cfp.english.upenn.edu

Bowling Green State University Presents the 8th Annual Battleground States Conference
Title: Crossing Boundaries, Revealing Connections: Experiments in Interdisciplinary Studies
February 22nd – 24th 2013

Culture is mercurial and fluid. Thus research must create, but also dispute yet engage, a transformational and reflective understanding of our subjects. The examination of knowledge and epistemologies from varying perspectives reveals the interconnections of vastly varying subjects. But to find these connections we first need to explore and experiment.

This year’s Battleground States Conferences invites participants to facilitate creative, experimental, and exploratory standpoints that expand their own area of knowledge from unique and multifarious perspectives. In the nature of Interdisciplinary Studies, we seek to cross and analyze intellectual boundaries from multiple perspectives and synthesize diverging epistemologies. We encourage participants to take risks and embrace the possibilities.

Topics of interest include the following, but we also welcome innovative and thoughtful presentations that this list does not encapsulate:
• Experimental pedagogical method
• Performance as presentation
• Interdisciplinary and social histories as lenses to the past and a maps to the present
• Art, music, and documentary as scholarship
• Holistic Science
• Examinations of the barriers and/or facilitators in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Studies in team researching, presenting, performing, or teaching
• Complicating interdisciplinary research methods
• Social media as teaching models/presentation tactics
• Cultural theory in conjunction with social activism
• The intersection of science and religion
• Nuances of Cultural Studies
• Pushing the boundaries of academia and publishing
• Media modalities, technologies, and informational frameworks
• Rethinking educational administrations
• Economic geographies and industrial expansion
• Integrating and connecting the knowledges of:
o American Studies, Popular Culture, Film/Cinema Studies, Race Studies, Ethnic Studies, Women’s Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Environmental Policy and Planning, Social Media Studies, Political Science, Literature, Graphic Arts, Musicology, Labor Studies, Activism, Educational Reform, Legal and Justice Studies etc.

We also encourage participants to present on topics and areas of research they have yet to fully develop or have always desired to present. More so we endorse unconventional forms of presentation that move beyond the standard paper reading (although paper presentations will be accepted). This conference will open dialogues and modes of thinking that truly traverse and test the boundaries of intellectual work. The purpose of this conference is to develop new knowledge and to do so, we ask scholars to embrace epistemological innovation.

Abstracts of 300 words should be sent to battlegroundstates@gmail.com and must be submitted no later than January 31st 2013. Submissions should include media equipment requests and any special presentation requests. Panel, performance, and artistic display proposals are welcome and should include a 300-word abstract and contact information for all participants.

Please visit our social media sites for information about The Culture Club and Battleground States:
tumblr: http://thecultureclubatbgsu.tumblr.com/
Twitter: @cultureclubatbg
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/battlegroundstates

All other inquiries should be directed to Elisabeth Woronzoff, Culture Club President, eworonz@bgsu.edu