Emerging Geographies

CONFERENCE CALL FOR PAPERS:

Emerging Geographies: Mapping, Tracking, and Tracing
Conference Date: April 18, 2008

Deadline for submissions **has been extended** to February 20, 2008

Maps of worlds are often depicted as stories already told, already written. If we acknowledge these geographies as emerging and in process, how can we map, track, and trace these worlds as they become entangled with and produce various scales of time and space?

Instead of assuming the regions of Cold War geography, emerging geographies encourage scholarship that investigates how the world looks from various locations and “out of the way” places to understand geographies as formed and contingent. We are interested in how histories are lived in the present, how they shape our current worlds, and are alive within these worlds. Emerging geographies track the longue durée and uncover alternative and layered histories. This tracking requires an engagement with histories that pays attention to complex, situated entanglements and the significance of details. Emerging geographies map the active ways in which social landscapes are constructed and regions are made. They ask: how do geographies come into being?

We are looking for papers from advanced graduate students and posters from all graduate students that describe and analyze emerging geographies for a one-day graduate student conference at the Department of Anthropology, UC Santa Cruz. The deadline for submissions has been extended to February 20, 2008. Distinguished scholars across the disciplines such as Donna Haraway, James Ferguson, and Donald Moore will comment upon the papers and convene discussions.

Examples of possible paper or poster topics include:

• In the early 20th century, evangelical missionaries divided Guatemala into spheres of influence in order to avoid inter-denominational competition. What legacies might remain of those geographies?

• The state of India mobilizes a 500 million year-old geological connection between their nation and Antarctica to argue for the modern-day presence of a research station within an Antarctic protected area. How are sciences being strategically used to make geopolitical claims?

• Several Jewish groups in the US, Europe, and South Africa use DNA evidence to assert that Lemba people are a lost tribe of Israel and part of a Jewish Diaspora. How does this evidence situate people in the world?

We encourage submissions that de-center human agency in the making of emergent geographies. Deadline for submissions **has been extended** to February 20, 2008. Please send a one-page abstract to: emerginggeographies@gmail.com, and indicate that your submission is for the Emerging Geographies Conference.