The graduate students of the Department of Comparative Literature at UCI
invite submissions for its annual conference.
Play: Towards a Critical Concept
University of California, Irvine
April 3-4, 2008
Because play is undecidably split between seriousness and unseriousness,
it thus remains for us an ambiguous concept. It is often associated with
frivolity, waste, and childishness, and in this way becomes a dismissed
or marginalized concept. At the same time, however, it has also been
intimately connected with creativity, diplomacy, and the sacred. We ask
to what extent play can become a critical point of engagement in the
fields of critical theory, literary studies, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and rhetoric.
In what ways can play intersect with, intervene in, and inform the
critique of politics, culture, and society?
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- commodification of play (uses and abuses of free time)
- play of the signifier
-child's play
-play as resistance
-leisure (leisure time, social activity)
-institutionalized play (professional sports, war games and training,
education)
- games (board games, social games, head games, games of chance, games
of the everyday)
- play and simulation (representation, legitimation, ritual, magic)
-serious play
-play and the body
-foreplay
-power plays (from coup d'etat to corporate takeover)
-play as fantasy and imagination
-play and politics/diplomacy
-play of boundaries
-rules and laws
-language games (translation, play between languages)
-animal play
-play and survival
-the history of play
-the philosophy of play
-ecology of games
-mapping play
- play as socialization (object relations, psychic and material
processes)
- toys, dolls, automata
The deadline for the submission of 250-word abstract is January 15,
2008.
Presentations are to be 20 minutes in length. Send proposals to
playatuci@gmail.com. Please include your name, email address,
institution
and phone number with the abstract.
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