cfp.english.upenn.edu

Roots and Radicalisms: Literature, Theory and Praxis

Jean Baudrillard’s claim from The Illusion of the End (1992) that history “has become a dustbin. It has become its own dustbin, just as the planet itself is becoming its own dustbin” signals a millennialist angst that proclaims the exhaustion of ideas and the end of historical “progress.” And yet, as the significant worldwide political upheavals of the past year attest, global citizens are not yet entirely resigned to living in and among dustbins. Is it possible that we are experiencing a widespread reemergence of radical thinking and action?

Roots and Radicalisms: Literature, Theory and Praxis seeks to draw out ideas and generate discussion around the topic of a return to radical thinking and action by excavating the roots of revolutionary thought throughout literary history, and by engaging with the new radicalisms shaping our discipline and global society today. What forms have approaches to revolution and newness taken in the diverse historical and geographical milieus engaged by the study of literature? What new boundaries are being explored and challenged within the discipline of literary and cultural studies which may contribute to social and political change? And how might we embrace the challenges of speed and scale closing in on fronts as diverse and as connected as the technological, the ecological, the geopolitical, and the minutiae of everyday living?

Possible papers might discuss (but are not limited to):

- Transgressive subjects and subjectivities (bodies, identity, gender)
- Space & Place (borders, border crossing, spatiality)
- Citizenship & the Nation (post- and transnationalism, social justice, biopolitics)
- Globalization (cosmopolitics, encounters, migration flows)
- Empire (power politics, capitalism, neocolonialism)
- Beyond the human? (animal studies, ecology, science studies)
- Sexuality (health, orientation, erotics)
- Materiality & objects (Marxism, materialism, conceptualizing matter)
- Newness (novelty, origins, revolutions)
- Technology (new media, techno-bodies, game theory)
- The Avant-garde (experimentation, aesthetics, risk)
- Old books/new approaches (book history, print culture, digital humanities)
- Winners & losers (persecution, vilification, re/writing history)
- Weirdness (drug culture, fringe activity, speculative thought & challenges to realism)

Presentations will be about 20 minutes each (8 pages double-spaced) and will be followed by a moderated discussion. Those wishing to make presentations should send a 300-word abstract, a 50-word bio, and their CV to endnotes.2012@gmail.com by Friday February 29th.

The conference will take place at the UBC Vancouver campus from Friday May 4th to Saturday May 5th, 2012.

This year’s Endnotes conference also welcomes creative submissions (poetry, creative/experimental writing, music, art, multimedia, etc.) for an artist’s panel to be held the Friday evening of the conference. Submissions exploring formal or conceptual aspects of radical and revolutionary thinking are encouraged.

We look forward to receiving and reading your submissions,

The Endnotes 2012 Team

http://endnotes2012.tumblr.com/