[URBANTH-L]CFP: Interdisciplinary Conference on Parties/Shared Space

[Angela Jancius]

From: Yetta Howard <yettahoward_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 11:30:10 -0700 (PDT)

CALL FOR PAPERS: INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE ON
PARTIES/SHARED SPACE

University of Southern California
18th Annual AEGS (Association of English Graduate
Students) Conference
April 2-3, 2005
Los Angeles, CA

You are invited to . . . submit papers or panels in
all disciplines including literature, film, history,
psychology, technology studies, anthropology,
sociology, cultural studies, and performance studies
responding to the conference theme of Parties/Shared
Space.

Parties are generally thought of as fun places to
gather, environments for celebrating around a certain
theme or merely as occasions to socialize. Parties
provide a context in which to question and examine
shared space. Describing the "party-like atmosphere,"
or the carnivalesque, which is infused into everyday
society, Mikhail Bakhtin writes that in the carnival
there is a leveling of performers and spectators, a
kind of de-hierarchization, and that "all distance
between people is suspended, and a special carnival
category goes into effect: free and familiar contact
among people." Although Bakhtin primarily discusses
the influence of the carnival on literary discourses,
theories of parties can be extended well beyond the
literary, into many areas of modern thought. For
example, Elizabeth Grosz, in reflecting upon
virtuality, writes that Cyberspace links "disparate
physical spaces and individuals through a shared
virtual space." What are the limits to imagining
parties and shared space?

Topics may include, but are certainly not limited to,
the following:

- Literary/Artistic gatherings (i.e. Bloomsbury Group, Beat Poets, Warhol's
Factory)
- Masquerade
- 18th-Century Salons
- Coteries/Renaissance Poets
- Subcultures
- Celebrations (i.e. Early Modern Period, Greco-Roman Feasts)
- Harlem Renaissance
- Prohibition/Speakeasies/Blind Pigs
- Films centering around parties (i.e. Hitchcock, Kubrick)
- Rituals
- Weddings/Wakes/Funerals
- Performance/Dance/Theater
- Political Activism/Protests/Grass-roots organizations
- Negative conceptions of parties (i.e. The Mob, Riots)
- Crowds and claustrophobia
- Collective vs. Individual Identities (gendered, raced,
sexed, and/or ethnically constructed notions of shared space)
- Cyberspace/Chat rooms/Internet communities
- Audiences
- Geographically specific or classed spaces/gatherings (i.e. urban vs.
rural, gangs)
- Public Sphere (i.e. according to Habermas)
- Schizophrenia

Keynote speaker and after party information TBA

Come to our party! Please submit a working title and a
500-word abstract by December 15, 2004 to:
Laura Scheurer, lauralon_at_usc.edu and Yetta Howard,
yettahoward_at_yahoo.com

Please paste submissions into the body of the email
rather than send as an attachment. Include "Parties
Conference" in the subject heading.

Proposals should also include name, institutional
affiliation, address, phone number, and email address
of the presenter. If proposing a panel, please include
the above information for all participants.

=====
Yetta Howard, M.A.
P.O. Box 18166
Los Angeles, CA 90018
Phone/Fax: 323.462.4539
Cell: 323.632.9450
yettahoward_at_yahoo.com