7 March 2023

Call for Submissions: CCLPS Postgraduate Student Conference (5 May 2023), 'Trans*- Multiplicities of the Prefix'

The SOAS Centre for Cultural, Literary, and Postcolonial Studies is hosting a postgraduate conference on 5 May 2023 on the chosen topic of Trans*-: Multiplicities of the Prefix.

At the conference (5 May 2023) we want to investigate the possibilities of the prefix ‘trans’-, to discuss translation, transnationality, transcendence, and whether the term can be viewed in itself as a queer politics of resistance and the embodied forms it might take up. We hope to investigate the limitations and possibilities of the trans*- framework, working through and beyond the boundaries that bind us.

Trans*- Multiplicities of the Prefix

The trans*- prefix refers to many concepts; as Christina Sharpe writes,

The asterisk after the prefix “trans” holds the place open for thinking (from and into that position). It speaks, as well, to a range of embodied experiences called gender and to Euro-Western gender’s dismantling, its inability to hold in/on Black flesh.

The asterisk speaks to a range of configurations of Black being that take the form of translation, transatlantic, transgression, transgender, transformation, transmogrification, transcontinental, transfixed, trans-Mediterranean, transubstantiation (by which process we might understand the making of bodies into flesh and then into fungible commodities while retaining the appearance of flesh and blood), transmigration, and more.

(Christina Sharpe, In the Wake, 30)

Abstracts and apply

We are inviting speakers to apply to speak on a relevant subject. Send your abstracts on related topics using our Google Form by 24 March 2023. The word limit is 250 words.

If you have any queries related to the topics or the conference, please contact us via 703774@soas.ac.uk.