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UCSB's Graduate Center for Literary Research (GCLR) is now accepting abstracts for their annual conference, which will be held in hybrid format on June 5. This year's theme is "Forked Tongues: The Role of (Foreign) Languages in Literature, Film, and the Arts." Abstracts are due soon, on March 11. Read on for more information and the link to the conference website.

By Graduate Division Staff
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2022 - 10:58am


UCSB's Graduate Center for Literary Research (GCLR) is now accepting abstracts for their annual conference, which will be held in hybrid format on June 5. This year's theme is "Forked Tongues: The Role of (Foreign) Languages in Literature, Film, and the Arts." Abstracts are due soon, on March 11.

This conference asks its presenters to reconsider literary and artistic representations of "speaking with forked tongues" - from biblical allusions to the pervasive violence of linguistic suppression - and how these forms offer radical potential to disrupt existing and/or imaginary monolingual paradigms. How might envisioning the image of language as a diffuse, shifting, vaporous form - a "mountain effluvia" - allow for a more ethical approach to language, beyond fixed borders?

The conference will feature an address by distinguished keynote speaker Dr. Yasemin Yildiz, Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature at UCLA and author of the award-winning book Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition.

Conference presenters will be invited to submit their revised papers for possible inclusion as "Features" in the GCLR's responsive graduate journal Exchanges, in which feature articles are followed by brief critical responses by editors. This dynamic format aims to engage readers and develop conversations that began at the GCLR conference.

Visit the conference website for the full Call for Papers.The conference is organized by Rachel Feldman and the members of the GCLR Student Advisory and Editorial Board. Organizers are currently accepting proposals from graduate students, postdoctoral, and emergent scholars from UCSB and other institutions who are interested in giving a 20-minute paper. Please send a title and abstract to gclr@complit.ucsb.edu with the subject line "Forked Tongues" by March 11, 2022.