Monday, November 29, 2004

Interdisciplinary Conference on Parties/Shared Space

(now this sounds like a fun conference1)

CALL FOR CREATIVE WORK: INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE ON PARTIES/SHARED SPACE

University of Southern California
18th Annual AEGS (Association of English Graduate Students) Conference
April 9-10, 2005
Los Angeles, CA

You are invited to . . . submit papers, panels, poetry, fiction, and other written or visual creative work responding to the conference theme of Parties/Shared Space. We invite submissions of creative and critical work from all disciplines. Please contact us for a more specific CFP for academic papers.

Parties are generally thought of as fun places to gather, environments for celebrating or merely as occasions to socialize. Parties also provide a context
in which to question and examine shared space. We hope to do both through this conference: provide a fun gathering where writers/artists can party while engaging in a creative dialogue about parties and shared space.

Come share your work with fellow scholars, writers and artists! We welcome both individual submissions and panel proposals.

Some preliminary panel topics (Please suggest others!):
Poetry/fiction/other creative work that incorporates, thematically or tangentially:
> -- House parties
> -- Masquerade
> -- Subcultures
> -- Rituals
> -- Political Activism/Protests/Grass-roots organizations
> -- Weddings/Wakes/Funerals
> -- Crowds and claustrophobia
> -- Collective vs. Individual Identities (gendered, raced, sexed, and/or ethnically constructed notions of shared space)
> -- Cyberspace/Chat rooms/Internet communities
> -- Collaborative projects
> -- Work inspired by/in response to Literary/Artistic gatherings (i.e. Bloomsbury Group, Beat Poets, Warhol’s Factory, Harlem Renaissance)

Keynote speaker and after party information TBA

Come to our party! Please submit several poems, up to 10 pages of prose, or a sample of other creative work by January 2, 2005 to: Siel Ju at sielsiels@yahoo.com.

Include “Parties Conference” in the subject heading. Proposals should also include name, institutional affiliation, address, phone number, and email address of the presenter. If proposing a panel, please include the above information for all participants.

4 comments:

The Continental Op said...

This reminds me of my father's reaction when I told him I was going to major in "Social Relations" in college. He asked if that involved the study of parties, and said "that sounds like something you'd be good at".

Michael said...

I sympathize... when I was working on my MA in cultural studies at Bowling Green State University my working-class family would wonder about exactly what it was I was studying and why anyone would have to be taught to understand/research their own culture.

They understood why I might spend two years studying Russian culture--but who needed to study their own culture...

Siel said...

So I realize you posted this last year, but we missed you at the conference. You should've come. We partied hard. Or at least, I did. Afterwards.

Michael said...

Siel,

I wish I had, but I found out the happening to late... but I am working on a dissertation about environmental english studies and dialogical thinking/learning, so I will be ready for the next gathering!

I visited your site ... your posts about taking care of your mother and seeking a death certificate for your father were powerful... and was intrigued by your book/movie choices in your profile!