Call for Papers / Sessions: Iran: Myth or Fiction?

I have agreed to post this call for papers on my site. It seems like a valuable conference. Thinking of submitting a paper myself...

Conference title: Iran: Myth or Fiction?

Conference location: Atlantis City

We are living in an era where a fact is no longer a fact: where even the very notion of gravity is challenged and reality is no longer a given. This is the era of post-post-post modernism, or as the French-educated philosopher Goolmizaneh has aptly termed it: virtual post-ready-made-deconstructivism.

Can anything really be said to be a fact in a post-holocaust world of full-immersion game-playing? By now, we all know that the United States of America faked its moon landing (1) and that the infamous attacks on the World Trade Center were actually staged by Bollywood filmmakers who plot world cultural domination. (2) There is no one among us who still accepts the “facts” of evolution (3) or the “fact” that dinosaurs existed (4) or even the long-accepted “fact” that Elvis died some 30 years ago.(5) Facts are notoriously unreliable as we have all learned the hard way.

That is why the proud, nation state of Atlantis in conjunction with its renowned University of Atlantis are sponsoring the conference: Iran: Myth or Fiction.

After careful study, we realize that there has not been sufficient academic debate on the actual existence of the country that the world knows as Iran. This so-called country is rumored to be developing nuclear arms and de-stabilizing the entire Middle East region with its real-politik shenanigans. The question we are asking is this: does Iran even exist?

In the spirit of academic freedom and the sanctity of freedom of speech, we call on scholars from all over the world to offer papers on the actual existence of Iran.

We hope this conference will bring together such figures as:

* Historians of Asia and the Middle East
* Political scientists interested in alternative approaches to reality
* Researchers of myth and myth creation
* Oppressed academics everywhere who cannot find a voice in traditional institutions

Among topics the conference might explore:

* History of myth and fiction
* Iran: where would it be located if it really existed?
* The making of the myth: why we need the myth of Iran
* Protocols of the Elders of Aryan and their efforts at world domination
* Chess, poker, and tolerance: why the myth of Iranian invention took hold
* The poetry of Hafez: who was the real author Shakespeare or Marlowe?
* Persian or Farsi: the same language?

Short abstracts of no more than 200 words for papers or panels should be sent via email to responses AT gmail.com by March 1. Notification of acceptance for the conference will be made by March 18.

References:

(1) Moon landing faked

(2) 9/11 conspiracies

(3) Evolution in the face of Pastafarianism

(4) Dinosaurs never existed

(5) Elvis death faked