Call for Papers

UCLA QGrad 2026: SELVAGE

Queer/Trans Studies Graduate Student Research Conference

Keynote: Dr. PJ DiPietro

Conference Date: Friday, October 30, 2026

Abstracts Due: Friday, April 10, 2026

https://tinyurl.com/qgrad2026

UCLA’s 29th annual QGrad Conference invites graduate students working in any discipline engaging with queer, trans, and sexuality studies to convene under its 2026 theme, “Selvage.”

In her talk “Selvage/Obsidian” (2019), Vanessa Agard-Jones notes the double meaning of the word. Selvage (from self + edge) names both the outer edge of fabric that keeps it from unraveling and a zone of altered rock at the edge of a rock mass. 

“Selvage” can serve as a lens for thinking about the self as relational, multiple, situated, and forged through concrete histories of social and material forces that are specific and interconnected. By attending to edges, not as universal givens, but as dynamic and concrete sites, we invite contributors to consider how staying at the edge might shift or unsettle dominant scales, terms, and contexts of analysis, particularly regarding queer, trans, gender-nonconforming communities, and non-normative sexualities.

In fabrics, selvage runs parallel to the length grain (warp threads), the least stretchy direction that gives the material firm structure. The cross grain (weft threads), rectangular to warp, allows some stretch. The bias, diagonal to both, is the most flexible. The orientation of cutting in relation to these grains determine how the fabric will behave, stretch, hang, and move. While selvage is used to establish a particular orientation and control the behavior of the fabric, it is ultimately treated as excess and discarded, because it does not behave like the rest of the fabric. 

In geology, selvage marks the zone of transformation of a rock mass, commonly emerging along fractures (zones of repeated stress and deformation), faults (fractures where rock blocks have moved past each other), veins (fractures filled with minerals deposited by fluids), and dikes (magmatic or sedimentary sheet of rock that cuts through a pre-existing rock body). Geological selvage forms as a result of contact, pressure, friction, movement of fluid, which transform the rock’s shape, grain, texture, or chemical composition. It acts as an archival record of stress and transformation, demonstrating where forces concentrate and contact and how the material responds.

We draw inspiration from the work of our keynote speaker, Dr. PJ DiPietro (Syracuse University). In Sideways Selves (2025), DiPietro weaves together “fabrics with theoretical and practical threads that come from various ways of thinking and doing” to examine the ways dispossessed travesti, trans, and jotería communities across the Américas germinate material, social, cultural, and bodily ways of living and knowing together beyond the norms that arrange and limit what can be perceived and known as real.

Dwelling in the metaphoric materiality of selvage, we invite submissions that explore questions of selfhood, edges, margins, and the ethical, political, intellectual, collective, creative work that emerges in zones of pressure or strain. We ask: How do ongoing histories of colonialism, imperialism, slavery, and capitalism shape material landscapes and produce moralized, racialized, sexualized and gendered geopolitical and social hierarchies of life, value, and meaning? What might paying attention to social and material edges reveal about the formation of the self, as well as assumptions about subjectivity, embodiment, and relationality within these histories? 

We welcome proposal submissions from current graduate students (MA, MFA, MS, and  PhD) whose work engages with the interdisciplinary fields of queer and trans studies. We invite proposals that draw on a diverse range of methodologies and fields, from qualitative to quantitative approaches across the humanities, social sciences, and STEM fields, including medicine, life and health sciences, bioethics, geology, data science, and environmental studies. We also welcome proposals that practice anti-disciplinary modes of presentation or performance that move beyond a traditional conference paper, panel, or roundtable format. Possible conference topics and queries include (but aren’t limited to):

• Edges of selfhood, embodiment, dis/ability, identity, and relationality

• Transformative, ethical, political, epistemic, coalitional possibilities and stakes at the edges

• Erotic, sensual, spiritual, aesthetic, affective, communal, and political edges

• Edges and margins in Black feminist theory and praxis 

• Relations to and understandings of land 

• Indigenous and Native knowledge systems and ways of living

• Migrations, mobility, displacement, dispossession, survival 

• Belonging/unbelonging, space-making at/on the edge

• Fashion, weaving, and quilting as embodied practices of memory, grief, identity, and politics 

• Ecological, geological, chemical, social, and somatic traces of coloniality 

• Metaphoric materialities and material metaphors 

• Textile science, engineering, and manufacturing; fibers, dyes, wearable technologies, material sourcing, environmental impacts

• Social and material edges across urban, national, global landscapes

• Technological margins/edges: surveillance, data borders, biometric governance, algorithmic sorting, AI, smart cities, tech hubs 

• Edges of legality/illegality, carceral boundaries, lives lived in juridical gray zones, abolitionist frameworks and practices

• Fault lines of healthcare system: queer and trans encounters with medicine, control, insurgent practices of care and healing

• Human/nonhuman boundary 

• Archival and temporal edges

• Queering research methods

Keynote Speaker. Dr. PJ DiPietro is Associate Professor in Women's and Gender Studies and the Director of LGBTQ Studies at Syracuse University. She works at the intersection of anthropology, human geography, and philosophy. With a transdisciplinary approach, she engages decolonial thinking, hemispheric Latinx studies, and critical theories of race, gender, transgender, and sexuality. Her scholarship is grounded in collaborative, justice-oriented work with groups including the Association for Jotería Arts, Activism, and Scholarship (AJAAS), REC-Latinoamérica, and the travesti collectives Damas de Hierro and Futuro Trans. Dr. DiPietro is co-editor of Speaking Face to Face: The Visionary Philosophy of María Lugones (SUNY, 2019) and Trans Philosophy (University of Minnesota Press, 2024), and the author of the monograph Sideways Selves: Travesti and Jotería Struggles Across the Américas (University of Texas Press, 2025). She currently serves as the principal investigator of the multi-institutional project Trans Diasporic Study (2025–2027).

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

• Submissions must be made via the Google Form linked here:

• https://forms.gle/Hi8ezyTeATW6Woqz9

The form will request contributor information as well as the following:

• Paper title

• Abstract (maximum 250 words)

• Brief author bio (maximum50 words)

• 3 to 5 keywords

If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at uclalgbtq@gmail.com 

The conference will be held exclusively in person at UCLA. No virtual or hybrid participation options are available. On campus accommodations will be offered to accepted presenters traveling to Los Angeles outside the Southern California area. 

QGrad acknowledges the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples as the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar (the Los Angeles basin and So. Channel Islands). Toward the return of these lands and waters, we pay our respects to the Honuukvetam (Ancestors), ‘Ahiihirom (Elders) and ‘Eyoohiinkem (our relatives/relations) past, present and emerging.

https://tinyurl.com/qgrad2026