Our theme this year will be:

“Lifting Veils: Crisis, Exposure and Imagination”

Featuring keynote speaker: Dr. Jeffrey W. Robbins (http://www.lvc.edu/religion-philosophy/robbins.aspx).

Unprecedented changes appear to be happening more often and more rapidly than ever before. We notice these changes and events more readily due to the advent of the information age. New methods of the manufacture and dissemination of information expose us to crises in ways never before possible. These crises often lead to the exposure of new ways of understanding. The lifting of veils allows us to see these crises more clearly. In turn, these epiphanies invite imaginative and creative responses. There are two sides of the veil; with crisis on one and imagination on the other. Lifting the veil radically undoes the past, opens us to the future through change, and provides the possibility for vision and hope. In spite of technological and scientific innovation, crises often happen unexpectedly. Environmental and climatic crises, economic volatility, scientific and technological breakthroughs, political revolution, religious extremism and terrorism, and nuclear destruction are a few of the events that seem to be exposing us to new ways of understanding. These crises cross a multitude of boundaries including social, institutional, disciplinary and international ones. In part, crises make our world smaller, bring people closer together, and expose others’ differences. This affects our perception of the world and how we make sense of and interpret it.

The graduate students in the Humanities Program at Salve Regina University have broadly conceived the conference to include perspectives from the arts, sciences, social sciences, and humanities. We are looking for work representing state-of-the art research, theory, and praxis. We invite papers from a myriad of different perspectives in collegial conversation. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Literature – science fiction, dystopia, hyperbole, the death of the author, canonization, farce and satire
• History – 1848, 1968, the Plague, genocide, war and change, the promise of progress, labor movements, diaspora, immigration and emigration
• Political science – revolution, ideological shifts and polarization, document declassification, fascism, difference, anarchy
• Jurisprudence and legal studies – technology and intellectual property, data protection, nanotechnology, cloning, net neutrality, plagiarism, censorship on the internet, piracy and hacking, equality
• Economics and business – Enron, economic crisis, the end of history, communism, virtual money, energy, peak oil
• Leadership studies – collective vs. heroic leadership, holding sacred spaces, apocalyptic leading, prophecy
• Education – education access, student development, literacy, pedagogy and oppression, activism, social networking and virtual education, the death of philosophy
• Anthropology and sociology – myth and ritual, charisma, rationalization, superstition, rioting and mob violence, alienation, anomie, social revolutions, violence, propaganda, automation, Durkheim, secularization
• Philosophy and critical theory – queer identity, utopia, Marxism, Nietzsche, technique, repetition, deconstruction and postmodernism, posthumanity and transhumanity, multiculturalism, epistemology
• Psychology and psychoanalysis – desire, exposure, the real, trauma, Deleuze, Foucault, Zizek and apocalypse, Milgram and obedience, AA, therapy
• The natural sciences – consilience, ecological crisis and environmental change, advances in scientific understanding, nuclear technology, AIDS, entropy, extinction
• Religious studies and theology – apocalyptic literature, new religious movements,
antichrist figures, liberation theology, the death of God, eschatology, prophecy
• Technology – the singularity, bio-robotics, social networks and revolution, WikiLeaks, viral information
• Film, media, and the arts – 2012, the Wachowski brothers, Terry Gilliam, Guillermo Del Toro, fantasy, disaster, zombies and aliens, documentary, journalism

The deadline for proposals is September 1, 2011. Abstracts for 20-minute presentations (papers of about 3000 words) should be submitted via email as RTF or PDF files to the conference steering committee at interdisciplinarity@salve.edu. There may be an opportunity for publication. We invite submissions of 200-500 word abstracts for papers, panels, posters, short films and other visual media engaging questions such as:

What veils are being lifted? By what or whom? How do we react to the lifting of veils? Are we resistant? Are we complacent, desensitized, indifferent? Do we accept exposure and welcome change? How does the lifting of veils affect us and in what ways? What comes next?

Contact the conference steering committee at:

interdisciplinarity@salve.edu

Visit our website at: interdisciplinarity.salvereginablogs.com