DARK MATTERS: Obscured thinking and shadowed language

This conference is not quite so racy as the one held by the same group last year, but it looks just as interesting. Unfortunately, they do not have a web page, so here is their call for papers:

April 6-8, 2006
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario

DARK MATTERS:
Obscured thinking and shadowed language

This interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore the notion of "darkness" in its various conceptualizations and codifications, both throughout history and in the present. We emphasize the idea of the dark as a terrain of constant negotiation, and as a concept with a plurality of meanings and implications. The conference seeks to elaborate upon these diverse perceptions of darkness, from the idea of the abyss in philosophy or astronomy to darkness in photography and other visual arts, from theology and psychoanalysis to literary metaphors and tropes, and other potential ways of constructing, thinking about, or representing darkness in the present.

Suggested Themes:

dark humour…underworlds & afterlives…the void…a little Night-music…St John of the Cross…

mestizaje… minority languages …metaphors of blindness…Lacan…chiaroscuro & the Baroque…behind the veil…camera obscura …Freud…film noir …rhetoric of the absolute…black holes … nihilism and nothingness...the dark side of language: euphemism & taboo …

the death drive & the unconscious…Prince of Darkness: political justice & ethics…the abyss …things that go bump in the night…Nietzsche…the shadow play…not-white magic …

a flash in the darkness: phenomenology & post-structuralism…Heart & Liver of Darkness…

the visible invisible…Jung…negative theology…forgetting…Deleuze …black box…creation/destruction…the vanishing point…Calderón’s prison…“ít was a dark and stormy night"

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers on literature, linguistics, literary theory, philosophy, theology, visual arts, music, cinema, science, etc.

Proposals in English, Spanish or French (250-500 words) should be accompanied by a short CV and address, and submitted by January 9, 2006.

Please send submissions to:

Graduate Student Conference
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
Room 115, University College
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada N6A 3K7
Tel: (519) 661-3196 – Fax: (519) 661-4093
Or e-mail to: Monica Rettig (mrettig@uwo.ca ) or Meredith Snyder (msnyder6@uwo.ca)

I'm going to submit 20 minutes worth of economics jokes. I expect these folks would view that as a great example of dark humour. Now that I think about it, these folks might view anything I write as an example of "Dark Matter."