Hosted by Temple University’s Department of Geography and Urban Studies, the 21st Annual Critical Geography Conference hopes to include a wide array of scholars and activists doing work in critical geography. This year’s overarching theme connotes an exploration of how we understand, follow, imagine, feel, utilize, yield to and alter the workings of power. Power has been theorized from the top down and the bottom up, as structure and as capillary, as productive and destructive, and as both immaterial and material. We hope to use geography’s diverse engagements with power as an entry point for generating discussions across the ‘divides’ of critical geography – specifically divides between approaches attending to structural forces, focusing on knowledge production and meaning making, and/or tracing power into bodies and matter/materiality. As our logo <tucriticalgeography.org> seeks to make clear, the conference locates the question of “how power happens?” at the core of these three areas of inquiry, and calls upon critical geographers to create fruitful conversation and debate within the apparent areas of overlap.

The conference will begin on Friday, November 7th, 2014. The opening evening will feature a keynote address by Dr. Mona Domosh from the Department of Geography at Dartmouth College.

The program on Saturday, November 8th and Sunday, November 9th will consist of paper sessions, panels, round table discussions, and sessions with alternative formats.

We invite you to submit abstracts or proposals for sessions, by the deadline of August 10, 2014. Abstracts or proposals should be 250 words in length, and we ask that you include contact information and any titles or affiliations you would like placed in the program. Sessions may include papers, panels, roundtables, workshops, performances, or sessions with alternative formats. We are especially interested in participants organizing their own sessions, and we also want to encourage perspectives and styles of communication from beyond the academy. If you would like to organize a session, please let us know in advance and you can then issue a CFP through the appropriate mailing lists. Papers submitted individually will be reviewed by the program committee after August 20, and will be accepted for committee-organized sessions as space allows. Please send your abstract or proposal to Sarah Stinard-Kiel at sarah.sk@temple.edu

Further information on the conference, including accommodations, program, and conference events will be updated on the conference web site as the information becomes available, www.tucriticalgeography.org. You can also find updates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tucriticalgeography. Please feel free to email any further questions to the conference planning committee via Sarah Stinard-Kiel at sarah.sk@temple.edu or Allison Hayes-Conroy at anhc@temple.edu. The conference will be a caregiver and child friendly space.