Transitions

The University of Florida’s English Graduate Organization (EGO) invites proposals for our eighteenth annual conference: “Transitions.”

With a focus on transitional / media or media-in-transition, “Transitions” intends to explore the manner in which media not only has the capacity to represent flux, progress, institiality, or passages but also participates in cultural transition through media objects. Additionally, this conference welcomes scholarship that probes media’s referential and instrumental relationships with transition in dialogue with its inherently flexible formal capacities and histories. Media, as it will be taken up to facilitate these discussions, should be understood in all its diverse expressions: film, dance, comics, fashion, music, literature, architecture, new media, mass media, massive media, social media, and more.

Conference Format

Organized by University of Florida graduate students, EGO’s interdisciplinary conference will be held February 18-20, 2022. Understanding the uncertainty of public gatherings in the near future, EGO will host our conference in hybrid format, with events occurring online and in-person at the University of Florida and with the option to switch to a completely online modality, if necessary.

The conference’s events will begin with a keynote speaker whose work focuses on transitional media, followed by panels, screenings, performances, and public-facing events over the weekend. More specifically, we're anchoring the conference around our Sunday program, which will highlight University of Florida graduate students whose work and research integrates critical race theory.

Possible Proposal Topics

Due to the conference’s focus on transitional / media as well as its hybrid modality, EGO invites proposals of a variety of topics, genres, and modes, including but not limited to: papers, panels, posters, short films, creative readings, roundtable discussions in addition to other research-creation projects. Possible proposal topics include:

• New media
• Digital media
• Hybrid media
• Mass media
• Media histories
• Media activism
• Media ontology
• Interstitial media and identity
• Media's permanence and / or impermanence
• Media's role in shifting social attitudes
• Representations of media in utopian portrayals
• Approaches and uses of media in political or social crisis
• Representations of the evolving climate crisis
• Media's potentials and limits during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Pedagogical approaches during the COVID-19 pandemic

Other topics, focuses, and disciplines are welcome!

Submission Information

Please submit the following to ufl.ego@gmail.com by December 15, 2021 at 11:59 pm:

• Name
• E-mail
• Institutional affiliation, if applicable
• Bio, up to 50 words
• Abstract, up to 250 words
• 3-5 descriptive keywords
• Preferred format (in-person, virtual, no preference)
• Any audio-visual requirements

Deadline Submission: Wednesday, December 15, 2021 by 11:59 pm EST

COVID-19 Statement

EGO is aware of the unpredictability of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although we hope to safely host the conference in a hybrid format, we will make a final decision about the conference’s modality in the spring.

Questions

For questions concerning the conference, please contact us at ufl.ego@gmail.com