2014 IGS Conference Organizers
2014 marks the fifth year that the Graduate Students in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies have taken the lead in organizing the IGS Grad Student Conference. This year’s conference, entitled Rethinking Sustainability: New Critical and Cultural Horizons, will be held May 2-3rd on UBC’s Okanagan Campus.
The organization of this years conference is being coordinated by interdisciplinary graduate students for graduate students across disciplines; Mina Rajabi Paak (Co- Chair), Shandell Houlden (Co-Chair), Spela Grasic, Matt M. Husain, Joanne Taylor, Max Dickeson, Fabian Cid Yañez, Camilo Peña, Katey Kyle, David Kadish, and Jeannette Angel. Organizing and running a conference offers a unique opportunity for students to become familiarized with aspects of academia beyond writing and studying, such as communicating between departments, applying for funding, organizing catering, volunteers and so on.
When thinking about ‘sustainability,’ it is common to assume a connection to environmental discourse and practice, rather than consideration of sustainability itself as a framework of maintenance, legacy, and change. But what exactly is ‘sustainability’? And what does it mean to practice sustainability? Is this a framework exclusively applicable to environmental practices and thought? Or can the concept of sustainability, or the question of what it means to sustain, be applied more broadly to the study of literature, anthropology or mathematics? How do epistemologies of sustainability vary across fields? In short, what do we sustain? What becomes normatively understood as deserving sustaining?
This year’s conference welcomes keynote speaker, Sarah de Leeuw from the University of Northern BC. de Leeuw’s research is focused on relationships between people in place – this often includes how people care for or account for each other, mobilize power in relation to each other, or even how they relate to each other creatively and/or strategically.
The conference will also host an Eco Cultures Discussion with conference participants and invited guests Professors Denise Kenney
Jeannette Angel getting ready to install “Materiality” in the FINA Gallery
(Interdisciplinary Performance), Jodey Castricano (Critical Animal Studies) and recent MFA Graduate Cathy Stubington. The discussion is intended to generate conversation on the role of the arts in sustainability across multiple communities.
This discussion will be held in conjunction with the FINA Gallery Exhibition Materiality featuring interactive works on the relationship between nature and technology by David Kadish and Jeannette Angel, as well as a poetry reading by Kelly Shepherd on May 3 at 11:45am.
The exhibition will be open for the two days of the conference May 2 & 3rd, 9-4pm in the FINA Gallery in the CCS Building at UBC Okanagan.
In addition, the conference will close with a reception in the UNC ballroom, beginning at 4:00 PM on Saturday May 3rd. Tickets for the reception will be $15, payable at the door; purchase of a ticket includes appetizers and one drink, with additional drinks purchasable at the bar. For more information, you can email the conference organizers at igsconference2014@gmail.com.
Visit our blog to view the conference program and for registration information.