Update: The EGSS is pleased to announce that Professor Mayurika Chakravorty (University of Carleton) will be the keynote speaker for the conference! Her presentation will explore the question of identity in relation to the diaspora in contemporary YA and speculative fiction.

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Identity, as an embodied practice, is restlessly flexible, and while this fluidity offers freedom and possibility, it can also generate an abiding sense of uncertainty. Hubert J.M. Hermans and Giancarlo Dimaggio consider the “experience of uncertainty” in the context of globalization, which they describe as “a global situation of multivoicedness (complexity) that does not allow a fixation of meaning (ambiguity), that has no superordinate voice for resolving contradictions and conflicting information (deficit knowledge), and that is to a large extent unpredictable” (34). In the same vein, we might recall David Harvey’s famous theorization of the postmodern condition and its “disorienting and disruptive impact […] upon cultural and social life” (284). We respond to (and are shaped by) the rapidly changing world in which we live, and thus we incorporate the principles of adaptation, flux, flexibility, and transformation into our identities and our individual sense of self as we move through the world. Artists and writers have addressed these issues in numerous ways and are especially well suited to the task: after all, the creative act itself is often one of innovation and transformation, and its interventions cannot always be foreseen. John Clammer reminds us that creativity is “unpredictable in its precise outcomes. This is not only a good definition of art but equally of the shaping of the self. As we know, life […] is unplanned and unplannable, and so is the sense of identity that emerges” (42). Art’s inherent uncertainty, therefore, makes it apt for explorations of the uncertainty of the self and the environment in which it evolves.

 Our conference (March 22–24, 2024) seeks to examine the impacts of uncertainty, unpredictability, transition, and change both on individual identity as well as on the meaning and interpretation of cultural production, literary and/or artistic. Our goal is to foster generative conversations about the anxieties provoked by our rapidly changing world and about the stakes of stability and stasis in our contemporary context. The organizers invite scholars and students to explore literary and cultural works that reflect on the following questions, among others: Is uncertainty inevitable? In other words, are we bound by the assertion that “the only certainty is uncertainty” (Bussey et al. 1)? What pathways are liberated by uncertainty in the context of individual or community identity? What is lost – or gained – in transition? Can we consider transition a form of adaptation? What can be found in the liminal spaces between two forms or states? How do we understand the work of literature and art in times of uncertainty? What are the limits of art’s political intervention given our current geopolitical circumstances? How does trauma factor into these reflections? How might instability represent an opportunity to reimagine identity and self-determination? 

The English Graduate Students’ Society (soon to become the English and Bi-disciplinary Students’ Society) at l’Université de Montréal invites graduate students working in English or French to submit abstracts for scholarly papers (or creative writing) that address the topics of identity, uncertainty, and transition to be presented at our 21st annual graduate conference. Submissions may emphasize one topic specifically or consider the nexus of all three in works of historical periods, themes, and genres of the applicant’s choosing. EGSS also encourages abstracts from undergraduate students; accepted papers will be organized as an undergraduate panel to be delivered at the conference.

Submissions are welcome from a range of disciplines, including but not limited to: literary and cultural theory, digital humanities, film, visual arts, translation and adaptation studies, migration studies, critical studies in race and ethnicity, Indigenous studies, queer studies, gender and feminist studies, critical disability studies, supernatural studies, studies in speculative and science fiction, migration studies, and studies in popular culture and non-canonical genres.

We ask those interested in delivering presentations of 15–20 minutes (or of shorter duration for undergraduate students) to submit abstracts of no more than 250 words via Google Form: https://forms.gle/XW3dhCnzdva44pzo6. 

The deadline for submission is February 18, 2024. For any queries, please contact the conference organizers at egss.conferences@gmail.com.

Works Cited 

Bussey, Marcus, et al. “Introduction: Identity and Becoming in a Plurified World.” Transitional Selves: Possibilities for Identity in a Plurified World, edited by Marcus Bussey et al., Routledge, 2023, pp. 1–12, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003396246-1.

Clammer, John. “The Creative Self: Artistic Performance and the Making and Finding of Identity.” Transitional Selves: Possibilities for Identity in a Plurified World, edited by Marcus Bussey et al., Routledge, 2023, pp. 33–48, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003396246-4. 

Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Blackwell, 1989.

Hermans, Hubert J.M., and Giancarlo Dimaggio. “Self, Identity, and Globalization in Times of Uncertainty: A Dialogical Analysis.” Review of General Psychology, vol. 11, no. 1, 2007, pp. 31–61, https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.11.1.31.