[Discussion] UPDATE: Parties/Shared Space (grad) (12/15/04; 4/9/05-4/10/05)

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

****PLEASE NOTE NEW CONFERENCE DATES****

CALL FOR PAPERS: 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 or panels in all disciplines
including literature, film, history, psychology, technology studies,
anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, and performance studies
responding to the conference theme of Parties/Shared Space.

Parties are generally thought of as fun places to gather, environments
for celebrating around a certain theme or merely as occasions to
socialize. Parties provide a context in which to question and examine
shared space. Describing the =A1=A7party-like atmosphere,=A1=A8 or the
carnivalesque, which is infused into everyday society, Mikhail Bakhtin
writes that in the carnival there is a leveling of performers and
spectators, a kind of de-hierarchization, and that =A1=A7all distance
between people is suspended, and a special carnival category goes into
effect: free and familiar contact among people.=A1=A8 Although Bakhtin
primarily discusses the influence of the carnival on literary
discourses, theories of parties can be extended well beyond the
literary, into many areas of modern thought. For example, Elizabeth
Grosz, in reflecting upon virtuality, writes that Cyberspace links
=A1=A7disparate physical spaces and individuals through a shared virtual
space.=A1=A8 What are the limits to imagining parties!
   and s
hared space?

Topics may include, but are certainly not limited to, the following:

=A1P	Literary/Artistic gatherings (i.e. Bloomsbury Group, Beat Poets,
Warhol=A1=A6s Factory)
=A1P	Masquerade
=A1P	18th-Century Salons
=A1P	Coteries/Renaissance Poets
=A1P	Subcultures
=A1P	Celebrations (i.e. Early Modern Period, Greco-Roman Feasts)
=A1P	Harlem Renaissance
=A1P	Prohibition/Speakeasies/Blind Pigs
=A1P	Films centering around parties (i.e. Hitchcock, Kubrick)
=A1P	Rituals
=A1P	Weddings/Wakes/Funerals
=A1P	Performance/Dance/Theater
=A1P	Political Activism/Protests/Grass-roots organizations
=A1P	Negative conceptions of parties (i.e. The Mob, Riots)
=A1P	Crowds and claustrophobia
=A1P	Collective vs. Individual Identities (gendered, raced, sexed, and/or
ethnically constructed notions of shared space)
=A1P	Cyberspace/Chat rooms/Internet communities
=A1P	Audiences
=A1P	Geographically specific or classed spaces/gatherings (i.e. urban vs.
rural, gangs)
=A1P	Public Sphere (i.e. according to Habermas)
=A1P	Schizophrenia

Keynote speaker and after party information TBA

Come to our party! Please submit a working title and a 500-word abstract
by December 15, 2004 to:
Laura Scheurer, lauralon@usc.edu and Yetta Howard, yettahoward@yahoo.com

Please paste submissions into the body of the email rather than send as
an attachment. Include =A1=A7Parties Conference=A1=A8 in the subject head=
ing.

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.

***************************************
Yetta Howard, M.A.
Assistant Lecturer, Writing Program
Doctoral Student, English Department
University of Southern California
E-mail: yetta.howard@usc.edu
***************************************


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