Calls for Papers
We invite our Centre Research Associates to advertise on the Somatechnics Research Centre website any calls for papers for conferences, seminars, journal issues or edited collections they are organising.
To have a call for papers posted here, please email the Centre Administrator Jessica Cadwallader via email at SomatechnicsAdmin@gmail.com.
The Fifth International Somatechnics Conference: The Technologisation of Bodies and Selves
Call for papers: Abstracts are invited for an international conference to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 16th-18th 2009. Abstracts should be 300-500 words and should be forwarded to A/Prof Nikki Sullivan and Ms Jess Cadwallader at the addresses listed below. Proposals for panels and for performance pieces are welcome.
“Somatechnics” is a recently coined term used to highlight the inextricability of soma and techné, of the body (as a culturally intelligible construct) and the techniques (dispositifs and ‘hard technologies’) in and through which bodies are formed and transformed. This term, then, supplants the logic of the ‘and’, indicating that technés are not something we add to or apply to the body, but rather, are the means in and through which bodies are constituted, positioned, and lived. As such, the term reflects contemporary understandings of the body as the incarnation or materialization of historically and culturally specific discourses and practices.
Possible topics:
• Somatechnologies of the self (‘non-mainstream’ body modification, body sculpting, performance, fashion, drug use, ‘self-mutilation’, religious practice, etc)
• medical somatechnologies (cosmetic, reproductive, imaging, corrective, sex (re)assignment, implantation, enhancement, bio-techs, public health initiatives, etc)
• somatechnics of law
• somatechnologies of gender, sexuality, race, class, etc
• somatechnologies of normalcy and pathology
• somatechnics of war
• somatechnologies of the post-human (cyborgs, nanotechnology, virtuality, etc)
• soma-ethics
Deadline for abstracts: November 30th 2008
Keynote Speakers include:
Claudia Castaneda (Brandeis University)
Nichola Rumsey (University of the West of England)
Jennifer Terry (University of California, Irvine)
Further information:
The Somatechnics Conference Committee
Somatechnics Research Centre
Division of Society, Media, Culture and Philosophy
Macquarie University
North Ryde
New South Wales 2109
Australia
Email: nikki.sullivan@scmp.mq.edu.au and somatechnicsadmin@gmail.com
Phone: 61 (0)2 9850 8760
CFP: "Nonhuman Feminisms" Special Issue of Feminist Theory
CALL FOR PAPERS: ‘Nonhuman Feminisms’
Forthcoming special issue of Feminist Theory (please circulate widely)
'Nonhuman Feminisms'
Editors: Myra J. Hird (Queen's University, Canada) and Celia Roberts (Lancaster University)
Feminist Theory is inviting papers for a special issue on feminism and the nonhuman, to be edited by Myra J. Hird and Celia Roberts. Feminist scholars and activists recognise that 'the human' materially encompasses a very small proportion of the enormous diversity of living and nonliving matter on Earth. Environmental feminists, for instance, have long attempted to engage with the biosphere from the perspective of humanity as a recently arrived, temporary and rather unruly tenant. At the same time, feminists are cognizant that fetishistic engagements with science and technology (for instance in calls to address environmental crises through technological fixes and in assumptions that solutions to world problems such as poverty will come from scientific 'discoveries' such as genetically modified foods) necessitate remembering the majority of humanity, whose poor material conditions demonstrate that techno-scientifically-driven 'progress' is unevenly distributed and can work to entrench existing inequities. These tensions necessarily engage long-standing philosophy of science debates concerning larger ontological and epistemological assumptions, to which feminist scholars have provided significant, timely and diverse inputs. We particularly welcome theoretical and/or empirical interdisciplinary contributions from emerging and established scholars interested in engaging different conceptualisations of what constitutes the nonhuman (can the nonhuman be ontologically differentiated from the human, for instance?) and different epistemological approaches, including standpoint approaches to the body, posthumanism and so on. We also encourage contributions concerned with visual cultures (film, video, art and other media) and the visual forms the non-human might take.
Some questions you might consider:
· What does feminist theory have to offer to debates about the nonhuman?
· Is there a nonhuman feminist perspective?
· What are the feminist implications of the nonhuman?
· How might feminist theory move beyond the conflation of nonhuman with animal?
· How might a feminist ethics approach the nonhuman?
· How might we theorise sexual difference from a nonhuman perspective? Does sexual difference make a difference from a nonhuman perspective?
· How might the nonhuman contribute to longstanding debates about race, class, disability and so on?
· How might feminists visualise the non-human?
The deadline for submission of articles is 1 December 2009. Refer to the journal for submission guidelines regarding length and format. Please send your article electronically and with six hard copies to Myra J. Hird, email hirdm@queensu.ca <mailto:hirdm@queensu.ca> and Celia Roberts, email celia.roberts@lancaster.ac.uk <mailto:celia.roberts@lancaster.ac.uk> .Mailing address: Myra J. Hird, Sociology Department, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, K7L 3N6.