Central Illinois Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference
Event: 24/03/2017 – 25/03/2016
Abstract: 12/01/2016
Categories: Graduate Conference
Location: Illinois State University, Normal, IL
Organization: ISU Society of English Graduate Scholars
The First Annual Central Illinois Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference is hosted by the Society of English Graduate Scholars at Illinois State University in Normal, IL and currently accepting presentation proposals. This year’s conference theme is the exploration of “the in-between” from diverse and varied scholarly perspectives.
Just as Edward Soja proposes in his theorizing of a Thirdspace, our goals with this year’s theme of the in-between are to “encourage you to think differently about the meanings and significance of space and those related concepts that compose and comprise the inherent spatiality of human life: place, location, locality, landscape, environment, home, city, region, territory, and geography.” The in-between represents a liminal space where everything comes together, where traditional understanding is necessarily complicated, and where uncertainty is most certain.
This conference is meant to be inclusive to a variety of disciplines and intellectual discourses. Potential paper topics to explore the in-between include but are certainly not limited to:
Borders and borderlands: geography, language, translation, lived spaces and experiences
Life and death: ghosts, zombies, vampires, Frankenstein’s monster, angels
Childhood and adulthood: adolescence, children’s literature, maturation
Human and technology: cyborgs and posthumanism, medicine
Text and image: postmodernism and picture books, graphic novels, ebooks, multimodality, emojis
Bodies: relationships, health, visible and invisible disabilities
Media: television, theatre, gaming, breaking the fourth wall
Cultural binaries: gender, sex, fluidity, religion, race, morality
Classrooms: interdisciplinary pedagogies, history of academia, mathematical creative writing
The conference will be held on Friday and Saturday, March 24–25, 2017. All proposals may be submitted through our online form at ISUSEGS.tumblr.com. All proposals must be received by December 1, 2016.
Conference presentations follow a “long panel” format that provides 25 minutes for each presenter (typically 15 minutes to present followed by 10 minutes for questions). We accept proposals for individual and panel formats:
25 minute individual presentation (includes time for questions)
50 minute panel presentation (2–4 presenters)
75 minute panel presentation (3–5 presenters)
Through our online form at ISUSEGS.tumblr.com/propose2017, please submit a brief biography for each presenter (max 150 words) and an abstract for the presentation (max 250 words for single presentation, 500 words for panel.) Contact us for more information via at isuSEGS@gmail.com, like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/isuSEGS/ and follow us on Twitter @ISU_SEGS.