An Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference, April 14-15 2006

THE PROGRAM IN COMPARATIVE LITERARY STUDIES
GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

<http://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/complit_arrestflow/>ARRESTING THE FLOW
April 14-15, 2006

with keynote addresses by:
Bernhard Siegert
(Professor of History and Theory of Cultural Technologies,
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar)
Jules Law
(Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies,
Northwestern University)
and response from:
Peter Fenves
(Joan and Sarepta Harrison Professor of Literature,
Northwestern University)

call for papers:

"Arresting the Flow", the first annual graduate conference organized by
Northwestern University's Program in Comparative Literary Studies, seeks to
provide a platform for the formulation of a cohesive understanding of flow.
The terms flow, flux, and fluid are ubiquitous in the history of Western
thought-and its polemics. From Heraclitus to Plotinus, Augustine to Leibniz
and Kant, Hölderlin to Heidegger, Benjamin to Deleuze and Derrida, flow has
been variously defined: "fluid" have been the borders between self and other,
"fluctuating" the "influences" of the uncontrollable and uncreated on
organized space and time, "flowing" the conditions-and metaphors-of exchange
and transmission, knowledge and self-consciousness, circulation and infection.
One thing, though, has remained constant: that flow incorporates a concern for
the overflowing of certain limits of being and experience, whether those be
placed between man and God, mind and body, self and world, neurotransmitter
and memory, eye and screen, place and journey. And yet, "flow" seems to demand
its own, conceptual arrest.

Fields as diverse as psychoanalysis, film and media studies, philosophy,
theatre, religion, the history of science, geography, urban studies, law,
political science, economics, literary studies, architecture and art history,
among others, continue to be marked by the effects of flow.

themes:

Papers are invited to address, but are not limited to, topics such as:
The ebb and flow of thought
Flow and interruption
Flow at the source of permanence
Flow as negativity
Flow and the concepts of home and shelter
Rivers and bends, streams and eddies
Autoimmunity, law and politics
Volition, flow, resistance
Circulation(s)
Currents
Modeling flow and the impact on design
"Flow" as a paradigm of social theory
The metaphor of flow
Rethinking "influence": local, national, global, cross-disciplinary
Fluencies
Temporal flow and perception
Wandering, migration, and the production of space
Liquid space
Political states and states of flux
"Uneven flow" and the transgression of borders
"Total flow", streaming, and the subject of media
Landscape, fluidity and viscosity
Body fluids at the crossroads of the histories of
medicine, religion, literature
Fluidity of identity and concept: race/gender/ethnicity, genre/form/structure

submission guidelines:

The primary language of the conference is English. Presentations should last
roughly 20 minutes. Please send an abstract of 250-300 words as a Word
attachment to Julia Ng (j-ngnorthwestern.edu). On a separate cover page
please list the proposed title, author's name, affiliation, brief biographical
statement focusing on academic work (approx. 100 words) and contact
information. Please indicate if you will require technological support
(overhead, slide projector, etc.). Deadline for submissions is December 1,
2005.

for more information:

Please visit http://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/complit_arrestflow/
for continually updated information on the conference.

organized by:
Joel Morris, Julia Ng, Dan Nolan and Paul North

--
Julia Ng
Department of German Literature and Critical Thought
Program in Comparative Literary Studies
Northwestern University 2-375 Kresge 1880
Campus Drive * Evanston, IL 60208 USA

::: 847-467-7067
::: j-ngnorthwestern.edu