

This multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the crucial place
that strangers, aliens and foreigners have for the constitution of
self, communities and societies. In particular the project will assess
world transformations, like phenomena we associate with the term
‘globalisation’, new forms of migration and the massive movements
of people across the globe, as well as the impact they have on the
conceptions we hold of self and other. Looking to encourage innovative
trans-disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from all
disciplines, professions and vocations which struggle to understand
what it means for people, the world over, to forge a sense of self in
rapidly changing contexts where it is no longer possible to ignore the
importance of strangers, aliens and foreigners for our contemporary
nations, societies and cultures.
Papers, workshops and presentations are invited on any of the
following themes:

1. Transformations of Self

~ How is Self interweaved with Other? And the many ways in which Self
depends on Other

~ Acknowledging the importance of strangers for our lives, for our
sense of well-being

~ Recognising our dependence on aliens and foreigners for our
communities, cities and towns, for our countries and nations

~ The decline of the value of sameness and homogeneity, the rise of
diversity and plurality

~ Opposing the construction of self by othering, excluding and
stigmatising

2. Boundaries, Communities and Nations

~ Who is a stranger? Aliens and foreigners to whom?

~ New migrants, new migratory flows and massive movements from
peripheral to central countries

~ Trans-national networks and the blurring of boundaries; are we
living trans-national and post-national realities?

~ Assimilation, integration, adaptation and other forms of placing
the responsibility of change on foreigners

~ What has happened to ideas like acceptance, hospitality and
cosmopolitanism

3. Economies, Institutions and Migrants

~ Labour migration as key for economic growth and prosperity

~ The politics of making aliens, foreigners and migratory labour
‘invisible’

~ Global politics of money over people; new forms of global exclusion

~ Social movements, new rebellion and alternative globalisations

~ Trans-cultural connections that escape institutional and political
control

4. Art and Representations

~ Production and reproduction of cultural typing and stereotyping

~ The contested space of representing self and other, native and
foreigner

~ Art, media and how to challenge the rigid constructions of art and
culture

~ Fictions of strangers, stories of aliens, fables of foreigners

~ The artistic constructions of otherness

5. Self (inevitably) linked to Other

~ De-centering selves; who am I if not the relation with others?

~ Thinking and acting with others in mind; orienting life
inter-subjectively

~ Tensions, contradictions and conflicts of living recognising aliens
and foreigners

~ Bonds of care across boundaries of inequality and exclusion,
ideologies and religions, politics and power, nations and geography

~ Non-recognition as social and cultural violence

The 2012 meeting of Strangers, Aliens and Foreigners will run
alongside a second of our projects on Beauty and we anticipate holding
sessions in common between the two projects. We welcome any papers or
panels considering the problems or addressing issues that cross both
projects. Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word
abstracts should be submitted by Friday 16th March 2012. If an
abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be
submitted by Friday 22nd June 2012. 300 word abstracts should be
submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word,
WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract,
e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords

E-mails should be entitled: Strangers Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any
special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or
underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the
end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this
publication We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals
submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should
assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in
cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic
route or resend.

March 16, 2012

·         1st Global Conference: The Graphic Novel
Friday 7th September 2012 – Sunday 9th September 2012
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

·          

“Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask
there is an idea… and ideas are bulletproof.” ― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
Call for Papers:

This inter- and multi-disciplinary conference aims to examine,
explore and critically engage with issues in and around the
production, creation and reading of all forms of comics and graphic
novels. Taken as a form of pictographic narrative it has been with us
since the first cave paintings and even in the 21st century remains a
hugely popular, vibrant and culturally relevant means of communication
whether expressed as sequential art, graphic literature, bandes
dessinees, tebeos, fumetti, manga, manhwa, komiks, strips,
historietas, quadrinhos, beeldverhalen, or just plain old comics. (as
noted by Paul Gravett)

Whilst the form itself became established in the 19th Century it is
perhaps not until the 20th century that comic book heroes like
Superman (who has been around since 1938) became, not just beloved
characters, but national icons. With the globalisation of publishing
brands such as Marvel and DC it is no accident that there has been an
increase in graphic novel adaptations and their associated
merchandising. Movies such as X-men, Iron man, Watchmen and the recent
Thor have grossed millions of dollars across the world and many
television series have been continued off-screen in the graphic form,
Buffy, Firefly and Farscape to name a few.

Of course America and Europe is not the only base of this art form
and the Far East and Japan have their own traditions as well as a huge
influence on graphic representations across the globe. In particular
Japanese manga has influenced comics in Taiwan, South Korea, Hong
Kong, China, France and the United States, and have created an amazing
array of reflexive appropriations and re-appropriations, in not just
in comics but in anime as well.

Of equal importance in this growth and relevance of the graphic novel
are the smaller and independent publishers that have produced
influential works such as Maus by Art Spiegleman, Persepolis by
Marjane Satrapi, Palestine by Joe Sacco, Epileptic by David B and even
Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware that explore, often on a personal level,
contemporary concerns such as gender, diaspora, post-colonialism,
sexuality, globalisation and approaches to health, terror and
identity. Further to this the techniques and styles of the graphic
novel have taken further form online creating entirely web-comics and
hypertexts, as in John Cei Douglas’ Lost and Found and Shelley
Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, as well as forming part of larger
trans-media narratives and submersive worlds, as in the True Blood
franchise that invites fans to enter and participate in constructing a
narrative in many varied formats and locations.

This projects invites papers that consider the place of the comic or
graphic novel in both history and location and the ways that it
appropriates and is appropriated by other media in the enactment of
individual, social and cultural identity.

Papers, reports, work-in-progress, workshops and pre-formed panels
are invited on issues related to (but not limited to) the following
themes:

 * Just what makes a Graphic Novel so Graphic and so Novel?:
 ~Sources, early representations and historical contexts of the form.
 ~Landmarks in development, format and narratology.
 ~Cartoons, comics, graphic novels and artists books.
 ~Words, images, texture and colour and what makes a GN
 ~Format, layout, speech bubbles and “where the *@#% do we go from
here?”

 * The Inner and Outer Worlds of the Graphic Novel:
 ~Outer and Inner spaces; Thoughts, cities, and galaxies and other
representations of graphic place and space.
 ~ Differing temporalities, Chronotopes and “time flies”:
Intertextuality, editing and the nature of Graphic and/or Deleuzian
time.
 ~ Graphic Superstars and Words versus Pictures: Alan Moore v Dave
Gibbons (Watchmen) Neil Gaiman v Jack Kirby (Sandman).
 ~Performance and performativity of, in and around graphic
representations.
 ~Transcriptions and translations: literature into pictures, films
into novels and high/low graphic arts.

 * Identity, Meanings and Otherness:
 ~GN as autobiography, witnessing, diary and narrative
 ~Representations of disability, illness, coping and normality
 ~Cultural appropriations, east to west and globalisation
 ~National identity, cultural icons and stereo-typical villains
 ~Immigration, postcolonial and stories of exile
 ~Representing gender, sexualities and non-normative identities.
 ~Politics, prejudices and polemics: banned, censored and comix that
are “just plain wrong”
 ~Other cultures, other voices, other words

 * To Infinity and Beyond: The Graphic Novel in the 21st Century:
 ~Fanzines and Slash-mags: individual identity through appropriation.
 ~Creator and Created: Interactions and interpolations between
authors and audience.
 ~Hypertext, Multiple formats and inter-active narratives.
 ~Cross media appropriation, GN into film, gaming and merchandisng
and vice versa
 ~Graphic Myths and visions of the future: Sandman, Hellboy, Ghost in
the Shell.

Papers can be accepted which deal solely with Graphic Novels. This
project will run concurrently with our project on Fear, Horror and
Terror – we welcome any papers considering the problems or
addressing issues on Fear, Horror and Terror and Graphic Novels for a
cross-over panel. We also welcome pre-formed panels on any aspect of
the Graphic Novel or in relation to crossover panel(s).

Papers will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes. 300
word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 16th March 2012. If an
abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be
submitted by Friday 22nd June 2012. 300 word abstracts should be
submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word,
WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract,
e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords
E-mails should be entitled: GN1 Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any
special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or
underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals
submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should
assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in
cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic
route or resend.

The conference is part of the Education Hub series of research
projects, which in turn belong to the At the Interface programmes of
Inter-Disciplinary.Net. It aims to bring together people from
different areas and interests to share ideas and explore discussions
which are innovative and challenging. All papers accepted for and
presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN
eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development
into a themed ISBN hard copy volume or volumes.

March 16

·         6th Global Conference Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging
Sunday 16th September 2012 – Wednesday 19th September 2012
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers:

This multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the new and
prominent place that the idea of culture has for the construction of
identity and the implications of this for social membership in
contemporary societies. In particular, the project will assess the
context of major world transformations, for example, new forms of
migration and the massive movements of people across the globe, as
well as the impact of globalisation on tensions, conflicts and on the
sense of rootedness and belonging. Looking to encourage innovative
trans-disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from all
disciplines, professions and vocations which struggle to understand
what it means for people, the world over, to forge identities in
rapidly changing national, social and cultural contexts.

Papers, workshops and presentations are invited on any of the
following themes:

1. Challenging Old Concepts of Self and Other

~ Who is Self and who is Other?

~ The new value of social diversity and cultural multiplicity;
breaking with homogeneity and sameness

~ What is the place of difference and alterity, of normality and
normalisation in defining identity and membership

~ How to account for social membership and cultural identity?

~ Making sense of transformations and their effects over culture,
identity and membership

~ Othering, excluding, stygmatising

2. Nations, Nationhood and Nationalisms

~ What does it mean, today, to belong to a nation?

~ New migrants, new migratory flows and massive movements from
peripheral to central countries

~ Resurgence of the local and the diminishing importance of the
national

~ Are we living post-national realities?

~ What is the place of cultural claims in today’s forms of social
membership?

~ Models of multiculturalism and the contemporary experience of
multiculturalism(s)

~ Assimilation, integration, adaptation and other forms of placing
the responsibility of change on the Other

3. Institutions, Organizations and Social Movements

~ Evaluating the promises and institutions of post-national governing


~ Institutions and organisations that do more for money than for
people

~ Political battles over globalization

~ Social movements, new rebellion and alternative globalizations

~ Trans-cultural connections that escape institutional and political
intentions or control

~ New forms of global exclusion

4. Persons, Personhood and the Inter-Personal

~ De-centering individuals and the making of persons; thinking and
acting with others in mind and interpersonally

~ Tensions, contradictions and conflicts of identity formation and
social membership

~ New sources and forms of belonging; new tribalism, localism,
parochialism and communitarianism

~ Bonds of care across boundaries of inequality and exclusion,
ideologies and religions, politics and power, nations and geography

~ Who am I if not the relation with others?

~ Non-recognition as cultural violence

5. Media and Artistic Representations

~ The role of new and old media in the construction of cultures and
identities, of nations and place

~ Production and reproduction of cultural typing and stereotyping

~ The contested space of representing culture, identity and belonging


~ Art, media and how to challenge the rigid and impenetrable
constructions of culture

~ Living, being and belonging through art

~ Life imitating art and fiction

6. Transnational Cultural Interlacing of Contemporary Life

~ What is shared from cultures? How are cultures shared? Who has
access to the sharing of cultures?

~ Cultural claims and human rights

~ Exploring multiculturalism as a plural experience: Shouldn’t we
be talking about multiculturalisms?

~ Living in a context with the cultural markers of a different
context: Is that transculturalism?

~ Languages, idioms and new emerging forms of wanting to bridge the
‘invisible’ divide of cultures

~ Symbols and significations that connect people to places other than
‘their own’

~ Culture, identity and belonging by choice

7. New Concepts, New Forms of Inclusion

~ Recognition and respect without exclusion

~ An ethics for social relations in a new millennium

~ What to do with historically old concepts like tolerance,
acceptance and hospitality?

~ Should not we all be strangers? Should not we all be foreigners?

~ Is there any use for cosmopolitanism these days?

~ Loving the other within the self; building fluid boundaries of
belonging and being

Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts
should be submitted by Friday 16th March 2012. If an abstract is
accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by
Friday 22nd June 2012.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs;
abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this
order: a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract,
e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: Multiculturalism Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any
special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or
underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the
end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this
publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals
submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should
assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in
cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic
route or resend.

March 16

·         3rd Global Conference Space and Place
Monday 3rd September – Thursday 6th September 2012
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers:

Questions of space and place affect the very way in which we
experience and recreate the world. Wars are fought over both real and
imagined spaces; boundaries are erected against the “Other”
constructed a lived landscape of division and disenfranchisement; and
ideology constructs a national identity based upon the dialectics of
inclusion and exclusion. The construction of space and place is also a
fundamental aspect of the creative arts either through the art of
reconstruction of a known space or in establishing a relationship
between the audience and the performance. Politics, power and
knowledge are also fundamental components of space as is the
relationship between visibility and invisibility. This new inter- and
multi-disciplinary conference project seeks to explore these and other
topics and open up a dialogue about the politics and practices of
space and place. We seek submissions from a range of disciplines
including archaeology, architecture, urban geography, the visual and
creative arts, philosophy and politics and also actively encourage
practioners and non-academics with an interest in the topic to
participate.

We welcome traditional papers, preformed panels of papers, workshop
proposals and other forms of performance – recognising that
different disciplines express themselves in different mediums.
Submissions are sought on any aspect of space and place, including the
following:

1. Theorising Space and Place

~Philosophies and space and place

~Surveillance, sight and the panoptic structures and spaces of
contemporary life

~Rhizomatics and/or postmodernist constructions of space as a
“meshwork of paths” (Ingold: 2008)

~The relationship between spatiality and temporality/space as a
temporal-spatial event (Massey: 2005)

~The language and semiotics of space and place

2. Situated Identities

~Gendered spaces including the tension between domestic and public
spheres

~Work spaces and hierarchies of power

~Geographies and archaeologies of space including Orientalism and
Occidentalism

~Ethnic spaces/ethnicity and space

~Disabled spaces/places

~Queer places and spaces

3. Contested spaces

~The politics and ideology of constructions and discourses of space
and place including the construction of gated communities as a
response to real/imagined terrorism.

~The relationship between power, knowledge and the construction of
place and space

~Territorial wars, both real and imagined.

~The relationship between the global and the local

~Barriers, obstructions and disenfranchisement in the construction of
lived spaces

~Space and place from colonisation to globalisation

~Real and imagined maps/cartographies of place

~Transnational and translocal places

4. Representations of place and space

~Embodied/disembodied spaces

~Lived spaces and the architecture of identity

~Haunted spaces/places and non-spaces

~Set design and the construction of space in film, television and
theatre

~Authenticity and the reproduction/representation of place in the
creative arts

~Technology and developments in the representation of space including
new media technologies and 3D technologies of viewing

~Future cities/futurology and space

~Representations of the urban and the city in the media and creative
arts
~Space in computer games

300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 16th March 2012. If
an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should
be submitted by Friday 22nd June 2012. 300 word abstracts should be
submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word,
WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order: a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords
E-mails should be entitled: SP Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using
footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as
bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is
planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be
included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer all
paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a
week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be
lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative
electronic route or resend.