NEWS
This graduate conference took place at George Mason University, September 29 2007. This site is maintained as an archive of that event. Click here for information on the resulting book project.
We have a schedule of the day's events available in printable PDF form. Click here.
We have confirmed four speakers for our plenary panel, scheduled to close the conference. Check out the Program of Events.
We have a list of students who will be presenting in the "Presenters" section of the page. Abstracts are now available; click here to browse them.
Conference Theme and Topics
The first annual Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference at George Mason University will interrogate the politics of cultural programming in public spaces.
Institutions within the conference purview include: museums, festivals, the performing arts, sporting events, multicultural and/or ethnically specific celebrations, gigs and club nights, and tourist spectacles. Of special interest is the menu of activities available in specific localities at any given moment: Of what is this menu comprised? To whom is it offered? And at what cost?
Questions to be considered may include but are not limited to:
- How is the knowledge of cultural programming produced in and through institutions?
- How does cultural programming produce knowledge?
- How do cultural institutions interpellate performative identities of race, class, gender and sexuality?
- How do we understand labor in the context of cultural events?
- What are the ideological stakes of cultural programming, and what is its political economy?
- What kind of subject and desire does cultural programming produce?
We have an exciting mix of graduate students from many disciplines who will be presenting papers. This will be a free and open event, and the public is invited to attend.