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<p class="MsoNormal">Begin forwarded message:<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif">From: </span>
</b><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif">Claire Bishop <<a href="mailto:cbishop@gc.cuny.edu" target="_blank">cbishop@gc.cuny.edu</a>></span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif">Subject: CFP - graduate conference - Worms for Brains</span></b><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif">Date: </span>
</b><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif">June 9, 2025 at 11:31:10 AM PDT</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Dear friends and colleagues,</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Please find attached a CFP for a graduate conference this fall organized by GC doctoral students, on the rather wacky theme of worms and the “worms eye view.” I’d be so grateful if you could
forward it on to your graduate students, administrators of graduate listservs, and any artists/performers whose interests might fit.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Have a great summer everyone -</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Claire</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Claire Bishop<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Professor, PhD Program in Art History<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">CUNY Graduate Center<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">365 Fifth Avenue<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">NY NY 10016<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p style="background:white"><b><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">WORMS FOR BRAINS</span></b><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">A graduate student conference organized by doctoral students in the PhD Program in Art History at CUNY Graduate Center, 14 November 2025</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">This conference takes up “the worm” as a wide-ranging prompt to wriggle through the fields of art, culture, and history. Worms fertilize their native ecologies. Wormholes
enable leaps through time, space, matter, and medium. These protean organisms zigzag between matrix and matter – consuming, transforming, producing, and regenerating.</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">By taking seriously the paradigmatic <i>grunt worker </i>as an emblem for the reconstructive potential of decomposition, we seek to update our current modes of scholarship.
The “worm’s eye view” de-hierarchizes, retrieves the overlooked or stepped-on, and apprehends the fundamental components of the earth that (largely out of sight) continually refurbish a globalized world. Can a conference be like a compost pile in which heterogeneous
materials intermingle and decompose into nutrient-rich soil out of which new life can emerge?</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">We are seeking proposals that take up worms, either directly as a subject or more conceptually as a theoretical springboard, from actual invertebrates to metaphorical worms,
and every figurative invocation in between. This is a call to think trans-historically and across disciplines, primarily for graduate students (in disciplines including, but not limited, to Art History, History, Media Studies, Languages, Literatures) but also
extending to practicing artists and collectives. </span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">Here are a few possible prompts:</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.25in;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">● Conservation, archival practices, and integrated pest management</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.25in;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">● Decomposition, entropy, and states of decay</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.25in;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">● Defying taxonomy (Darwin’s Worms)</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.25in;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">● Eco-criticism, Land art, Earthworks</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.25in;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">● Grunt work (à la <i>Bullshit Jobs</i>) </span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.25in;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">● Hierarchies of scale and size, vertical and horizontal</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.25in;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">● The iconography and symbolism of worms</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.25in;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">● On screen in myth, science fiction, and porn: from Nordic lindworms to the colossal sandworms of Dune to worm vore</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.25in;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">● Performance & embodiment (earworms, dancing the worm, anyone?)</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.25in;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">● Regeneration and reproducibility (printmaking, clones)</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.25in;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">● Symbiosis, roots, migration (all rhizomatic paradigms welcome)</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.25in;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">● Worm's-eye-view / A Worm’s Perspective</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.25in;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">● Wormholes in the space-time continuum</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">...and beyond!</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background:white"><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">Interested participants are invited to submit a 350-word abstract and a CV for a 15-20 minute presentation by <b><i>August 1, 2025 </i></b>to </span><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:#0F54CC"><a href="mailto:arthistoryworms@gmail.com" target="_blank">arthistoryworms@gmail.com</a></span><span style="font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif;color:black">.
Please contact us with any questions.<br>
The conference will take place at CUNY Graduate Center on Friday, <b>November 14, 2025</b>.</span><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica",sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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