Notice Board

The History and Classics Graduate Student's Association (GCGSA) of the University of Alberta invite graduate students in related disciplines to submit papers on the topic "Action and Assertion." This year, we are excited to award seven (7) $200 travel grants to select students coming from outside of Edmonton! We will also reward $100 to one outstanding abstract submission based on the topic's relevance, quality of writing, and originality.*

Our conference focuses on the ways humans interact with society and the world around them and how individuals and groups assert themselves to convey their beliefs and values. People express their thoughts through writing, public expression, defiance, or even through a lack of action. Asserting oneself sometimes requires taking action against oppressive power or opposing force, but it is also a natural human process that materializes differently across time, space, and culture. How have people taken action against an oppressive power? How have people asserted their ideas, beliefs, and values? What influences people to assert themselves, and what was the reception? How can the study of action and assertion inform our understanding of individuals and the communities they live in?

We invite papers that engage with topics broadly related to "Action and Assertion" from students in History, Classics, Religious Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, English, Political Science, Philosophy, First Nations and Indigenous Studies, Economics, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, and other cognate disciplines. We are especially interested in papers that examine the following areas:

• Agency and claims to territory, space, or place.
• Negotiation, resolution, and reconciliation.
• Unconventional forms of action.
• The assertion of values (philosophy or theology).
• Public statements and spectacles: religious festivals; protests, rebellions, and massacres; inscriptions, edicts, and monuments.
• Action and assertion in literature, poetry, art, and material culture.
• The assertion of gender.
• Silence or lack of action and assertion.
• Behaviour: defiance, conformity, and power.
• Achievement and knowledge.

Presentations should be no longer than 15 minutes to allow for a question period afterwards. Please submit a 250-word abstract and a short biography (under 200 words) either as a Word document or PDF file to conference.hcgsa@gmail.com by January 31, 2020; responses will be sent out by the end of January.