DEADLINE EXTENDED

The Dalhousie Association of Graduate Students in English Presents

Destinations and Departures

An Online Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference

August 11-13, 2022, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia

It’s a dangerous business, […] going out of your door, […] You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.

—J.R.R. Tolkien

Most of us have started out on a journey—literal, intellectual, emotional—aiming for one destination and arriving somewhere else entirely. When we look back on the path we took to get there, what can we learn about ourselves from how our plans and thinking changed along the way? Moreover, when we look forward to our next destination, do we have any way of knowing where we will arrive?

Many of us have not travelled much—if at all—in the last few years, but that does not make us any less conscious of place, space, movement, and changes. These things continue to impact our lives and our scholarship, whether it is a project that had to rapidly change directions due to the pandemic, or a greater sense of how our lives are shaped by the places we go, have gone, and wish to visit, brought on by staying in one place. Historically, many forces have played a role in forcing, restricting, opening, or limiting movement, whether that be in the form of borders and boundaries, or in the form of expectation and convention.

Our conference this year focuses on the places we go (literally and metaphorically) and the paths we take to get there.

We invite submissions for papers, creative works, or something in between (15 - 20 minutes) from across the disciplines that engage critically with these issues.

Proposed topics include (but are not limited to):

Travel Writing

Road Literature

Tourism

Transportation

Space and Place in Literature

Migration and Trade

Boundaries (International, Disciplinary…)

Liminality

New Disciplinary Directions

Changes in Scholarly Writing/Methods

Field Work (Surprises, Complications, Successes, Struggles)

Public Scholarship

Ecosystems

Evolution(s)

Statistical Modelling

Exploration

Climate Fiction and/or Dystopia

Quest Narratives

Utopia as Lost Paradise or Future Achievement

Death and Dying

Genesis and Apocalypse

Submissions: Please send a 250-word abstract plus a 50-word bio along with your name, current level of graduate study, affiliated university, email address, and current time zone (in UTC) to dagse@dal.ca. Panel submissions are also welcome. Please include “Destinations and Departures Conference Abstract” in the subject line.

Deadline: April 30, 2022