Abstract Submission 
December 5th, 2025  at 11:59pm EST. 

The Liberal Arts Collective invites graduate students, scholars, and artists to submit abstracts for the Rendering Violence in Textual and Visual Media Conference at the Pennsylvania State University on  April 24-25, 2026.

Under the theme of “Rendering Violence,” the conference seeks to explore work that 
engages with the presentation, representation, and deployment of violence in all forms of media (film, novels, short stories, graphic novels, television, video, video games, etc.). The Liberal Arts Collective invites abstracts that address,  but are not limited to, the following topics: 

●  Violence as aesthetic or the aesthetics of violence
●  Ethical and Political violence
●  Identitarian violence (gendered, racial, religious, etc.)
●  Violence as an interrogation of the (forms of) media
●  Historical changes in the (re)presentation of violence
●  Technical changes in the (re)presentation of violence
●  Creative and destructive potentials of violence
●  Visibility and Invisibility of violence
●  Generic Violence (Film: Action, Horror, etc) (Literature: Memoir, Historical Fict. etc.)
●  Temporalities of Violence

Conference date: 24-25 April, 2026
Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 

Keynote Speakers: 
Seth Kim, Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies, Colby College 
Pedro Inock, Filmmaker and PhD candidate, NOVA University of Lisbon