Liberating Temporality and Spatiality — GCWS Graduate Student Conference 2023

March 4-5, 2023

Location

32 VASSAR ST. Cambridge, MA
Join in-person or online: www.gcws.mit.edu

Conference Theme

Time and space, while often seen as linear and confined concepts, can be stretched, altered, and reconfigured. We move through time and space in fits & bursts; some ways of moving and being are deemed normative or “good” and brought to the forefront, while others might be marginalized and cast aside. Here, we instead cast aside normative ideas of time and and space to focus on how liberating the concepts of temporality and spatiality can help us imagine and create new futures, communities, and ways of being. This conference seeks to look at liberatory conceptions of spatiality and temporality, particularly in the contexts of racial justice, abolition, disability rights, queer/trans ecologies, human development, death studies and practices, embodiment, community building, and more.

How might liberation encourage, if not require, new orientations to the concepts of time and space? What is the messiness that exists in these spaces of creation?

Some questions the conference seeks to explore:

  • How can the temporality and spatiality of subcultures be used to assess political and cultural change?
  • How do space and spatiality construct belonging, community and identity? Reciprocally, how do the concepts of belonging, community, and identity impact and construct space and spatiality?
  • What does access and openness look like in truly liberatory spaces?
  • How do subcultures or ideological communities produce alternative temporalities and encourage imagination of how our futures can be different from chrononormativity?
  • How do crises change our understanding of longevity, liberation, and community?
  • What is the interplay between alternative and hegemonic norms of time and space?

We look forward to welcoming our many graduate student panelists, film makers, artists, and presenters!

For more information: https://www.gcws.mit.edu/gcws-events-list/liberating-temporality-spatiality