cfp.english.upenn.edu

Innocence and Experience – March 9, 2013 at California State University, Northridge.

“My mother groaned, my father wept, into the dangerous world I leapt.” –William Blake

The Associated Graduate Students of English (AGSE) at California State University, Northridge are accepting proposals for our annual Spring Conference. We are looking for critical papers or creative works that explore the notions of “Innocence and Experience.”

The concepts of “innocence” and “experience” exist in many forms, and in the course of this conference we would like to explore and unsettle their meanings. We welcome graduate and undergraduate papers from a range of disciplines including but not limited to Literature, Rhetoric and Composition, Creative Writing, Pedagogy, History, Philosophy, Linguistics, Comparative Literature, Gender and Women’s Studies, Ethnic Studies, Art History, Film and Screen Studies,Animal Studies, Disability Studies, and Popular Culture.

Explorations may include, but are not limited to:

• Conceptions of the child
• Death, birth and rebirth
• Theoretical notions of innocence and experience
• Coming of age
• Knowledge, education, and learning
• Race and ethnicity
• Transitions and hybridity
• Fantasy and imagination
• Gender, sexuality, and development
• Transcending genres
• The family
• Cultural notions of innocence and experience
• Violence
• Ideologies of the child/adolescent
• Hierarchies of innocence and experience
• Power, class, hegemony

Our conference is proud to feature keynote speaker, Dr. James Kincaid, the Aerol Arnold Chair in English and Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

Abstract Submission Deadline: December 23, 2012

Abstracts and proposals should be a maximum of 250 words.
Please email submissions as Word (.doc, or .docx) attachments to AGSE.CSUNORTHRIDGE@GMAIL.COM

Conference date and place: March 9, 2013 at California State University, Northridge.