35th LSU Mardi Gras Conference - Spectral Landscapes: Hauntology in Place and Space

35th LSU Mardi Gras Conference - Spectral Landscapes: Hauntology in Place and Space
Lousiana State University | February 26-28, 2025 | Hybrid Format | LSU Women's Center

It was haunted; but real hauntings have nothing to do with ghosts finally; they have to do with the menace of memory.
—Anne Rice

The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.—Nikola Tesla

Laissez les temps hantés rouler! The LSU English Department and English Graduate Student Association invite you to our 35th annual LSU Mardi Gras Conference, themed "Spectral Landscapes: Hauntology in Place and Space." Just as Mardi Gras is a vibrant call for festivity and community, this event aims to celebrate the range of ideas surrounding the dynamic and diverse concept of hauntology—a portmanteau of haunting and ontology—in literature and other disciplines. Following Derrida’s Specters of Marx, we might conceive of hauntings as the persistence of elements that haunt the present like a ghost across social, cultural, economic, political, and even religious instances, performances, and texts.

From a mild obsession with ghosts and ghouls to unmaterialized, lost, and dead futures—we’re exploring how the present is “haunted” across the spectrum. A rigorous exploration of hauntology could interrogate hauntings by responding to questions such as: What haunts? What persists from the past and merges with the present and future, collapsing notions of temporality? Where are the tangible effects of “dead” or “lost” futures brought to life through a haunting of the present? How might we reimagine certain futures in light of what haunts us?

The LSU Mardi Gras Conference is an interdisciplinary conference showcasing academic and creative work engaging with the theme and related topics.

File Attachments: 2025_MGC_CFP_Spectral_Landscapes_Hauntology_in_Place_and_Space

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