[Discussion] NEW DIRECTIONS IN CRITICAL THEORY:

[sule tarakcioglu]

Please note the deadline has been extended to 29 February 2004!

We welcome graduate students working in any field or period to submit
proposals for this interdisciplinary event.

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NEW DIRECTIONS IN CRITICAL THEORY:
The Borders, Territories, and Frontiers Conference
University of Arizona
April 8-10, 2004


CALL FOR PAPERS:
The 2004 New Directions in Critical Theory Conference, an interdisciplinary
graduate student forum at the University of Arizona, will focus on "Borders,
Territories, and Frontiers." We read "Borders, Territories, and Frontiers"
broadly - in all of its concrete and metaphoric manifestations. This theme
evokes Southwestern history, literature, and film, points to the local
politics of Southern Arizona, border towns, areas, and regions, and
resonates with the emotive force of our national myths: notions of the
frontier and manifest destiny. In post 9/11 America and the greater, global
world, such terms also connote the hegemonic paradigms and critical concerns
central to social, cultural, and humanistic inquiry: globalization,
multiculturalism, political economies, transnationalism, feminism,
antiracist struggle, and liberal identity. In the academy itself, such
concepts encourage border-crossings between departments, prompt us to
question the theoretical methodologies and analytic frameworks we employ,
encourage us to redefine, problematize, or even liberate existing bodies of
knowledge, and increase our understanding of diversity and similarity across
various fields of study.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
An address by HORTENSE SPILLERS, Frederick J. Whiton Professor
of English at Cornell University, will open the event. Prof. Spillers, one
of the most distinguished African American feminist and psychoanalytic
theorists working in America today, has been a central, critical figure
in the areas of African American letters, African diasporic literature,
cultural criticism and literary theory. Her work includes, Black, White,
and In Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture and two
edited volumes, Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex, and
Nationality in the Modern Text, and Conjuring: Black Women,
Fiction, and Literary Tradition. She is currently working on In the
Flesh, which will consider points of intersection between Black
American women's history and feminist inquiry and The Eagle Stirs
Her Nest, a work that examines the rhetoric of black sermons
preached and/or written before W.W.I.

Sponsored by the Group for Early Modern Studies (GEMS) at the
University of Arizona, Dr. MITA CHOUDHURY, Lecturer and Director
of Publications Ivan Allen College, Georgia Institute of Technology and
distinguished scholar of early modern British literature and culture will
serve as our keynote speaker on Friday April 9th. Dr. Choudhury's work,
which traverses the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, evidences a
profound concern for border issues -- from analyses of the topographies
of political power and space of the early modern stage to critiques of race
and empire to such modern concerns as racism and the profession,
virtuality and authenticity, and gender and technology. Her recent
publications include _Interculturalism and Resistance in the London Theatre,
1660-1800: Identity, Performance, Empire_, an edited volume,
_Monstrous Dreams of Reason: Body, Self, and Other in the
Enlightenment_, and several articles on early modern culture, theater,
and performance.

We invite graduate students from any discipline to present
theoretically-oriented scholarship that interrogates the social formation
and maintenance of borders, posits means for transgressing, resisting, or
subverting boundaries, and in so doing, works to re-envision existing
territories or incite new frontiers of meaning.

Topics for BORDERS, TERRITORIES, and FRONTIERS might include but are not
limited to:

Global/Local Politics
Postcolonialism/Multiculturalism/Globalization
Tourism/Travel Writing /Advertising
History/Tourism/Architecture
Architecture/Geography/Memory
History/Life Writing/(Re)membering
Memory & Identity
National/Cultural/Racial/Sexual/Gendered/Class Identity
Hybridity & Identity
Hybridity & Embodiment
Borders of the Human
Exteriority/Interiority
Peripheral Zones/Contact Zones
The Rhetoric of Borders, Territories, Frontiers
Barriers/Communities/Home
Space/Mobility/Displacement
Immigration/Othering/Alienation
Borders & Criminality
The Southwest in Film, History, & Literature
Ranching/Ecology
New Frontiers & Scientific or Spatial Studies
Science & Technology Studies
Virtual Borders, Territories, or Frontiers
Cyberspace & Virtual Bodies
Genders/Sexualities/Cyborgs
Popular Culture/High Culture
Consumerism/Media/Identity
Subjectivity/Experience/Identity
Sex & Economy
Violence/Sexuality/Desire
Heteronormativity/Homosexuality/Transsexuality
Feminist Theory & Queer Theory
Psychoanalytic Theory & Feminist Theory
Critical Race Theory & Psychoanalysis
Spirituality & Subjectivity
Performativity/Self-Fashioning
Texts, Bodies, & Spectacle
Bodies of /and Knowledge
Intellectual Traditions & Interdisciplinarity
Diversity, Similarity, & the Academy
Language/Literacy/Opportunity
Translation/Appropriation/Adaptation
Texts, Contexts, & the Web
Theory & the Classroom
Teaching & Service Learning
The Academy & Activism

We particularly welcome submissions attending to race, gender, class,
ethnicity, sexuality, material culture, media and film studies, feminist
studies, performativity, corporeality, and visuality. Please submit 100-250
word individual abstracts or panel proposals, comprised of a 100-250 word
abstract for the entire panel and one 100-250 word abstract for each paper.
Include names, email addresses, mailing addresses, institutional
affiliations, technology requests, paper titles, and abstracts by February
29, 2004 to:

Wendy Weise (Department of English) & April Huff (Women's Studies)
Conference Co-Chairs
Modern Languages Building, Room 445
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona 85721
(620) 621-1836
newdirectionsaz@hotmail.com

If you should have any questions or concerns, please contact Wendy Weise &
April Huff at newdirectionsaz@hotmail.com