23rd Annual CLIFF Conference @ University of Michigan.
What, when & where
Cartographies of Silence: A Conference for Readers and Writers
23rd Annual CLIFF Conference
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
March 15-16, 2019
Keynote Speaker: Professor Irena Klepfisz
Submission Deadline: December 7, 2018
Silence is not an absence, but is charged with meaning and action. To speak of silence means to speak of a multitude of paradoxes, as well as to enter an exciting avenue for literature, activism and interdisciplinary scholarship. Our conference interrogates what it means to plumb silences in the archive in search of unheard voices, and invites scholars to investigate the meanings of silence as a critical category. In particular, this conference is interested in mapping – across scholarly and creative disciplines – questions of translating silences in the archive, in the text, in the subject, and in activism. What are the possible ways of translating silence when events and experiences resist such translation? What challenges and possibilities does silence offer translators and scholars, who are tasked with making meaning of both the enunciated and the unsaid or untranslatable? How can we engage with knowledge that does not yield itself to current academic frameworks? In what ways can a focus on silence help to transform knowledge itself?
We welcome papers that take creative, interdisciplinary, and experimental forms. In addition to academic panels, the conference will include a reading of creative written work. We invite applicants who are submitting a paper proposal to include a written creative piece (3-5 minutes) that they would like to read. Acceptances to the conference will be based on paper proposals.
Deadline & how to apply
We invite graduate students in Comparative Literature and across the humanities that address the concerns outlined above. Paper proposals of no more than 250 words may be submitted to cliff.complit@umich.edu by December 7th. Please include a short bio of yourself with the abstract.
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