Call for Participants
“Mapping the Discursive Landscape Conference” by the Bodies and Arguments Across Borders Working Group
Application Deadline: Friday, March 10th, 2017, 11:59pm
Why: Last fall, the working group Bodies and Arguments Across Borders began with the topic of bringing postcolonial studies into rhetorical scholarship, and using related methods to investigate current narratives about refugees. Rebecca Dingo’s Networking Arguments instigated the conversation, and Julietta Hua’s Trafficking Human Rights served as an inspiring example. To re-orient the words of Hua, the “work of mapping the discursive landscape and the regimes of knowledge” through which international human rights issues become mediated for U.S. audiences demands a transnational rhetorical feminist methodology: a methodology that is transnational in its attention to the various ways national power, privilege, and identity are positioned. This spring, the working group will continue our discussion and put in practice transnational rhetorical feminist methodologies for reading refugee spectacle and narrative. Our work will culminate in a mini-conference “The Mapping the Discursive Landscape,” which will consider alternative readings that de-naturalize and complicate descriptions and images of forced migration, asylum, and the international community. The conference will feature a panel, an interactive exercise of annotating public images of migration, and a keynote speech by Professor Rebecca Dingo, UMass Amherst.
Who / How: We seek scholars, artists, and graduate students wishing to present research that is conversant with transnational and feminist analyses of refugees, as well as work that critically examines the rhetorics promulgated by programs and policies related to forced migration. Please send a 250-300 word proposal describing your 20-minute presentation, workshop, or performance. Please list any AV technologies you anticipate needing.
Proposals are due by 11:59pm on Friday, March 10rd, by email at [email protected].
When / Where: The Mapping the Discursive Landscape Conference will take place on Friday, April 21st from 4pm to 9pm in Room 9207 of the Graduate Center, CUNY. For more information on the conference, click here.
Sponsored by the Bodies and Arguments Across Borders Working Group
