Indiana University's 2021 Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference

“A ‘world’ need not be a construction of a whole society. It may be a construction of a tiny portion of a particular society. It may be inhabited by just a few people. Some ‘worlds’ are bigger than others.” – Maria Lugones

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Now, more than ever, is a good time to think and act upon the state of our worlds. With the present climate disaster; the rise of white supremacist terrorism emboldened by governing bodies; the continued attempted eradication of people of color in America; and a global pandemic bent on restructuring the rhythm of our daily lives, now is a good time to ask, “Who are our worlds for?” Because worlds are made up from the “descriptions and constructions of life,” they are open to re-description and re-construction (Lugones 10). This conference takes the pun on J. L. Austin’s How to Do Things with Words seriously to think, on the one hand, about the performativity of word-making, and on the other, its interplay with “world”-making.

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How does language construct the worlds we inhabit, and what are its uses and limitations in spurring action or bringing about new possible worlds? How do we do the things that are urgently begging to be done with the skills that we’ve spent years cultivating? What opportunities can be leveraged, what constraints must be negotiated, and what limits must be acknowledged in investing in our scholarship and teaching as a force for doing things with, in, and, at times, against worlds? 

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“How to Do Things with Worlds” is, for us, a question of what we should be making out of this specific moment. This online conference is dedicated to pursuing this question to its fullest extent.

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This site is designed to serve as an archive of the panels and presentations from our 18th annual interdisciplinary conference, which was the first to be hosted entirely online. Presentations were recorded asynchronously, with synchronous discussion on Discord and a synchronous keynote from Dr. Vanessa Plumly, Assistant Professor of German at Lawrence University.