**Deadline Extended**

“[N]ow may be the time,” as Teresa de Lauretis suggests, “for the human sciences to reopen the questions of subjectivity, materiality, discursivity, [and] knowledge, to reflect on the post of posthumanity.” She goes on to enumerate the various “schemata” to which that reopening applies, a list that is, unsurprisingly, a long one. As scholars reconsider their own disciplines in light of the “nonhuman turn,” the question of what comes next becomes increasingly pressing. What’s more, escalating global temperatures and rising sea levels have urged thinkers, from the mechanical sciences to the humanities, to move beyond traditional methodologies to consider their fields of study from increasingly interdisciplinary vantage points. Given this confluence, the English Graduate Student Association of Georgetown University seeks proposals from various disciplines and theoretical approaches addressing, but not limited to, the following questions: How do new materialist theories think through the increasingly complex global systems—economic, technological, and environmental in scope—impacted by anthropogenic climate change? To what extent can posthumanist theory and emerging disciplines like critical animal studies challenge or even collapse the subject-object division inherent to Enlightenment epistemology? In refusing the confines of a traditional subject-object divide, how might a reconsideration of these non-human agents allow us to reconceive our failures within the political arena or the ramifications such a failure might entail? How might we rethink historical periods, and especially literary periodization, along the lines of energy regimes? How are terms like “nature” and “environment” employed or circulated as discursive constructs that affect human bodies, knowledges, and spaces? In what ways does a reconsideration of the nonhuman world—of animals and inanimate objects as agents in and of themselves—shape our understanding of science, methodology, or historicity? We are particularly interested in papers that investigate burgeoning technologies in relation to research methods in the humanities, as well as in studies that integrate approaches or methodologies less common in humanistic inquiry. Proposals may also be considered for inclusion in Predicate, EGSA’s interdisciplinary journal in the humanities, which will be published in spring 2017.

The conference will be held on Saturday, April 8, 2017.

UPDATE: Keynote speaker will be Vin Nardizzi, University of British Columbia, author of Wooden Os: Shakespeare's Theatres and England's Trees (University of Toronto Press, 2013). 

A combination of any of the following theoretical approaches (as well as those not listed here) would be welcomed:

Marxist theory and criticism

Feminist theory and gender studies

Queer theory

Postcolonial theory

Race and ethnic studies

Psychoanalysis

Globalization and globality

Environmentalism and ecotheory

Animal studies

Poststructuralism and Deconstruction

Epistemology, phenomenology, and ontology

Digital humanities

Metropolitanism

Disability studies

Reader response theory

Print and material culture

Television and media

Pop culture and game studies

Submissions should be sent via email by the EXTENDED deadline of February 24, 2017 to the following address: egsa@georgetown.edu. Conference proposals should consist of 250-500 words and include a short biographical statement with academic affilication. Article or other prose submissions for the journal should be 15-25 pages, double-spaced, in standard size and font (Times New Roman or Garamond preferred). MLA style, please. Article proposals and pitches for reviews or personal essays are also acceptable. Poetry submissions may consist of 3-5 poems. Include a cover letter. Journal submissions are accepted on a rolling basis. Please address conference submissions to Emily Coccia, Academic Chair, and journal submissions to John James, Editor of Predicate. If submitting for both the conference and the journal, please note so in the body of your email.

Feel free to email us at egsa@georgetown.edu with any questions.  

Key terms: Anthropocene, Ecology, Environmentalism, Animal Studies, Queer, Materialism, Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism, Metahumanism, Cyberhumanism