CFP: "Whole Worlds: Systems of Affect, Capital, Aesthetics" at Univ. of Chicago

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Department of English invites graduate student proposals for conference papers for "Whole Worlds: Systems of Affect, Capital, Aesthetics". The conference will be held February 13th-14th, 2014 and seeks papers that are at the intersections of affective, political, and aesthetic theories under the concepts of wholeness and worlds. Submission deadline: November 1st, 2013.

Call for Proposals: WHOLE WORLDS: SYSTEMS OF AFFECT, CAPITAL, AESTHETICS
Annual Graduate Student Colloquium of the University of Chicago Department of English
Keynote Speaker: Mark Seltzer, Evan Frankel Professor of Literature at UCLA
February 13-14, 2014
Literary and cultural study have developed overlapping vocabularies to triangulate "worlds" on multiple scales: psychoanalytic worlds invested in the labor of repair, the sociocultural worlds of artistic and political community apprehending a space for multiplicity to endure, and global worlds of transnational capital that totalize the capture of exchange. With so many worlds, is there a whole world or a world that is whole? What marks off a space as a world and what mechanisms mediate between a world and its own sense of wholeness? What are the parts that compose a whole world or the procedures that give to a world the fantasy of wholeness? What is the place of art-objects in developing and sustaining worlds and in what ways do worlds either totalize or resist closure?
The University of Chicago Department of English invites graduate student proposals for conference papers at the intersections of affective, political, and aesthetic theories under the concepts of wholeness and worlds. Possible paper topics may focalize literary or cultural texts from any period and may engage in conversations with such fields and subjects as:
•psychoanalysis and the management of part- and whole- objects;
•systems theory and the autopoiesis of worlds;
•literary realism and the mediation between aesthetic and political worlds;
•fictional worlds theory and the administration of novelistic space;
•global capital and the transnational organization of cultural exchange;
•ecological criticism and the preservation of symbiotic worlds;
•new media, virtual worlds, global connectivity, and the nodes of immaterial networks;
•game worlds and the demarcation of spaces of play;
•empire, sovereignty, and exceptional spaces;
•population studies and the control of cultural and social worlds;
•ambient poetics and the curation of atmospheric reading environments;
•queer counterpublics assembled in and against homonationalism;
•speculative realism and the mereology of object-oriented ontologies;
•art objects and collectives as representative or subversive microcosms;
•computational methodologies and mapping world literatures;
•periodization and the compartmentalization of world-historical time; and
•archival worlds in and against world canons.
Submit 250-300 word abstracts to wholeworlds.uchicago@gmail.com by November 1. Please include a brief academic biography. Presentations will be about 20 minutes in length (approx. 8-10 double spaced pages).
For more information and updates, please visit http://wholeworlds.uchicago.edu/

IDEA & ODGE sponsored Grant Writing Workshop

"SECRETS TO SUCCESSFUL PROPOSAL WRITING" is a two-day workshop on fellowship and grant applications for all disciplines hosted by the Office for Diversity in Graduate Education and the Institute for Diversity, Equity, and Advocacy. Day one will be Friday, September 13th from 9am - 3pm, and day two will be Friday, September 20th from 9am - 4pm. Both sessions are designed to mentor graduate students and faculty of color in all disciplines to develop and deploy proven strategies in submitting competitive fellowship and grant applications to the Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Science Foundation, and other funding sources. Deadline for registering: September 10th, 2013.

Day One
Friday, September 13
9 am - 3 pm
332 Coffman Union (President's Room)
Day Two
Friday, September 20
9 am - 4 pm
332 Coffman Union (President's Room)
Optional Consultation
Participants who attend both workshops are eligible for post-workshop individual consultations with Dr. Olguín or with Dr. El-Fakahany .
Workshop Overview and Goals
This 2-day workshop is designed to mentor graduate students and faculty of color in all disciplines to develop and deploy proven strategies in submitting competitive fellowship and grant applications to the Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Science Foundation, and other funding sources.
Through small and large group discussions, this highly interactive workshop will help participants to identify funding, address project design and strategic self-representation, avoid common pitfalls, and develop a work regimen to submit a competitive application. Additionally, participants can receive feedback on their proposals through individual consultations with faculty facilitators.
Previous year par­ticipants received the following awards: Postdoctoral fellow­ship to study in China; UMN Global Spotlight Major Faculty Grant; UMN Institute for Diversity, Equity and Advocacy Fellowship;
UMN Graduate School Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship; National Insti­tute of Mental Health Traineeship; UMN Digital Content Library Fellowship, two Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowships, and an honorable mention from the National Science Founda­tion.
Facilitators
Dr. Jeanine Ferguson Pharmacy
Lisa Park, Professor Sociology - Group 1 - Social Sciences
Ben Olguín, Assc. Professor English, U of TX at San Antonio - Group 2 - Humanities
Esam El-Fakahany, Professor Psychiatry and Rhonda Jones-Webb, Assc. Professor Epidemiology - Group 3 - Sciences, Health Sciences & Engineering
Applicants must attend both workshops and must be a US citizen or permanent resident.
Register here
or visit
diversity.umn.edu/idea/workshopsevents
When registering, you will be required to provide a brief statement regarding your research (limit 100-200 words)
and a list of targeted funding source(s) and type (pre-doctoral, dissertation, postdoc, grant, etc.).
In addition, please e-mail a 2-page CV to oedidea@umn.edu.
Your registration will not be complete until all information is submitted
DEADLINE FOR FACULTY SEPTEMBER 10, 2013
Space is limited to 40 participants.
For questions, please contact Noro Andriamanalina at andri002@umn.edu or 626-4546.

Pay periods for graduate appointments

Academic year payments for Graduate student TAs, RA and fellows are distributed over 19.5 stipend periods, every two weeks. The first day of the academic year employment is 8/26/13 and the last day is 5/25/14 (the last check is .5 check, so will be half the amount as the others). The actual first PAY DAY is September 18th. The last PAY DAY is June 11th. If you are on a semester appointment, the dates are 8/26/13 - 1/08/14 in the Fall and 1/09/14-5/25/14 in the Spring.

For Fellowship Recipients: Fellowships and Taxes

The University does not automatically withhold taxes from fellowships. Those of you on fellowship may find the University website about fellowships and taxes informative: http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/pay/taxes/index.html. From here, click on the "non-service fellowship" link. For the pdf form to request withholding of graduate fellowship income tax, click here.

Syllabi and Office Hours Due

FALL 2013 INSTRUCTORS & TAs: Please submit a copy of your course syllabus electronically to amstdy@umn.edu by Wednesday, September 4th. Please also include the time(s) and day(s) you will be holding office hours for the upcoming semester.

Lubet discussion on "Pushing Limits" radio broadcast

PROFESSOR ALEX LUBET, Music, was featured on the program "Pushing Limits" on KFPA Radio Pacifica. He discussed disability and jazz as well as other issues related to his book Music, Disability, and Society (Temple University Press, 2010). To listen to the broadcast, please click here.

Barkan publishes Corporate Sovereignty

Joshua Barkan, PhD '06, published his book Corporate Sovereignty: Law and Government under Capitalism (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). Click here for more info.