CFP: VIII Annual LANGSA Conference: “Shaping the Future”

SHAPING THE FUTURE is an interdisciplinary conference hosted by the Languages Graduate Student Association of the University of Connecticut. The conference will take place at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, from October 27th to 28th, 2017.

This year’s LANGSA conference aims to discuss how literatures, cultures, and languages explore, shape and represent the future. This event seeks to investigate these topics as broad categories, from the physical to the abstract. LANGSA encourages papers with a focus on understandings, beliefs, fantasies or fears about the future in a variety of mediums, styles, and forms. LANGSA particularly welcomes contributions which consider the metaphorical shaping of the future, speculations on what the future will be, and possible contributions toward the shaping of the future through identity politics, foreign language education, or arts.

We encourage submissions across all disciplines that engage with the future as a complex ground for connecting, hybridizing, or confronting realities. We welcome approaches to this theme from all disciplines, fields, and historical periods.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • The future of languages/language studies

  • Intellectual futures / The future of the University

  • The future of global citizenship

  • The rising popularity of fascism and racism

  • Futurism, Science fiction and speculative fiction

  • Political futurism, especially in its exploration of fascism

  • Utopian studies, classic or contemporary utopias

  • Dystopian studies, classic or contemporary dystopias

  • Gender, sexuality and queer futures

  • Afro-Futurism / Race and Science Fiction

  • Indigenous Futurism

  • Transcultural representations in classic SF and futurist texts

  • Futurist art and its political and cultural context

  • The history of the future

  • Borders: physical, psychological, metaphorical, symbolic, sexual, geo-political, or cultural

Please send abstracts of 250-300 words to langsa.uconn@gmail.com by August 31, 2017. Presentations will be limited to 20 minutes. Abstracts must include a cover sheet indicating the title, author’s name, affiliation, e-mail address and short biography.

For any additional update on keynote speakers, dates and program Visit Conference Website.