An encounter implies the unexpected, unplanned, or unintended meeting of two or more things: a coming-together of unspecified duration with an unknown conclusion. Encounters are as likely to be confrontational and hostile as they are pleasurable or fortuitous. They are open to ambiguity - potentially productive and transformative, as well as offering multiple possibilities for resistance, struggle, alliance, desire, support, and the assertion of agency. In many ways the chance nature of an encounter makes it particularly relevant to the diverse and interdisciplinary fields of communication and cultural studies. Here, unexpected relations and relationships are often both studied and forged, transforming existing subjectivities, bodies, identities, assemblages, spaces, practices, communities, knowledge regimes, and power relations.

"Encounters" calls presenters to explore the concepts of encounter and relation. Many fields are open to new epistemologies, many practices to new encounters with existing and emerging forms. Where and how have such encounters taken form? In what space and context and involving what actors? Can we map new encounters based on past knowledge and experience, or do they defy hierarchy and linearity? What new understandings or hybridities are generated through encounters? How have these encounters changed subjectivities, power relations, or norms, and how have they been reproduced? How do notions of relation solve or further problematize the turn to relativism? What is the relevance of chaos and chance? How can communication and culture uniquely contribute to a critical engagement with the nature(s) of encounters and with the effects, affects and relations that may result from them?

"Encounters" is the ninth annual graduate student conference hosted by the students in the Joint Programme in Communication and Culture of Ryerson and York Universities. The conference reflects the programme's interdisciplinary nature, featuring presentations from a wide range of disciplines that include academic, creative, pedagogical and activist concerns.

Topics include encounters with/through/in:

- Technologies, interfaces
- Creativities, imaginations, materials
- Legislation, regulation, policy
- Identities, subjectivities, subcultures and counter-cultures
- Praxis, pedagogy, activism, community building
- Disciplines, methods, standards, conventions
- Sites, spaces
- Distance, mobility, migration
- Hybrids, networks
- Sensation, sensualities, bodies
- Effects, affects, desires


Presented by and for graduate student scholars, artists and activists through the organizing efforts of the Communication and Culture Graduate Students Association.

For more information about the Joint Graduate Programme in Communication and Culture at Ryerson and York Universities: http://comcult.yorku.ca and http://www.ryerson.ca/graduate/programs/comcult/