Proposals for EGSS Annual Conference due January 5th

Call for Academic and Creative Proposals

IDENTITY & IDENTIFICATION

The English Graduate Student Society

2025 Conference at Florida Atlantic University

February 3 | Boca Raton, FL

“People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn't bother me. It's other people doing the calling that bothers me.”

― Octavia E. Butler

“Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.”

― James Baldwin

We invite undergraduate and graduate students from all academic institutions as well as independent scholars and creatives to explore the theme of “Identity and Identification” academically and creatively. Works falling outside the conference theme are, of course, also welcome.

Proposal abstracts for 10 to 15 minute papers or readings should be 250 words or less. Please submit your proposal accompanied with a 100 word biography by January 5th, 2025 to the following links below.

ACADEMIC

CREATIVE

Following a Lacanian fashion, we may describe our identity as an imaginary construction based on the series of successive, compounded identifications that we have with the world we live in. Identification being described as the process in which the subject, becoming captivated withsome aspect of their external reality, incorporates said image of that externalized ‘other’ into forming their own self-representation—the“original form of emotional tie” according to Freud. Outside of these theorizations that attempt to articulate the amorphous processes of the unconscious, we can also consider the materializations of these processes as their effects and ‘affects’ within society—perhaps analogous to Franz Fanon’s descriptor of "the cultural imposition”.

“Identity and Identification” seeks to question the dialectics of the self and the collective.These investigations can range from exploring the reciprocal relationship between internal and external spaces of subjectivity to probing how the processes of identification can be wielded as a sociopolitical tool. How do we construct identity? Who and what gets to decide the boundaries of identity? What are the constrictory and liberatory forces of identity, and how might we utilize the later while mitigating the harm of the former? This conference welcomes both academic and creative proposals that touch on the published theme, but we also welcome proposals that may not be related.

Topics can include, but are certainly not limited to:

Interdisciplinary studies throughout Psychology, History, and Philosophy
Social Movements and Ideology
Materialism and Commodification
Phenomenological and Ontological studies
Linguistic Theory

This conference is free for presenters and attendees. Please email Cailey Poirier at poirierc2021@fau.edu or Carrie-Anna Wade at cwade2014@fau.edu with questions.