New Directions Conference
"[Dis]Embodied Disciplines: Blurring Boundaries in the Academy"
Conference Dates: April 11-12, 2014, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
Deadline for Abstract Submission: January 13, 2014

The body is a site where regimes of discourse and power inscribe themselves, a nodal point or nexus for relations of juridical and productive power. And, yet, to speak in this way invariably suggests that there is a body that is in some sense there, pregiven, existentially available to become the site of its own ostensible construction.
– Judith Butler

Traditional academic disciplines tend to compartmentalize and fragment knowledge. They develop models, paradigms, or core assumptions that are rarely questioned internally. Indeed, they may even have become articles of faith rather than accurate pictures of how the world works. An academic discipline either builds on or discovers variables within a theory particular to itself and develops a jargon, or set of definitions, all its own.
– Tom Holm, J. Diane Pearson, and Ben Chavis

We are pleased to invite you to participate in our 2014 New Directions Conference: "[Dis]Embodied Disciplines: Blurring Boundaries in the Academy." This interdisciplinary conference solicits all papers/performances centered around "the body" in order to join students and faculty in dialogues that further create connections across departments.

The keynote address, delivered by Dr. Brenda Jo Brueggemann of the Nisonger Center at The Ohio State University, will be on Friday, April 11. There will also be a plenary address delivered by creative writer TC Tolbert, whose work integrates bodies and bodily discourse, on Saturday, April 12.

Our goal is to blur the boundaries between disciplines and discuss the body, in its myriad forms and conceptions, across all possible understandings and interpretations. We invite you to participate in this truly interdisciplinary conference with the hope that you will find new bodies to interpret and perform.

If we consider the body as a site wherein discourse and power are inscribed, we must also consider how the body inscribes itself onto other discourses in academia. How do we define the body? How does the body represent a people and not just the individual person? How do we blur the divide between the interior/exterior, the personal/global, the text/meaning? How does the body render itself in relation to medicine, anthropology, physics, race studies, geography, gender studies, etc.?

In order to bring together the fragmented discourses of the academe and to build a cohesive, de-compartmentalized body of knowledge, you may want to consider:
*Film/cinema*
*Rhetoric and composition*
*History*
*Political Science*
*Border Studies*
*Public Health*
*Language/Linguistics*
*Geography*
*Gender Studies*
*Anthropology*
*Medicine*
*Literature*
*Natural Sciences*
*Race Studies*
*Visual Art*
*Dance*

Submission Information:
All proposals are due by January 13, 2014. Please submit to arizonanewdirections@gmail.com.

For individual paper proposals, please submit the following in a Word or PDF format with your name in the title:
1) Name and contact information (including email address)
2) An abstract (250-300 words)
3) How your proposal fits among other disciplines (1-2 sentences)

For performance proposals, please submit the following in a Word or PDF format with your name in the title:
1) Name and contact information (including email address)
2) Description of performance (~300 words)
3) How your proposal fits among other disciplines (1-2 sentences)

For panel proposals (3-4 papers), please submit the following in a Word or PDF format with your name in the title:
1) Name and contact information for panel organizer (including email address)
2) Short description of the panel (~100 words)
3) An abstract for each individual paper (~250 words), with accompanying name and contact information for individual presenters

We will notify participants by mid-February, 2014.

This conference is generously supported by the English Department at the University of Arizona and Bedford St. Martin Publishers. There is no registration fee for presenters or attendees.