Call for papers:

The Department of Comparative Literature at UC Irvine is pleased to announce "Cultures of Violence," a graduate student conference featuring keynote addresses by Cathy Caruth, Winship Distinguished Research Professor of Comparative Literature and English at Emory University, and Wendy Brown, Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley and an introductory address by David Theo Goldberg, Director, UC Humanities Research Institute and Professor of Comparative Literature at UC Irvine. This interdisciplinary event will attempt to examine different forms of violence‹be they physical, psychological, institutional, technological, critical, or representational‹as well as their relation to globally and historically situated conflicts that have taken place around and through various concepts of culture. Diverse thinkers, critics, writers, and artists have worked toward critiques of violence, exploring the uses of violence and the means by which it is mobilized in order to produce particular social, political, and textual effects. Some of this creative and theoretical work represents an effort to productively work through acts of systemic violence. In this critical tradition, this conference is being organized to come to grips with the deployment and dissemination of violence in our current times. We welcome all submissions for papers or organized panels, including those which concern literature, film and new media, critical theory, psychoanalysis, philosophy, political theory, queer and gender studies, critical race studies, diaspora and transnational studies, cultural studies, contemporary pop culture, etc.