What's Happening to Cultural Studies Conference: Seeking Proposals (Deadline: May 31, 2022)
Console-ing Passions
Call for Contributions
What’s happening to cultural studies?
Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories (CMNH) - University of Brighton, UK
14-16th September, 2022
This conference intends to promote a conversation about cultural studies: its current shape, the forces that have shaped it, and its possible futures. It will be a hybrid conference, with in-person and remote participation.
Rather than assuming a singular proper form of cultural studies operating globally, the conference will try to balance the task of recognizing the multiplicities of cultural studies with that of understanding the changing and increasingly contradictory place of cultural studies in the academic world. One might think of this as an effort to begin a cultural studies analysis of cultural studies itself in the present conjuncture.
In order to promote conversation and collective thinking, we will not follow a traditional conference format. We have instead designed a structure governed by three themes, each of which will be addressed on one of the conference’s three days. Each of these days will begin with an opening panel which identifies fundamental questions and struggles. These will be followed by further contributions devoted to the theme broached in that panel. To avoid ending up with a de facto separation within the larger conversation of the whole, we will avoid parallel panels.
Amongst those who have already agreed to participate are Lawrence Grossberg, Shakuntala Banaji and Jeremy Gilbert. We are particularly keen to hear also from those at the start of or at an early stage in their scholarly work on cultural studies.
The three overarching themes, and the three corresponding days of the conference, are as follows:
Day 1: What is cultural studies?
Day 2. What are the institutional conditions of the current state of cultural studies?
Day 3: Does cultural studies still matter? What is it good for today?
A fuller description of the conference and each theme can be found on the attached flyer.
If you would like to be involved, please contact cultura...@brighton.ac.uk by May the 31st 2022, with an indication of which ‘theme’ you would like to participate in, and an abstract (of up to 300 words) for how you will do so. We welcome various forms and media of contributions.
When sending your abstract, please express a preference for either in-person or remote participation. Please also append a short bio to your abstract.
We look forward to reading your submissions.
The conference organizing committee:
Cristina Moreno Almeida (King’s), Maria Manuel Baptista (Aveiro), Tom Bunyard (Brighton), Lawrence Grossberg (UNC), Suzanne Leonard (Simmons), Toby Lovat (Brighton), Patricia McManus (Brighton), Marco Solaroli (Bologna), Anna Zsubori (Loughborough)