DISAPPEARANCE: Spatial and Temporal Horizons
a two-day interdisciplinary conference
November 7th & 8th, 2013
The Department of Comparative Literature
The Graduate Center, CUNY
New York, New York

The Graduate Students in The Department of Comparative Literature at The Graduate Center, CUNY invite you to a conference investigating the question of disappearance through various disciplines. Disappearance is first used as a noun in English in a 1712 edition of the Spectator. Founder Joseph Addison writes that if we "look into the Bulk of our Species, they are such as are not likely to be remembered a Moment after their Disappearance. They leave behind them no Traces of Their Existence, but are forgotten as tho' they had never been" (No. 317).

If disappearance is broadly considered as a transition from being there to no longer being there, then what is it that happens in the instance of vanishing? What disappears? What causes disappearance? How does disappearance function? How are questions of memory, existence and trace exacerbated when the term is directly applied in a political context, as it has commonly been used since the 1950s. In what ways do academic disciplines perpetuate and protect against disappearances? If the moment of disappearance is a horizon, how can we mobilize our understanding of space and time to open new perspectives within the question of disappearance?

We welcome examples and explorations from a variety of disciplines and intersections including: literature, languages, film, philosophy, political science, linguistics, psychology, education, human rights, theory, cultural studies, American studies, women's studies, queer studies, journalism, medieval studies, art, art history, digital media studies, theater, music, sociology, history, science, Judaic studies, Latin American studies, fine arts and cognitive science.

Possible conference papers might take up the inquiries below, but additional investigations are welcome. We invite papers exploring and theorizing:

what disappears in a disappearance
what marks the moment of disappearance
what gets revealed in a disappearance
what's left behind in a disappearance
where the disappeared goes
who/what names something as a disappearance
how literature deals with disappearance
power and disappearance
ghosts and disappearance
death and disappearance
disappearance and erasure
distortion and disappearance
disappearance and deception
disappearance and identity
disappearance and the body
transformation and disappearance
disappearance and/in Magical Realism, Romanticism, post-modernity, etc
disappearance and translation
disappearance and history, oral traditions and artifacts
disappearance and religion
the space of disappearance
the temporal capacity of disappearance
the mobility of disappearance
disappearance in the contemporary world
disappearance and globalization
privacy, security and disappearance

We welcome submissions of individual papers and proposals for panels of 3-4 papers in English. Please submit a 250-300 word abstract for a 15-20 minute paper by September 15th, 2013 to disappearanceconference2013@gmail.com. Proposals should include the title of the paper, presenter's name, institutional and departmental affiliation, and any technology requests.