We are pleased to announce that Professor Carla Freccero will be our keynote speaker. Carla Freccero is Professor and Chair of Literature and History of Consciousness, and Professor of Feminist Studies at UCSC, where she has taught since 1991. Her books include Father Figures (Cornell,1991); Popular Culture (NYU, 1999); and Queer/Early/Modern (Duke, 2006). She co-edited Premodern Sexualities (Routledge, 1996). Her current book project, on nonhuman animals and figuration, is Animate Figures. In 2010 she won the Critical Animal Studies Faculty Paper of the Year. Her fields include early modern European literature and history; critical theory; feminist and queer theories; popular culture and cultural studies; psychoanalysis and animal studies.