January 12, 2005
Penn Grad Conference, You So Dreamy
The Graduate Humanities Forum here at the University of Pennsylvania will be hosting an interdisciplinary conference on Collecting the Unconscious: Reflections on Sleep and Dreams on March 3-4, 2005. Princeton history professor Christine Stansell will keynote. This year, we invite applications from grad students at other universities: just supply a 200-word abstract by January 20. New media topics aren’t highlighted by the call for papers, it’s true, but takes on digital dreaming should be welcome at this gathering. The list of topics includes nightmares; nocturnes; dreams and the subversive discursive; dream poetics; prophecy, divination, or the oracular dream; and “brain in a vat”: from Descartes to The Matrix. For one thing, I bet there are some creative new media works about this sleep and dream stuff…