Innovations and Anxieties Saturday, March 31st
Innovations cross a multitude of interdependent fields: aesthetic, scientific, technological, historical, informational, educational, political, and ethical. Across these fields, innovation cleaves fault lines between, for instance, the hope for cosmopolitan betterment and the politico-economic success of an isolated few; between the possible formation of open, more egalitarian social relations and the breakdown or deformation of normative modes of relation; between the anticipation of solutions to pressing problems and the inequalities, violences, and injustices caused by those solutions. This year the URI Graduate Conference title, Innovations and Anxieties, captures the dynamic negotiations that are and have been possible within and across these fault lines. We ask:
• What have innovations enabled or disabled? • What sort of futures might innovations prefigure? • What traces or tracks do innovations leave behind? • What histories or continuities will have been possible in the wake of innovation? • How might innovations inspire praise and critique, hope and fear, promise and imbalance, progress and diversion, quietude and combat, tranquility and anxiety?
We invite graduate students to submit papers, panels, or creative works that attend to these and other questions in a variety of fields: history, film, philosophy, languages, literature, political science, rhetoric and composition, communications, cultural studies, psychology, sociology, anthropology, biology, medicine, women’s studies, technology, visual and media studies, library and information studies, (though not limited to these fields). Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
• transnationalism • sustainability • adaptation, serialization • cosmopolitanism • cybernetics • digital humanities • information sharing • revolution • gender & transexuality • gothic or graphic novels • disability technologies • digitization, cybertext • artificial intelligence • multiliteracies • workplace technologies • organic, local movements • online media • robotics, cyborgs • E-books, E-learning • textiles, fashion, manufacturing • nanotechnology • critical theories • neuroscience, medical innovation • social networking • architecture, planning design • web comics, video games • citizen journalism • modernization • web fiction, science fiction • scientific breakthrough • invention • outsourcing • globalization
Submission directions: We are accepting submissions for individual papers, panel proposals and creative works (creative writing, visual art, music, etc.). Please submit all abstracts and proposals of 250- 300 words, as well as the required contact and biographical information, via our website at www.urigradconference.org by clicking on the Submit Your Abstract link. Direct all questions regarding submissions and conference details to [email protected]. Please visit our website at www.urigradconference.org for more information.
** Extended Deadline for receipt of proposals is Friday, March 2, 2012 **
Applicants Will Be notified of their Acceptance by Monday, March 5.