Call for Papers

Goblin Modes: Pleasure, Care, and Disobedience

21st Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference

Department of English, Indiana University, Bloomington

Dates: Friday, March 22nd – Saturday, March 23rd, 2024

We are pleased to announce the Call for Papers for Indiana University’s 20th Annual Interdisciplinary Conference, hosted by the Department of English. This conference will be held virtually on Friday, March 22nd and Saturday, March 23rd.

Resonating with a moment of widespread fatigue, the term “goblin mode” cemented its position as the Oxford word of the year for 2022. Embodying perhaps a dissatisfaction with hyper-curated self-imagining, the aesthetics of this rejection has been variously defined as a hedonistic, slovenly, and a selfish endorsement of personal pleasure. Less discussed, however, is goblin mode’s position as a challenge to the pressures of hyperproductivity. Goblin mode constitutes a remedy, as the exhausted increasingly embrace the importance of self-care and resist the call to ever increasing standards of productivity. Alongside goblin behavior, trends such as “quiet quitting” have resulted in tangible economic and social impacts––if curmudgeonly commentators are to be believed. What implications might these trends have for scholars and writers in our respective fields?  Though creative work and criticism occasionally turn to the importance of enjoyment, the question of what constitutes “serious” art and scholarship maintains a considerable distance between the academy and pleasure. “Goblin mode” invites a reorientation of our professional pursuits: what is the role of pleasure in literary studies, rhetorical criticism, and creative production within the academy, especially if pleasure and comfort hold such potential for subversion? Alternatively, how can we locate a social value for disobedience through or escapes into “selfishness”? Is goblin mode inherently self-serving, or does it connect to a broader and necessary cultural shift toward rest and pleasure?

Relevant topics may include (but are by no means limited to):

• Representations and Interrogations of “Goblin Behavior”

• The Social and Economic Impacts of Capitalist Exploitation

• Interrogations of Self-care and Perceived Selfishness

• Gender and Equity

• History of Labor and Labor Movements

• Boundary-making and Boundary-breaking

• Fugitivity and Subversion

• Collectivity in Isolation 

• Race, Liberation, and Empire

• Queer Modes of Interpretation

• Narratives and Counternarratives

• Materiality or Materialisms

Proposals might also situate these topics in the context of rhetoric and composition studies. We invite proposals that consider the pressures of academic spaces and the role of rhetoric in studies of rest, resistance, and pleasure. Papers that bring together critical and creative elements are also highly encouraged.

We invite proposals for both individual papers and organized panels:

• Individual scholarly papers and creative works (15-minute presentations; please submit a 250-word abstract)

• Panels organized around a thematic topic (three 20-minute papers or four 15-minute papers; please submit a 350-word panel abstract as well as a 100-word abstract for each individual paper on the panel)

Email your submission to iugradconference@gmail.com by January 14, 2024. In your email, please submit your abstract (both in the body of the email and as a Word attachment), along with your name, institutional affiliation, and email. Please note that both the keynote and the panels will be given synchronously via Zoom.

Sarah Lawler and Ryan Lally, Conference Co-Chairs

Ben Hoover, CFP Author