CFP: Encounters With(in) Texts

20th Annual (dis)junctions Hunamities and Social Sciences Graduate Conference University of California, Riverside April 5-6, 2013 ABSTRACT DEADLINE Feb 11th 

Encounter: transitive verb

1) a: to meet as an adversary  b: to engage in conflict with

2) to come upon face-to-face

3) to come upon or experience especially unexpectedly 

In our contemporary situation within media-saturated, cosmopolitan modernities, we “come upon” texts and Others so frequently that “encountering” with its unanticipated and oppositional valences has become the norm.  This year’s (dis)junctions conference invites papers that contribute to conversations around notions of “encountering,” with particular focus given to the operation of texts, understood as representational media objects, within “scenes of encounter.” 

 

 To articulate both the continued utility and the potential limitations of our critical literacies in a world of encounters, this conference examines the impact of situatedness, unexpectedness, and/or unpreparedness on “face to text” encounters with media objects, embodied encounters negotiated through or overdetermined by texts, and representations of “encountering” within texts. 

Please visit www.disjunctions2013.org for specific panel CFPS, as well as a fuller theorization of the conference theme of “encountering.”   

SUBMISSIONS:  As always (dis)junctions welcomes panels and papers from all areas of the humanities, social sciences, and creative disciplines, as well as panel proposals from our colleagues in the physical sciences.  Abstracts and panel proposals should be submitted through www.disjunctions2013.orgor emailed to disjunctions2013@gmail.comno later than February 11th. 

KEYNOTE:  We are proud to announce this years keynote is Dr. Nicholas Mirzoeff, professor of visual studies in New York University's Media, Culture and Communication department.  The editor of both editions of Routledge’s Introduction to Visual Culture (2000, 2009), as well as the Routledge Visual Culture Reader (2002), his current work in visual studies focuses around three major areas: developing a genealogy of “visuality”; developing visual culture as a fie3ld of study and a methodology; and working in conjunction with creative visual artists and media practitioners.  His most recent book is The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality (Duke, 2011).   In addition to being a premier voice in visual culture scholarship, he is a contributing editor for the Media Commons online project, and is a co-PI in the development of the multi-media, digital-born authoring software, “Scalar.”  Currently, he is working in conjunction with Islands First on a project that explores the visual culture of climate change.