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unix.tamu.edu>"Negotiating Boundaries" 18 & 19 September 1998 Texas A&M University CALL FOR PAPERS The English Graduate Student Association of Texas A&M University announces its Interdisciplinary Conference on Language and Literature. You are invited to submit creative writing and abstracts (500 words) addressing any aspect of the conference's theme, "Negotiating Boundaries." Panel proposals are also encouraged and should include the panel's title, participants' names, and abstracts. All approaches in the humanities are welcome. Possible topics might include but are certainly not limited to: * Negotiating Boundaries of Region, Race, Class, Gender, and/or Sexuality * Writing from the Margin; Writing from the Center * Passing--Race and/or Gender * Cross-Dressing * Fin-de-siecle Literature and Culture (any century) * Constructions of "High," "Middlebrow," and "Low" Culture * Negotiating Boundaries in the Visual and Performing Arts * Literary Genres (the Novel, Poetry, Auto/Biography, etc.) * Mixing Literary Genres/Writing about Literary Genres * Constructing Authorial Identities * Children's Literature * Creative Writing Submissions * Negotiating Boundaries Between Academic Disciplines * Literary, Theoretical, Historical, Sociological, Anthropological, * Philosophical, and/or Psychological Perspectives on Negotiating Boundaries The following topics are being sponsored by the Discourse-Oriented Student Society (DOSS) of Texas A&M. If your submission relates to any of these topics, please write "DOSS" on your abstract or panel proposal. * Graduate Student/Teacher--Negotiating Boundaries in Academia and in the Classroom * Boundaries in Functional Linguistics and Discourse Analysis * Interstices in Classical and Modern Rhetoric * Boundaries within Technical Writing Conference Date and Location: 18-19 September 1998 Texas A&M University Deadline for Submissions: Postmarked by Friday, 29 May 1998 Please Address Submissions to: Claire Carly Dept. of English Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-4227 For more information, please contact Claire Carly at: cic1692Mail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
pal.xerox.com>The First Workshop on Embodied Conversational Characters Granlibakken Resort & Conference Center at Lake Tahoe Tahoe City (North Shore) California, USA October 12-15, 1998 With the support of AAAI Cooperation of ACM/SIGCHI Call for Papers Recent advances in several core software technologies have made possible a new type of human-computer interface: the conversational character. Conversational characters are autonomous, anthropomorphic, animated figures that have the ability to communicate through multiple modalities, including spoken language, facial expressions, and gestures. Unlike textual natural language interfaces, conversational characters have the ability to perceive and produce the verbal and non-verbal signals that identify discourse structure and regulate the flow of information between interlocutors. Such signals include intonational patterns, gestures, back-channel feedback signals, and turn-taking protocols. These capabilities enable them to engage in complex interactions with human users via natural speech rather than complex command languages, menus or graphical manipulations. Research on conversational characters has emerged from a number of disciplines, including, among others, artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, computer animation, computer vision, psychology, cognitive science, virtual reality, CSCW, and HCI. This diversity is naturally reflected in the broad range of active research areas in conversational character interfaces. The primary goal of this workshop is to advance the state of conversational character research and development by identifying novel approaches to the topics and issues listed below, and integrating them into a framework for embodied, conversational human-computer interaction. Selected contributors will be invited to expand and refine their papers for inclusion in a book to be published by Addison-Wesley. The aims of this book will be to introduce, define, and advance the field; to give a snapshot of current work in it; and to suggest future challenges and opportunities. Particular topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Multi-Modal Interaction * Autonomy * Recognition & perception of speech, * Behavior/dialogue planning gesture, facial expressions, etc. * Distribution of semantic information * Reactivity and opportunism across multiple modalities * Rendering techniques * Representation * Semantic representations for * Character individuation non-verbal communication * Dialogue planning * Affect and personality * Turn-taking and back-channel signals * User Studies * Spoken Language Processing * Tools for character * Discourse structure building/authoring * Intonation * Architectures & Applications Papers should address one or more of these topics. Demonstrations and video presentations of working systems are strongly encouraged. Format The two and a half-day workshop will include several paper sessions, organized around emerging themes, with follow-up panel discussions. In addition, there will be a demonstration session for authors to present working systems. Attendance Attendance will be limited to 35-40 people. Preference will be given to authors whose papers have been selected for presentation at the workshop. Submission Requirements Paper submissions are due on June 15, 1998, and should be no longer than 6 pages (10-12 point font). Upon acceptance, authors will be given the opportunity to expand their papers to 8-10 pages. Electronic submissions in Postscript or Microsoft Word formats are preferred, and should be sent to prevostMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue