via Nix

Identity and Its Discontents
Conference to be held at the University of Melbourne
26-28 November 2008

Keynote speakers:
Dr Tony Birch (University of Melbourne)
Dr Debjani Ganguly (ANU)
Professor Ghassan Hage (University of Melbourne)

Call for Papers:

What does it mean to speak of identity?
Despite its popularity in academic discourse, identity is often insufficiently theorised. The purpose of this conference is to create the time and space to stop and think about identity, identities and their implications, effects and affects, their formation and performance, workings and failings, and the way in which identities intersect with our other analytical categories like gender, race and class, as well as nationality, religion, ethnicity, culture and sexuality. Our aim is to begin a conversation that explores, historicises and interrogates our concepts of identity.

Further questions we are interested in addressing include:
How is identity materialised, articulated, embodied, lived and ritualised?
How does one live out the identity of the colonised? The coloniser?
How does one rebel against their identities, and can they be escaped?
What are the effects of interactions with other groups, forced or voluntary?
Who has the power to define what constitutes an individual’s or group’s identity?
Is there a power to living on the margins?
How are identities shaped by emotions?
How are identities shaped and lived on an individual and/or collective level?
What roles do individual and collective memory play?
What roles do language and representation play in shaping and reshaping identities?

We invite scholars with an interest in these or similar questions to propose a 20 minute paper. Proposals for sessions built around a theme are also welcomed.

Please send abstracts of 300 words, and a biography (max. 50 words) to identityanditsdiscontents [at] gmail [dot] com, by June 30.

So its the first day of November for only a few more minutes. I have written 854 words of my novel. Only 49,146 words to go.
You can check out an excerpt, and track my progress here over on my user profile at NaNoWriMo.

So yeah, I ditched my old story and came up with something completely new. It kinda pounced on me and demanded to be written, so I guess that is what I will do.

This blog probably ain’t going to be updated much over the next month though. I have some hardcore writing to do.

So I have a recently implemented policy of doing new things. For example, singing Karaoke at the gay club, which was meant to happen last Thursday, but didn’t, so instead I made a public announcement from a pillar in the Canberra Centre. (Same sort of thing, yeah, public speaking, kind of).

It’s part of my plan for personal development. Defeating my fears, etc. So anyway, on the list for the near future are such things as coding an F/OSS application, and riding a bicycle around Lake Burley Griffin, (I am terrified of riding bicycles to the point of having panic attacks, so this one will be in the company of a trusted friend, me thinks).

SO ANYWAY, my mind has been littered with unfinished stories and novels since I was in primary school. SO I have signed up for NaNoWriMo.
They sent me an instructive email, instruction 3 is:

Tell everyone you know that you’re writing a novel in November. This will pay big dividends in Week Two, when the only thing keeping you from quitting is the fear of looking pathetic in front of all the people who’ve had to hear about your novel for the past month. Seriously. Email them now about your awesome new book. The looming specter of personal humiliation is a very reliable muse.

So here it is. Awesome new book will be available for reading at the end of November.
I will probably spend the better part of December editing it, so Awesome, Edited new book will be available in January.
I’m using a story I came up with when I was a teenager, and never finished, and subsequently lost in a HDD failure. It will be a teen fantasy novel cos thats what I mostly read.
It will no doubt be waaaaaaaaaaaay less heteronormative than the original though. That love affair between the two chicks that I replaced by making one of them a boy is coming BACK. MWHA HA HA