CFP: Tufts Univ Graduate Conference

Tufts University will be hosting its first annual Graduate Humanities Conference on "Curiosities." The conference will take place on Friday, February 17th, 2012 from 8:30am to 5:30pm, with a reception to follow. This new conference expands the long-standing Tufts English Graduate Organization (TEGO) conference to include interdisciplinary approaches and insights and is open to graduate students studying in programs in the humanities at institutions worldwide. 

1st Annual Tufts Graduate Humanities Conference

February 17, 2012

What makes an object, a person, or a pursuit a “curiosity”? Are curiosities abnormal and rare? Are they always the extraordinarily strange, or can they be an everyday oddity? Enmeshed in a larger set of notions that often pit the social against the individual, the normative against the taboo, and the expected against the surprising, curiosities generate questions about desire, taste, knowledge, and inquiry.  
This interdisciplinary conference – which replaces a longstanding English graduate conference at Tufts University – endeavors to explore past, present, and future “curiosities” in the many senses of the word. We will consider novel objects and people, as well as irregular approaches and perspectives. How might being “curious” be both an impetus to activity and a description of activity itself? How is a desire for knowledge a potential curiosity in its own right? 

The keynote speaker will be Andrew Piper, Associate Professor of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at McGill University. Professor Piper's work focuses on the intersection of literary and bibliographic communication from the eighteenth century to the present. He is the author of Dreaming in Books: The Making of the Bibliographic Imagination in the Romantic Age (Chicago).

PLEASE SUBMIT a 250-500 word abstract, including your name, email address, and affiliation by December 12, 2011.

Mail or e-mail abstracts to:

Jennifer Croteau

Department of English, East Hall 210

Tufts University

Medford, MA 02155

Jennifer.Croteau@tufts.edu

Abstracts that explore the theme of Curiosities from a wide range of fields and disciplines are encouraged.  Topics may include but certainly are not limited to: 

The Peculiar and Uncommon

The Exceptional and States of Exception

The Virtuoso and The Everyman

Generic Curiosities

The Spy, Voyeur, and Critic

History and Anachronism

The Archive, Library, and Collection

Kitsch and Camp

Animal Studies

Evolution

The Fetish

Marginalia

The Natural and Unnatural

New Mediums and Virtuality

Politics and Ethics

Sponsored by:

Tufts English Graduate Organization

Tufts University English Department

Tufts University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences