CSPT Annual Graduate Student Conference

Dr. Gayatri Spivak speaking at 'Human Being Human' 

Each year a collective of CSPT students conspires to organize a graduate conference in line with a particular theme, movement, problematic, or impulse that they feel speaks to their particular moment and circumstance.

The 2023 conference will use a critical and interdisciplinary approach to explore the theme of:

Social Movements & Technology

May 5th to 6th, 2023

9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

View program

The Alterity of Affliction / Afflictions of Alterity

September 25, 2020   

This conference seeks to facilitate an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary discussion about the limitations and new horizons of discourse on pain. How do we come to know and recognize pain in the other? In the self? And, how might we reconstruct what is lost after pain?

Keynote speaker: Cindy Baker

Organized by Julie Funk (PhD, English), and Jonathan Nash (PhD, English).

Past Conferences

2018/19: 'Worlds Without Us'
Keynote Speaker: Rebekah Sheldon (Indiana University)
Organizers: Tyler Fontenot (MA, English) and Maya Cowan (MA, Anthropology).

2016/17: 'Indeterminacy: Un/knowing a Body in Space'
Keynote Speaker: Ivan Coyote
Organizers: Kira Boyko (MA, English), Rachel Lallouz (MA, English), Paige Thombs (MA, History), and Jonah Clifford (MA, Political Science)
Call For Proposals, and Facebook Event

2015/16: 'Nihilism.Hope'
Keynote Speaker: Michael Truscello (Mount Royal University)
Endnote Speaker: Francis Abu-Febiri (Camosun College)
Organizers: Galina Scolnic (MA, Sociology), Russell Elliott (MA, Sociology), and Tim Charlebois (MA, Political Science)
Call For Proposals, Schedule, Event Program, and Event Poster

2014/15: 'Human Being Human'
Keynote speakers: Gayatri Spivak (Columbia U.) and Glen Coulthard (UBC)
Organizers: Philip Cox (MA, English); Susan Kim (MA, Political Science); Yusuf Saadi (MA, English)
Event Poster, Program, Website, and Call for Proposals

2013/14: 'Thinking as a Way of Life'
Keynote Speaker: Dalie Giroux (U. Ottawa)
Organizers: Julian Evans (MA, Political Science); Guillaume Filion (PhD, Political Science); Jasmine Liu (MA, Political Science); Nick Poole (MA, Political Science); Kim Smith (MA, Sociology)
Event Poster, Program, and Call for Proposals

2011/12: ‘In/Coherence: Expression, Translation, Violence’
Keynote Speaker: Bruce Braun (U. Minnesota)
Event Poster, Program, Website, and Call for Proposals

2010/11: ‘thinking politically’ (a workshop)
Pre-Seminar Facilitator: Timothy Murray (Cornell U.)
Event Program and Website

2009/10: '(inter)disciplinarities: the “new relationality”?'
Keynote Speaker: Mark B. Salter (U. Ottawa)
Event Program and Call for Proposals

2008/09: ‘(inter)disciplinarities: theory & crisis’
Keynote Speaker: Ricardo Dominguez
Event Program