In-Between Wor(l)ds: Liminality, Poetry, and Performance
310 Pillsbury Dr SE
Minneapolis,
MN
55455
“We are always in the middle.” That is how Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari put it when looking at contemporary modes of existence. Human art and experience live in the thresholds where languages, identities, genres, media, and meanings meet. Rather than treating the in-between as a space to move through, we are invited to ponder what happens when we linger there; when uncertainty, hybridity, and transformation become sources of artistic and intellectual possibility.
Join us on November 6 - 7, 2026, at the University of Minnesota for two days of scholarly presentations and artistic work exploring liminality across poetry, performance, literature, visual art, and digital media. Our keynote speaker, Adeena Karasick, brings her expansive work in experimental poetry, multilingualism, performance, and transmediality to the convention.
From German-Jewish assimilation and diaspora to queer and trans poetics: from the shifting boundaries between text and speech to the dissonance between the special and the familiar, In-Between Wor(l)ds considers how contemporary art responds to a world increasingly shaped by movement and instability. Come listen, encounter, and think with us from the threshold.
All presentations (including Zoom sessions) will take place in Pillsbury Hall, room 412.
Full schedule:
| Friday, November 6th | ||
|---|---|---|
| Time | Presenter | Session Title |
| 3:00pm (15:00) | Michael Wagner & Janeth Eni, University of Minnesota | Conference Opening |
| 3:15pm (15:15) | Denisse Mendoza Jaimes, University of Minnesota | Elumbral of the unspeakable: diasporic identity and the plurality of languages in Gloria Gervitz's Migrations |
| 3:45pm (15:45) |
William Kelsey, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign |
“Ich hört ein Bächlein mauscheln:” German-Jewish Assimilation and the Natural World in the Works of Karl Kraus |
| 4:45pm (16:45) | Missy Drew, University of Minnesota | The Bar is a Stage: How Tom’s Saloon Creates Space for Gay Hypermasculine Performance |
| 5:15pm (17:15) | Michael Wagner, University of Minnesota | Is this funny? An exploration of the funny, unfunny, and the importance of the "bit" |
| 6:15pm (18:15) |
Adeena Karasick, Pratt Intitute |
Keynote Presentation |
| Saturday, November 7th | ||
|---|---|---|
| Time | Presenter | Session Title |
| 10:00am | Michael Wagner & Janeth Eni, University of Minnesota | Day 2 Welcome |
| 10:15am | Maria Arriola, University of Minnesota | Sleepy Driver |
| 10:45am | Veronica Adeloye, Florida State University | How Sound Reshapes Meaning; A Comparison of the Written and Spoken in An Die Nachgeborene by Bertholt Brecht |
| 11:15am | Boatemaa Agyeman-Mensah, University of Virginia, Charlottesville | Field Work: Poems |
| 12:45pm (Zoom) | Aishwarya Pratim Rabha, Jawaharlal Nehru University | The Non-Poem and the throwing out of ‘words’: Community, Desire, Voice in Nilamoni Phookan Jr.’s reading of Paul Cézanne |
| 1:15pm (13:15) (Zoom) | Annika Burkard, McGill University | Adalbert Stifter’s Description of the Solar Eclipse of July 8, 1842, and the Problem of Representation |
| 1:45pm (13:45) (Zoom) | Laci Burton, University of Vermont |
Generating Embodied Truths Through Queer Autofiction |
| 2:45pm (14:45) |
Adeena Karasick, Pratt Institute |
Performance of Sonic Warfare |
| 3:45pm (15:45) | Michael Wagner & Janeth Eni, University of Minnesota |
Farewell |