NEW DIRECTIONS IN CRITICAL THEORY:
University of Arizona
April 6-9, 2006



CALL FOR PAPERS:
The 2006 New Directions in Critical Theory Conference, an interdisciplinary
graduate student forum at the University of Arizona, will focus on tensions
between local identities within global contexts. This conference will address
the crisis of how ?local? identities must act in ?global? frameworks,
and the ways that global frameworks in turn reflect and shape conceptions of
local identities. Concepts of local identity such as ?nation,?
?culture,? and ?language? are complicated by geo-political issues such
as globalism and global capitalism. Individuals do not adhere to discrete
categories of one culture, one nation, or one ideological framework. While
subjects may still be defined by a local or global identity, they are also now
subject to one that is ?glocal?--a hybrid identity that speaks to a complex
interconnectedness of both global and local identities. This is a particular
concern in border states and towns that must negotiate the immediate local
needs of a diverse community of Caucasian Americans, Native Americans, Mexican
Americans, and Mexicans, as well as the formation of a national identity that
works to define and thereby exclude for economical and political reasons.


Glocal identity does not go unchallenged; groups fight for local identities and
effectively tribalize knowledge and access to knowledge while the pressure to
act within larger contexts constantly weighs on people. This tension can be
found not only in the aforementioned identity and world politics, but also in
the academy itself, where academic tribalism comes into conflict with more
global interactions within the university (crossing disciplinary boundaries in
favor
of interdisciplinarity). This leaves us to question how identity, discipline,
and politics can be defined as both local and global, and how these relate to a
hybrid glocal approach.


An address by Lauren Berlant: Lauren Berlant, Professor of English at The
University of Chicago will open this event. Professor Berlant, is a
distinguished scholar who explores questions of nationhood, citizenship and
gender. Her work complicates these issues by relating concepts of citizenship
to class mobility, national and ethnic patriotism, constructions of family,
consumerism, gender, and sexuality. In her scholarship and publications
Professor Berlant exposes the multiple intersections between these facets of
citizenship that shape how American culture perceives and constructs boundaries
and borders, both physical and symbolic. Her recent publications include, Author
of the National Fantasy, The Queen of American Goes to Washington City: Essays
on Sex and Citizenship, and The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of
Sentimentality in American Culture.


We invite graduate students from any discipline to present
theoretically-oriented scholarship that investigates the social formation and
maintenance of local/tribal identities, global contexts, and the possibility of
hybrid glocal identities, and in doing so, question the tensions between these
forms of interaction and possible rewards attained from not merely crossing the
border, but from redefining and reconceptualizing definitions of citizenship
and nationhood. We would also welcome interdisciplinary work that crosses
disciplinary borders to create new knowledge within a glocal university context
(such as papers, film, artwork, installation projects, and so on).


Possible Topics:


Global/Local Politics
Postcolonialism
Language and discrimination
Language and racism
Language policy and planning
Tourism/Travel Writing/Advertising
Architecture/Geography
History/Autobiography
Memory and Identity
National/Cultural/Racial/Sexual/Gendered/Class Identity
Hybridity and Identity
Hybridity and Embodiment
Borders of the Human
Peripheral Zones/Contact Zones
The Rhetoric of Borders, Territories, Frontiers
Barriers/Communities/Home
Space/Mobility/Displacement
Immigration/Alienation
Othering
Borders and Criminality
Borders in Film and Literature
Science and Technology Studies
Virtual Borders
Borders and Boundaries in Cyberspace
Popular Culture/High Culture
Consumerism, Media and Identity
Sex and Economy
Violence and Desire
Heterinormativity/Homosexuality/Transsexuality
Feminist Theory and Queer Theory
Critical Race Theory
Spirituality and Subjectivity
Texts, Bodies and Spectacle
Bodies of/and Knowledge
Diversity, Similarity and the Academy
Translation/Appropriation/Adaptation
Teaching and Service Learning
The Academy and Activism


Please submit 100-250 word individual abstracts or panel proposals, comprised of
a 100-250 word abstract for the entire panel and one 100-250 abstract for each
paper. Include names, email address, mailing addresses, institutional
affiliations, technology requests, paper titles, and abstracts by February 1st
2006 to:


Meg Smith Hallak (Department of English) or Erica Reynolds Clayton (Department
of English)
Modern Languages Building, Room 445
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona 85721
(520) 621-1836
ndconf_at_email.arizona.edu


If you should have any questions or concerns, please contact Meg Smith Hallak at
ndconf_at_email.arizona.edu.


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New Directions in Critical Theory
University of Arizona
ndconf_at_email.arizona.edu