CALL FOR PAPERS

On Saturday March 26, 2015, the TCNJ Graduate Program in English, in conjunction with the Office of the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Department of English, and the Women’s and Gender Studies Graduate Certificate program, will host the Department’s second English MA Student and Alumni Symposium at The College in order to offer students the opportunity to share their work in literature and literary studies. The principal aim of this event is to engender a community of research and pedagogical exchange in language and literature.

The success of last year’s Poetic Justice Symposium, the program’s first venture into hosting such an event, has inspired much of the preparations for this year’s symposium. For more information on the accomplishments and wonderful work presented at last year’s scholarly symposium, and to learn more about the Department’s vision for the continued support of student scholarship here at TCNJ, visit http://englishgrad.pages.tcnj.edu/2015/03/03/scholarly-symposium-poetic-justice/.  

For this year’s theme, in tandem with the yearly campus theme sponsored by the Cultural and Intellectual Community Program Council (CICPC) and as announced at last year’s Poetic Justice event, the call for papers will invite MA students and alumni to submit 300-word abstracts for 15-20 minute presentations on the topic of Change. Deadline for abstract submission will be Thursday October 15, 2015.

Potential areas of inquiry may include any of the following suggestions:

• The Bildungsroman and other coming-of-age conventions

• Translation and linguistic variation

• Genre bending: Changes in form and genre delineation

• Trans-formation: transsexuality and transgendered identity

• Nostalgia: posts and pasts

• Close readings of poetry about change (original poetry welcome)

• Feminist theory in transition

• Changing representations of peace and non-violence  

• Monstrous change: literary mutants, miscreants and “monsters”

• Social media and its impact on the field of literary studies

• Ecocriticism: evolving relationships between nature and humanity

• Conversion narratives 

• Changing categories of race and ethnicity

• The transformative power of education

• Representations of change in young adult literature

• Colonialism and changing maps of empire

• Shakespearean and other literary adaptations

All registrations to attend the symposium may be completed at http://goo.gl/forms/Br8qOFuLDM. Deadline for attendance registration will be Tuesday March 1, 2016. 

Those who wish to submit an abstract for consideration may email tcnjmachange@gmail.com by Thursday October 15, 2015 with contact information and attached abstracts.

Please email all inquiries to tcnjmachange@gmail.com.