cfp.english.upenn.edu

This conference aims to explore the ways in which the humanities interact, engage with, and are affected by popular media and popular culture. More specifically, this conference is concerned with the intersection of literature and media that complicates, alters, or further enriches literary scholarship and communication.

We particularly welcome proposals that address or are related to the following topics:
o Changing perceptions of academia in the media
o Pedagogical Approaches
o Approaches to Digital Studies
o Green Studies/Eco-criticism (For example, how does popular media present environmental concerns? How has popular culture influenced people’s ideas of and responses to environmental crisis?)
o Archives and the media/Digitization of archives
o Periodicals and databases
o Film/television adaptations
o Social networking sites and the academy

We also encourage papers from other disciplines including Art, Music, History, Communications, Journalism, Sociology, Political Science, and Women’s Studies. We welcome submissions from undergraduates as well.

Keynote Address:

The keynote speaker for this year’s conference is Dr. Elizabeth Abel, Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include 20th-Century American literature, 20th-Century British literature, African American studies, Cultural studies, and Gender & Sexuality studies. Her latest book, Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow (University of California Press, 2010) explores the cultural context and history of segregation through the photographic medium.

Dr. Abel is also the author of Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis (Chicago, 1989) and editor of Writing and Sexual Difference (Chicago, 1982). She is the co-editor, along with Barbara Christian and Helene Moglen, of Female Subjects in Black and White: Race, Psychoanalysis and Feminism (Berkeley, 1997). She has written several articles for Critical Inquiry and Representations and has contributed to the books Conflicts in Feminism (ed. Marianne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller, New York, 1990) and The Familial Gaze (ed. Marianne Hirsch Hanover, NH, 1990).

Submission Information:
Abstracts of no more than 300 words for papers not exceeding 20 minutes should be submitted by February 7, 2011 to the organizers at tulsagradconf@gmail.com. Or also, through regular post to: EGSA Conference Committee, English Dept. Zink Hall, The University of Tulsa, 800 S. Tucker Drive., Tulsa, OK 74104. Please include the title of your paper, your name, your contact information, institutional affiliation, and any AV requirements you may have.

There is a registration fee of $20.00 for all presenters (excluding TU graduate students who can register for $15.00 and TU undergraduates who can register for $5.00).

Conference Dates and Locations: Thursday, March 24th through Saturday, March 26th at The University of Tulsa in the Allen Chapman Activity Center on the university’s campus.

Contact: If you have any questions or require further information, please e-mail the conference co-directors Melissa Antonucci at melissa-antonucci@utulsa.edu or Kate Williams at kate-williams@utulsa.edu.