[Discussion] CFP: Arresting the Flow (grad) (12/1/05; 4/14/06-4/15/06)

[gpultar@cstgroup.org]

From: Julia Ng <j-ng@northwestern.edu>

"Arresting the Flow"
CLS Conference-Spring 2006

http://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/complit_arrestflow/

Keynote addresses by:

Bernhard Siegert
(History and Theory of Cultural Technologies, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar)

Jules Law
(English and Comparative Literary Studies, Northwestern University)

Responses by:

Peter Fenves
(Joan and Sarepta Harrison Professor of Literature, Northwestern University)


CALL FOR PAPERS

The graduate students of Northwestern  University's Program in Comparative
Literary Studies invite submissions for their first annual conference, to be
held April 14-15, 2006. The conference theme is "Arresting the Flow".

This conference seeks to provide a platform for the formulation of a cohesive
understanding of flow. The terms flow, flux, and fluid are ubiquitous in the
history of Western thought-and its polemics. From Heraclitus to Plotinus,
Augustine to Leibniz and Kant, Hölderlin to Heidegger, Benjamin to Deleuze and
Derrida, flow has been variously defined: "fluid" have been the borders between
self and other, "fluctuating" the "influences" of the uncontrollable and
uncreated on organized space and time, "flowing" the conditions--and
metaphors--of exchange and transmission, knowledge and self-consciousness,
circulation and infection. One thing, though, has remained constant: that flow
incorporates a concern for the overflowing of certain limits of being and
experience, whether those be placed between man and God, mind and body, self and
world, neurotransmitter and memory, eye and screen, place and journey. And yet,
"flow" seems to demand its own, conceptual arrest.

Fields as diverse as psychoanalysis, film and media studies, philosophy,
theatre, religion, the history of science, geography, urban studies, law,
political science, economics, literary studies, architecture and art history,
among others, continue to be marked by the effects of flow. Papers are invited
to address, but are not limited to, topics such as:

The ebb and flow of thought
Flow and interruption
Flow at the source of permanence
Flow as negativity
Flow and the concepts of home and shelter
Rivers and bends, streams and eddies
Autoimmunity, law and politics
Volition, flow, resistance
Circulation(s)
Currents
Modeling flow and the impact on design
"Flow" as a paradigm of social theory
The metaphor of flow
Rethinking "influence": local, national, global, cross-disciplinary
Fluencies
Temporal flow and perception
Wandering, migration, and the production of space
Liquid space
Political states and states of flux
"Uneven flow" and the transgression of borders
"Total flow", streaming, and the subject of media
Landscape, fluidity and viscosity
Body fluids at the crossroads of the histories of
medicine, religion, literature
Fluidity of identity and concept: race/gender/ethnicity, genre/form/structure

The primary language of the conference is English. Presentations should last
roughly 20 minutes. Please send an abstract of 250-300 words as a Word
attachment to Julia Ng (j-ng@northwestern.edu). On a separate cover page please
list the proposed title, author's name, affiliation, brief biographical
statement focusing on academic work (approx. 100 words) and contact information.
Please indicate if you will require technological support (overhead, slide
projector, etc.).

**Deadline for submissions is
December 1, 2005.

--
Julia Ng
Department of German Literature and Critical Thought
Program in Comparative Literary Studies
Northwestern University * 2-375 Kresge * 1880
Campus Drive * Evanston, IL 60208 USA

::: 847-467-7067
::: j-ng@northwestern.edu



>From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List