Dear Ms. FitzGerald,

On Friday, September 23, 2011 the Cultural Studies Student Organizing Committee (SOC) of George Mason University will be holding our 5th annual Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference. I am writing to solicit your help in publicizing the call for papers for the conference.

I have posted the text of the CFP below and attached a copy (in PDF). I hope you will consider sharing it with graduate students affiliated with the Department of History and Art History.

Many thanks, in advance, for your help with this matter. Please let me know if you have any questions regarding this request or trouble opening the attachment.

PhD Student, Cultural Studies Program

Subject:	Call for Papers for Fall 2011 GMU Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference: "Ecological Inequalities and Interventions: Contemporary Environmental Practices"
Date:	Mon, 02 May 2011 10:02:10 -0400
From:	Jason Morris <[log in to unmask]>
To:	[log in to unmask]

Co-organizer, GMU Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference, Fall 2011 (http://culturalstudies.gmu.edu/ecological.html)

George Mason University

Ecological Inequalities and Interventions:

Contemporary Environmental Practices

The Cultural Studies Student Organizing Committee (SOC) of George Mason University invites paper proposals for our 5th annual Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference. The Conference will take place on Friday, September 23, 2011 at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Dr. Timothy Luke, Chair and University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Political Science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, will deliver the keynote address.*

“Since most of history’s giant trees have already been cut down, a new Ark will have to be constructed out of the materials that a desperate humanity finds at hand in insurgent communities, pirate technologies, bootlegged media, rebel science and forgotten utopias.”

(Mike Davis, “Who Will Build the Ark?”, New Left Review, January 2010)

The current and future impacts of ongoing, globalized environmental crises have animated scholars, activists, and professionals from a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds and generated a burgeoning field of work that seeks to come to grips with the ecologies of the present as well as the possible ecologies of the future. This conference will provide a forum for emerging scholars and practitioners involved in cultural studies, environmental studies, the arts and humanities, public policy, political ecology and related fields to engage in conversations regarding contemporary and prospective environmental practices and politics.

We seek to engage in efforts to develop a deeper understanding of human interventions – in the forms of work, art, and politics – into the environment. We also wish to examine the ways in which concepts such as “nature” and “human practice” inform, articulate with and determine one another. “Ecological Inequalities and Interventions: Contemporary Environmental Practices” will offer an appropriately interdisciplinary forum for work in this emerging area of inquiry.

Possible paper topics include:

· Environmental activism: past, present, and future

· Labor, Nature and Culture

· Marxism and Ecology

· Ecology as critique and self-critique

· Creative expression and Ecology

· Neoliberalism and Discourses of Sustainability

· Ecology and the Politics of the Global South

· Environmentalism and Citizenship

· Academic interventions and public policy

We welcome proposals for traditional academic paper presentations, as well as alternative formats such as panel discussions, workshops, and film screenings. In addition we hope to publish select conference papers in an edited volume or curated journal issue.

Abstracts of 300 words and a current CV should be sent to Jason Morris (jmorrisf AT masonlive DOT gmu DOT edu) by 10 June 2011. Please include the title, presenter’s name, institutional affiliation, contact information, A/V requests and any other special needs required. Abstracts should be sent as .doc, .rtf or PDF file attachments.

Keep up to date with the conference through our website: http://culturalstudies.gmu.edu/ecological.html

*Biography of Dr. Timothy Luke

In addition to his duties within the Department of Political Science Dr. Luke serves as Program Chair of the Government and International Affairs Program in the School of Public and International Affairs, and Director of the Center for Digital Discourse and Culture. In 2003, he also initially organized and directed the new interdisciplinary PhD program in Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought at Virgina Tech. His areas of research include environmental politics and cultural studies as well as comparative politics, international political economy, and modern critical social and political theory. He is the author of numerous monographs and articles including: A Journal of No Illusions: Telos, Paul Piccone, and the Americanization of Critical Theory, Timothy W. Luke and Ben Agger, eds. (New York: Telos Press Publishing, forthcoming 2011); There is a Gunman on Campus: Tragedy and Terror at Virginia Tech, Ben Agger and Timothy W. Luke, eds. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), Museum Politics: Powerplays at the Exhibition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); Capitalism, Democracy, and Ecology: Departing from Marx (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), The Politics of Cyberspace, co-edited with Chris Toulouse (New York: Routledge, 1998), and Ecocritique: Contesting the Politics of Nature, Economy, and Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).