A Postgraduate Conference with Invited Guest Speakers,

University of Vienna, June 1-2 2012

"The everyday is what we cannot but aspire to, since it appears to us as lost to us."
Stanley Cavell, In Quest of the Ordinary

Proposals are invited for papers to be presented at Pursuing the Trivial. Investigations into Popular Culture. A Postgraduate Conference with Invited Guest Speakers, scheduled for June 1 – 2, 2012 at the University of Vienna. The international and interdisciplinary conference will be organised by Prof. Dr. Monika Seidl (Department of English, University of Vienna), Prof. Dr. Roman Horak (Department of Art and Cultural Sociology, University of Applied Arts Vienna) and Mag. Barbara Maly (Department of English, University of Vienna).

Pursuing the Trivial invites postgraduate students to submit proposals on papers that deal with aspects of the trivial, the popular, the common, the ordinary, the banal and the everyday. In our conference we would like to explore meanings, roots and routes of mundane practices, texts and artefacts through the ages and how they, for example, relate to gender, class or race identities; language and communication; genre, media and technology; politics and power; local and global impacts, material and economic contexts.

We see our topic as very broad, which means that different approaches and perspectives are most welcome and appreciated.

We would like to invite postgraduate students from various disciplines to hand in abstracts of a maximum length of 300 words by September 30, 2011 (final date extended). Please include a brief CV (1 page max.). You will receive confirmation of acceptance of the proposed presentation by December 1, 2011.

Contact e-mail: eugenie.theuer@univie.ac.at, valentin.freyler@univie.ac.at

Web: www.univie.ac.at/pursuingthetrivial and http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pursuing-the-Trivial-Call-for-Papers/222367481107189

Download the CFP (pdf)