Online Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference: Call for Papers
University of Washington, Seattle
Disrupting Society: The (In)Expressible Currents of Revolution
Seldom can a single term be applied to subjects as varied as the spread of hormonal birth control and the drop of the guillotine upon the neck of a tyrant. Often defined as a radical political, social, or economic change, revolution as a concept is continuously split between its messianic imminence and inevitability in retrospect. In a speech only weeks before her death at the hands of reactionaries, Rosa Luxemburg remarked on both the incredible speed at which revolution can move and how it is beyond her capabilities to prophesize the time required for its fulfillment. Her imminent revolution, like many others, never came to pass. Societies develop, transform, and distribute currents of revolution, upheaval, and insubordination regardless of if such changes are realized.
This interdisciplinary conference aims to further discussion of premonitions, conditions, and actualizations of revolution in art, literature, film, performance, philosophy, and digital technology.
We invite presentations which explore whispers, echoes, and shouts of revolution found in cultural production and organized dissent from across the globe. We encourage scholars from the humanities and beyond to submit abstracts which explore, but are not limited to, the following topics and questions:
- Industrialization, Tech, and the Information Age
- Women’s Liberation
- Sexual Revolution
- Race and Ethnicity
- Revolution before the 20th Century
- Legal reform and revolution
- Urbanization
- LGBTQ Movements
- Visual art as revolution/ protest art
- Contemporary Market Reform
- Anti-imperialism movements
- Recent Protest
- Can art engender revolution?
- How does cultural production solidify revolutionary aims?
- What role does it play in not only the creation, but the preservation of new orders?
- What are the limits of cultural expression in capitalist modes of production?
- How have artists broken out of these boundaries?
- What relationship have theorists proposed between art and revolution and does it track across contemporary society?
- Is art praxis? If so, how?
Current graduate students are invited to submit abstracts between 200-300 words accompanied by a short bio to uw.igsc2022@gmail.com by April 22nd, 2022.
The conference will take place online via Zoom on June 10th and 11th.
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