Congratulations to our Hirschhorn Award Nominees and Winners!

Draper would like to congratulate our 2011-2012 Hirschhorn Award nominees and winners! The Hirschhorn is given annually to the most outstanding thesis written by one of our students during the previous year. Theses are judged on the originality of the project, the strength of the research, and the quality of the writing.

This year we had thirteen total nominees and a tie for the award! The winners were Joey McGarvey (May 2012) and Scott Kaplan (January 2012). Their thesis titles and abstracts are below.

Our nominees were:

Christopher Cappelutti (May 2012)
The Many Faces of Ulysses: Joyce and Dante Rewrite Tradition

Michelle Dennis (May 2012)
Unyielding Passions: Reexamining Sentimental Fiction

Nick Gutierrez (January 2012)
Some Small Measure of Hope for the Possibility of Meaning: Reading the Ethics of Literature and the Literature of Ethics

Sarah Latanshyn (September 2011)
"From Uzhhorod there is a road" to Lemkovyna: Music and Identity Among the Lemkos

Tamir Morag (September 2011)
Public Atmosphere and Policy Making in Israel on the Eve of the Six Day War

Beatriz Olivetti (January 2012)
Conceptual Strategies: Curating Emptiness and Performance at the 28th Sao Paulo Biennial

Ryan Petersen (May 2012)
Heavy Metal Warriors and The Monster-Terrorist-Fag: subcultural Biopolitics and Heavy Metal Masculinity in America's War on Terror

Cara Ryan (May 2012)
American Catholics Meeting Islam: Soidarity, Partnerships and Resistance

Zeinab Saiwalla (May 2012)
Unpacking Rituals: Understanding What Lies Beneath Two Commonplace Dawoodi Bohra Practices

Roy Schwartz (May 2012)
Is Superman Circumcised? The Secret (Jewish) Identity of Superheroes

Eric Silver (May 2012)
Teacher/Preacher: Secular Proselytization in a Classroom Setting

And our winners:

Scott Kaplan
From an Elegant Despair to a Moral Exuberence: A Search for Utopian Feeling in Tony Kushner's Theatre of the Fabulous

Abstract:
In this paper, I will be exploring the political theatre of Tony Kushner and his Theatre of the Fabulous. By breaking down the various meanings attributed to fabulousness, I will be attempting to explain an evolution in quer theatre that Kushner is actively pursuing from the Theatre of the Ridiculous to his Theatre of the Fabulous. I will argue that Kushner’s methodology for this change is related to the way in which he politicizes feeling within two of his most Brechtian plays: A Bright Room Called Day and Slavs!. In these two plays, I will examine how Kushner’s characters both indulge in a hopeless complacent feeling I will refer to as elegant despair as well as willfully and hopelessly struggle with a complicated hopeful and powerful political feeling, which I will refer to as moral exuberance. Through these two emotions, I argue that Kushner’s political theory of the fabulous becomes most apparent, and invite us to imagine a way in which our queer aesthetic can imagine and feel toward utopia.

Joey McGarvey
The Stagecoach and the Pear: The New York Fruit Festival and the Metaphors of Ninetheenth-Century American Authorship

Abstract:
“The Stagecoach and the Pear” is divided into two chapters. The first takes a primarily historical approach and represents the first real exegesis of the Complimentary Fruit and Flower Festival, an event hosted by the New York Book Publishers’ Association on September 27, 1855. The event brought together seven hundred booksellers, publishers, and authors in New York City to celebrate the decade’s literary success. Significantly, as many as fifty—and probably far less—of those who attended were female authors. In this first chapter, I ask the question: Why fruit? Why did the Association’s secretary, publisher George Palmer Putnam, decide his menu would consist almost entirely of produce and pastries (and would entirely omit alcoholic beverages)? One clear answer is as an enticement to these women, who were both apprehensive about attending and phenomenal sources of profit to the publishers who could gain their trust. As I develop the macrohistorical themes of the Festival in a way that has not previously been done, I also reveal the Festival as an active site of negotiation among some of the most prominent men and women of letters at a highly charged moment in literary history. Specifically, I argue that male publishers develop a metaphor for authorship—particularly female authorship—through fruit, allowing them to treat these women as commodities.

In the largely literary second chapter, I theorize a genre of women’s writing that I call the tale of mobility. Here, I claim that the women writers invited to the Festival had begun to develop their own metaphor for authorship through periodical tales of travel and place beginning in the 1830s. This metaphor stressed experience over commodification, and suggests both women’s excitement and anxiety about authorship. In both chapters, I repeatedly draw on a previously untapped archive, the New York Public Library’s collection of over 190 response letters from authors and other literary notables invited to the Festival, preserved by Putnam in a scrapbook. These letters, I argue, reveal the dialogue, hopes, and fears inherent in the Festival—and in mid-century literary culture—in an entirely new way.

Congrats, everyone!

Draper Student Dave Ferris Co-owns and Operates a B&B in Downtown Brooklyn

It's true! We just read about it in the L Magazine. It's called 3B and it's communally owned and run by a group of people who communally live one floor below. Pretty neat concept, we think.

You can read and see more about the B&B itself, its owners, and its ethos -- or book a room, if you need a getaway -- at the official website. Congrats, Dave and Co.!

UVic Cultural, Social and Political Thought CFP

n/coherence: expression, translation, violence
Cultural Social and Political Thought Conference
University of Victoria: April 21-22, 2012

The Cultural, Social, and Political Thought program at the University of Victoria is pleased to announce a call for papers and projects for our annual graduate conference on April 21-22, 2012. The title of this year’s conference is in/coherence: expression, translation, violence. Thematic workshops will feature keynote speakers and student submissions (papers, performances, art pieces). This interdisciplinary conference seeks to engage in/coherence in social, cultural and political discourses, especially with respect to contemporary events.

Dynamics of expression, translation and violence in current contexts present opportunities for discussing in/coherence. As an interpretive thematic, in/coherence can be explored in ways that destabilize the binary reduction of “coherence versus incoherence”. How does in/coherence function politically, socially and culturally in contemporary arenas? Actions viewed as “incoherent” are frequently disregarded as illegitimate, yet claims of “coherent” actions are equally problematic. In response to recent expressions of dissent, a common insistence for actors to “bear reasonable witness” to their choices has illuminated the hegemonic scope of legitimacy. How do both demands and rejections of coherence complicate notions of incoherence (and vice versa)? Discussing in/coherence in these ways has potential ramifications for discussions around citizenship, postcolonialism, democracy, resistance, identity, liberal normativism, gender, nationalism, biopolitics, indigeneity, aesthetics, multiculturalism, the urban, language, globalization, critical theory, posthumanism, and capitalism, among others. We invite participants to submit original projects and aim to foster dynamic debate of these themes.
The conference will offer four workshops through which to approach these issues:

Narratives:
Narratives form horizons of consciousness: while they open up some ways of relating, they simultaneously close off the possibility of others. Proposals around this theme explore how the norms of “good,” i.e. coherent, narrative correspond to the dominant ideologies of our time (capitalism, neoliberalism, colonialism and so on). We also look for contributions that address the possibilities for new genres and narratives to reject the norms of efficiency and coherence.

Materialism/Materialities:
Is the material synonymous with the concrete? Can materiality be understood outside of language? Contributions to this workshop might consider the irreducible number of determinations (linguistic, topographical, concrete, etc.) that come into play in discussions of materiality.

Spatiotemporalities:
We are often told that a coherent notion of space and time, and conceptualizations thereof, are fundamentally imbricated in our ability to identify and make ourselves. Homelands and histories are presupposed as the fundamental conditions under which our being together is made and understood. We invite proposals which seek to describe, interrogate and trouble considerations of spaces and times (or spatiotemporalities) imagined as coherent or incoherent, and to call into question the rationalities that mobilize such discourses.

Technologies:
The clean lines and binary choices presented by contemporary technology give the strong impression of clarity, control, and coherence, but under the surface lurk power failures, code exploits, and unexpected mutations. In this spirit, proposals to this workshop might, among other aims, interrogate the in/coherent character of key technologies – questioning the reasons for their design, the way that they function, and the effects that they have on their users – interrogations that may demonstrate that an in/coherent logic informs the algorithmic operation of technology.

Please submit project proposals between 250-500 words (with expression of interest in one of the four workshops) to in.coherence2012@gmail.com by January 30th, 2012.

Extended Deadline: NYU CALC "Networked New York," Mar. 9, 2012 (deadline Jan. 5)

"Networked New York" - call for papers

The Colloquium in American Literature and Culture at New York University invites proposals for our 2012 spring conference, "Networked New York." This symposium will take place on Friday, March 9, 2012, and will feature a keynote address by Marvin Taylor, Director of Fales Library & Special Collections and founder of the Downtown New York Collection.

We envision this conference as a forum for examining systems of interrelation among writers and artists who live, work, commune, and clash in New York City, whether physical New York (the city's buildings, streetscapes, neighborhoods), digitized New York (its blogs, websites, tweets), or institutional New York (its libraries, archives, museums). We aim to enable discussion about literary, artistic, and intellectual coteries in New York – past and present – and to consider the influence of such communities on the cultural production the city generates as well as on the city itself. To these ends, we hope to include papers from a range of historical and disciplinary contexts.

Our keynote panel will probe the specific concerns that the geographies and institutional landscapes of New York City bring to bear on archives and collecting in both contemporary and historical contexts. To this end, we also seek papers that may address similar subjects, particularly radical archives in New York and/or key strategies for making and using contemporary archives in the city. How does one address the archival presence or absence of certain communities or spaces in New York City?

Other potential paper topics include but are not limited to explorations of the following:

- Neighborhood dynamics and artistic communities


- Collaborations among artists, writers, readers, viewers


- Circulation of ideas and materials


- New York street life and material culture


- Urban space and identity


- Sites, scenes, and modes of interaction


- Digital media and the city

Please send a brief CV and abstract, 300-500 words in length, to Annie Abrams and Blevin Shelnutt atnyucalc@gmail.com by January 5, 2012. Please direct any questions about the conference to this address.

Thesis Submission & Thesis Topic Approval Due Today, 12/16

A friendly reminder to Draperites!

If you're planning on graduating in January, you must turn in your thesis (and corresponding paperwork) by 5pm today, 12/16. When you come in, please deliver it directly to the front-desk.

If you're planning on graduating in May, you'll want to hand in your thesis topic approval form this Friday as well. Simply leave it in Robert's box (bottom left hand corner of the wooden mailboxes behind my desk). We will email you when it's been approved.

Contact our offices if you have any questions.

Foucault Society Colloquium: Wednesday, 12/14

The Foucault Society, NYC
2011 Colloquium Series: New Research in Foucault Studies

Our popular Colloquium Series continues next week! We are delighted to invite you to another evening of critical dialogue and light refreshment. Join the discussion, celebrate the end of the semester and find out how you can help shape the Foucault Society's agenda for 2012. All are welcome.

Dominique E. Johnson, Ph.D.

"Critical Dilemmas and Methodological Regimes: Toward a Genealogy of an Empirical Borderland"

Wednesday, December 14, 2011
7:30-9:30pm

CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Room 5409
New York, NY

Abstract:
This paper engages in a Foucaultian critique of quantitative methodologies. Situating Foucault's discussions of the carceral society and regimes of verification in the context of work by Patricia Hill Collins and Sandra Harding, I examine the dilemmas that emerge when using critical theory to frame quantitative social research. The paper looks carefully at the silencing of intersectional identities that often occurs when quantitative data is used for the construction, maintenance and representation of social identities, and argues that these dilemmas challenge us to expand our conceptualizations of what it is to do quantitative research, particularly for intersectional analysis. Engaging both the risks and opportunities that arise from seeking to enter the quantitative matrix, the paper concludes by considering the various implications of living and working in the empirical borderlands while making a critical intervention into existing methodological regimes.

Speaker bio:
Dominique Johnson (Ph.D., Urban Education, Temple University) is Assistant Professor of Law and Society and a member of the Women and Gender Studies convening group in the School of Social Science and Human Services at Ramapo College of New Jersey. Dr. Johnson is currently the Chair of the American Democracy Project at Ramapo College.

About the Colloquium Series:
The Foucault Society's Colloquium Series provides a forum for new research and works-in-progress, and offers an opportunity for both junior and senior scholars to share new work with a friendly and supportive audience of colleagues.

Open to the public. All are welcome. We will have wine and snacks. Suggested donation: $5.

RSVPs are appreciated. E-mail: foucaultsocietyorg@gmail.com.

**As part of our ongoing fundraiser, we will have hardcover copies of Foucault's book, The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the College de France, 1982-1983 (Palgrave, 2010), available for purchase.**

About the Foucault Society:
The Foucault Society is an independent, nonprofit educational organization offering a variety of forums dedicated to the critical study of the ideas of Michel Foucault (1926-1984). All of our events are open to the public. We welcome new participants who have an interest in Foucault's work and its impact on diverse areas of inquiry, including critical social theory, philosophy, politics, history, culture, gender/sexuality studies, and the arts.

Website: www.foucaultsociety.org

Twitter: @foucaultsociety

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/foucaultsociety/

E-mail: foucaultsocietyorg@gmail.com

For directions to the CUNY Graduate Center, please see: http://www.gc.cuny.edu/About-the-GC/Building-Particulars/Building-Access.

Submit Your Resume for Wasserman's Class of 2012 Resume Book

Class of 2012 Resume Book Collection
December 12 - January 26, 2012

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Graduation will be here before you know it! The early stages of your job search should begin now. Beginning Monday, December 12 - Thursday, January 26 at 3pm, the Wasserman Center for Career Development will collect resumes for theClass of 2012 Resume Books. These books will be distributed to hundreds of employers in industries such as finance, marketing, engineering and technology, advertising, public relations, entertainment, health care, consulting, non-profit, government, education, real estate and many more. and serve as one source for recruiting Class of 2012 graduates.

To be eligible to participate:

- Be officially recognized by the University as receiving an academic degree (Bachelor, Master or PhD) in January, May or September 2012 (certificate candidates, MBAs and Law students are NOT eligible).

- Get your resume critiqued and signed off on by the Wasserman Center of NYU-Poly Career Center staff before the deadline. Click here for the Wasserman walk in hours schedule. Click here for the NYU-Poly walk in hours schedule. This must take place even if a counselor has looked at your resume in the past.

Click here for INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO SUBMIT

Internship at Scenarios USA

Event Planning and Development Intern

Summary:

The Event Planning and Development Intern will work under the supervision of and in close partnership with the Director of Development and the Database Manager. The Event Planning and Development Intern will assist in achieving major development department goals: assist in the management of 2011 REAL DEAL Awards and Gala logistics and work with the Database Manager to develop the resources in Convio Common Ground including input and tracking for the event and foundations/corporations cultivation as well as other database tasks.

The Event Planning and Development Intern is a leading contributor to Scenarios USA program development and Scenarios USA seeks a passionate and persuasive representative of the organization and its mission. Scenarios USA is a small but very accomplished organization. This position will provide a great deal of experience in event planning and development to a responsible and ambitious candidate.

Responsibilities:

Event Planning (75%)

· Assist with production of event journal

· Prepare correspondence: edits, proofreads, and formats reports, documents, etc.

· Research topics as needed for gala

· Assist in the planning and execution of logistics surrounding our annual gala

· Create, organize and maintain program and event files as needed

· Field telephone calls and emails about gala as needed

· Ensure that internal follow-up is completed; assist with follow-up to donors and volunteers

· Enter information into and help manage database

General Development/Database Maintenance (25%)

• Assist in the tracking and entering of event donor information
• Keep track of event donations
• Make copies, collate, and distribute materials
• Organize information in electronic and hard copy files

Reports to: Director of Development

Location: Brooklyn, New York

Start Date: ASAP

Hours: 3 days per week – hours flexible

Compensation: lunch and transportation reimbursed

Qualifications:

· Bachelor’s degree

· Superior organizational skills, attention to detail

· Excellent interpersonal and communications skills; ability to interact effectively with a range of stakeholders.

· Fluent English

· Experience in a professional environment

· Experience in supporting program, conference, and/or event planning preferred

· Demonstrated proficiency in word processing, spreadsheets, internet research, email, and file management (prefer Microsoft Office Suite); experience with Constant Contact and/or fundraising software preferred

· Commitment to the mission of Scenarios USA

To apply:

Send cover letter and resume by December 18^th, no calls please.

By email: denise@scenariosusa.org

Subject line: Event Planning and Development Intern

By mail: Event Planning and Development Intern Search

Scenarios USA

80 Hanson Place, Suite 305

Brooklyn, New York 11217

Scenarios USA seeks to hire staff who reflects the diversity of the communities we serve.

Equal Opportunity Employer: This position will be filled without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, disability, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.

About Scenarios USA:

Scenarios USA believes that by valuing youth and investing in their stories, we can strengthen academic achievement, promote civic engagement, and support young people in becoming responsible and healthy individuals. Every aspect of the Scenarios USA program – from the classroom discussion and reflection to the script-writing contest, to the film production, to the public speaking engagements – is a two-way street that gives young people the power to work as full partners with teachers, professional filmmakers, and community and youth advocates. This formula has been proven effective in our program evaluation, and we are proud that The Ford Foundation, our top funder, continues to cite Scenarios USA as a model in the fields of education, youth development and adolescent health. For more information: http://www.scenariosusa.org

Notes on the Recent Draper MA Thesis Writing Workshop

Our thanks to Scott Silsbe for providing the following notes!

On writing a thesis

It should be an original argument embedded within the current work on the subject.

When choosing a thesis topic think about the following: What have I done? Where am I going? Think broadly at first, then narrow the topic down. What are my 'key terms'? How will your thesis be formally organized, i.e. chapters, sections, etc.

Five hints for choosing a thesis-writing:
1: Pick something that motivates you, not something you think you ‘should’ do.
2: Pick something you can finish in the allotted time.
3: Write throughout the entire process. ('Writing' includes note-taking, graphing outlining, etc. in addition to drafting the essay itself.)
4: Be in communication with your adviser.
5: Throughout the process, think about your title as well as write and rewrite your abstract. Ask yourself, "What is my ‘elevator talk’?" How do you explain your thesis in 300 words or less? In 50 words or less? In ten words?

Three possible starting points are:
1: Methodology - how will you go about your research and analysis?
2: Data - what is the material you're working with (primary sources or literature on the subject you'll be analyzing)?
3: Theory - what ideas/system of ideas will you be using you make sense of your data?

Keep in mind: the time between when the thesis-approval document is due and when the thesis itself is due (about 3 months) is not enough time to write a thesis. Start working early.

Set early personal deadlines. Your personal ‘final draft’ deadline should be two weeks to one month before the actual final draft deadline. Work backwards to plan your schedule.

Call for Papers: Shift, Issue 5

Shift welcomes academic papers, exhibition and book reviews, as well as discussions concerning other art-related events from current graduate students. Please see Submission and Style Guidelines for appropriate guidelines.

The committee welcomes submissions dealing with visual and material culture from any discipline. Papers may address a full range of topics and historical periods. Topics may include, but are not limited to, art and propaganda, patronage, gender and identity, spirituality and art, nationalisms and regionalisms, modernism and modernity, performance art, photography and film, perspectives in theory, methodology, and historiography, collection and representation, art and technology.

Submission Deadline for Issue 5

This journal is an online publication. All manuscripts should be sent by email toeditors@shiftjournal.org. Papers must be submitted to the editors of Shift by 01 March 2012. The journal launch will take place 01 October 2012.

http://shiftjournal.org

Call for Papers: "Queer Interventions and Intersections"

Call for Submissions

Trans-Scripts, an interdisciplinary online journal in the Humanities and Social Sciences at UC Irvine

Volume II: 2012, “Queer Interventions and Intersections” Journal Publication Date: April 15, 2012

Deadline for the submission of papers: January 1, 2012

Trans-Scripts – a new interdisciplinary online journal in the Humanities and Social Sciences based at the University of California, Irvine – invites graduate students to submit their work for publication. The theme of the second volume will be “Queer Interventions and Intersections.”

While some argue that the very nature of ‘naming’ a ‘queer’ critique dismantles its efficacy, we use the term to reference a mode of critical inquiry that has historically worked as and at the limits of the (hetero)normative, interrogating the incoherencies and ambivalences of normative scripts of gender and sexuality, race and class. For many scholars, queer critiques represent an alternative hermeneutics and critical topography that emerges at the limits of regulatory practice and disciplinary formation. Therefore, ‘queer’ emerges as a fluid, protean, and fungible term, one that is in constant formation and acutely aware of its entanglements with and resistance to structures of power within society.

Invariably bound up in discussions of gender, sexuality, race, and class, among other social categories of identity, queerness is a productive and vast critical terrain whose relevance to disciplines as diverse as literature, anthropology, politics, theology, sociology, military studies, disability studies, informatics, geopolitics, pedagogy, and critical race theory cannot be understated. Given the increased attention to queerness and queer theory in academia over the past two decades, we invite submissions that engage with the notions of “queer interventions and intersections” across a variety of registers. Queerness is central to many of the events currently structuring transnational public discourses, from the recognition of ‘third gender’ identity in Nepal and the repeal of the American military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy, to Lady Gaga’s queer video aesthetics and the mobilization of queer rhetoric in the grassroots movements and political revolutions in the Middle East.

Possible paper topics include, but are not limited to:

queer bodies and inhabitations/queer cyborgs/disordered bodies/disembodied queers queerness and animal studies/posthumanisms
queer metacritiques/problematizing queer theories

cyberqueers/technologizing the queer
queer disability studies
queer affective lives/queer negativity, queer futurity/anti-futurity
queer and feminist methodologies/pedagogies
mobilizing queer desires and sexualities/queering desire
homonationalism and militarizing queerness/(de)nationalizing queerness (e.g., DADT) trans lives and communities, transgender rights movements
queer rhetorics and literary queers, queer enabling fictions, queer poetics/queer lyrics reparative reading and/or anti-histories
queer kinships/queering kinships
queer geographies and geopolitics, queer spatiality and temporality
queer criminality, queer violence
the economic crisis and queer communities/queerness and poverty
queer aesthetics in popular culture/queer reality television
queerness and sports, queerness and health/healthcare
transnational queer connectivities and performativities
queer ethnographies/queer tourism/movement, queer diasporas
queer revolutions/resistances, queer mobilizations in the 2011 Middle East revolutions

Trans-Scripts welcomes all submissions that engage topics related to “Queer Interventions and Intersections.” They may, but certainly need not, address the examples listed above. As we believe that scholarship from a variety of approaches can help inform contemporary understandings, submissions need not conform to any disciplinary, methodological, temporal, or other criteria. They need only be original, well researched, and properly cited in MLA style. English language contributions from all universities in all countries will be considered. By contributing work, unpublished students can gain experience of the peer-review process and achieve their first publication, while those already published gain further professionalization.

Faculty Contributors

In addition to selected student work, renowned academics will contribute editorial pieces, offering students the chance to place their work in conversation with experts in various fields. Past contributors have included Étienne Balibar, Hortense Spillers, Frank Dikötter, Clarence Lang, and Joy James.

Submission Guidelines and Review Process

The deadline for submission is January 1, 2012. All submissions should be written in English. The total word count should be between 3,000 and 12,000 words, including footnotes. Explanatory footnotes should be kept to a minimum. Submissions should employ the MLA style of citation (for further information on the journal’s submission guidelines and mission statement, see the journal website at http://www.humanities.uci. edu/collective/hctr/trans-scripts/index.html).

For more information, the Trans-Scripts journal can be accessed at the
following website:
http://www.humanities.uci.edu/collective/hctr/trans-scripts/index.html.
Please direct all general inquiries about the journal or any comments on
published pieces to our 2012 volume’s Editor-in-Chief, Jen Kosakowski, at
jkosakow@uci.edu.
Thank you,
The Trans-Scripts Editorial Collective

Equinoxes 2012, Brown University French Studies Graduate Conference

EQUINOXES 2012 Call For Conference Papers Transgression(s)

April 20-21, 2012 | Brown University | Providence, Rhode Island Keynote speaker: Sylvaine Guyot
Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Harvard University

The notion of transgression is a ubiquitous theme of humankind’s history. The word in itself evokes the act of overstepping a defining boundary between what is lawful from criminal; what is permitted from forbidden; what is good from evil. To transgress is to bend a norm, to infringe upon a law, to violate a proscription, to go beyond what society deems a prescribed limit. Transgression, therefore, raises the question of the norms and values on which a group or community is founded, along with the question of the conditions under which one will or will not be considered as a member of the group. The various effects that are expected from the transgressive act or behaviour - effects of emancipation, salvation, or inversely of destruction, regression - and the various modes of social regulation of transgression - punishment, absolution - are some other aspects of the question from which it is possible to deeply explore the representations of the norm and anti-norm in French and Francophone literature.

In the aim of investigating the various stakes pertaining to the notion of transgression, we invite submissions in literary, cultural, and media studies dealing with all periods and genres of cultural production from all areas of the French-speaking world.

Potential avenues of exploration may include but are not limited to:

aesthetics of transgression
logics and/or aesthetics of the scandal, the shock sacrality, aura
passion, excess, violence, irrationality representations of the body, erotics, pleasures notion of the Other
power, domination, emancipation
breaking knowledge barriers
temporality, spatiality, universality of transgression taboos, prohibitions
judgement, punishment, redemption, catharsis activism, radicalism
performance, "actionism"
knowledge, initiation, truth

Graduate students who wish to participate in the conference should submit an abstract of roughly 250 words. The presentations, in French or English, should not exceed 20 minutes. Please send abstracts with name, institutional affiliation and address to brown.equinoxes@gmail.com before January 15, 2012.

The conference proceedings will be published in the Equinoxes electronic journal (http:// www.brown.edu/Research/Equinoxes).

Call For Papers: Queering Paradigms IV

2nd Call For Papers: Queering Paradigms IV

Following the success of the three international, interdisciplinary Queering Paradigms conferences held thus far on three continents, the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), the Graduate Program in Social Memory at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) and the Brazilian Association of Applied Linguistics (ALAB) are proud to announce Queering Paradigms IV, to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from the 25^th to the 28^th of July, 2012. Our confirmed keynote speakers are Annamarie Jagose (University of Sydney, Australia), José Quiroga (Emory University, USA), Alípio Sousa Filho (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil), Jack Halberstam (University of Southern California, USA), Luiz Paulo da Moita Lopes (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Jô Gondar (Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).

As in the previous conferences, we use the term ‘queer’ to refer to an indefinite, borderless domain of non-normative genders, sexualities and bodily practices that is also affiliated with critical analytic approaches, while recognizing that the term does not resonate globally as it emerged from Western experience. ‘Queering’ thus questions, contrasts, challenges and destabilizes heteronormativity, but is not restricted to it: homo-, class-, religion-, race-, ethnic-, scientific- and academic-normativity are also part of its scope of analysis.

The aim of the conference is thus to analyze the status quo and the future challenges of Queer and LGBTIQ Studies from an ample, inter/multidisciplinary perspective, in order to problematize/destabilize (i.e. to queer) essentialized discourses and totalizing paradigms. Our intention is to bring together researchers from many countries in an exploration of queer and LGBTIQ social practices, presenting from disciplines as diverse as, but not limited to, anthropology, sociology, language studies, theology, political science, law, social medicine, philosophy, geography and social psychology.

Proposals for Papers and Panels:

Paper and panel proposals are invited on any aspect of Queer or LGBTIQ Studies. They shall be grouped into the following areas:

· Queering ethics

· Queering institutions

· Queering language practices

· Queering art and literature

· Queering media practices

· Queering races and ethnicities

· Queering epistemologies and methodologies

· Queering activism

· Queering temporalities and geographies

· Queering bodies, embodiment and identities

The proposals will undergo a peer-review process by our international board of reviewers and should be submitted through our website: http://www.alab.org.br/eventos/queering-paradigms-iv, by 15 December 2011.

· Proposals for individual papers: These should take the form of abstracts with a minimum of 1500 and a maximum of 3500 characters, followed by three keywords.

· Panel proposals: Panels may have between four and six participants, one of whom shall be the organizer. The submission must include a panel rationale of between 1500 and 3500 characters followed by three keywords, as well as four to six paper abstracts of the same length, each also including three keywords. The organizer is responsible for writing the panel rationale, collecting the participants’ abstracts, and submitting everything together through our website.

Proposals may be submitted, and papers may be presented, in English, Portuguese or Spanish, but due to the international nature of the conference, the use of English is highly encouraged. Abstracts should be written in the intended language of presentation. For those who use English as a second/foreign language, please note that what matters for our conference is not a so-called near-native level fluency, but rather the ability to communicate ideas clearly, which may be further enhanced by visual props such as slides. Papers may be single- or co-authored. Potential participants may submit up to two proposals.

The proceedings of this conference will be prepared for peer-reviewed publication in the Queering Paradigms Series, made available by the international academic publishers Peter Lang.

Requests for further information can be sent by email to: queeringparadigms4@gmail.com. You can also learn more on our website (http://www.alab.org.br/eventos/queering-paradigms-iv), and follow us on Twitter (@QueeringP4) and on our Facebook page (Queering Paradigms 4).

Dean's Student Travel Grant Program

Dear Students,

We recently sent out an announcement about the Draper Travel Grant, which we award to students participating in conferences throughout the academic year. The Graduate School of Arts and Science also has such an award - Dean's Student Travel Grant Program - which students can apply for throughout the academic year. 225 awards are distributed annually, in the amount of $500 each. Awards are made through a two-tier lottery process during three award periods. Applications for Period 1 are being accepted from next Monday, Oct 10 - Friday, Oct 21.

More information on the Dean's Student Travel Grant is available on the web, here: http://gsas.nyu.edu/page/grad.travelgrant.

Academic Advising and Registration for the Spring 2012 Semester

It may only be October, but we're already looking ahead to the spring 2012 semester. Registration on Albert for the spring term will begin on Monday, November 14, 2011. Spring classes will be available in Albert's Course Search beginning the week of October 17, 2011. Please remember that most departments in GSAS have earlier registration than Draper does, so if you plan to register for non-Draper classes, you will be able to start making those arrangements before you complete your Draper advising and registration.

Draper's preliminary spring 2012 course schedule will be available on our website within the next couple weeks. These listings will be updated regularly with new crosslists and information.

Draper's spring 2012 academic advising period will be held in two separate sessions. The first academic advising session will begin on Thursday, November 10th and end on Wednesday, November 23rd. Any students who are unable to come in for advising during this session will have the opportunity to do so on January 9th and 10th. No advising appointments will be held in December.

Draper will begin scheduling advising appointments on Tuesday, October 25th. To schedule your appointment, please call 212.998.8070 on or after October 25. No advising appointments will be scheduled before that day.

All students who will be enrolling in courses in the spring must have an advising appointment prior to the start of the semester.

Information on Fall Advising and Registration

Dear Students:

As many of you are aware, Draper will begin taking appointments for fall 2011 academic advising this coming Monday, July 25. Appointments can be scheduled by calling Draper's main line at 212.998.8070. To be fair to all of our students, we cannot schedule advising appointments via email.

The following information should be useful to you as you prepare for advisement and registration:

• Advising will run from Monday, August 15 - Thursday, September 1.
  
  
• Remember that all students who are taking credit-bearing courses *must* have an advising appointment before they will be given access codes. Students who will not be taking classes but will be completing their theses in the fall should register for Maintenance of Matriculation (MM) with Class Number 1631. For more information on what MM is and why you need to register for it, please see Draper's FAQ page for current students here.
  
  
• If you cannot attend your advisement appointment in person, you can schedule a phone appointment. New students are encouraged to come in for advising in person, if at all possible.
  
  
• Draper's fall course listings are available on our website (http://draper.as.nyu.edu/object/drap.courses.fa11). Please note that these listings are currently more accurate than those found through Albert, but that due to the new registration system, some details--particularly for crosslisted courses--are still being finalized. Course information will be complete by the time advisement begins.