Call for Papers

		The 17th Annual Cultural Studies Conference at Kansas State University, March 6-8, 2008

Many people are drawn to such extremes; history demonstrates that extreme ideologies and positions, binary thinking and identities have been seductive for centuries. As a result, the middle ground, the space between polar opposites, is often represented as difficult or impossible to occupy, either figuratively or physically. Indeed, we may speak of the middle ground as being excluded.

The 2007 Cultural Studies Conference seeks to better understand this state of affairs by analyzing ways that extremes, binaries, and their often-absent middles inform biological, dialectical, D/democratic, Derridean, evolutionary, feminist, gender-theoretic, literary, political, psychoanalytic, R/republican, and queer perspectives. We are interested in a wide array of papers that examine why some binaries are easier to bridge than others, how the dynamics of different oppositions are related, how oppositions evolve, and why extremism is still alluring to so many.

We welcome papers on related topics, including:

• representations of sex/genders/sexual orientations/queerness;
• constructions of race, hybridity, and/or borderlands;
• gonzo journalism and/or literary genre blurring;
• extreme sports;
• the rhetoric of ongoing debates surrounding the right to life and/or right to die;
• extreme, suppressed and/or censored art and literatures;
• the separations or definitions of space and place: haven or ghetto? sacred or secular?
• representations and rhetorics of political extremes;
• separatisms, nationalisms, essentialisms (strategic or otherwise);
• anything or anyone in the middle: middle class, middle earth, middle age, moderation, midway(s), middle-brow literatures and cultures.

Standard conference format: panels of three papers; each paper a 15 minute oral reading/presentation. Alternate session formats may also be proposed.

Proposals (1 pg per presentation) for 15-minute presentations (or panels of 3 presentations) should be submitted by Oct. 15 2007 to Director, Program in Cultural Studies, English Dept, Kansas State University, Manhattan KS 66506-6501. Email submissions strongly encouraged: csdirector@ksu.edu. Please include return email address for all submissions.



Proposal Deadline: October 15, 2007