2013 UTSA English Graduate Symposium Celebrating Women's History Month: "Technologies and Locales of Knowledge: An Interdisciplinary Symposium Exploring Discourse, Meaning, and Power"

Sponsored by the Department of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio, the Women's Studies Institute/Consortium for Social Transformation, the Inclusion and Community Engagement Center, Dr. Sonja Lanehart, and Dr. Joycelyn Moody

March 30, 2013 at The University of Texas San Antonio in San Antonio, TX

Keynote Speaker: Julia Serano, Transgendered writer, musician and spoken word artist and activist, author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity

Proposal Submission Deadline: Friday, February 8, 2013

How are we shaped by the spaces we inhabit and the tools we have available? The English Graduate Students and the Graduate English Organization at the University of Texas at San Antonio offer the opportunity to share academic and activist projects with our symposium. This year, we wish to explore social challenges and theoretical models through investigation of the significance of our cultural surroundings. This interdisciplinary symposium will bring together graduate and undergraduate students, scholars, writers, artists and performers in order to break down conventional boundaries.

We invite papers that engage the concepts of epistemology, language, the self, community, disciplines, and activism. Papers may challenge, complicate, critique, or expand current conceptualizations of academic and activist spaces and tools. We wish to invite research from all disciplines, including, but not limited to, literary, cultural, queer, LGBT, feminist, environmental, American, critical race, communication, political, subaltern, bicultural, and popular cultural studies.

We also encourage topics that propose new and imaginative approaches to discourse analysis, coalition building, methodology, and pedagogy. Visual arts and rhetoric proposals are highly encouraged; the symposium will feature an exhibition of artistic responses such as paintings, drawings, and sculptures related to our theme. We also invite creative writing proposals that bridge disciplines and explore questions of transformation, revolution, liberation, and imagination.

Some possible topics include but are not limited to:

- Examinations of Social Movements and/or Academic Disciplines
- Narratives of Transformation/Transformative Narratives
- Feminisms/Women's Studies/Gender Studies
- Queer Studies and Theory
- Transgender Studies
- Third Space Feminisms
- Linguistics/Language/Translation Studies
- Body Politics
- Racial and Cultural Representations
- Critical Race Theory
- Identity Formation/Representation
- Popular Culture/Film/Performance Studies
- Autobiography Studies
- Transnational Discourses of Race/Nation
- Globalism and Colonialism
- Concepts of Communities/Nations/Space
- Alternative Literacies
- Pedagogies in the grade school, university, and/or feminist classroom
- Discourses of Development, Progress, and Difference
- Transformative Art/Transformative Music
- Spirituality

Please submit 250-word individual abstracts or panel proposals (panel proposals should be comprised of a 250-word abstract for the panel as a whole and titles for each paper) to utsagradconf2013@gmail.com by February 8, 2013. Paste your proposal into the body of the email message and include any technology requests. Please also include your contact information.

If submitting a work of art, please attach a low-resolution image of your piece, if possible, in addition to your abstract.

The conference registration fee is $10.00 to be paid upon sign-in on the day of the conference. Please plan to pay by cash or check only please, as we cannot accept credit cards. We apologize for any inconvenience might cause.

Submit: utsagradconf2013@gmail.com
Email Subject: Abstract for Technologies and Locales
Deadline: February 8, 2013