Call for Papers

43rd Annual American Studies Symposium

“Race, Difference, and Public Space”

Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, April 28-29, 2018

Submission Deadline: February 1, 2018

*Travel support is available

The American Studies Program at Purdue University announces its 43rd Annual Symposium to be held April 28-29, 2018. This event focuses on the presentations of graduate student work that demonstrates interdisciplinarity, innovation, and intellectual rigor. The Symposium Committee invites papers, posters, and panels from a wide variety of disciplines to present on all topics relevant to this year’s theme, “Race, Difference, and Public Space.”

“The politics and poetics of space permeate the culture of the United States as a nation through moral values that get attached to the open ranges of the western frontier and the far reaches of empire overseas; that contrast the barrio, the ghetto, and the reservation with the propertied and properly gendered suburban home; that juxtapose the finite limits of social space with the infinite possibilities of cyberspace and outer space. In both scholarly research and everyday life, the moral meanings attributed to these spaces and places have often been resolutely and creatively contested.” -George Lipsitz, “Space,” Keywords for American Cultural Studies

Your submission should highlight the interdisciplinarity of your scholarly research, as well as the ways in which your research interrogates or engages with special topics in American Studies. We will consider proposals that explore questions of space and its relevance to or intersections with race and/or difference. Proposals should interpret public space as environment, urban, rural, political, digital, virtual, physical, material, speculative, etc. Proposals may also consider, challenge, or transgress the following:

• Interrogating modes of social, historical, and cultural expression in public space
• Utilizing design and technology to create difference and determine access, mobility, and agency
• Including and/or advocating for vulnerable communities such as youth, children, homeless, disabled, refugees, elders, undocumented, etc. in public space
•  (Re)claiming of public space and memory
• Policing, legitimizing, and surveillance of public space by individuals, governments, patriarchies, media, etc.
• Exploring ways civic engagement and pedagogies interact with the University as a public space
• Examining the potential social affinities that take place in public space

The Symposium Committee invites all those interested to submit papers, posters, and panels. Panels should consist of three papers. All proposals should include an abstract no longer than 250 words in length, proposal title, 200-word biography, current CV with contact information for each individual, and any requests for audio and/or visual equipment necessary for presentation.

Submissions must be made electronically to bplante@purdue.edu no later than February 1, 2018 at 11:59 PM. *Housing accommodations are provided. Please include a budget for additional travel support.

Best,
AMST Symposium Committee