Interdisciplinary Symposium at Rice!

The annual interdisciplinary symposium hosted by the Rice English department is seeking paper proposals for the October 2-3rd conference.  The submission deadline is July 1st.

This year's theme is SHIFTING SPATIALITIES: THE DYNAMIC BOUNDARIES of PLACE AND SPACE.

In past years, we have enjoyed interdisciplinary conversations among many of Rice's humanities and social science departments.  We hope to continue that trend.  The Rice symposium is a fantastic way to gather presentation experience and new ideas for your research without ever leaving the Rice campus.  We hope many of you will choose to participate.

Below you will find the Call for Papers and directions for abstract submissions. Feel free to direct questions to rice.symposium@gmail.com.

Thank you,

Cassie Casiano and J.E.M.S. Weeks
Symposium Directors
English Department


Shifting Spatialities: The Dynamic Boundaries of Place and Space

Rice Graduate Symposium
October 2-3, 2009
Rice University, Houston, TX

Call For Papers
Submission Deadline: July 1, 2009

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Sharon Marcus; Professor of Literature, Columbia University

As the citizen of the nation becomes the consumer of the multinational corporation, our roles as inhabitants of space become increasingly complicated.  Our literature, our faith, our bodies all speak to the different ways that we find to occupy the shifting territories of the postmodern landscape.  Looking both to the past and future can help us to discover the real and imagined ways our cultures can develop in more richly and defined ways.

We anticipate work that looks at the connections between spatialities and a broad variety of disciplines, including feminism, sexuality, gender,literature, anthropology, philosophy, architecture, performance, political science, linguistics, history, physics, and mathematics.

Possible paper topics might include, but are not limited to:

?        Community planning
?        The role of the global corporation
?        Reconfigured national boundaries
?        Real and imagined communities created by literature
?        Bodies, sexuality, and limits
?        Performance studies and the fourth wall
?        Disciplinary spaces of the academy
?        Travel narratives
?        Ethnic and racial boundaries
?        Topologies

Please send proposals for panels or individual paper abstracts of 250 words or less to rice.symposium@gmail.com on or before July 1, 2009.