Knowing Otherwise Conference
Mabel Smith Douglass Room, Douglass Library
March 6, 2025
To connect with ancestors, spirits, and ghosts entails intergenerational remembering that transcends individual memories and experiences and disrupts the space-time continuum. It involves tending to both the dead and the living, presence and absence, matter and trace, and past and future. It calls into question notions of discrete selfhood, human agency, and linear temporality. Knowing Otherwise explores how haunting, conjuring, and spectral encounters challenge us to think beyond conventional limits. We should be prepared to be surprised, affected, changed, and hailed by that which lingers and haunts. Join us for a 1-day conference featuring three panels, a keynote, and a live performance.
9.45 - 10 Introduction
10 – 11:15 Panel 1
“Transit Memories as Haunting: Andean Indigenous Women and Activism Beyond Borders”
Evelyn Autry (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers), Elva Navarro and Mavila Paucar (PEX Semillas de Libertad)
11:15 - 11.30 Break
11.30 - 12:45 Keynote
“The Dictator’s Two Bodies: The Politics of the Paranormal in the Twentieth-Century Philippines”
Deirdre de la Cruz (Southeast Asian Studies & History, University of Michigan)
12.45 - 1.45 Lunch
1.45 – 3 Panel 2
“Materializing Absence: Art, Photography, and Spirits”
Zeynep Gursel (Anthropology, Rutgers) Dana Luciano (English & Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers), and Hilit Surowitz-Israel (Religion, Rutgers)
3 – 3:15 Break
3:15 - 4:30 Panel 3
“Conjure: The Feminine as Oceanic Force”
Fernanda Villarroel Lamoza (Davidson College & Presidential Visiting Scholar & IRW, Rutgers), Christina Knight (Art History & Global Racial Justice, Rutgers), Carlos Decena (Latino and Caribbean Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, & Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, Rutgers)
4.30 Reception & Performance
"OTHERWISE: Queer Scholarship into Song -- and More!"
Kay Turn Her and the Pages
Led by Kay Turner (Douglass '71)
REGISTER HERE: https://forms.gle/bgo8eydyEonjJ7Kb7
Non-Rutgers visitors may park in Lots 79 & the Douglass deck. Guests must use this link to register for parking: https://rudots.nupark.com/v2/portal/eventregister/c0f09d64-d5ef-43b8-a849-3776c57b569d#/events/registration/. They must enter an email address where they will receive a confirmation. Until this process is completed, their vehicles are not registered, and they may receive a citation. Special Event parking does not include metered parking or free parking for faculty, staff, or students. Rutgers-affiliated faculty, staff, and students must have a Rutgers parking permit (semester, daily, or event) and park accordingly. Faculty, staff, and students parking without a parking permit or outside their parking permit assignment will be subjected to ticketing and/or towing. Link to campus map is here.