The UC Berkeley Comparative Literature department is proud to announce that calls for submissions are open for our 11th Annual Symposium, “Re-presenting Spaces: Literature, Ecology, the World We Share.” For our 11th year anniversary, we wanted to conceptualize a theme that honored the work of previous symposia, while encouraging fresh takes on literature, culture, and society. The event will be held on April 27th, 2024.
With this theme, we ask you to think critically and creatively about the concept of space and to examine the question of why literature matters in producing meanings to spaces, in curating the ecological world, and in reintroducing the agency of nature. We invite you to consider the historical, current, or future methods of “shaping”, “forming”, or “weaving” that humans have used and continue to use in order to curate, represent, and imagine different spaces—whether fictional or material, illustrated or experienced, textual, or digital. We encourage undergraduate scholars to look into the “experienced,” “constructed,” or “situated” to reimagine our epistemological understandings of nature and space as “objects” to be known, to redefine the meanings of “shaping” in literary representations of different environments and entities in interactions, and/or to reconsider the various possibilities of engagement and interpretation. We welcome undergraduates from all disciplines and backgrounds to submit their work and we value greatly all the works sent to us.
Through the symposium, the committee aims to provide a forum for undergraduates to present and discuss their research among peers, graduate students, professors, and the public. Past symposia have featured keynote speakers Poloumi Saha, Ramsey McGlazer, Karl Britto, Judith Butler, Timothy Hampton, and Eric Falci, as well as participation from university students from around the world. This year, we are pleased to announce that our keynote speaker will be Emma Fraser, Assistant Teaching Professor in Media Studies and the Berkeley Center for New Media at UC Berkeley.
Accepted applicants will be expected to prepare a 15-20 minute presentation or discussion of their research to be delivered at the conference. While we accept abstracts of all subjects within the broad category of “comparative literature,” we especially encourage submissions to express relevance to the theme. However, don’t let the theme discourage you from applying! We do not expect submissions to strictly adhere to the theme – rather, they may be interpretations based on your own scholarship.
This year, we ask for abstracts and encourage full papers for consideration. If applicants are submitting abstracts for unfinished theses or research papers, we only ask for a writing sample of the full paper (at least 4 pages).
Submit your application here! More information can be found on our website. Follow our new Instagram page (@calcomlitsymposium) for updates. Feel free to email us at calcomlitsymposium@gmail.com with any specific questions.
The symposium committee is committed to provide space for the undergraduate scholars. We believe these disciplines are essential to forging critical understandings of the world and are necessary to make meaning in the midst of immense turmoil. We hope you will join us in bringing literary scholarship to new heights.