Conference dates: February 17-18th, 2006
Submission Date: December 17th, 2005

Acacia Group of California State University Fullerton is seeking papers for our 2006 conference. Please note submissions are open to graduate and undergraduate students. Please send completed papers of 10-12 pages (please do not send abstracts) to: acaciaconference@gmail.com (word format please).

Or mail to: Acacia Group PO Box 5853, Fullerton CA 92838

Our aim is to engender an interdisciplinary conference wherein topics, genres, and mediums can be presented side-by-side. Topic ideas and panel suggestions should include a title, a brief explanation, and any quotes / questions that may help spark inspiration in potential conference applicants. We are also seeking suggestions for pedagogical topics, creative writing panels, and special session panels from other humanities-based studies so long as they can be linked to the general theme of the conference. The following topics and panels have been proposed and are open for submission:

"Fantastical Devices in Literature: How do they work?"
This topic invites papers that explore the fantastic or supernatural in literary works. How do elements of the supernatural serve to undermine hegemonic forces in a particular society? How do fantastic or supernatural devices create a forum for social and political commentary? And to what effect? What is the advantage/disadvantage of using unrealistic devices to address serious topics? Is there a spiritual connection to the supernatural that undermines the Western idea of realism?

"Mavericks, Outlaws, and Thieves: Reading Social Outcasts"
Applicants to this panel should examine aspects of social outcasts in American fiction/film. Papers may seek to address aspects of the "The American Hero" as "he" often appears to exist outside of social and political systems as well as the reluctant hero, the anarchist, the traveler, or the criminal. What are the ways in which American fiction/film has romanticized and idealized (or objected to) these figures of the "man alone"? Who is he and how did he come to be? Do women outcasts function in similar ways? Where are these images upheld, downcast, or countered? Papers may treat any period(s) of American literary/artistic production.

"Rewriting History"
This topic is open to papers that seek to address the social, political, or economic forces at work in recording, rewriting, and fictionalizing "History." This topic is intended to spur critical conversations about the function of texts-historical documents, text books, or any narrative claiming to be based upon historical events-as agents of political agendas. Possible lines of inquiry may, but need not, include: Do these texts enforce, undermine, seek to change political systems? What mechanisms are at work to accomplish such ends? Are the agendas put forth by the creators/recorders or elements of the pieces at odds with the function of the pieces? Papers may address any medium, period, or culture.

"Policing Language: Evaluating Sexist, Racist, and Elitist Languages"
Papers submitted to this topic may focus on the poetics of any period, genre, or culture. Submissions should critically examine the language of a particular poet, series of poems, or cross-section of poetry written from a particular period or culture in order to discover the politics of radical poetry. The term "radical poetry" is here used to denote any poetic piece that may be read as complicating and challenging political or social systems. The purpose of this topic is to encourage (discourage?) the reading of poetry as not only symptomatic of, but also engendering of, limiting social and political systems. These systems may include, but are in no way limited to gender roles, family organization and values, government, economics, religion, etc.

"The Urban Center in American Literature"
The close of the 19th Century was characterized by a move from the pastoral existence of America's past to the urban industrial space of the nation's future. With the close of the American Frontier, came the development of urban centers. Individuals could not longer make a living off of the land; therefore they migrated to the city for new opportunities. The city became a new social and economic frontier to conquer. This panel envisions a wide array of topics that discuss the social and cultural impact of the city upon late Nineteenth Century American literature. Papers might discuss the following: Naturalism in the City, Social Darwinism and Class conflict in the city, Portrayal of Labor in the city, The search for Utopia in the city etc. . .

"Magical Realism: Real or Imaginary?"
There is very little agreement to what the terms and condition are in the genre of magical realism. It can be argued that there is an element of faith in magical realism, that asks the reader to expand their perspective of the world and allow for the realistic possibility of a space in which the magical and the real coexist. Conversely, magical realism is also seen as closer to fantastic literature, in that it creates a literary space that is based on the imagination, not reality, in which supernatural elements are only metaphorical representations. This topic invites papers that explore the spirituality, or lack thereof, in magical realism.

"Slash Fan Fiction"
Slash fan fiction is one of the most popular forms of fan fiction on the Internet. Beginning with stories featuring the pairing of Kirk and Spock from Star Trek in the 1970s and exploding into numerous stories based in, but not limited to, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Star Wars, slash fan fiction takes reader-response theory into creative praxis as fans rewrite fiction. What is the inspiration for writing slash? Is it the homerotic subtext in the cannon? If so, how does one see that? Why is slash so popular among mostly heterosexual women? Why are there more male/male pairings than female/female? Papers discussing topics and controversies of slash fan fiction are welcome

"Misrecognition in Fiction"
Detective stories often function by providing “red herrings,” clues and/or descriptions of character and events that are designed to keep the reader from knowing the plot until it is ultimately revealed by the author. Such a stratagem may give an author some control over readers, although many readers are able to recognize the red herrings themselves. In any kind of writing or art, what could be the red herrings that postpone/change/challenge reader understanding? What is the source of the “red herrings” and what can you infer from their presence, efficacy, and use?

"Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries"
Much of the literary theory we study derives from areas of study other than literature. For instance, Jacques Derrida was a philosopher. How can using different perspectives/approaches to understanding from separate disciplines enhance each other? Can you present two thinkers from separate disciplines (music and literature; science and literature; visual or plastic arts and literature; philosophy and literature; science and visual arts; philosophy and literature; physics and philosophy; history and literature; for example—but feel free to think of others) in a paper and discuss the ways in which they engage/complement/challenge each other’s thought/approach/work?

"Merging Disciplines into Art"
Does a/an author(s) incorporate other disciplines into his/her/their work? Does an author structure a novel on musical forms? Does an author use scientific/psychological/theological—to give a few examples; feel free to develop others—principles to inform/structure a work?

"Critical Thinking/Complacent Writing"
Some writers, activists, and literary critics feel that after or apropos Derrida and the philosophy of deconstruction, effective political action is impossible. Is there really an impasse? How might a deconstructive theoretical approach obstruct effective action in praxis? How might a deconstructive theoretical approach occlude or bring to light overlooked/new voices and experiences embedded within cultural, gendered, national, regional, or ethnic groups?

"Motion and Money in Fiction"
How have economic structures/strictures put pressure on groups and/or individuals to become rooted in a place, or disperse across regions, countries, and continents? Have some groups/individuals become newly rooted elsewhere? Have some individuals/groups found the capability/desire/need/pressure to move often? To stay? How do writings reflect/interrogate the effect/affect of such movement or stasis?

"Identity Construction Costs"
If identity is a construct, necessitating constant maintenance, what are the inspiration/pressures that create form/s of identity construction? How are those pressures created and revealed? Do those pressures change over time? If so, why? What kinds of writing lend themselves more or less to disclosing the forms, effects, changes in, and costs of construction?

"Value in Descriptions of Art"
If art (any—literature, plastic, dance, film, visual) may be though of man’s attempt to understand himself, does the free market create/deny art? How do other economies create/deny art? Must art be a reaction to oppression? Could art be purely expressive? How important is “audience” response to the value, purpose, or effect of art?

"Expressions of Mourning"
How is mourning, as dealt with in literature and art, an expression of individual loss/desire/power/identity and community loss/desire/power/identity? How do the two aspects of individual and community conflict and/or engage with each other?

"Tethering the Imagination"
How is art/literature “creative”? When is it imaginative? When is it realistic? When is it fantasy? How can we know? Must there always be, even in the most fantastic art/literature, a tether to the mundane and understandable? Who is supposed to be capable of such “understanding”? If so, why and how is that accomplished? Who may not be “capable” of such understanding? Why?

"Strategic Representations of Popular Culture"
How do aspects of popular culture—including, but not limited to, magazines, fiction, non-fiction, advertising, film, travel, food, entertainment, toys, and leisure objects—employ strategies designed to appeal to certain groups? What theories inform those strategies? Is there a segmenting of groups and profiling occurring that can be described and examined? If so, does this segmenting have a relationship to power?

"Binary Busting in Nonfiction"
Considering Derrida’s idea of “play” as a suggestion that multiple meanings of writing be considered together to bring out the relationships between them, in tandem with Foucault’s idea that all writing is discourse, how does non-fiction writing function? For example, what concepts do the current mode in journalism, of presenting “two sides” to a story, benefit?

"Quotidian Exigencies in Fiction"
Are details/description of the mundane important in literature? How might they function? What is the effect/affect of their inclusion in fiction, drama, and poetry? What is the effect of their exclusion from fiction/drama/and poetry?

"Power/Desire in Fiction"
Is possession of power, or the possibility of wielding/using power affected by desire? Do the powerful experience/fulfill/define desire? Do the powerful depend on being desired, reject being the object of desire, or both?

"Hybridity/Mimicry"
As postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha posits his idea of hybridity and mimicry in The Location of Culture, inexact, or displaced doubling may create parodies of social hegemonies that carry the potential to disrupt the naturalized norms. How does the idea/practice of creating an imperfect copy function in literature?

"Pedagogy: Critical Theory"
Critical theory is sometimes considered esoteric, difficult, and an approach to thinking that takes readers away from “the literary work.” Can you provide examples of critical theory’s usefulness, necessity, and place in literature? How would you create a course to introduce students to theory, making it accessible, interesting, and unintimidating?

"Pedagogy: Safe Harbors"
Is a “safe” and neutral classroom an achievable objective? Is it a useful or necessary requirement for learning to occur? Is there a place for opinion, belief, and emotion in the classroom?

"Pedagogy: Peer Editing"
Can peer editing help improve writing? Should creating rubrics be a group project? Is there a best/better way to create rubrics? Do students learn from creating and applying rubrics to their peers’ writing? Are there limitations to learning in peer editing exercises?

"Pedagogy and Interpretation of Texts"
Critics such as Paulo Freire and bell hooks have attempted to eliminate what Freire refers to as the "banking system" of education, in which students are the idle receptacles of information. Freire's and hooks' pedagogical methods seek to "engage" students, thereby empowering them, and according to hooks, enabling them to fight racism and sexism. How do "radical" and "conservative" methods of pedagogy empower/disempower students? How does this power dynamic affect the reading and interpretation of texts? How has the reading of texts changed as pedagogical methods have changed?

"Pedagogy and Technology"
Can the use of technology, such as the Internet in distance learning, help create equality in the classroom by erasing visual signs of difference?

"Setting in Art"
How does setting function in art? Is a city, region, building, room, meadow, mountain, garden, ocean, or other space a character, a part of plot, a marker of genre, an economic/cultural boundary, or other function/sign? How does the space shape the work? What effect/affect does such use create?

Creating Writing Panels

Creative writing/productions/performance contributions are encouraged to function as commentaries on or expressions of any and all of the topics listed, or, they may be submitted individually for special panel consideration. We are accepting completed paper submissions only, no abstracts please. Submissions that will not be presented in written form (performances, art, etc.) must include a brief (1-2 page) explanation of the submission's relevance to the topic/theme, materials used, and concepts explored (photos of the pieces should be included if available). All presentations, whether written, performed, or shown may not exceed 20 minutes

Creative Writing/Media
Can a moment in time be captured? Please submit your writing/mixed media expressing the attempt/desire/accomplishment/impossibility of recreating/describing/capturing a moment in time.

Creative Writing/Media
Do we know ourselves? Can we know anyone else? Do we instead create ideas/impressions/representations of ourselves and others? If so, what do/can these accomplish? What are they meant to accomplish? Please submit your writing/mixed media concerning your ideas about or practice of these concepts.

Creative Writing/Media
What is a poem/short story/novel? How is one read? How is one created? Please submit writing/mixed media that demonstrates your ideas about these questions.

Creative Writing/Media
Is plot important? Must things happen? Are events, conflict, resolution necessary? Please submit your writing/mixed media that utilizes/examines/negates these concepts.

Additionally, we are interested in papers/presentations for the following suggested panels: