[Chass-gradstudents] Dis/Junctions Conference

[CHASS Grad Affairs]

Dear Graduate Programs, please circulate the following message to your
graduate students:

Dear Graduate Students,



I am writing regarding the upcoming conference DIS/JUNCTIONS: New Work
Across the Disciplines.



Dis/Junctions is an annual graduate student conference dedicated to
fostering dialogue across disciplines, methods, and genres. After a brief
hiatus, we’re excited to bring Dis/Junctions back in collaboration with
HHDJ. Rather than having a narrowly defined theme, we want to open the
invitation to all students (CHASS and STEM) interested in showcasing their
interdisciplinary work.

How can we imagine modes of research, practice, and theorizing that surpass
the usual structure of academic disciplines? Or methodologically, how might
we be thinking in new ways across domains of embodiment, cognition, and
representation? How might advances (past or present) in or across our
various fields (such as modes of digitization, mediation, and the making
and circulation of information) be opening up new possibilities for
scholarship?



As the French historian, philosopher, and literary and cultural critic
Michel Foucault suggested, disciplinary lines can serve as foundations for
ordering knowledge and disciplining subjects into the* status quo*.
However, when we allow ourselves to play with such lines, we can stimulate
the production of new, and often subversive, knowledge and practices. In
today’s academia, this is reflected in a rise not necessarily in new
"disciplines" but rather in "areas of study." Decolonial, Indigenous, and
Critical Race Theories that carved out their intellectual spaces in the
past decades are now conjoined with Environmental, Medical, and Digital
Humanities, Disability, Animal, and Games Studies, among many others. At
the same time, arts, sciences, and humanities are entering an unprecedented
level of dialogue. And while the new “studies” might seem like yet another
set of molds, they also resist the standardization of what can be said and
how it can be said.



The work of UCR graduate students now involved in various areas of health
humanities and/or disability justice exemplifies this spirit. Their
research insists that bodies are always already entangled in sociopolitical
arrangements, that medicine is never simply objective, that health is never
merely personal. Through engagements with literature, performance,
philosophy, and more, they are showing what interdisciplinary critique can
do. We invite students from all disciplines to think alongside us and take
part in this unfolding dialogue.



We welcome proposals from graduate students at all stages, especially those
interested in sharing works-in-progress, exploring experimental formats, or
engaging in conversation across fields. Whether you’re working on
literature, theory, culture, media, the environment, the body, the archive,
or something that doesn’t fit neatly into any category–this is your space.

· The conference will take place on Friday, May 30th, at HMNSS 1500.

· The format will be short, flash presentations or posters, with plenty of
time for Q/A and discussion. If you think your project is not quite fleshed
out, this is a perfect opportunity to get some feedback from the community!

· If interested, fill out this Google form
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe77tw-Xz9az7XuvIioJmXL2RHxyoFMciM9pCUmEOysJP5Psg/viewform?usp=header>,
including a short, up to 100-word description of your talk by May 23.



Hope to see you there!



Best,

The organizing committee



-- 

Jovana Isevski

PhD Candidate in English

University of California, Riverside

jisev001 at ucr.edu
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