Fast Facts

Conference Dates: June 8-11, 2017
Location: East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania
PROPOSAL SUBMISSIONS CLOSED
Proposal Acceptance Notifications were emailed on March 17, 2017
Registration Window: April 24, 2017 to June 1, 2017. (Late registration will begin June 2, 2017.)

REGISTER FOR THE CONFERENCE HERE
RENEW KBS MEMBERSHIP HERE (All conference attendees must be current members of the Kenneth Burke Society)
For accommodations options, click HERE.
For travel information including local airports, airport shuttle, and car rentals, click HERE.
You can also help support student travel to the conference.

Conference Website: http://kbjournal.org/kbs17
Program Chair: Ethan Sproat (Ethan.Sproat@uvu.edu)
Program Co-Chair: Annie Laurie Nichols (alnich@umd.edu)
Onsite Conference Coordinator: Cem Zeytinoglu (czeytinogl@po-box.esu.edu)
Conference Keynotes: Anne George, Texas Christian University; James Klumpp, University of Maryland

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

Read the Story of the Conference Poster

Call for Nominations for the 10th Triennial Kenneth Burke Society Awards

KBS 2017: Call for Nominations for Conference Paper Awards

Conference Theme

The Tenth Triennial Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society welcomes proposals that focus on conflicts in and among various communities as well as various communities’ unique modes—or agencies—of waging, navigating and/or resolving conflict. As with prior KBS conferences, we also welcome all proposals from all disciplines—and from all students and scholars of Kenneth Burke’s work. We welcome proposals that address any aspect of Burke’s life or work.

More generally, the Tenth Triennial Conference will focus on these broad themes:

Conflicts. From its Latin roots, the word conflict literally means “together-fight.” Kenneth Burke strongly believed that humanity’s underlying penchant for conflict could be harnessed away from physically harmful actions and refocused toward symbolic/discursive behaviors.

Communities. In the 1970s, Burke wrote, “I never think of ‘communication’ without thinking of its ultimate perfection, named in such words as ‘community’ and ‘communion’.” Indeed, Burke’s lifelong motto Ad Bellum Purificandum is the aphoristic representation of a “perfected” rhetorical perspective that ceaselessly employs a “dialectical resource whereby any conflict of powers can be presented as a ‘balance of powers.’”

Worlds. Today we, too, find ourselves in a fractured world profoundly fraught with—and largely defined by—conflicting worldviews. Whatever our divisions, we symbol-using organisms remain inexorably united in that we are all-together the world-stuff that replicates the world in symbols. In this respect, symbolic divisions—that is, conflicts in human communities—are remarkable achievements if only because humans must begin with some accord concerning the symbols they use among themselves before they can use those symbols to engage in discord.

More specifically, the Kenneth Burke Society welcomes submissions that consider and critique the perspectives and tools Kenneth Burke employed toward understanding, interrogating, and negotiating conflicts, communities, and worlds.

• How can Burkeian ideas help people learn to negotiate the dialectic of identity and difference?
• How can a theory of identification allow for necessary diversity?
• How might Burke’s work anticipate or fail to account for emerging new publics?
• What implications does Burke pose for 21st-century pluralistic education at all levels?
• In what ways could Burkeian thought navigate secularism, religious civil rights, and state religions?
• What does Burke studies mean amid the continual negotiations of race, racism, racial identity, and race politics?
• What implications does Burke’s notion of “entitlement” pose for natural-born, immigrant, and/or undocumented residents of any country?
• How could Burke’s theories of the body and non-symbolic motion bridge any apparent divides among cisgender, LGBTQ, heteronormative, homonormative, pan-sexual, non-binary, and/or intersex identities?
• How does Burke’s thought inform our understanding of the ever-growing number of technologically mediated global villages—e.g. global fan cultures; ethno-cultural, religious, and/or racial diasporas; hacktivists/hive-minds; and more?
• How does Burke help or hinder our understanding of the ways communities are negotiated and renegotiated in a postcolonial and increasingly postnational world?
• What does it mean to “purify war” in the face of psychological warfare, economic warfare, cyberwarfare, false-flag military operations, international “black-ops” and drone warfare, and/or international terrorism?
• How does Burke’s spectrum of non-symbolic motion and symbolic action inform or challenge notions of ambient rhetoric, ontology, epistemology, and other philosophical implications of human communication?

Over the course of the conference, a combination of keynote speakers, featured presenters, and seminar leaders will explore these topics and more. Keynote speakers will be announced in February 2017. Seminars, seminar leaders, and featured speakers will be announced in March 2017.

We invite individual presentations, panels, and seminar topics exploring any of the above sets of concerns. Proposals should be submitted by CLICKING HERE. The submission window runs from November 1, 2016 through February 15, 2017. All proposals are due by 11:59 p.m. on February 15, 2017. Proposals for individual presentations should be 250-350 words in length. Proposals for panels or other formats may be up to 500 words in length. Acceptances will be announced by March 7, 2017.

Registration

Attendees may register for the conference online starting March 25, 2017. As with past conferences, registration fees will include all meals and special events. Further details will be published on the conference website from now until the conference.

The Venue

East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania is located a little over 30 miles west of Kenneth Burke’s farm in Andover, New Jersey, and about 70 miles west of Newark Liberty International Airport. East Stroudsburg is nestled between the Pocono Mountains and the Delaware Gap National Recreation Area. A list of lodging and dining options in and around campus will be published on the conference website soon.

Transportation from Newark Liberty International Airport

There are multiple ways to get from the airport to the conference site. More specific travel options will be published on the conference website soon.