Fluidity is a complex state of being in the world that exists in the realm of the aesthetic. To be fluid means to be continuously shifting and morphing, calling attention to embodiment and its materiality in relation to spaces and each other. As an identitarian characteristic, fluidity challenges the spatio-temporal logics that impose rigid taxonomy through the hetero-patriarchy and, instead, offers resistance. As a spatial condition, fluidity may offer malleable or blurry boundaries to help form alternative ways of being and connecting in the world. As a process, fluidity means to reimagine bodies and spaces as watery.

This conference invites investigation into aesthetic considerations of bodily and spatial concepts of fluidity. To consider how fluidity breaches, contests, and negotiates borders and boundaries in the world. We invite you to reflect on what it means to move fluidly through the world, to examine watery embodiments throughout time and space in different contexts. How is fluidity represented in literature and other forms of media as a way of practicing a politics of refusal? As a refusal to be caged into the historically rigid ways of being in the world? How is fluidity attentive to the embodied realities of gender, sexuality, race, socioeconomic privilege and ability?

 We are honoured to welcome Dr. David Tenorio from the University of Pittsburgh as the keynote speaker for this event. Dr. Tenorio’s current research examines the representation of queer futurity as portrayed by contemporary artists, performers, writers, and filmmakers from Mexico, Cuba, and their diasporas in the United States.

We encourage interdisciplinary submissions from fields such as literature, philosophy, history, sociology, art history, geography, and cinema studies. We welcome papers related, but not limited, to the following topics:

Hispanic Literature and Culture Black Studies Diaspora Studies

Indigenous Studies Queer Theory Environmental Humanities

Disability Studies Cinema Studies Feminism and Gender Studies

Those who wish to participate in the conference should submit an abstract of no more than 250 words, along with a short bio. Abstracts must be submitted on the online portal before June 6th Presentations should not exceed 13 minutes.

 The conference will be held on September 19th at the University of Toronto.Additional information is available on our website: https://spanportconference.wixsite.com/fluidity-conference