CFP: Navigating Interdisciplinarity (grad) (2/10/07; 3/16/07-3/17/07)
The Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto
invites abstracts for its 18th annual graduate student conference:
?Navigating Interdisciplinarity, Cultivating New Spaces of Comparison?
Date: March 16?17, 2007
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Keynote Speaker: Haun Saussy, Professor of Comparative Literature at
Yale University
Recently, the field of Comparative Literature has been experiencing a
period of self-reflection. ?Trans, Pan, Intra: Cultures in Contact? is
the title for the American Comparative Literature Association's 2007
conference. Comparative Literature in the Age of Globalism is the
title of the most recent publication of scholarly critiques of a
discipline dedicated to methods of comparison. As a contribution to
the current discussion of global intellectual exchange, the Centre for
Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto is requesting
papers that engage interdisciplinary approaches to literature and
culture.
The Centre?s 18th annual international graduate student colloquium
will focus on the ways methodologies from the Humanities, the Social
and the Natural Sciences can be brought to bear on the study of
literature or culture, thus redefining its object and scope. Papers
are encouraged to address one or more of the following questions with
any combination of theoretical and practical texts that marks the
intersection (the nebulous in-between space) of at least two
disciplines:
? The Text and the City (Literary Studies, Architecture, Sociology,
Urban Planning)
? Photography and Life Writing (Visual Studies, History, National Literatures)
? Adaptation Theory (Cinema Studies, Drama, Literary Studies, and more)
? Technology and the Book (Media Studies, Book History and Print
Culture, History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, English,
etc.)
Questions:
What can be gained by uniting normally separate fields of study? How
does one decide which points of disciplinary intersection will yield
the richest, most creative results?
What are the dangers of too much interdisciplinarity? At what point do
comparative projects attempt to pull in so many theories, fields,
languages, or literatures that they sacrifice intellectual focus or
cohesion?
Are there rules for interdisciplinary approaches? What should the
guidelines and basic requirements be to ensure that projects which
draw upon multiple disciplines do so in an academically rigorous manner?
Does Comparative Literature need to involve literature at all? Can
pieces of music, paintings, films, etc. serve as texts? Does replacing
a language requirement with fluency in another discipline bring about
a crisis that has the potential to redefine Comparative Literature?
If decentralisation, decolonisation, and globalization have brought
about a change in the Eurocentric territorialisation of knowledge,
does Comparative Literature need to renegotiate a space for itself?
** Other topics and questions along similar lines of inquiry are also
welcome. **
Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be sent to
ronald.ng_at_utoronto.ca by February 10, 2007 (deadline has been extended
from January 20, 2007). Graduate students from various disciplines are
encouraged to apply. Please observe the following procedures to enable
blind peer review: 1) attach a short biographical note on a separate
page, 2) do not include your name on the same page as your abstract,
and 3) type ?abstract? in the subject line of your email. Also, please
indicate at the end of your abstract if you will require any special
resources (projectors, multimedia players, etc.). All presentations
should be timed and must not exceed 20 minutes in length. For more
information on the Centre for Comparative Literature, please visit:
www.chass.utoronto.ca/complit/.
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Received on Sun Feb 04 2007 - 13:54:51 EST