Call for Papers:
The University of North Alabama English Department
Announces the 6th Annual Alabama Regional Graduate Conference in English
February 27-28, 2015

Streams of Consciousness:
Water, Sound, Land, Text

Come join the University of North Alabama English department as we celebrate the interactions between place, music, and culture. UNA is situated in what is locally known as "the Shoals" region: a group of four municipalities, Florence, Sheffield, Tuscumbia, and Muscle Shoals, united by the Tennessee River which winds between them. Known to the original inhabitants of the area as "The Singing River," the Tennessee River has had an immense impact on local creative culture. As the critically acclaimed documentary Muscle Shoals (2013) has recently reminded the world, much of America's best-loved and most influential music was created in the area, as was T.S. Stribling's The Store (1933), a Pulitzer-prize winning novel set in Florence. This conference invites investigations into the importance of place to creative cultures. We invite proposals for scholarly papers which apply any combination of water, sound, land, place, or music to language, literature, or other media.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):
-Spoken word poetry
-Ecocriticism or Ecofeminism
-Rhetorical Analysis
-Literature and music
-Music or sound in film
-Nature Writing
-Comparative Rhetoric
-Folklore and place
-Feminist Rhetoric
-Song lyrics as poetry
-Landscape as lyric
-Musical heritage
-Texts inspired by music
-Regionalism in texts
-Literary musicality
-Place or sustainability in literature
-Technical/Process Analysis

The conference will feature several special events which highlight the interaction of place with creative culture, including a screening of the Muscle Shoals documentary and tours of the Fame recording studios and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.

We welcome proposals from current students and recent graduates (within the last five years) of MA or PhD programs in English, Film Studies, or Cultural Studies. Presentations should be twenty-minutes in length and may explore a range of topics addressing our theme in relation to literature, film, or other new media. Presentations that utilize audiovisual presentations are encouraged.

Proposals:
Please upload proposals of 250-300 words by December 1, 2014 to the conference website at www.una.edu/englishgradcon. Suggestions for panels are also welcomed. All proposals will receive a decision on acceptance by December 31, 2014.

Travel Scholarships:
A limited number of travel scholarships for out-of-town presenters are available and must be made at time of proposal submission. Presenters will be notified of travel scholarship award when they are notified of acceptance. More information and the application can be found on our website: www.una.edu/englishgradcon

Prize for Best Paper:
At the closing session of the conference, presenters will be asked to vote on the three best papers presented at the conference. Following the conference, a panel of judges will award first, second, and third place standing to these three papers with a cash prize awarded to the top paper.

Information:
Further information on the conference, the University of North Alabama, our department, and the Florence area is available on our website: www.una.edu/englishgradcon.