GAFIS Symposium 2025
“EXPLORING THE LIMINAL”
The concept of liminality as coined in a text entitled Rites de Passages (1908) and described as a three-fold process–separation, transition and incorporation– and would go on to become a trope found in fields as varied as psychology, literature, botany, geography, medicine, to name a few. From the latin limen or threshold, the term itself emphasizes the importance and value of transitions. To define something is to determine its limits, drawing a line separating what it is from what it is not. By simultaneously embracing beginnings, intersections and ends, and an in-between space challenging the notion of enclosed categories, liminality provides the opportunity to reassess traditions and boundaries, opening up new thresholds. For the 38th GAFIS Symposium, we would like to explore liminality as an interdisciplinary topic providing an auspicious subject around which to come together, where different fields in science, social sciences and humanities can resonate. We would like to invite scholars to submit a paper from any but not limited to these areas : political science, geography, anthropology, botany, mathematics, sociology, gender and women’s studies, literature, art and art History, History, philosophy, religious studies, post-colonial and colonial studies, film and theater studies, law.
Keywords : beginning, crossroad, inbetween, interdisciplinary, transition, mutation, fluidity, periphery, ambivalence, ambiguity, contact, porosity
Cover image: “Rooms by the Sea” (1951), Edward Hopper
Date:
March 7th & 8th, 2025
Location :
Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St, Madison, WI 53706