Critical Intersections – Estranged New Worlds [An Undergraduate Research Conference]  

Call for Undergraduate Participants: On Saturday, April 5, 2014, graduate students in the Comparative Literature Program will host an interdisciplinary conference to showcase undergraduate research. Undergraduates will present their work in a conference setting, receive mentorship, improve their public speaking skills, and add a valuable experience to their résumés or graduate school applications.  

We welcome projects from all disciplines tackling different types of media including literature & poetry, philosophy and critical theory, historical texts or artifacts, multi-media and digital works, computer games or programs, laboratory experiments, sociological or environmental studies, theater, film, art installations, music, economic studies of corporations, finance and capital, etc.  

Papers and projects may address (but are not limited to) the following questions:

: How is estrangement manifested in the historically, socially, and technologically constructed worlds that humans and/or nonhumans inhabit?

: What kinds of worldbuilding does your research participate in? What kinds of estrangement does your project engage, interrupt, and/or create? : How do changing notions of kinship promote values of care, and self-care, as responses to hostile interior and/or exterior landscapes?

: What kinds of worlds do humans and/or nonhumans build (utopias? dystopias? panoptic societies?)? How does your project interrogate these worlds?

: Can we produce innovative understandings of human and nonhuman identities by employing interdisciplinary frameworks of study?  

If you’d like to participate in the conference, please submit a 350 word abstract tocritical.intersections.ucsb@gmail.com by FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2014. You can find answers to some frequently asked questions on our website,http://criticalintersectionsconference.wordpress.com/, or feel free to email the conference committee.  

Thanks much,  

Shari Sanders, PhD Candidate

Comparative Literature Program

University of California, Santa Barbara