“There is another world, and it is this one.” - Paul Éluard
“There is another world, in this one.” - Octavio Paz
“There is no other world, not even this one.” - Emil Cioran

Otherworlds

The Stanford-Berkeley English Graduate Conference seeks proposals for 20-minute papers that
address any aspect of worldmaking in the context of otherness, alterity, subaltern studies, and
literal other worlds, from any period, for a one-day conference, “Otherworlds,” to be held on
April 22nd, 2023, in Stanford, CA, at Stanford University.

The conference is open to any student currently enrolled in a graduate or undergraduate
program in English or a related discipline. Presentations with audiovisual components are
welcome. The conference will be facilitated in a hybrid format, with options to participate both
in person and by Zoom.

The conference on Otherworlds encourages papers from all humanities disciplines that engage
with questions of worldmaking and alterity. Otherworlds encompasses a variety of approaches
and topics, ranging from the real (Otherness, subaltern studies, ecocriticism) to the imagined
(science fiction/fantasy, utopia/dystopia, the metaverse). As our globalized world vacillates
between expansion and contraction, this theme invites panelists to consider worlding in the
past, the present, and the future.

Topics may include:
• otherness, alterity, subaltern studies;
• literal other worlds such as science fiction or fantasy landscapes/mystical spaces/outer
space/the metaverse;
• alternative historiographies and methodological ways of conceiving worlds;
• social forms of otherness and othering, and how these manifest in, or relate to,
contemporary crises (climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, the resurgence of
fascism, etc.);
• fragmentary modes of being, seeing, and occupying space in an imagined unitary world;
• worlds decaying and flourishing, evolving and etiolating;
• utopian and dystopian worlds;
• worlds within and without disciplinary genres;
• mapping dialogic worlds, such as the critical conversations and the fields we occupy,
cultivate, and hold accountable;
• the reshaping of worlds in and through literature or the arts broadly defined;
• and constructed spaces that, in turn, construct both limitations and potentialities for
bodies, selves, communities, and beings that share these worlds.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
For consideration, please complete this form (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScnqVb-PrJ0sY8h9VP30JmJ7QZqNQ0w5hYLVNkX3v5NPOVpqA/viewform) by 11:59PM PST on March 5th, 2023. You will be
asked to include a 300-word abstract and a 150-word biography.