19th Annual Interdisciplinary Conference
Association of English Graduate Students
University of Southern California, Los Angeles
April 7 - 8, 2006

Keynote speakers:

Juana Maria Rodriguez and Pireeni Sundaralingam, with Colm O'Riain

EXCERPTED FROM THE CFP. PLEASE VISIT OUT WEBSITE

Trans- is a prefix circulating with increasing frequency, not only in the titles and subject matter of our intellectual and creative work, but also in the terms we use to define academic and creative selves.

This conference poses trans- as a question to be explored from a multiplicity of positions, politics, and performances, utilizing multiple mediums, methods, and genres. Participants may be inclined to invoke the prefix and terms directly, or prefer to perform trans- work without directly referencing the prefix. Both proposals, and a combination / revision of the two, are welcome.

We encourage critical and / or creative work that translates, transforms, transgresses, or works at answering some of the aforementioned questions. We seek proposals that will contribute to a truly transdisciplinary conference, including projects that attempt to transcend creative and critical boundaries.

***Deadline for Submission: January 27th, 2006***

Potential papers should run 15-20 minutes. Please e-mail an electronic one-page abstract (250-words, double-spaced), including your name, affiliation, address, phone number, and e-mail address to:

uscaegs@gmail.com

Decisions will be made no later than mid-February 2006.

*** Juana M. Rodriguez received her B.A. in Liberal studies from San Francisco State University, San Francisco in 1988, M.A. in English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, New York in 1991, and her Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from University of California, Berkeley in 1998. She currently teaches in the Women and Gender Studies Program at UC Davis, and is the author is Queer Latinidad.

Pireeni Sundaralingam was recently named as one of America's "Emerging Writers" by the literary journal Ploughshares. She has won several awards and grants for her poetry, including the prestigious Rosenthal fellowship from PEN USA. She is editor of Writing the Lines of Our Hands, the first anthology of American South Asian poetry. Her work will be featured in the documentary film "Veil of Silence" and in The International Museum of Women in 2006. The poems in her forthcoming first collection (Margin Lands) move from fragmented personal memories of censorship and genocide in Sri Lanka to universal images of immigration and repatriation in the West. In her spare time, Pireeni is a cognitive scientist. Colm O'Riain, from the poetry and music performance group Word & Violin, will join Pireeni on several collaborative pieces.