cfp.english.upenn.edu

Panels are now being formed in the Literature area of the Agora Conference at Texas A&M-Commerce. Scholars, researchers, professionals, teachers, graduate students and others interested in this area are encouraged to submit an abstract. Given that our conference theme, Agora, focuses on an area where a plethora of people and ideas intersect, proposals on fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or cross-genre topics are invited.
Our keynote speaker is Roberta Seelinger Trites, children’s literature scholar and author of Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature and Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children’s Novels.
However, we welcome submissions from a diverse range of disciplines, critical perspectives, and time periods, as well. To that end, we are interested in continuing to promote work in:
• Children’s Literature
• American Literature
• British Literature
• Race, Gender, Class and/or Ability Studies
• Queer Studies
• Cultural History
• Graphic Narratives
• Science Fiction

We also seek to broaden the scope of our conversations by encouraging panels that draw from areas frequently under-represented at graduate conferences such as (but certainly not limited to):

• Literature in Translation
• World Literature
• National and Migrant Identities in Literature
• Literary Radicalism
• Environmentalism(s) in Literature
• Food and Beverage Cultures
• Literature of Fan Culture
• Politics in/of Literature
• Creative Pieces

General Call for Conference Papers:

Keynote Speakers
Roberta Seelinger Trites, Jay Telotte, Sara Cushing Weigle

The Agora as constructed by the early Greeks was a public assembly space—the town square where merchants and philosophers met to exchange goods and ideas. Today, the Agora has evolved from the city square and market place as the convergence of many public interests to a virtual space in which different cognitive, epistemological, communicative stances meet together and compare, contrast, and argue on processes of knowledge and science. It is in that same spirit that the English Graduates for Academic Development (EGAD) of Texas A&M University-Commerce provides the Agora as a market place of ideas. Submissions are open to both graduate and undergraduate students.

For the first time, in order to meet specific interests of research and reflection, the EGAD conference will be organized in four sections that correspond to the four “souls” of our graduate program at both the master’s and doctoral levels:

• Literature
• Film studies
• Branches of Linguistics
• Rhetoric and Composition Studies

See below for specific calls for each section listed above.

Submission Guidelines
Abstracts should be submitted to EGAD.TAMUC@gmail.com no later than January 31, 2012.

• Within the body of the email please include:
• name
• affiliation
• email address
• title of paper
• a brief biographical statement
• preferred section: film studies, literature, linguistics, rhetoric/composition
• Please attach the abstract submission as either a .doc or .rtf file
• Abstracts should be between 250-500 words
• If you are making a creative writing submission, please indicate this within the abstract describing the work

Please list any audio and visual equipment necessary for your presentation. Please note that laptops will not be provided.

Conference Fee
$35 early registration (ends January 31st)
$50 late registration (after January 31st)

Checks can be made payable to: EGAD
Department of Literature and Languages
P. O. Box 3011
Texas A&M University-Commerce
Commerce, TX 75429-3011