"Arresting the Flow"
CLS Conference-Spring 2006
http://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/complit_arrestflow/

Keynote addresses by:

Bernhard Siegert
(History and Theory of Cultural Technologies, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar)

Jules Law
(English and Comparative Literary Studies, Northwestern University)

Responses by:

Peter Fenves
(Joan and Sarepta Harrison Professor of Literature, Northwestern University)

CALL FOR PAPERS

The graduate students of Northwestern
University's Program in Comparative Literary
Studies invite submissions for their first annual
conference, to be held April 14-15, 2006. The
conference theme is "Arresting the Flow".

This conference seeks to provide a platform for
the formulation of a cohesive understanding of
flow. The terms flow, flux, and fluid are
ubiquitous in the history of Western thought-and
its polemics. From Heraclitus to Plotinus,
Augustine to Leibniz and Kant, Hölderlin to
Heidegger, Benjamin to Deleuze and Derrida, flow
has been variously defined: "fluid" have been the
borders between self and other, "fluctuating" the
"influences" of the uncontrollable and uncreated
on organized space and time, "flowing" the
conditions-and metaphors-of exchange and
transmission, knowledge and self-consciousness,
circulation and infection. One thing, though, has
remained constant: that flow incorporates a
concern for the overflowing of certain limits of
being and experience, whether those be placed
between man and God, mind and body, self and
world, neurotransmitter and memory, eye and
screen, place and journey. And yet, "flow" seems
to demand its own, conceptual arrest.

Fields as diverse as psychoanalysis, film and
media studies, philosophy, theatre, religion, the
history of science, geography, urban studies,
law, political science, economics, literary
studies, architecture and art history, among
others, continue to be marked by the effects of
flow. Papers are invited to address, but are not
limited to, topics such as:

The ebb and flow of thought
Flow and interruption
Flow at the source of permanence
Flow as negativity
Flow and the concepts of home and shelter
Rivers and bends, streams and eddies
Autoimmunity, law and politics
Volition, flow, resistance
Circulation(s)
Currents
Modeling flow and the impact on design
"Flow" as a paradigm of social theory
The metaphor of flow
Rethinking "influence": local, national, global, cross-disciplinary
Fluencies
Temporal flow and perception
Wandering, migration, and the production of space
Liquid space
Political states and states of flux
"Uneven flow" and the transgression of borders
"Total flow", streaming, and the subject of media
Landscape, fluidity and viscosity
Body fluids at the crossroads of the histories of
medicine, religion, literature
Fluidity of identity and concept: race/gender/ethnicity, genre/form/structure

The primary language of the conference is
English. Presentations should last roughly 20
minutes. Please send an abstract of 250-300 words
as a Word attachment to Julia Ng
(j-ng_at_northwestern.edu). On a separate cover page
please list the proposed title, author's name,
affiliation, brief biographical statement
focusing on academic work (approx. 100 words) and
contact information. Please indicate if you will
require technological support (overhead, slide
projector, etc.). **Deadline for submissions is
December 1, 2005.

--Julia NgDepartment of German Literature and Critical ThoughtProgram in Comparative Literary StudiesNorthwestern University * 2-375 Kresge * 1880Campus Drive * Evanston, IL 60208 USA::: 847-467-7067::: j-ng_at_northwestern.edu ========================================================== From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List CFP_at_english.upenn.edu Full Information at http://cfp.english.upenn.edu or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj_at_english.upenn.edu ==========================================================Received on Tue Oct 11 2005 - 17:56:54 EDT