UPDATED: New deadline: January 31, 2016.
Call For Papers
New Directions Graduate Conference 2016:
Visions: Temporality, Spectacle, and Space
The University of Arizona
April 22-23, 2016
Tucson, Arizona
"Vision is the art of seeing the invisible." -Jonathan Swift
The graduate students and English Department of the University of Arizona invite proposals for the
annual New Directions Graduate Conference. Held every spring, New Directions is an interdisciplinary
conference organized for and by graduate students as a way of drawing together student scholars across
wide-ranging and diverse fields. This year’s conference, titled “Visions: Temporality, Spectacle, and
Space,” will concern itself with varied modes and modalities of future progress and degradation,
concerns about visual cultures and the construction of knowledge, and the possibilities inherent in
spaces, places, and the demarcations that define them.
This year we are privileged to announce our keynote speakers, Dr. Jack Halberstam of USC and Dr.
Donald Pease of Dartmouth. Author of works like Gaga Feminism, The Queer Art of Failure, and Female
Masculinity, Dr. Halberstam has greatly influenced the fields of feminist and queer theory, popular
culture, posthumanism, and transition(s), and will be giving a presentation entitled “Zombie Humanism
at the End of the World”. Likewise, Dr. Pease has been transformative in his field of American Studies,
authoring numerous books and over 100 articles, including Theodor Seuss Geisel, “The Mythological
Foundations of the Global Homeland State,” and National Identities and Postnational Narratives. As
founder/director of the Futures of American Studies Institute, Dr. Pease is a formidable critic of the past,
the future, and their connections.
The New Directions academic conference aims to give graduate students across the academy the
opportunity to develop proposals around the concepts of time, place, space, and identity—from the
intimacy of the self to the global and even our place in the cosmos. Including but not limited to selfexploration, questioning the way in which identities are (re)formed, constructed and explored in
material and ideological realms of emotion, intellect, the psyche, and how identities manifest spatially
and temporally in the world, possible topics for critical and creative presentations include:
Abilities and disabilities
Apocalypse
Artistic representations of the self
Beginnings, endings, and seriality
Constructing History/Herstory
Contested identities, spaces and territories
(De)constructing identity
Dystopia/utopia
Epigenetics, socio-ecology, and/or biology
Ethno, historical, and/or cultural Mathematics
Ethnocentrism and biases in maps
Futures of Pedagogy
Global Warming and the Anthropocene
Mythologies, ancient texts and folklore
National and transnational identities
Nationalism and racism
Philosophies of self
Prophets, dreams, and revelation
Queer Time/Queer Space
Relativity/Spacetime
Sexuality and citizenship
Space Travel/Time Travel
Transition(s) and translation(s)
Travel-writing/travelogues, voyages of self-discovery
Visual culture and media: film, video games, performance
Submission Guidelines
Individual Submissions:
All individual proposals must be submitted by email to arizonanewdirections@gmail.com by 11:59pm
MST on January 31, 2016. Please use the following format for the subject line of your email: “Proposal
Last Name First Name” (eg. Proposal Woodson Jacqueline). Please assist us by attaching a single
document in .DOC, or .DOCX format only with the following information in exactly the order listed
below:
Paper Title.
Name; institutional affiliation; any degrees and granting institutions; email address; and phone number.
Abstract of the content and rationale of the paper: up to 300 words. (Presentation time for papers is 20
minutes maximum)
Brief (2-3 sentence) scholarly biography of presenter.
Indicate any audiovisual needs or special accommodations.
Panel Proposals:
Final panel proposals, including proposals for no more than three individual presenters (formatted as
above) are due by no later than 11:59pm MST on January 15, 2016. Papers not accepted by panel
organizers may be resubmitted to the general call for consideration provided they meet the above
deadline. Please respond to all submissions in a prompt and courteous manner. Please use the following
format for the subject line of your email: “Panel Last Name First Name” (eg. Panel Rowling J.K.). Please
assist us by attaching a single document in .DOC, or .DOCX format only with the following information in
exactly the order listed below:
Panel Title.
Name; institutional affiliation; any degrees and granting institutions; email address; and phone number.
Copy of the panel proposal (up to 150 words).
Brief (2-3 sentence) scholarly biography of organizer.
Indicate any audiovisual needs or special accommodations.
Three proposed papers & related information formatted as above under “Individual Submissions”