CFP: Works In Progress

Works in Progress

An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference

May 31, 2012
University of Cincinnati
Department of English & Comparative Literature
Cincinnati, OH

The English Department at the University of Cincinnati invites you to submit proposals for an interdisciplinary academic conference focusing on the value of sharing works in progress as a means to increase experimentation, build community, and test new ideas. Rather than soliciting finished products from participants, we seek work that shows its seams, represents thinking in action, invites revision, and resists closure. In other words, don’t hide your process; advertise it.

Changing concepts of materiality, influencing everything from mediums to social communication, have highlighted the importance of process to all forms of production. In this spirit, we encourage projects that take process seriously, that understand process—how things are made, how ideas cohere, how writing happens—as a legitimate and compelling object of study. Projects could include but aren’t limited to explorations of the academic and the technical; pedagogical, artistic and scholarly experiments and practices; and reflective, theoretical, rhetorical, creative, or critical works.

We encourage presenters to experiment with the genre of their presentations. Presenters should feel welcome to take advantage of multimodal delivery. Presentations might take the form of a PowerPoint project, a short film, an interactive discussion or workshop, some combination of these, or other possibilities.


Proposals for individual and panel presentations might address any of the following:

·               Non-linear narratives

·               Multi-author works

·               Reconsidering ownership

·               Law in the digital age

·               Piracy and plagiarism

·               Digital technology

·               Transcending conventional mediums

·               (Re)use/mediation/mix/vision

·               Mash-ups and multi-modalities

·               Text-in-progress

·               Work that is self-conscious about process

·               Restructuring spaces

·               Collaborative art

·               Questioning “the finished project”

·               Re-envisioning embodiment and materiality

·               Persona and social networking

Panel proposals should include a coversheet containing panel title, each presenter’s name, the name of a moderator, presentation titles, university affiliation, mailing address, e-mail address, phone number, requests for technology, and anticipated format of presentation (papers, multimodal, interactive, workshop, etc.); the second page should include abstracts of 250-words for each presentation (3 to 4) and a 250-word abstract for the panel as a whole.

Individual proposals should consist of two pages. On the first page, include name, presentation title, university affiliation, mailing address, e-mail address, phone number, and details of any technology you may require, and the anticipated format of presentation (paper, multimodal, interactive, etc.); the second page should contain a 250-word abstract. Please do not include identifying information on second page (abstracts).

The deadline for submission of proposals is March 30th, 2012.


Send proposals and queries to zlabekkm@mail.uc.edu.


Individual presentations should not exceed twenty minutes; panel presentations should plan for 80 minutes total (including Q&A time).

Mindful of the financial pressures we all face, there will be no fee to attend or present at this graduate conference.