English Graduate Student Conference
The University of Tulsa
'Passing and Questions of Legitimacy'

Call for papers and panels on Passing and the Question of Legitimacy.

As graduate students, we all encounter many forms of passing. We worry whether we passed that class or that assignment; we wonder whether or not our papers pass for publication or will pass for a conference. We attempt to pass ourselves off as people who are knowledgeable; we sometimes even pass as professors. In our scholarly work we ask whether or not a text passes in a literary genre, period, canon, or, if it passes as belonging to a certain "author." We also ask about the construction and presentation of selfhood in literary texts and how characters pass as being white, black, Latino/Latina, middle-class, male, female, straight, gay, bisexual, and even transgendered.

What is seemingly obvious in all of these—and many more—articulations of passing is that there is a notion, possibly Platonic, of what it means to be authentically something. What, then, is passing? Why do we pass? How do we pass? Is there anything like authenticity? If so, what does it mean for our various pursuits? If not, what does it imply about our sense of self, our standards, and the very ways in which we mediate and negotiate the world?

This conference seeks papers and panels in varied and diverse topics ranging from, but not limited to:

Issues of Multiple Editions (e.g. Authoritative/ Pirated Editions)
Canonicity
Gender
Race
Class
(In)Authenticity
Artifice
Adaptation
Power
Identity Construction

We are looking for submissions from graduate students and advanced undergraduate students. Please send 300-500 word abstracts, or panel proposals to English Grad Conference Committee (eng-grad-conf_at_utulsa.edu) by December 5th, 2005. The conference will take place at the University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK on Feb. 17th and 18th, 2006.

Joshua Lea Brazee
Editorial Assistant,
James Joyce Quarterly

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Received on Tue Oct 11 2005 - 17:57:23 EDT