Conferences & Funding

Saturday, April 16th, 2011 The Latin root of “occupation”—occupare—accounts for the word’s aggressive, militaristic sense: to seize or to capture. While “occupation” still retains this meaning, it also comes to signify one’s profession, the office that one holds, or the work that one does within or on a culture, a nation, or a world. But this word also has a material dimension—an abode, a building, a dwelling—as well as a ruminative sense—an abiding, a dwelling, a letting be. These dimensions or senses demonstrate the agility of “occupation,” but to them we also add something else: that occupations often precede us, sweeping us into a being or becoming preoccupied. This year we hope that our title [Pre]Occupations captures these competing and collaborating dimensions, opening a field of exciting and exigent problematics: What history or histories might one claim? What periods seize one’s interest? What miracles, joys, sadnesses, or violences [pre]occupy a reader, a worker, or a cit

March 18-19, 2011 When an echo sounds, be it spoken, written, or acted, the repeated content takes on a new character. The Echoes Graduate Student Conference at Duquesne University seeks to engage academic communities in polyvocal dialogues,exploring echoes as they appear across disciplines, texts, and times. The Duquesne University English Graduate Organization welcomes proposals of academic papers from the humanities, arts, and sciences, as well as submissions of creative work. Our aim is to establish a space of intellectual inquiry in which scholars can explore the phenomenon of echoes as they reach across disciplines, genres, genders, religions, cultures, places, time periods, races, and classes. Possible questions include, but are not limited to: * How are echoes embodied and performed across the boundaries of gender, race, and class? * How do the arts echo other disciplines? * In what ways do collective memories of political bodies rely on or transform echoes of the p