2nd Call for Papers: 2017 UCL English Graduate Conference "Distortion"

Ana Zhong Announcement
Location
United Kingdom
Subject Fields
Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Film and Film History, Humanities, Literature, Graduate Studies

We’re excited to announce that the CFP is now open for our 2017 English Department Graduate Conference on the theme of "Distortion". The conference will be held at University College London (UCL) on June 9th, 2017. 

 

Keynote Speakers

Dr Gillian Woods (Birkbeck) 

Dr Michael Sayeau (UCL) 

 

About the conference 

“I am interested in making up a good case for distortion, as I am coming to believe it is the only way to make people see.” –Flannery O’Connor. 


This year, the annual UCL Department of English’s graduate conference will be on the theme of “distortion,” that aims to explore the distortion, deception, and disassociation of truth. Living in a world of “post-truth” the question of determining the difference between objective and subjective has become difficult to distinguish. This conference will examine the concept of distortion as it manifests in literature and culture. From Chaucer to Shakespeare, from Marcel Duchamp to Man Ray, from Pound’s haikus to Trump’s twitter, we perceive the world through the distortion of text, art, photography, and film. 

Some of the questions that will be addressed over the course of the conference are: How is the fictionalisation of facts exhibited in literature? In what ways do we project our subjective viewpoint onto the world and others? How is language fabricated to create different meanings? What is the relationship between distortion and manipulation? What are the effects of mistranslation and misinterpretation? In what ways is our vocabulary changing to reflect the distorted information we receive? 

Topics might include, but are not restricted to: 

  • Deception 
  • Illusions and dreams 
  • Distortion of history and rewriting the past 
  • Mistranslation & misinterpretation 
  • Methods of narratology 
  • Post-truth 
  • Fictionalisation of facts 
  • Linguistic prosody: poetry, syntax, and semantics 
  • Rhetoric 
  • Sexuality, scopophilia, and voyeurism 
  • Cognitive distortions 
  • Technologies of distortion 
  • Other artistic mediums (paintings, photography, film & television) 


How to submit 

Abstracts of 300 words together with a short 50 words biography are invited for submission by Friday 5th May 2017  to distortionucl@gmail.com

The conference is free and open to the public.

All are welcome! ^-^

 

 

Website: https://distortionuclconference2017.wordpress.com 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ucldistortion 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ucldistortion 

Contact Information

Organisers: Kent Su, Shani Bans, Shiran Avni, and Ai Zhong

Contact Email
distortionucl@gmail.com