[Discussion] CFP: Reading Traditions, Appropriating Cultures (grad) (1/31/06; 4/21/06-4/22/06)

[gpultar@cstgroup.org]

From: liner@ou.edu

Reading Traditions, Appropriating Cultures: An Interdisciplinary Graduate
Conference in Rhetorical, Literary, and Cultural Studies

The University of Oklahoma
April 21-22, 2006

Keynote Speaker: Michael Moon, Johns Hopkins University

As scholars and as teachers, academics are necessarily engaged in negotiations
with a number of different cultures, communities, and traditions. From
contemporary critical attempts to reread the dominant traditions of Western
history, art, and philosophy to politically charged efforts at education reform,
questions regarding inherited methods, conventions, and paradigms are currently
of paramount and wide-ranging importance. Scholars in the humanities cannot
avoid asking these questions. If "history" is a narrative written by the
victors, in what ways do we reread "and thereby rewrite" our various histories? 
How are dominant histories reinforced, challenged, subverted, or appropriated
for different, often contradictory aims? What does it mean to "read" such an
intertextual and heteroglot text as culture or tradition? How can teachers deal
with the multiple cultures and traditions represented�or underrepresented
or misrepresented�in their curricula and by their students?

More fundamentally, how do we reconfigure the concepts "culture" and "tradition"
that are both the means and the ends of these negotiations? How do these
concepts intersect with each other and influence each other, either as scholarly
topoi or in other discursive fields beyond the university?

The University of Oklahoma Student Association of Graduate English Studies
(SAGES) seeks proposals for papers and panels that address these and related
issues. As the title �Reading Cultures, Appropriating Traditions�
suggests, this conference aims to inaugurate and to encourage interdisciplinary
dialogue that interrogates ideas and cases of culture and tradition, as well as
such related concepts as identity, community, history, subjectivity, agency, and
so forth.  Although this is a conference in rhetorical, literary, and cultural
studies, papers from such diverse fields as history, philosophy, communication,
and the social sciences, as well as interdisciplinary fields such as
women�s studies or subaltern studies (to name but a few possibilities)
are not only welcome but actively encouraged. In addition, SAGES also welcomes
proposals for entire panels (of three to four papers).

Please send an abstract (approximately 250 words) describing the focus, scope,
and method(s) of your paper to ousagesconference@gmail.com.  To propose a panel,
please include a description of the panel (approximately 150 words) along with
the individual abstracts. (Note: panels will be externally chaired rather than
be chaired by one of the presenters.) Sessions will run 90 minutes, with one
hour for papers (15-20 minutes each) and 30 minutes for discussion. The deadline
for proposals is January 31, 2006. Please send any questions to the email
address listed above.

Aaron Cerny and James Liner
Department of English
University of Oklahoma
Norman, OK 73019



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