Innovations and Anxieties
Saturday, March 31, 2012
A Graduate Conference hosted by the Graduate Program in English at the University of Rhode Island (Kingston, RI)

Innovations cross a multitude of interdependent fields: aesthetic, scientific, technological, historical, informational, educational, political, and ethical. Across these fields, innovation cleaves fault lines between, for instance, the hope for cosmopolitan betterment and the politico-economic success of an isolated few; between the possible formation of open, more egalitarian social relations and the breakdown or deformation of normative modes of relation; between the anticipation of solutions to pressing problems and the inequalities, violences, and injustices caused by these solutions. This year the URI Graduate Conference title, Innovations and Anxieties, captures the dynamic negotiations that are and have been possible within and across these fault lines. We ask:

●What have innovations enabled or disabled?
●What traces or tracks do innovations leave behind?
●What sort of futures might innovation prefigure?
●What histories or continuities will have been possible in the wake of innovation?
●How might innovations inspire praise and critique, hope and fear, promise and imbalance, progress and diversion, quietude and combat, tranquility and anxiety?

We invite graduate students to submit papers, panels, or creative works that attend to these and other questions in a variety of fields: history, film, philosophy, languages, literature, political science, rhetoric and composition, communications, cultural studies, psychology, sociology, anthropology, biology, medicine, women’s studies, technology, visual and media studies, library and information studies, (though not limited to these fields).

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
●adaptation, serialization
●digital humanities
●gender and transexuality
●digitization
●workplace technologies
●robotics, cyborgs
●social networking
●citizen journalism
●scientific breakthrough
●globalization
●sustainability
●cybernetics
●revolution
●disability technologies
●multiliteracies
●online media
●textiles and manufacturing
●neuroscience, medical innovation
●graphic novels, web comics
●outsourcing
●transnationalism
●cosmopolitanism
●information sharing
●artificial intelligence
●organic, local movements
●E-books
●E-learning
●critical theories
●architecture, planning design
●modernization, invention

INDIVIDUAL PAPERS: Please submit an abstract of 250-350 words. Include full name, title of your work, contact info, a brief bio, and institutional affiliation.

PANEL PROPOSALS: Please submit abstracts of 250-350 words for each presentation/presenter. A panel will consist of 3-4 presenters. In addition to the required contact and biographical information, please include title of the panel on each submission. You may choose to provide your own panel chair.

CREATIVE SUBMISSIONS: We welcome proposals for creative works, including creative writing, visual art, music, video production, and dramatic performance. Please submit an abstract of 250-350 words describing your project and its connection to the conference theme, as well as the required contact and biographical information.

SUBMISSION DIRECTIONS: Please submit all abstracts and proposals via our website at www.urigradconference.org by clicking on the Submit Your Abstract link. Direct all questions regarding submissions and conference details to urigradconference@etal.uri.edu. Visit our website at www.urigradconference.org for more information.

**DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF PROPOSALS IS Friday, March 2, 2012**