CALL FOR PAPERS

Full Conference Program (click here)

DEADLINE: November 15, 1999

PLENARY SPEAKERS:
 

Peter Linebaugh, author, The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in 18th Century England; co-author, The Many-Headed Hydra: The Origins of the Terraqueous Working Class (forthcoming).

Jamie Owen Daniel, co-editor, Not Yet: Reconsidering Ernst Bloch

Theodore W. Allen, author, The Invention of the White Race (2 vol.)
 

Jewell Parker Rhodes, author, Magic City and Voodoo Dreams.

The Conference:

The Kansas State University Program in Cultural Studies invites paper or panel proposals for its annual symposium, the longest continuing cultural studies conference in the nation.  (But who's counting?)  All disciplinary perspectives, including both the empirical and the theoretical, all historical topics and periods, and all subjects artistic and nonartistic, are welcome.  A special invitation is extended to interdisciplinary work and innovative formats.

The Topic:

The Year 2000 census in the U.S., with its debate about "sampling,"  raises important issues specific to the historical moment, but also broader cultural issues as well.  The invisibility of the homeless or of minorities, for instance, may occur at the levels of both literal representation or of political discourse, with important effects from either.  The conference will explore the policies and practices of the culture of counting in all its forms, exploring who counts  and how, who's counting and why.

Abstracts:

Proposals should be limited to one page,  single-spaced abstracts, which should be sent to:

Director of the Program in Cultural Studies
Department of English
Denison Hall
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS  66506
FAX: 785-532-2192
Inquiries by email (csdirector@ksu.edu)or telephone (785-532-6716).

Suggested topics or areas:

- the census, sampling, representation, political boundaries, population & growth
- polling, voting, opinion weighing, media representation, market surveying
- ideological assumptions in empirical research & investigation, statistical study & measurement
- civic development, housing, transportation, construction
- recovered histories, peoples, narratives, testimony
- homelessness, immigration, spectacular vs. unspectacular violence
- business and corporate culture, efficiency and downsizing, the workplace,  affirmative action, quotas
- invisibility, marginality, valued and unvalued experience
- alternative music, art, literature, awards, honors, censorship & self censorship
- invisible sexuality, transgender, nontraditional families
- canonicity debates, ratings, "top" lists, the artworld
- beans in academia: grades, tests, merit, evaluation, tenure, rank, stratification,  institutional prestige
- unequal "globalization" and "periphery," worthy and unworthy victims, trade  wars
- the public intellectual vs. the rest of us