Genre Trouble: Experiments in Body & Form is a one-day interdisciplinary gathering to think and practice forms of writing experimentation. Hosted by New York University’s program in Experimental Humanities and Infinite Text Collective, Genre Trouble stages a series of conversations with thinkers across disparate fields writing first-person theoretical work. Whether under the auspices of autotheory or autofiction, conceptual and performance art about the self, or academic writing that draws on personal anecdote, the last few decades have seen an explosion of writing that blends theoretical concerns with lived experience. Genre Trouble is a day to touch base with the most radical impulses and implications of such writing and compare notes with practitioners across diverse subjects. One overarching objective is to unsettle the genre conventions that too often separate writers by discipline. Even more urgently, thinking with ongoing political, ecological, and other crises, testing genre becomes a way of negotiating ways that writing can be a mode of response. By convening writers whose work troubles generic taxonomies, Genre Trouble makes a space to explore how experimentation upends received notions of theory and enables a critical revisioning of history, place, relationality, and everyday life.

Participants are invited into a simple yet potent program. A morning panel constellated across genre, discipline, and theme, will invite guests to speak informally or read from their work. We’ll then open the conversation to attendees to draw on the resonances and entanglements among the speakers. Next we’ll facilitate a writing workshop for interested participants that draws on all of the participants’ work. The afternoon program will feature a second panel of three or four writers, followed by a conversation with all attendees. We’ll then host a closing reception.

Confirmed speakers include Nuar Alsadir, Lou Cornum, Kay Gabriel, Madhu Kaza, Poupeh Missaghi, Joseph Osmundson, Joseph Earl Thomas, and Carina del Valle Schorske.

Genre Trouble will be live streamed for those not able to attend in person. In-person seating is limited, so reserve your spot.

We’ll also be hosting a meet-up and an in-person workshop in conjunction with the conference—see details below.

Opening Reception: 10am

Opening Remarks: 10:30am

Panel 1: 1045-12-45 // Flecks of the Future Tense

Speakers: Lou Cornum, “Future Fictions”; Kay Gabriel, “TS Syntax”; Joseph Osmundson, “Queering the Truth in Non-Fiction”; and Joseph Earl Thomas, “Reality Marble”

* Moderators: Miranda Trimmier & Sonia Werner 

Writing Workshop: 1:00-230 // with Infinite Text Collective

            Facilitators: Paige Sweet & Miranda Trimmier

Panel 2: 3-5 // Echoes, Recitations, and other Remains

Speakers: Nuar Alsadir, “The Shape of Thought”; Madhu Kaza, “Vale of Cashmere”; Poupeh Missaghi, “Examining the Psyche as a Way Into and Through Writing”; and Carina del Valle Schorske, “Infinite Notebook: Excess and the Archive”

* Moderators: Paige Sweet & Sonia Werner

Closing Reception: 5pm 

In conjunction with the Genre Trouble conference, ITC will be hosting an in-person meet and greet — if you’re in the NYC area, we’d love to see you in the flesh! We’ll also have an in-person Writing Workshop.

In-Person Meet and Greet on Thursday, October 12, 5-7pm at Union Hall, located at 702 Union Street in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY.

In-Person Genre Trouble Writing Workshop on Saturday, October 14. Hosted at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, located at 68 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY (in DUMBO). Register here.