CALL FOR PAPERS:

The 23rd Annual UAlbany English Graduate Conference:

Back To the Future: Historical Reflections on Contemporary issues

April 11th, 2025 / 9 am - 4 pm EST 

Official site: https://egsoalbany.weebly.com/conference.html

How can we, as global citizens, reflect on historical moments to alter or produce alternatives to or even mitigate current or future crises?  The University at Albany’s 21st annual English Graduate Student Organization Conference, “Back to the Future: Historical Reflections on Contemporary Issues,” seeks out papers, projects, and creative works that explores how history informs, predicts or shapes our present and future(s).

This conference is an intentional convening of graduate and undergraduate students, who often remain separated within the institution, to present their work in a cooperative environment. Our hope is that this conference provides a platform for an engaging discourse featuring a great range of perspectives on historical reflection and its possibilities for the future. We encourage student proposals for both critical and creative projects from literary/cultural studies, creative writing, rhetorical/composition studies, and other adjacent disciplines.

Potential topics related to the theme of “Historical Reflections on Contemporary Issues” may include, but are not limited to the following:  

Archives/Artifacts and PreservationAfrofuturismTemporality/Queer TemporalityTestimony and NarrativeBiopolitics and/or BioethicsIndustrializationTechnological DevelopmentWar/Nuclear PowerPoliticsDystopia/UtopiaAI/Surveillance, AlgorithmsReality, Consciousness, and Consciousness-RaisingHuman relationships with NatureTransformations/Transition
Please submit a 350 word abstract and a brief bio by February 1st 2025 by scanning the code below. 

Please contact ualbanyegso@gmail.com with any questions.