Urban Cuts: Appropriation and Resistance in the American City

The Department of American Studies at Saint Louis University invites papers for its Second Visual Culture Graduate Student Conference, to be held April 16-18, 2010 in St. Louis, Missouri. This year’s conference theme, “Urban Cuts: Appropriation and Resistance in the American City,” coincides with the “Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark” exhibition at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis.

Proposals are welcome from all disciplines exploring visual representations of conflicting uses and contested meanings of urban space. Taking a cue from Matta-Clark’s “cuts,” we seek contributions addressing the effects of changes in urban geography on people’s daily lives. We are particularly interested in projects that examine the role of photography, film, advertising, fine art, performance, architecture, design, and/or new media. We encourage submissions by graduate students working transnationally and comparatively on urban environments.

Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following themes:
– Representation & Iconography of Urban Space
– Demolition, Destruction & Displacement
– Fractured/Fragmented Space
– Contested Ownership
– Political Activism through Urban Space
– Memory & Subjectivity
– “Anarchitecture” as concept and practice
– Abandonment & Neglect
– Urban Renewal
– Urban Performance as Resistance

Please submit a 250-word abstract and a curriculum vitae by January 15, 2010 to vcc2010@slu.edu.
Additional information is available here. For questions, please contact Elizabeth Wolfson (vcc2010@slu.edu).