CALL FOR PAPERS

The Rutgers University Program in Comparative Literature
is pleased to announce its 2016 graduate student conference:
URBAN (DE)COLONIALITY AND LITERATURE

Keynote Speaker: JOSÉ DAVID SALDÍVAR, Stanford University.
March 3, 2016

The biennial graduate student conference at the Rutgers University Program in Comparative Literature seeks to relate the theoretical production of decolonial thought with other critical discourses in the global academy. The conference invites participants to think about (de)coloniality beyond the geographical limit of the Americas, the temporal constraint of modernity, and the monolingualism of hegemonic languages and dominant disciplinary frameworks. The conference aims to address the following questions, among others: What knowledges do Ethnic Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Area Studies outside of Latin American and Caribbean Studies bring to Decolonial Studies? How does literature, especially fiction, and visual arts become a resource for decoloniality? How does (de)coloniality question the meaning and method of comparativity? In which ways does decolonial thought illuminate global configurations of urban life and culture?

Graduate students interested in presenting their research at Urban (De)Coloniality and Literature are asked to submit an abstract of 300 words or less addressing the conference theme.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

•  Modernity/Coloniality/Decoloniality.
•  Dialogues across African, Latin American, Caribbean, and Asian Studies.
•  Global Urbanism, the Coloniality of the City, and De-Westernization.
•  Gentrification, Racial Segregation, and the Prison-Industrial Complex.
•  Feminist and Queer approaches to (De)Coloniality.
•  Genres of the Human in Theory and Literature.
•  Religion and Empire in the Modern/Colonial World.
•  (De)Coloniality and World Literature, Cinema and other Media.
•  Bridging Comparative Literature, Comparative Philosophy, and Comparative Political Theory.

The deadline for paper proposals is 11:59 PM on December 1st, 2015. Please e-mail all proposals to Conference Co-Chair Rafael Vizcaino (Rafael.Vizcaino@rutgers.edu), with “Submission: CL Graduate Conference 2016” as the subject of the e-mail. All submissions should include the title of the paper, the abstract, and the name, affiliation, and contact information of the author.