Theorizing School Violence

full name / name of organization: 
UCR (dis)junctions

Cultural consciousness has, in the last decade and a half, becomes more and more aware of cultures of violence as they circulate within spaces of education. School violence in the form of school shootings, bullying, and other ways of imagining violence has become central to cultural production. From films about real events (such as 2003's Elephant, a loose adaptation of Columbine), to Glee's therapeutic evaluation of bullying, the inclusion of a school shooting as a minor plot point in the first season of American Horror Story, and the recent remake of Carrie, such violence has infiltrated many different genres and types of media (television, film, music, video games, media accounts, etc.). This panel invites papers that analyze the ways that school violence appears in texts and in cultural discourse as a way of imagining subjectivity, sociality, and forms of politics. Papers that look at school violence through different lenses (queer theory, theories of race and ethnicity, disability studies, animal studies, etc.) and in different historical periods are welcomed and encouraged.

The theme of 21st annual (dis)junctions conference, hosted by UC Riverside, is "irreverent readings," featuring keynote speakers Virginia Jackson (UC Irvine) and Constance Pendley (UC Santa Barbara). Abstracts of 250 to 300 words should be submitted via the form at www.disjunctions2014.org by February 10th, 2014.