Seventeenth-Annual
Liminalities
The 17th Annual Graduate Conference in Comparative Literature
October 29-30, 2021
Conference Organizers: Ana Duclaud, Oscar Chaidez, Nanjun Zhou and Nafal Ossandon Hostens
Liminality is an anthropological concept that denotes borders, thresholds and transitions. Previously used to describe the middle stage of rites of passage marked by transformation and the uncertainty of an outcome, the term would later expand to include spaces and times of change. More recently, the concept has been co-opted by various academic disciplines as a way of approaching emerging and historical cultural phenomena.
Moments of crisis—the Covid pandemic, for example—may be described as liminal. At the same time, liminality applies to notions of subjectivity. Outside traditional constituents of belonging such as culture and place, the identity of those caught between spaces becomes liminal, as does that of those between or outside normative categories of sexuality, gender, ability, or otherwise. Indeed, liminality is so thoroughly encompassing that it begs the questions: is it a limiting category, or are we all, in one way or another, liminal? Is liminality temporary or are we always living in the in-between? In a sense, the legacy of post-structuralism, with its disavowal of binaries and essentialisms, pronounces the transitive, queer nature of all things and beings.
As we continue to transition out of a global pandemic, we propose a conversation on spatial, temporal and political change, seeking to discuss liminality’s numerous manifestations and explore its potential to shed light on contemporary issues. We therefore invite proposals that directly or indirectly deal with borders, globality, and movement, as well as precarity, ambivalence, identity and queerness. Topics may include, but need not be limited to the following areas of scholarship:
North-South discourse
Center-periphery discourse
Postcolonial / decolonial discourse
Queerness
Feminism(s)
Disability studies
Intersectionality
Hybridity
Identity and belonging
Borders and boundaries
Moments / periods of transition
Space / place / temporality
Critical globalization
Biopolitics / necropolitics / precarity
Migration / displacement / diaspora
Nationalism / transnationalism
Citizenship / exclusion / othering
Violence / conflict / trauma
Bioethics / post-humanism
Submit your abstract/proposal here: https://tinyurl.com/u98hmeju
