Altered States: 2nd Annual Critical Studies Graduate Student Conference

University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts – March 28-29, 2008                  Los Angeles, CA

The graduate students in the Critical Studies Division in the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts seek submissions from graduate students on the theme of “altered states.” In this conference we will address the issue of “altered states,” which we understand to encompass questions of how visual media and visual culture can serve to represent and open up possibilities for expanded experience. What are the consequences of transgressing boundaries — political, social, technological, and mental? How can media, broadly understood, provide routes for subjects to break free of the ideologies that constrain their perception? What forces seek to constrain such expansion? What are the potential costs associated with altered states?

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

* politics of alternative performances, exhibition spaces and practices
* exile and immigrant cinemas, and the politics of transnational cinema
* the legacies and continuances of the psychedelic movement
* “mainstream” or hegemonic responses to the counterculture
* drug culture or political economies of the war on drugs
* ghosting, haunting, and representations of the paranormal
* discourses of hybridity, cloning, and bioengineering in the media
* critical histories of mental illness and asylums
* the mobilization of media and the atomization of the viewer
* paracinema or exploitation cinemas and non-normative spectatorship

We invite proposals for 20-minute presentations from a wide variety of disciplinary and methodological approaches. To apply, send an abstract (up to 300 words) and a brief biographical sketch (up to 100 words) by January
21, 2008 to zeroforconduct@live.com.