Graduate English Conference

The University of Idaho Graduate English Conference (UIGEC) is an annual event sponsored by MA and MFA English students. Each year, the conference chair(s) develop a theme, create a call for papers, invite a keynote speaker, and plan panels based on proposals submitted for the conference. All conference-related work is done by graduate students, with faculty support and mentorship from the MA-English Director. The UIGEC is a unique opportunity for graduate students in the English Department to gain experience in planning, executing, and presenting at an academic conference. 

UIGEC 2024: Global Conversations: Breaking Sociocultural Barriers

Across all horizons of the world, barriers have been fabricated by multiple sources, and have primarily succeeded in creating divisions between people and understandings. These barriers are rooted in physical, social, cultural, and historical constructs operating on ideals that foster separation and discrimination against those on the other side of the barrier. The goal of the UI Graduate English Conference this year is to open a space for conversation about the significance and lasting impact of these barriers.

In light of breaking barriers and open conversation, our goal for this conference is to create dynamic conversations orbiting around the interaction between creative and analytical work. These modalities communicate in unique ways that, when paired, can reach audiences in comprehensive ways and inspire ideas going forward. Dismantling barriers must be done through collaboration and open dialogue, and we invite diverse modalities and perspectives into this space.  

April 20, 2024

Keynote Speaker: Douglas Ishii, Assistant Professor of Asian American Literature and Culture, University of Washington

UIGEC 2023: Storytelling: Narrating Agency

The 2023 conference was held April 1, 2023 on the University of Idaho's campus in Moscow, ID from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Seventeen scholars from 12 universities spanning four states and five countries, presented both in person and virtually across three panels: Story Culture and Theory, Storytelling Art Forms, and Story Agents and Environments.

Historically, humans have attributed agency to human consciousness and intentionality, often to exert control over other entities. Narrating Agency is an exploration of the meaning of agency, and what/who can have it. Within and beyond humans, we wonder what has the capacity and drive to enact change? In the stories we read, tell, and see, who has the ability to take action and why? Who are the characters, elements, landscapes, and settings that drive change in our stories of the world around us? How do the narrators and voices of our natural and social world assert themselves, or become silenced, in a story?

No story has a single author. In an increasingly divisive world, we hope to come together to tell our own story; a story of a conference as a confluence of perspectives that form new patterns and ties among different disciplines and agents that we may not always consider when working alone. We challenge you to push the boundaries of who is included in your - or, our - story, from the trees of a forestry study, to the bacteria living in wildfire, to the psychologically confounding identities of our social and bodily realities, and finally, to any imagery, speaker, perspective, or agent that influences the formation and telling of your story.

Keynote: "Storytelling in Indigenous cultures" by Caj Matheson, Director of Natural Resources for the Coeur d'Alene Tribe.

UIGEC 2019: Fluid Frontiers: Explorations of Water in the Humanities and Beyond

Seventy-one percent of the planet is covered in water — an element that is fluid, ever-changing, essential to life on Earth. We live in a time where melting glaciers and rising water levels are reshaping landscapes, and physical and social boundaries are becoming increasingly fluid. This fluidity is written into our bodies at the cellular level. It welcomes us to think critically about ways of knowing both human and nonhuman worlds and creates a much-needed space for less-privileged narratives in academia and society. The graduate students in the University of Idaho Department of English invite you to consider how literature, creative writing, pedagogy, linguistics, and the humanities at large engage with water as both a physical substance and concept. This might range from ecocritical analyses, to fluid interpretations of language and literature, to creative works on the fluidity of relationships, ontologies, and experiences. We welcome projects that will open a discussion on ever-shifting creative, pedagogical, rhetorical, and theoretical boundaries, as well as explorations of how academic disciplines might harness the fluctuation of belief and knowledge to push these boundaries even further in ways that reflect the increasing interdisciplinarity of the watery world that we inhabit and embody.

Keynote: “Reclaimed Waters: The Arts of Elemental Justice in the Anthropocene”
Professor Richard Watts (French/Comparative History of Ideas/Environmental Humanities)
University of Washington, Seattle