Second Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Theory Workshop: State/Terror
March 13, 2015, room/time TBA
Hosted by SPTSA: Social and Political Theory Graduate Student Association

Full CFP: http://sptsa.tumblr.com/state-terror-cfp

About the Workshop
The Second Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Workshop on ‘Theory,’ sponsored by the Social and Political Theory Student Association (SPTSA) will bring together GC students from different disciplines and perspectives to explore what it means to ‘do theory.’ Its objectives are threefold. First, we seek to provide an opportunity for students to practice presenting and receiving feedback on works in progress in a supportively critical environment. Second, we hope to generate unexpected connections between people, concepts, orientations, and modes of theorizing. Third, we seek to build community across disciplines for GC students doing theoretical work. The workshop thus serves as a space in which we can practice taking apart the boundaries that constrain and discipline different theoretical endeavors.

Submissions and Panels
Submissions of in-progress papers, presentations, or performances are due by January 5, 2015 tosptsa.cunygc@gmail.com; notifications will be sent by January 15, 2015. Please use the Submission Form.

State/Terror
Today, “state” and “terror” appear to be relatively clear notions, which do not seem to require much critical reflection. Our milieu is constructed and reconstructed with and through official, philosophical, economic, and other sorts of discourses, which convey the meaning(s) of state/terror. Such discourses enable us to imagine, speak about, and act upon [state] [terror] in certain ways while foreclosing others. What is lost in this discursive framework is different state(s) (of) terror: varying experiences of being exposed to the state, spatially and historically changing understandings of terror –ist/-ized, differential distribution of the possibility of being terrorize-able, (mis)translations of the meanings of state/terror across borders of all sorts. As a result, state (and) terror may indeed be dangerously fluid concepts, which are justified only by each other and sufferings of different sorts.

Not to mention, what happens when we think “state/terror” beyond and without “the state?” What other kinds of state(s) – spatial, temporal, affective, embodied, performative, literary, and more – are tethered to terror?

Juxtaposing such strong terms demands that we ask numerous questions. We seek to pose them in an interdisciplinary workshop, which goes beyond the limits of our scholarly disciplines. We want to experiment about what happens if we imagine something different every time we read, learn, teach, see, perform, feel, and think state/terror.

For the full CFP, including suggested topic areas, visit: http://sptsa.tumblr.com/state-terror-cfp