Fluidity is a complex state of being in the world that exists in the realm of the aesthetic. To be fluid means to be continuously shifting and morphing, calling attention to embodiment and its materiality in relation to spaces and each other. As an identitarian characteristic, fluidity challenges the spatio-temporal logics that impose rigid taxonomy through the hetero-patriarch and, instead, offers resistance. As a spatial condition, fluidity may offer malleable or blurry boundaries to help form alternative ways of being and connecting in the world. As a process, fluidity means to reimagine bodies and spaces as watery. At the core, this concept takes up what Astrida Neimanis in Bodies of Water states “is a deliberate extension of feminist theories of embodiment into distinctly posthuman waters… rethinking bodily matters beyond a humanist imagination.” 

 

This conference invites investigation into aesthetic considerations of bodily and spatial concepts of fluidity. To consider how fluidity breaches, contests, and negotiates borders and boundaries in the world. We invite you to reflect on what it means to move fluidly through the world, to examine watery embodiments throughout time and space in different contexts. How is fluidity represented in literature and other forms of media as a way of practicing a politics of refusal? As a refusal to be caged into the historically rigid ways of being in the world? How is fluidity attentive to the embodied realities of gender, sexuality, race, socioeconomic privilege and ability?

 

We encourage interdisciplinary submissions from fields such as literature, philosophy, history, sociology, art history, geography, and cinema studies. We welcome papers related, but not limited, to the following topics:

 

        Hispanic Literature and Culture                         Black Studies                     Diaspora Studies

        Indigenous Studies                                               Queer Theory                    Environmental Humanities

        Disability Studies                                                 Cinema Studies                 Feminism and Gender Studies

 

Those who wish to participate in the conference should submit an abstract of no more than 250 words, along with a short bio. Abstracts must be  submitted through the online form before April 18th. Emails should include the author's name, institutional affiliation, and contact information. Presentations should not exceed 15 minutes.