Fragile Realities (2012)

Call For Papers

(Please distribute widely)

Fragile Realities: Intersecting Interpretations of the Real

Inaugural Thoughtsforward/SELCS Postgraduate Conference 2012

Friday 6 July 2012 // UCL, Bloomsbury Campus, London

Deadline for Abstracts: 30 April 2012 (Extended) 10 May 2012

UCL School of European Languages, Culture and Society

Supported by the European Institute and Faculty Institute of Graduate Studies

Keynote Speakers

Dr Matthew Beaumont 

UCL English Department and The City Centre

Author of Utopia Ltd.: Ideologies of Social Dreaming in England and Editor of A Concise Companion to Realism.

and

Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen, Assoc. Prof., PhD

 Department of Aesthetics and Communication, Aarhus University

Project member: Reality, Realism and the Real in Visual Culture. Co-editor of Globalizing Art: Negotiating Place, Identity and Nation in Contemporary Nordic Art.

The committee invites submissions for papers by UK-based postgraduate students across a wide spectrum of interests and disciplines on perspectives relating to studies of reality. In particular, we encourage papers that interrogate ideas of the real in an interdisciplinary manner and explore the critical possibilities of the theme.

We invite graduate researchers working in fields connected to European languages, cultures & society to respond to this critical interrogation, and in doing so, reflect on how concepts of reality operate in different theoretical contexts, and whether interconnections between various fields may be achieved.

The conference will be organised as chaired panels dealing with specific themes under the broader umbrella of Reality. The suggested panel titles here are arranged broadly along the lines of literature, politics, history, and critical theory:

• Representing Reality – Political and Media Discourse,

• Mirroring Reality – Perceived and Constructed Self-image,

• Tracing European Identities – Nation and Migration.

Additionally, a selection of papers from the conference will be published online and in a special print edition of Opticon1826, the multidisiplinary peer-reviewed academic journal based in UCL.

Please send submissions and queries to <thoughtsforward@gmail.com>.

Submissions should include the following:

• An abstract of no more than 250 words.

• 3 to 5 key words relating to the focus of the paper.

• A short bio of around 50 words.

We aim to respond to all submissions by 11 May 2012.

We are looking forward to receiving your submissions!

Warm regards,

Thoughtsforward organisers.