cfp.english.upenn.edu

"Worlds Between: Exploring the Borders, Boundaries, and Gaps that Divide and Bind"

Saturday, April 27, 2013
California State University, Northridge
Graduate Conference

“Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horizon’s verge.” – Lord Byron

This conference is interested in exploring the concept of the spaces between – genres, cultures, times, people, movements, nations – the possibilities are endless. How do these spaces confine? How do they enable? What moves between? What exists within?

We invite undergraduate and graduate students to submit proposals for both critical and creative works that explore the boundaries of the many worlds in which we study, live, struggle, strive, and thrive.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

Queer Theory
Disability Studies
Interpretations of the gap
Crossing literal and figurative boundaries
Hybridity, liminality, and interstitiality
Slipstream, speculative, surrealist narratives
Globalization
World literatures
Post-Colonialism and cultural studies
Pop Culture
Gothic Studies
Film Studies
Pedagogy and narratology
Rhetoric and composition
Linguistics
Gender, race, class, and politics
Environmental Studies and ecocriticism
The space between good and evil

Our keynote speaker is Aimee Bender, author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Professor of creative writing at the University of Southern California.

Please send 250-word abstracts to sigmataudeltaiotachi@gmail.com. Submission deadline is February 15, 2013.

This graduate conference is hosted by Sigma Tau Delta Iota Chi Chapter and sponsored in part by the CSUN English Department and the Distinguished Speaker Award.