How do we ‘articulate’ worlds that haven’t already been expressed – when language or text fail us? How do we attune our knowledge-seeking practices more ethically towards a world-in-transit?
In order to collectively speculate upon such insurgencies, we propose ‘(art)iculating worlds’, an academic conference organized by Concordia’s Media Studies second year MA students as an effort to foster community and encourage knowledge dissemination among early scholars.
For many emerging scholars, most academic conferences are inaccessible due to travel expenses, admission fees, or lack of published works. As such, (art)iculating worlds encourages and elevates nascent, incomplete, or ‘unruly’ thought that aligns with the poly-disciplinary orientation. Our goal is to take advantage of our positionality within Montreal, a hub of interdisciplinary academic fields, and create a free conference that will allow for diverse scholars and research topics to be examined through decolonial and democratic means.
This event will span over two days (January 22nd-23rd), with the first day will kickoff with a introduction to the conference, as well as a keynote speaker. The next day, we will host a mix of oral presentations, artists, storytellers, and any other mixed media projects that demonstrate a reimagining of articulating knowledge or meaning. There will be a panel dedicated to the presentation of research by Communications Master’s students, aimed at demystifying the research and thesis writing process for new and early scholars, as well as encouraging other emerging scholars to practice their presentation and public speaking skills. (art)ticulating worlds hopes to be as accessible, inclusive, and sustainable as possible by offering tea, coffee, snacks, and lunch for participants as well as closed captioning services and quiet art spaces. To ‘(art)iculate’, in the context of our symposium, proposes we unite the parts to which prevailing notions of difference have been inscribed. Whose voices have been missing? What forms of being, knowing, and thinking have been valorized? Trailing the current credence given to research-creation in academia’s institutional context, we aim to show the various methods of storytelling that are being used to enrich communities by presenting works that are not touched on by traditional epistemologies. Our objective is to further delve into the intersections between distinctions of expert and non-expert, academic and non-academic, knowing and unknowing, for more diffuse and democratic processes of knowledge production and dissemination. As such, our conference intends to feature two keynote speakers: one situated within the academic sphere, the other operating outside of institutional academia. Ideally this dialogue would illuminate potential areas of commonality thus further emboldening alternative (art)iculations of knowledge-production.
YEARS FUNDED
2025
AMOUNT ALLOCATED
$500