The 2017 Conference of the English Department Graduate Students at the University of Chicago invites students, faculty, and local (not) readers to a conference on the relevance of “not reading” to the cultures, practices, and institutions of literature. Our conference begins with a simple contention: every act of reading entails an implicit decision not to read something else—and, indeed, not to engage in an activity other than reading. How can an acknowledgement of this fact help us rethink some of the most pressing issues of literary study today, including new interpretive methodologies, canonicity, patterns of publication, the work of reading, lost texts, the archive, or the politics of what we (don’t) read?
Find more details on the conference website.
This conference is organized by graduate students in the Department of English at the University of Chicago, and is co-sponsored by 3CT, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, The Nicholson Center for British Studies, The Franke Institute for the Humanities, the Department of English, and the Department of Cinema and Media Studies.