First Annual SAGGSA Graduate Student Conference: Transgressing Boundaries and Occupying Spaces: Examining Inequalities in Nature-Culture

Real and imagined boundaries are everywhere in nature-culture and are everyday challenged and transgressed in extraordinary and mundane ways. Be they the geo-spatial inequities that exist within urban, rural and remote (‘nature’) regions or the socio-economic inequalities highlighted by Occupy Wall Street, humans and non-humans often go beyond the structural and social limits that are imposed on them. Whether this resistance is manifested by groups who have historically been and continue to be rendered abject based on race, gender, class and sexuality or groups considered ‘alternative’ by the mainstream, or whether these transgressions are more subtle shifts in the ecological aspects of nature-culture, this conference seeks to explore inequalities in nature-society in its varied and multidimensional forms. We encourage papers from any discipline that complicate the relationship between inclusion and exclusion, and explore the ways in which agents act to resist victimhood and use their uneven status as a form of empowerment. SAGGSA, the Sociology, Anthropology, & Geography Graduate Student Association, is the graduate student arm of the Dept. of Global and Sociocultural Studies (GSS) at FIU. The purpose of this organization is to promote networking and enhance learning in the fields of sociology, anthropology and geography. SAGGSA engages GSS students and faculty and the wider FIU community in contemporary issues in research and in social and political participation through regular events and a colloquium series.

Keynote: Jen Marlowe, Author, filmmaker/playwright and human rights advocate, Seattle, WA

Reception Speaker: Dr. Roderick Neumann, Professor of Geography, Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies, Florida International University, Miami, Fl