OTHER/WISE:
CONTESTING KNOWLEDGES, INVENTING CULTURES
Conference Date: Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Keynote Speaker: Jonathan Gray, Associate Professor of English, John Jay College
Submission Deadline: Friday, March 6, 2015
The second annual QC English Graduate Conference comes at a time of protests against police brutality, petitions against the glorification of militarized violence, and public demands for justice and accountability for the victims of such forms of state violence. These cultural responses highlight what the Other/wise conference hopes to explore: how texts—both literary texts and other forms of media—respond to dominant cultural ideologies, structures, and narratives, and how readers interact with and respond to dominant ideologies, structures, and narratives in texts. This conference is interested in the voices, experiences, knowledges, epistemologies, and wisdoms of the other, the marginalized, and the non-normative; those that deviate and disturb; those that work against normativity and conventionality. We are interested in the ability of alternate ideologies, different understandings, and Other wisdoms to challenge epistemologies and contest normative knowledges. We want to engage in a conversation not only about how texts and readers respond to the pervasive, often oppressive beliefs and systems of the culture as it stands, but the process of inventing new cultures, the evolution of sub-cultures, their interaction and cooperation with and struggle against the dominant culture.
The QC English Graduate Conference is a chance for CUNY graduate students to share their research interests with the larger CUNY community. Submissions must be critical or theoretical works about literature or culture, and can be pieces of larger works or works-in-progress.
Possible submission topics include but are not limited to:
- Postcolonial Studies, National Identity, Racial Identity
- Representations of the Other: Race, Ethnicity, Nationality, Sexuality, Gender
- New Modes of Representations and Digital Media
- Pedagogical Approaches to Deconstructing Dominant Ideologies
- Representations of the Body: Disability, Race, Gender
- The Other in Science/Speculative Fiction
- Film and Theatre
- Poetry and Poetic Form
- Comics and Graphic Narratives
- Protest Literature
To Submit a Proposal
Please send proposals of 250 words or less to [email protected] by Friday, March 6, 2015. Proposals should be pasted in the body of the email and should include your full name and the name of your program and school. All Queens College MA, MFA, and MS Ed students are welcome to submit, as well as Master’s students from other CUNY schools. If you have any questions, please email [email protected].
Keynote Speaker Biography
Jonathan W. Gray is Associate Professor of English at John Jay College-CUNY. He is the editor of the Journal of Comics and Culture and the author of Civil Rights in the White Literary Imagination (University Press of Mississippi, 2013). Professor Gray is currently co-editing Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives for Palgrave MacMillan and is working on a book project for Columbia University Press, Illustrating the Race: Representing Blackness in American Comics, that traces depictions of African Americans in comics from 1966 to the present. He has published academic articles on the Harlem Renaissance, Kyle Baker’s graphic novel Nat Turner, and Jay Z’s relationship to Black masculinity. His journalism on comics and popular culture has appeared at EW.com, Salon.com, and the New Inquiry.
