“Few cross the river of time and are able to reach non-being. Most of them run up and down only on this side of the river. But those who when they know the law follow the path of the law, they shall reach the other shore and go beyond the realm of death.” Horace (Roman poet, 65 BC- 8 BC)

For the 8^th Annual Graduate Conference in Comparative Literature at the University of Alberta, we invite presentations on the theme of crossings. Centering on such distinctions as genre and medium;  discourse and discipline; race, gender, and sexuality; and language, community, and geography, the Crossings conference encourages submissions which explore the possibility of, and challenges in, cutting across critical frameworks for producing novel perspectives and visions in comparative literary studies. While papers on new developments in comparative literature are welcome, we warmly appreciate contributions from other disciplines that “cross” discipline-wise and connect to the conference theme in any of the following directions, and beyond:

– Networks and Exchange: Possibilities, Obstacles, and Threats

– Centrality, Alterity, and Othering

– Transgression and Complicity

– Aesthetics of Rurality and Urbanity

– Nature, Humanity, and the Humanities

– Crossings between High and Popular Literature

– Crossing between Genres

– Nationalism and Transnationalism

– Coloniality and Post-Coloniality

– From Print to Digital Media

– Linguistics, Translation, Literary, and Cultural Studies

– Mapping World Literature

– Interdisciplinary Comparative Studies

– Space, Territory, Locality, and Globality

– Media, Aesthetics, and Politics

– Gender and Sexuality

– Exile, Immigration, and Diaspora

– Mobility and Immobility

– Minority and Majority in Religion and Ethnicity

– Identity and Trauma

– Cultures and Languages

You are encouraged to submit your abstracts of no longer than 250 words and a short bio (60 words) by 15 December 2013 to clconf@ualberta.ca.

*The keynote speaker for this year’s conference is Dr. Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the celebrated author of eighteen books, including Post-Orientalism: Knowledge and Power in the Time of Terror (Routledge, 2009), Brown Skin, White Masks (Pluto, 2011), and The World of Persian Literary Humanism (2012, Harvard UP). His works have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and address a wide range of topics from Middle Eastern Studies and Postcolonial Studies to World Literature and World Cinema.

Published by cclawebsys

View all posts by cclawebsys