[Discussion] CFP: Ethics, Beauty, & Environment After Postmodernism (grad) (12/15/04; 3/3/05-3/5/05)

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**GRADUATE CONFERENCE**

2005 Pacific Rim Conference on Literature and Rhetoric
University of Alaska Anchorage
March 3-5, 2005

"ethics beauty environment: the Wilderness of Signs"

While it is clear that postmodernism was a shift in thinking that needed
to happen=97a concerted movement to displace the =93grand narratives=94 t=
hat
for centuries have been used to disaffect peoples through naturalized
and often power-stacked claims to reason, order, and
justice=97postmodernism has proven defiantly evasive on elements integral
to the condition(s) of being human: ethics, beauty, value, and judgment.
And although signifying practice inescapably defines the human world,
postmodernism has not successfully addressed aspects that lay outside
human signification, namely the environment and the natural world. Here
we find a dangerous conundrum: while the natural world around us has an
existence independent of its human conceptions, these human conceptions
carry with them grave consequences for the natural world=92s very
existence. At the dusk of postmodernism, now is the time to visit
careful attention upon these issues=97issues critical not only for the
good of humanity, but for the good of the non-human world as well.

The title and theme for the 2005 Pacific Rim Conference on Literature
and Rhetoric=97=93ethics beauty environment: the Wilderness of
Signs=94=97invites discussion into the possibilities of objectivity; ethi=
cal
action, language, and representation; issues of aesthetic responsibility
and the role of art in society; the environment in human imagination;
threats of signification upon ecology; the nature/culture dialectic; the
loss of the pastoral; the =93greening=94 of discourse across disciplines;
the impact of (post)modern urban environments to the =93human condition=94=
;
and the consequences these and other issues have both for and beyond
humanities studies in the 21st Century.

These suggestions are intended to stimulate rather than constrict
thought, and responders are encouraged to interpret the conference theme
freely. Proposals for both individual papers and panel organizations may
be submitted directly through the conference website at:

http://www.cyborgsophist.net/pacrim/

Individual abstracts should be 200-300 words for a 20-minute
presentation. We will assess and organize individual papers into panels
of three or four.

Panel proposals should be 500 words for a 1 hour-15-minute session.
Please include the session title, name of organizer, institutional
affiliation, discipline or department, along with the chair=92s name and
participants=92 names.

Please direct all questions, comments, and concerns to:

Joseph Jordan, conference director
Department of English
University of Alaska Anchorage
(907) 786-4348
anjpj@uaa.alaska.edu

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