Call for Abstracts
Deadline: March 8, 2021
The Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society (CRRES) invites graduate student submissions for its annual research symposium. The symposium is an interdisciplinary space that highlights race and ethnicity research being done by graduate students across the Indiana University Bloomington campus.
Format
This year, the CRRES annual research symposium looks a little different. Instead of two to three days packed with conference sessions, we will be hosting lightning round panels each week in the month of April. The conference will begin a kick-off Friday, April 2, 10-11am, in place of our monthly coffee hour. Panel sessions will be April 9, 16, 23, 30, with possible time slots at 10:30am-12:00pm or 1:00-2:30pm. Upon submitting, graduate students will be asked to indicate their available and preferred presentation times. Times and number of panels may subject to slight changes.
Lightning round panels will begin 5-minute presentations from each presenter. The remainder of the session will follow a roundtable format, with time for open discussion between panelists and audience members. Sessions with a large audience will be separated into breakout rooms to give everyone a chance for discussion.
Our purpose with this format is two-fold and responds to the preferences expressed in a recent survey of our graduate student affiliates. First, these brief presentation times are designed to give students the opportunity to share their work in a supportive, low-pressure environment. We encourage projects in all stages of research, from those still in the planning stages to completed papers. Second, in a time when we all isolated from one another, CRRES seeks to provide spaces for connection and community. While we are excited to hear about your research, we hope too that you are able to use these research month sessions to connect (and reconnect) with others.
Theme
It has been one year since we became aware of the COVID-19 virus. We’ve lived through an abrupt transition into our current physically distant lives. Compounded by the pandemic were the highly visible and viral deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, which sparked renewed nation-wide protests against racial injustice. Yet this movement was met with continued racial terror, from counter-protests to an attempted white supremacist coup on the Capitol. And from the onset of the pandemic, anti-Asian xenophobia has infused public life, as hate crimes, especially targeting elderly Asian Americans, continue to be committed today. It is in these contexts that we conduct research on race and ethnicity in our society.
This year CRRES invites you to position your work in the broader landscape of persistent, viral racial inequalities. Consider:
- How is your work informed by racial injustice, historical or continued legacies of racism, or movements for change?
- How does your work respond to anti-Blackness, xenophobia, racial disparities, or intersectional inequalities?
- What might your work suggest about how we move beyond these racisms to create spaces, encourage practices of radical transformation, healing, and joy?
Submissions need not be focused on the pandemic, protests, or other recent events. However, we ask that you include one or two sentences in your abstract responding to at least one of the questions above, to help us connect presenters engaged in similar conversations.
We hope that you’ll accept our invitation to share your work, consider its implications with others, and engage in discussions on how we move forward.
Submission
To apply, please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words to the conference committee via the survey at the following link:
Applications should be submitted no later than Monday, March 8th, 2021 by 11:59 pm ET. Accepted presenters will be notified by March 17th, 2021.
