Forces at Play: Bodies, Power, and Spaces

Cyber bullying, the male gaze in cinema, SlutWalk in Toronto, the canonization of slave narratives, border rhetoric in the classroom – issues such as these take up the ways bodies, power, and spaces converge in a re-seeing and re-interpreting of historical and contemporary social complexities. Investigating this nexus in our discursive and material realities gives us the language for articulating the machinations of power and space that construct and dismantle singular and collective (im)material bodies.

The English Graduate Organization of the University of Massachusetts Amherst invites submissions to our 2012 graduate interdisciplinary conference on March 31st 2012. This year's conference will push against standardized and finite notions of body, power, and space to explore how these three variables act upon each other to produce layered, complex, and radical permutations. We urge submitters to investigate the systems of regulation and control that maintain power over singular and collective bodies within various spaces. We invite submissions from a diverse range of disciplines, critical perspectives, and time periods; all three terms need not explicitly be examined in the project, though the possibility of convergence is an encouraged angle. Projects may include papers and/or panel presentations, performance pieces, and multi-media approaches on the following topics:

-literary theoretical approaches
-social spaces and institutions
-composition and rhetorical studies
-canonical studies of bodies of literature
-national and communal boundaries (migrant communities, diasporas, refugee camps)
-(post)colonialism and global studies
-gender and sexuality studies
-animal studies
-childhood studies
-social thought and political economy studies
-media studies and digital spaces
-visual and performing arts
-pop culture/material culture
-emerging creative projects
-disability studies

SUBMISSIONS:
We accept three different types of submissions:
1. Individual papers/projects: please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words. Include your name,
paper title, institution, and email address.
2. Panels: please submit a 1000 word proposal for an entire panel of presentations (3-4 presenters). Included in this proposal should be abstracts of 200-300 words for all presentations, title of the panel, and information for each presenter (name, paper title, institution, and email address). If you are forming your own panel, you have the option of providing your own chair.
3. Performances and creative presentations/panels: we welcome submission of creative works, including creative writing, visual art, and dramatic performance. Please include a brief description of your project, as well as your name, project title, institution, and email address.
Email submissions to umassengconf@gmail.com no later than January 25th, 2012.