SWES 2018 - 2018 Southwest English Symposium

The 23rd Southwest English Symposium at Arizona State University
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Tempe, Arizona
April 6-7, 2018
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Keynote Speaker: Catherine Connors, University of Washington
Professor and Chair of Classics and Adjunct in Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies
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The Southwest English Symposium (SWES) is a regional humanities conference held at Arizona State University. The conference provides graduate and advanced undergraduate students with an opportunity to present current work before an interdisciplinary audience. We encourage a diverse range of humanities proposals including (but not limited to) literature, writing, rhetoric, literacy, composition, pedagogy, education, social transformation, history, religious studies, film, creative writing, linguistics, and more.
The theme for the 23rd Southwest English Symposium is Diverse Perspectives and Transdisciplinarity in English and the Humanities. This conference seeks to celebrate this diversity of scholarship where we, as scholars in the humanities, contribute to various fields from increasingly diverse perspectives and experiences. The aim of this conference, harkening to the mission statement from the host institution is “measured not by whom we exclude, but rather by whom we include and how [we] succeed.” We are seeking to explore and showcase how the humanities intersect, interact, influence, and are influenced by other disciplines in order to display how diverse and interdisciplinary scholarship contributes to the study of the humanities.
Some questions we might ask include:
In which ways can more approaches diversify perspectives of the humanities?
How can the studies of the humanities and sciences intersect?
What methods from other disciplines can we adapt into the humanities and vice versa?
What changes are required to better engage with interdisciplinarity and new theories?
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We cordially invite all to submit a diverse range of proposals. The symposium is an ideal venue for presenting seminar papers and current research projects. Possible topics might include:
Health and medical humanities, including expressive and creative art therapy
Intersections between ecocriticism, environmentalism, sustainability, and the humanities
Digital humanities, pedagogy, and methodologies
Statistical approaches to literature and reading
Inclusion of visual and performative humanities
Embodied technologies and multi-modality within curriculum design
Technical writing and communications in the sciences
Considerations of materiality and material cultures
Political, social, and economic realities (e.g. systemic racism or global climate change)
De/re-constructing literary canons
Diversifying theory/methodology through feminism, reflexivity, and inclusion of experience
We invite abstracts for 20 minute presentations, with 10 minutes of Q&A following the presentation.