INTERFACE: LIMINALITY, MEDIATION & HYBRIDITY

GRADUATE STUDENT
INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE
DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL MEDIATIONS
CARLETON UNIVERSITY, OTTAWA
APRIL 30TH - MAY 1ST 2004

Call for Papers
The Cultural Mediations Program at Carleton University announces a call for papers for the Interface graduate conference to be held in Ottawa during April 30th - May 1st 2004. The keynote speaker for the conference will be Will Straw from the Department of Art History and Communications Studies, McGill University.

The Interface conference is an interdisciplinary congress for graduate researchers and scholars in Canada. It emphasizes the embeddedness of cultural production and consumption within a matrix of mediating factors and the liminality resulting from multiple "contested borders". Presentations dealing with any aspect of "Cultural Mediations" are welcome in the general streams of Literary Studies, Visual Culture, Musical Culture and New Technologies. To accommodate a wide range of research interests the 2004 conference will be run with both general and themed streams. Performance pieces, slide exhibits and short film presentations (~20 mins) of theory/praxis are welcomed and encouraged. The conference welcomes proposals on a wide range of cultural studies / critical theory topics including:

SUBJECTS

• The Liminal Body
• Mediating Sex
• Nation, Race & Gender in Production
• Sensing, Affect and Mediation
• Experiencing Time
• Homo Junctio: Connective Wo/Man

SPACES

• Fringes and "Freaks"
• The Space of Consumption
• The Borders of the Nation
• Exile, Nomadism, Diaspora
• The Map and the Territory
• Globalism, the Internet and Mediation

OBJECTS

• "/"
• Fetishism and the Overdetermination
• Inter / Intra / Multi Disciplinarity
• The Other as Mirror
• The Analog and the Digital
• Pattern, Complexity, Emergence

MEDIATIONS

• The Moment of Production / Consumption
• Communication and Language
• Mediating History / Historicizing Mediation
• Intersections of Cultural Theory and Praxis
• Feedback, Cross-Talk and Noise
• Limits and Boundaries

Proposals

The Conference committee invites proposals for individual presentations to be included in general and themed streams. The format for presentations may be either:

• A 20 minute paper addressing a particular facet of the conference theme, as determined by the conference committee, with 10 minutes of time for feedback after each presenter, OR
• One media presentation or performance of about 20 minutes, followed by a discussion led by the artist and a committee appointed mediator

Proposals (of no more than 250 words) for 20-minute papers should be directed via email to the Organizing Committee.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS FEBRUARY 1, 2004.