The intersection between crises and selves has long been a fertile ground across literary and artistic explorations. This CFP invites papers that examine how individual and collective crises—ranging from pandemics, ecological disasters, and political upheavals to personal and generational trauma—have shaped the articulation of selfhood across literature, film, visual art, and other media. Through this topic, we urge scholars to explore how various identity positions and orientations interact with crises to produce unique modes of writing the self. 

The idea of the self evades a singular definition. The self may take the form of the humanist “master and controlling author” (Mbembe 2019), or a “dialogic” entity influenced by the “plurality of voices that define human existence” (Bakhtin 1981). Others may negotiate the self in its perceived opposition to the other (de Beauvoir 1949; Fabian 1983; Levinas 1989). As theorisations about the Anthropocene have made apparent, the idea of the ‘self’ is itself in crisis, throwing the imaginaries that this idea circumscribes into stark relief. 

At a time when crisis straddles the boundary between a state of “exception” and a “norm” (Chun 2011), when “crisis-ordinariness” has become part of our theoretical vocabulary (Berlant 2011), what can crises of the self mean? How do these crises of the self and selves in crisis create opportunities for transformative, emergent, and productive strategies of thinking and writing about ourselves and the world? In negotiating and challenging these categories, this conference seeks to foster a multidisciplinary dialogue where we can consider how selves are constructed, transformed, and remembered in and through states of crisis. 

We invite abstracts for individual 15-minute presentations from any literary genre and period, as well as related disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. We encourage submissions from graduate scholars and early-career researchers.

Possible themes may include, but are not limited to:

• The (im)possibilities of approximating a self in the contemporary 

• Framing crises across identity positions, orientations, and limits

• Remembering the self through life-writing, trauma, and crises

• Crisis of individual self vs. collective selves 

• Crisis in and of genres, forms, and their functions

• Recounting, witnessing, and anticipating time in crisis

• The precarity and vulnerability of unmoored selves

• Self in the (in)secure state and borders as crises 

• Narrating crisis through storytelling, perspective, and the politics of representation

Key Details: 

Date of the Conference: March 21 2025.

Abstracts of 300 words maximum, along with a 50-word bio-note, should be submitted (in PDF or Word format) to snuenglishconference2025@gmail.com on or before 21st February 2025.

A limited number of outstation participants will be provided accommodation at Shiv Nadar IoE during the duration of the conference, as well as cost of travel (3AC train tickets and cab fares). There will also be cash prizes (worth over 15K) awarded to the best presenters across different panels at the end of the conference.