**************************************************************

Intrinsically, a shared humanity is our first point of reference, an a priori that grounds the limits of possible expression between self and other, self and thing, self and world. It is a core identity that persists in spite of repeated challenges to its integrity and universality, inviting a creative discourse as the very basis of its adaptability and change. However, to what extent is the reverent humane a limitation on discourse and a shelter for barbarism, solipsism or exclusion? In what sense does the value of "humanity" determine and efface what remains "outside," namely the animal, the vegetable, or the inhuman? In turn, how might we begin to understand the world beyond the flesh, beyond the bracket of humanity?

In our investigation of the inhuman, the posthuman, the transhuman, and religiosity, we invite papers, panel proposals and artistic works that explore moments of transgression at the limits of the Humanities, those spaces and times which demand a rethinking not only of Continental and predominately German thought, but of our common familiarity with that index of humanity as it emerges across a range of disciplines.

As such, we would like to offer an interdisciplinary venue for scholarship of diverse interests and concerns. We encourage work that negotiates the boundaries between critical theory, cultural studies, environmental studies, urban studies, women's studies, religion, social and political thought, post-colonial theory, and other facets of criticism.

 Panel discussions are encouraged under the following topics:

·        Animality and the Transhuman
·        Science and Counterscience
·        The Soft Machine
·        (Tall) Tales of Anime
·        Un-writing the Human: Creative Texts
·        Das Unheimliche
·        Oh, the inhumanity!
·        Genealogies of Anti-humanism
·        States of Exception / States of Exclusion
·        Human, all too human
·        Urbanity and Human Scale
·        Alien Ecologies
·        Hauntology
·        Anti-Metaphysics
·        The Nature of Absence (void, abyss, the invisible)
·        The Nature of the Negative

 Publication: The conference proceedings may be considered for publication in a special on-line series of Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies.

 Distinguished Keynote Speaker: Cary Wolfe is a Dunlevie Professor of English at Rice University.  His books and edited collections include Critical Environments: Postmodern Theory and the Pragmatics of the "Outside" from the University of Minnesota Press (1998), Animal Rites: American Culture, The Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory from the University of Chicago Press (2003), and the edited collection Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal, also from Minnesota (2003). He is currently finishing a fourth book, What Is Posthumanism?, and a co-edited collection with Branka Arsic entitled The Other Emerson.  He is founding editor of the new series Posthumanities at the University of Minnesota Press, which will publish four books a year, and continues to research and publish widely in areas such as systems theory, pragmatism, animal studies, posthumanism, poststructuralism, and American culture.

 Submissions: 200-300 word abstracts for a 20 minute presentation, submitted via email to inhumanconference@gmail.com. The deadline is June 15, 2008. Please include a title page indicating your name, affiliation, year of study, submission format, contact information, and special A/V requirements, if applicable.

 The Inhuman is the first conference among graduate students at York University's Division of Humanities, organized in conjunction with the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies (CCGES).

 For more information about York Humanities: http://www.yorku.ca/gradhuma/
For more information about CCGES: http://www.ccges.yorku.ca/