Below is the CFP for our annual Graduate Student Conference Critiquing Culture 2014 which will take place on September 13th this year with Cindi Katz as our keynote. The abstracts are due June 20th. 

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Critiquing Culture

The Cultural Studies Graduate Conference at George Mason University

2014

Featuring Cindi Katz as Distinguished Keynote Speaker; Dr. Cindi Katz is a Professor of Geography in Environmental Psychology and Women’s Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her work concerns the consequences of global economic restructuring for everyday life and the production and social reproduction of space, place and nature. She has published widely on these themes as well as on social theory and the politics of knowledge in edited collections and in journals such as Society and Space, Social Text, Signs, Feminist Studies, Social Justice, and Antipode.

The Cultural Studies Student Organizing Committee (SOC) at George Mason University invites paper proposals for our 8^th annual Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference. The conference will take place on Saturday, September 13, 2014 at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

CALL FOR PAPERS

At George Mason University, we acknowledge the need to specify Cultural Studies as an academic field with definable features and particular modes of methodological inquiry. In our view, Cultural Studies examines cultural objects as products of the wider social, historical, economic and political conditions that structure their formation, and acknowledges the interrelationship between these factors. In particular, Cultural Studies focuses on power relations and inequalities, which shape the horizon of possibilities for any cultural object at hand, be it a political discourse, an economic model, or a mass cultural product. As a field, Cultural Studies has expanded both geographically and theoretically, building upon its origins in the Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies through the inclusion of a range of critical approaches including Marxist political economy, poststructuralism, feminism, critical theory and post-colonial studies. While the objects of Cultural Studies vary widely, the field aims at political relevance and efficacy.

In an attempt to establish a vibrant community for scholars working in precisely this interdisciplinary vein, the Cultural Studies Student Organizing Committee at George Mason University invites graduate students to submit research papers for a conference specifically oriented toward the examination of cultural objects, whether through Marxist, structuralist/poststructuralist, feminist, or other critical lenses. We encourage the submission of papers related, but not limited, to the following broad themes:

• Political Economy
• Mass & Popular Culture
• Gender & Sexuality
• Race & Ethnicity
• Representation & Aesthetics

This year we also strongly encourage paper submissions that address the intersections of activism, culture, space, and privatization.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words and a current CV should be sent to [log in to unmask] by 20 June 2014. Please include presentation title, presenter's name, institutional affiliation, contact information, A/V requests, and any special needs required in the email. Abstracts should be sent as .doc or .rtf file attachments.