With the advent of the digital age and the ever-increasing pressure to sustain an online presence, the notion of identity has become newly relevant to our understandings of self and society. Similarly, the transition into a newly globalised world generates the need for individuals and collectives to redraw or reconstitute the boundaries of the various identities they assume.
This conference seeks to bring together postgraduates working on all aspects of literature and language to consider the ways in which identity is constructed, performed, represented and deconstructed, across all aspects and periods of literature, culture and history. By considering the implications of identity construction and representation throughout history, we hope to shed light on how the study of language and literature reveals a wider understanding of the human condition. We particularly welcome interdisciplinary approaches to the theme of identity.
The School of English’s annual Colloquium takes place on the 29th May 2014 at the University of Sheffield. Proposals for papers (of up to 20 minutes in length) are therefore invited from postgraduate students working in the fields of Literature, Linguistics, Theatre and Creative Writing. Poster/visual presentations will also be considered.
Please send proposals of no more than 300 words (along with full name, affiliation and title of paper) to
soepgcolloquium@sheffield.ac.uk
by 21st March 2014.
Potential topics for proposals include (but are not limited to):

•  Identity: personal, national, regional, racial, cultural, social, political, religious, sexual, historical
•  Self-definition: construction and destruction, deconstruction
•  Self and Other: centres/margins, domestic/foreign, oppositions, conflict, Gothic
•  Self and society: the individual/the state, political identification, rebellion, the crowd/the mob, utopia/dystopia
•  Projected/actual identities: performance, performativity, public and private, representation, the digital age, the act of writing, biography and autobiography
•  Writing identities: character and characterisation, cognitive approaches
•  Mind/body: gender, materialism, philosophy of mind, ethics
•  Human/animal: animal studies, anthropomorphism, anthropocentrism, evolution and degeneration
•  Human/machine: science fiction, genetic engineering, bioethics, cloning, transhumanism, cyborgs, androids
•  Identity formations: memory, narrative, speech, trauma, psychiatry, psychology
•  Language and identity: accent, dialect, language change, language rights, language politics
•  Language acquisition: first- and second-language acquisition

 
Responses to submissions will be given by 4th April. If you do not receive acknowledgement from our team within a week of submission please assume it has not been received and try resending it.
For more information please visit http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/english/pgc/colloquium
Keep up to date with colloquium news: https://www.facebook.com/shefsoepgcolloquium    @IdentityPGC