The Writing and Society Research Group at the University of Western Sydney presents Missing Persons; an interdisciplinary conference for postgraduates and others to be held on the Bankstown campus of the University of Western Sydney on Thursday 10 and Friday 11 July 2008
Missing Persons seeks to examine and explore issues arising from loss and displacement, memory and forgetting, disappearance, erasures and caesuras, death and dying in artistic and creative production.
In particular the conference will assess the artistic, cinematic, literary, moral, social, familial, (geo)political, philosophical, psychological and religious significance of these issues, both individually and together.
Submissions are invited on any of the following themes:
* writing memory: memory and desire, memory and affect;
* memory loss, dementia and the return to childhood;
* disappearances, erasure, secrets and control;
* ghosts, haunted writing and vampiric production;
* literary representations of space and “the space between”;
* the narrative underground: marginalised narratives and volcanic texts;
* myths and legends of actual missing persons;
* narratives of death and dying;
* true crime.
Submissions can include papers, performance, art works, installations, works-in-progress and workshops. The conference steeringcommittee also welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals.
250-word abstracts should be submitted by 31 March 2008. Ifan abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should besubmitted by 31 May 2008.
Abstracts (including bios) should be submitted to Tessa Needham at <writing@uws.edu.au>
A small number of bursaries will be made available to assist postgraduate students travelling to the conference from interstate.