Good (somewhat local) conference to consider

OK folks. UTSA has a conference that you should consider entering. The deadline for submissions is very soon: March 15. The conference is on May 1.

Here is the submission request copied from their website:

2009 UTSA English Graduate Symposium

The 2009 UTSA English Graduate Student Symposium on "The Politics of Imagination: Revolutionary Discourse, Methodology, and Pedagogy"

Sponsored by the Department of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio


May 1, 2009 at University of Texas San Antonio in San Antonio, TX

Keynote Speaker: Dr. María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, Department of English, New York University

Proposal Submission Deadline: Extended to March 15, 2009

In 2009, a year identified with notions of hope and change, expectations of revolutionary thinking hover in a multitude of realms, from economics to academics, from war to peace, and from globalization to localization. In The Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the Age of Development, Saldaña-Portillo encourages her readers to rethink narratives of minority and marginal subjects in the search for and critique of revolution and revolutionary movements, situating them within racialized and gendered contexts.

This symposium seeks to explore the concepts of revolution and imagination within terms of discourse, methodology, and pedagogy. This interdisciplinary symposium will bring together graduate students, scholars, writers, and performers from throughout the central and border regions of Texas.

We invite papers that engage the concepts of revolution and imagination. Papers may challenge, complicate, critique, or expand current conceptualizations of revolution and imagination in all disciplines, including, but not limited to, literary, cultural, queer, feminist, environmental, American, political, subaltern, and bicultural studies. We also encourage topics that propose revolutionary or imaginative approaches to discourse analysis, methodology, and pedagogy. Visual arts proposals are highly encouraged because the symposium will feature an exhibition of artistic responses such as paintings, drawings, and sculptures related to our theme. We also invite creative writing proposals that bridge disciplines and explore questions of revolution and imagination.


Some possible topics include:

- Imagined communities/nations/space Alternative literacies
- Revolutionary pedagogies in the grade school, university, or feminist classroom
- Neocolonial discourses of development, progress, and difference
- Revolutionary and decolonial desire
- Postcolonial and Feminist methodologies
- Discourses of nativism, hybridity, and mestizaje
- Rhetorics of nationhood, sovereignty, and terrorism
- Local and global policies (gender, sovereignty, civil/human rights)
- Environmental studies
- Queer studies
- Imagination in the arts
- Poetry as a revolutionary art form
- Politics and poetry
- Body studies
- Technologies of imagination
- Socio-linguistic studies


Please submit 250-word individual abstracts or panel proposals (comprised of a 250-word abstract for the panel as a whole and titles for each paper) to utsagradconf@gmail.com by March 1, 2009. Paste your proposal into the body of the email message and include any technology requests. If submitting a work of art, please attach a low-resolution image of your piece, if possible, in addition to your abstract. The conference registration fee is $20.00 for pre-symposium registration and $25.00 for registration at the symposium.


Submit: utsagradconf@gmail.com
Email Subject: Abstract for Politics of Imagination (please remember to include this in the subject line)
Deadline: March 15, 2009