What is DiCon?

Diverge: to separate. Converge: to meet. In mathematical terms, the prefix marks the difference between infinity and defined. The Literature and Writing Studies department at California State University, San Marcos seeks papers and creative works that expand, transgress, problematize, and rethink hegemonic boundaries and definitions. 

Our conference aims to host critical conversations about power structures that enable and perpetuate social, political, and economic disparity. DICON–DIverge and CONverge is about “writing on the verge”: deconstructing hegemonic systems in order to discover new possibilities. These hegemonic systems include (but are not limited to) cultural, political, and environmental structures that influence how people participate and engage within and among communities and other specific contexts. 

Participants in our conference are encouraged to examine how diverging from preexisting systems fosters a space of convergence that facilitates equitable conversation, bringing together voices that may have been lost or silenced. 

Proposals may consider the process undertaken by a hegemonic body to displace communities, the reclamation of identity and narrative, intersectional experiences of hegemony, alternate realities, and the possibilities of the future. 

We are seeking to feature graduate and advanced undergraduate conference papers, fiction, poetry, experimental, and multidisciplinary writings that examine borders, liminality, and transcendence. Possible topics could include but are not limited to the following: Ethnic-American experience, Ethnic-American Literature, Indigenous Literature, Historical/narrative reclamation, Afrofuturism, Transhumance, Experimental Literature, Nonhuman narratives, Labor of writing, Labor of reading, Labor of research, Intersectional Feminism, Queer Identity, Ecocentric Identity Structures, Disability Studies, Supercrip, Postmodernism, Slipstream literature, Experimental Pedagogy, Translation, Emergent Structures, Deconstruction, Multidisciplinary Studies, Digital Humanities, Found Language, Experimental Archivism, Marxist Critical Theory, Personal Narrative, Agitprop, Spatial Dynamics, The Avant-Garde. Papers should be no less than six and no more than ten pages, or alternatively, presentations no less than 10 minutes and no more than 20 minutes. 

Please submit a 250 word abstract, synopsis, or artist’s statement, as well as a short (50-100 word) biography by March 12, 2023 to csusmdicon@gmail.com or on this google form. 

Find more on our website: csusmdicon2023.com

DiCon: Writing on the Verge

CSU San Marcos 

333 S Twin Oaks Valley Rd, San Marcos, CA 92096