2023 Charles F. Fraker Graduate Student Conference
DIS/CONTINUITIES: UNSETTLING MEMORY AND TIME
6-7 October 2023
Department of Romance Languages & Literatures
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Keynote Speaker: Prof. Eduardo Cadava (Princeton University)
Deadline for abstracts: June 15th, 2023
LINK TO ABSTRACT SUBMISSION:
http://bit.ly/frakerconference
Free and open to the public
The 2023 Charles F. Fraker Conference, organized by the Romance Languages and Literatures Department at the University of Michigan, takes conversations on memory and time as its point of departure. Through Dis/continuities, we propose a critical reflection on the relationship between memory and time, challenging the imperatives of binary thinking that inform hegemonic and counter-hegemonic
mechanisms of reading. Engaging with panels and dialogues, we open the possibility to inhabit and explore thresholds between linear and disruptive ways of approaching studies of memory and time. This way, we aim to encourage ways of suspending absolute and universal norms of historical comprehension, revision, and research to destabilize traditional modes of reading.
In the wake of political, economic, and natural disasters that constantly take place in the contemporary world with no end in sight, some questions that guide our conference are: What are the political potential and social stakes in re-conceptualizing and negotiating our relationship with the past, the present, and the future? How do narratives engaging with remembrance and time fall outside of the limits of the official archive? What other temporalities can or do emerge from the studies of memory? What does it mean to explore a post-hegemonic way of reading memory and time?
Papers may engage with, but are not limited to, the following fields, themes, and media:
Accumulation and Dispossession
Care and Community
Cinema
Colonialism and Decoloniality
Crisis and Culture
Critical Race Theory
Democracy, Law, and Justice
Ecocriticism
Gender and Sexuality
Heritage Studies
History and Historicity
Illness and Disability
Illustration
Indigenous & Afrodiasporic
Studies
Literature
Museum Studies
Narrative/Narratology
Nation-state and Empire
Performance
Photography
Resistances
Speculative Fiction
Technologies
Translation Studies
Urban Studies
Violence and Trauma
We welcome abstracts up to 300 words for papers in English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, that engage with the above-mentioned fields and themes. We encourage scholarly investigations in the form of academic papers, but also alternative formats such as creative writing, performance, photography, and video essays. Papers may deal with literary or cultural studies as well as other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.
LINK TO ABSTRACT SUBMISSION:
http://bit.ly/frakerconference