Showing posts with label Mansfield College. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mansfield College. Show all posts

Saturday 3 December 2011

CFP: 4th Global Conference: Strangers, Aliens and Foreigners

Friday 21st September 2012 – Sunday 23rd September 2012

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers

This multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the crucial place that strangers, aliens and foreigners have for the constitution of self, communities and societies. In particular the project will assess world transformations, like phenomena we associate with the term ‘globalisation’, new forms of migration and the massive movements of people across the globe, as well as the impact they have on the conceptions we hold of self and other. Looking to encourage innovative trans-disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from all disciplines, professions and vocations which struggle to understand what it means for people, the world over, to forge a sense of self in rapidly changing contexts where it is no longer possible to ignore the importance of strangers, aliens and foreigners for our contemporary nations, societies and cultures.

Papers, workshops and presentations are invited on any of the following themes:

1. Transformations of Self
~ How is Self interweaved with Other? And the many ways in which Self depends on Other
~ Acknowledging the importance of strangers for our lives, for our sense of well-being
~ Recognising our dependence on aliens and foreigners for our communities, cities and towns, for our countries and nations
~ The decline of the value of sameness and homogeneity, the rise of diversity and plurality
~ Opposing the construction of self by othering, excluding and stigmatising

2. Boundaries, Communities and Nations
~ Who is a stranger? Aliens and foreigners to whom?
~ New migrants, new migratory flows and massive movements from peripheral to central countries
~ Trans-national networks and the blurring of boundaries; are we living trans-national and post-national realities?
~ Assimilation, integration, adaptation and other forms of placing the responsibility of change on foreigners
~ What has happened to ideas like acceptance, hospitality and cosmopolitanism

3. Economies, Institutions and Migrants
~ Labour migration as key for economic growth and prosperity
~ The politics of making aliens, foreigners and migratory labour ‘invisible’
~ Global politics of money over people; new forms of global exclusion
~ Social movements, new rebellion and alternative globalisations
~ Trans-cultural connections that escape institutional and political control

4. Art and Representations
~ Production and reproduction of cultural typing and stereotyping
~ The contested space of representing self and other, native and foreigner
~ Art, media and how to challenge the rigid constructions of art and culture
~ Fictions of strangers, stories of aliens, fables of foreigners
~ The artistic constructions of otherness

5. Self (inevitably) linked to Other
~ De-centering selves; who am I if not the relation with others?
~ Thinking and acting with others in mind; orienting life inter-subjectively
~ Tensions, contradictions and conflicts of living recognising aliens and foreigners
~ Bonds of care across boundaries of inequality and exclusion, ideologies and religions, politics and power, nations and geography
~ Non-recognition as social and cultural violence

The 2012 meeting of Strangers, Aliens and Foreigners will run alongside a second of our projects on Beauty and we anticipate holding sessions in common between the two projects. We welcome any papers or panels considering the problems or addressing issues that cross both projects. Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 16th March 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 22nd June 2012. 300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords

E-mails should be entitled: Strangers Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this publication We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Dr S. Ram Vemuri
School of Law and Business, Faculty of Law, Business and Arts
Charles Darwin University
Darwin NT0909, Australia

Rob Fisher
Network Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net,
Freeland, Oxfordshire,
United Kingdom

The conference is part of the Diversity and Recognition research projects, which in turn belong to the At the Interface programmes of Inter-Disciplinary.Net. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore discussions which are innovative and challenging. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.

For further details of the project, please click here.

For further details of the conference, please click here.


Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.

Tuesday 29 November 2011

CFP: 2nd Global Conference: Gender and Love

Tuesday 25th September – Thursday 27th September 2012

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers:

The study of gender is an interdisciplinary field intertwined with feminism, queer studies, sexuality studies, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies (to name just some relevant fields).

This project calls for the consideration of gender in relation to various kinds of love (with regard, for example, to self, spirit, religion, family, friendship, ethics, nation, globalisation, environment, and so on). How do the interactions of gender and love promote particular performances of gender; conceptions of individual and collective identity; formations of community; notions of the human; understandings of good and evil? These are just some of the questions that occupy this project.

This conference welcomes research papers which seek to understand the interaction and interconnection between the concepts of love and gender; and whether, when, how and in what ways the two concepts conceive and construct each other.

Papers, presentations, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on issues related to any of the following themes:

1. Love as a Disciplinary Force: Productions of Gender
* Love, Gender, Essentialism and Ontology
* Love, Gender and Narrative
* Love, Gender and the Law
* Love, Gender and Religion

2. Norms, Normativity, Intimacy
* Rituals and Rites
* Conventions, Commitments and Obligations
* Choices and Respect; Loyalty and Trust
* Transgressions and Taboos

3. Gendered Yearnings
* Personhood and Identity
* Body Politics and Belonging
* Love and Gender Performativity
* Transgender Desires
* Queer Kinship Formations
* Queer Conceptualisations of the State

4. Global Perspectives on Gender and Love
* Transformations of Intimacy in a Global World
* Sex and Choice
* Reproductive Rights
* Sexual Citizenship
* Gender, Love and Trans/Nationalism

5. Representations of Gender and Love
* Aesthetics and Intelligibility
* Gendered Narrations of Love
* Media, Gender and Love

For 2012, the Gender and Love project will meet alongside our project on “Skins” and Contemporary Culture. It is our intention to create cross-over sessions between the two groups – and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between gender and love and Skins and contemporary culture. The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. Papers will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 16th March 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 22nd June 2012. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords

E-mails should be entitled: GL2 Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this publication We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs:

Dikmen Yakalı Çamoğlu
Department of Communication Sciences
Dogus University, Istanbul,
Turkey

Dr Rob Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House, Wroslyn Road,
Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HR

The conference is part of the ‘At the Interface ’ series of research projects run by ID.Net. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various
discussions which are innovative and challenging. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into 20-25 page chapters for publication in a themed dialogic ISBN hard copy volume.

For further details of the project, please click here.

For further details of the conference, please click here.

CFP: 5th Global Conference: Making Sense of: Madness

Thursday 30th August 2012 – Saturday 1st September 2012

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers:

This inter-disciplinary research conference seeks to explore issues of madness across historical periods and within cultural, political and social contexts. We are also interested in exploring the place of madness in persons and interpersonal relationships and across a range of critical perspectives. Seeking to encourage innovative inter, multi and post disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from all disciplines, professions and vocations which struggle to understand the place of madness in the constitution of persons, relationships and the complex interlacing of self and other. In the 4 previous conferences we had the participation of friends and colleagues who have experienced forms of madness in their personal lives, and they have always been not only welcome, but also moving and illuminating for all: Such contributions based on the actual experience of madness from within are always welcome to our annual events.

In particular papers, workshops, presentations and pre-formed panel proposals are invited on any of the following themes:

1. The Value of Madness or Why is it that We Need Madness?
~ Critical explorations: beyond madness/sanity/insanity
~ Continuity and difference: always with us yet never quite the same
~ Repetition and novelty: the incessant emergence and re-emergence of madness
~ Profound attraction and desire; fear of the abyss and the radical unknown
~ Naming, defining and understanding the elusive

2. The Passion of Madness or Madness and the Emotions
~ Love as madness; uncontrollable passion; unrestrainable love
~ Passion and love as a remaking of life and self
~ Gender and madness; the feminine and the masculine
~ Anger, resentment, revenge, hate, evil
~ I would rather vomit, thank you; revulsion, badness and refusing to comply

3. The Boundaries of Madness or Resisting Normality
~ Madness, sanity and the insane
~ Being out of your mind, crazy, deranged … yet, perfectly sane
~ Deviating from the normal; defining the self against the normal
~ Control, self-control and the pull of the abyss
~ When the insane becomes normal; when evil reins social life

4. Lunatics and the Asylum or Power and the Politics of Madness
~ The social allure and fear of madness; the institutions of confining mad people
~ Servicing normality by castigating the insane and marginalizing lunatics
~ Medicine, psychiatry, psychology, law and the constructions of madness; madness as illness
~ Contributions of the social sciences to the making and the critique of the making of madness
~ Representations, explanations and the critique of madness from the humanities and the arts

5. Creativity, Critique and Cutting Edge
~ Madness as genius, outstanding, out of the ordinary, spectacularly brilliant
~ The art of madness; the science of madness
~ Music, painting, dance, theater: it is crazy to think of art without madness
~ The language and communication of madness: who can translate?
~ Creation as an unfolding of madness

6. Unrestrained and Boundless or The Liberating Promise of Madness
~ Metaphors of feeling free, unrestrained, capable, lifted from reality
~ Madness as clear-sightedness, as opening up possibilities, as re-visioning of the world
~ The future, the prophetic, the unknown; the epic, the heroic and the tragic
~ The unreachable and untouchable knowledge of madness
~ The insanity of not loving madness

7. Lessons for Self and Other or Lessons for Life about and from Madness
~ Cultural and social constructions of madness; images of the mad, crazy, insane, lunatic, abnormal
~ What is real? Who defines reality? Learning from madness how to cope with reality
~ Recognising madness in oneself; relativising madness in others
~ Love, intimacy, care and the small spaces of madness
~ Critical and ethical implosions of normality and normalness; sane in insane places and insane in sane places

Papers will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes.

The 2012 meeting of Making Sense Of: Madness will run alongside the second of our projects on Chronicity and we anticipate holding sessions in common between the two projects. We welcome any papers or panels considering the problems or addressing issues that cross both projects. Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 26th March 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 22nd June 2012. 300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up tp 10 keywords

E-mails should be entitled: Madness Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Gonzalo Araoz
Project Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net and University of Cumbria,
Cumbria, United Kingdom

Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net, Freeland,
Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

The conference is part of the ‘Making Sense Of:’ series of research projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.

For further details of the project, please click here.

For further details of the conference, please click here.

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.

CFP: 4th Global Conference: Fashion: Critical Issues

Sunday 16th September – Wednesday 19th September 2012

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers:

Fashion is a statement, a stylised form of expression, which displays and begins to define a person, a place, a class, a time, a religion, a culture, subcultures, and even a nation. This inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary conference seeks to explore the historical, social, economic, political, psychological and artistic phenomenon of fashion, a powerful component of contemporary culture. Fashion lies at the very heart of persons, their sense of identity and the communities in which they live. Individuals emerge as icons of beauty and style; cities are
identified as centres of fashion; the business of fashion is a billions of dollar per annum global industry, employing millions of people. The project will assess the history and meanings of fashion; evaluate its expressions in politics, business, pop culture, the arts, consumer culture, and social media; determine its effect on gender, sexuality, class, race, age, nation and other sources of identity; and explore future directions and trends.

Building on the foundations of previous meetings, publications and collaborations, the conference will be structured around five main areas of focus. Each area will have the opportunity to enjoy specific as well as whole group sessions. Papers, presentations, demonstrations and workshops are invited on the following themes:

1. Understanding Fashion

- Fashion, Style, Taste-Making, and Chic
- Fashion and Fashionability
- Fashion and Zeitgeist
- History of Fashion
-The Future of Fashion

2. Learning and Fashion

- Tools and Methodology
- Theorizing Fashion: Disciplines and Perspectives
-Fashion Education
- Identifying, Defining and Refining Concepts (e.g., ‘style,’ ‘fashion,’ ‘look,’ ‘fad,’ ‘trend,’ ‘in & out’)
- Studying and Documenting Fashion (curatorial practice, collections, archives, and museums)
-Fashion Specialists (e.g., pattern makers, fitters, embroiders, tailors, textile experts)
-The Materials of Fashion

3. Representing and Disseminating Fashion

- Fashion Icons
-Designer and Muses
-Stylists
- Style Guides and Makeover Shows
- Fashion Photography
- Fashion Magazines, Blogs, and Social Media
-Films and Documentaries about Fashion
-Fashion and the Performing Arts, Music and Television
- Celebrities as Fashion Designers

4. Identity and Fashion

- Fashion and Identity (e.g., class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, nation, transnationalism, religion, etc.)
- Fashion: (Sub)Cultures
- Fashion, Politics, and Ideology: e.g., ‘message’ fashion; political platform, regimes, and revolutions)
- Ethical Issues in Fashion (e.g., cruelty free fashion, eco-fashion, exploitative labour, the ‘fakes’ market)
-Fashion as Performance
-Fashion, the Body, and Self-Fashioning (e.g., beauty standards, body art, weight, plastic surgery, etc.)

5. The Business of Fashion

-Fashion Professions and Trades
-Fashion Cities, Fashion Weeks, Fashion’s Night Out
-Fashion Marketing (e.g., brands, flagship stores, guerilla stores, eCommerce)
-Fashion Models
-Fashion Forecasting
-Marketing Platforms (e.g., communication, streaming video, social media, etc.)
-Fashion Markets: Vintage, Nostalgia, Mass, Luxury, Emerging
-Producing Displaying Fashion (production sites, showrooms, runways, window displays, websites, etc.)
- The Rise of the Accessory as a Driving Force of Fashion

The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. 300 word abstracts are due by Friday 3rd February 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 22nd June 2012. Emails containing
the abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords

E-mails should be entitled: FASHION4 Abstract Submission.

Please Note: In this email please attach TWO versions of your abstract as follows:

1) One with title and body of abstract only (no identification of the author—this version will be for our blind peer review process).
2) The other with the following information about the author(s):
affiliation, email, title of abstract, title and body of abstract

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Jacque Lynn Foltyn
Professor of Sociology, Dept of Social Sciences,
College of Letters and Sciences, National University, CA, USA

Dr Rob Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House, Wroslyn Road,
Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HR

The conference is part of the Critical Issues series of research projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.

For further details of the project, please click here.

For further details of the conference, please click here.

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.

Tuesday 22 November 2011

CFP: 1st Global Conference: Monstrous Geographies: Places and Spaces of Monstrosity

Thursday 19th July – Saturday 21st July 2012

Mansfield College, Oxford

CALL FOR PAPERS:

What is the relationship between the monstrous and the geographic – those places monsters inhabit but also places that are configured as being monstrous in and of themselves? Places that engage notions of self and otherness, inclusion and exclusion, normal and aberrant, defense and contagion? From the Necropolis to the Killing Fields and from the Amityville Horror to the island of Dr. Moreau, geographical locations have acted as the repository or emanation of human evil, made monstrous by the rituals and behaviors enacted within them, or by their peculiarities of atmosphere or configuration. Whether actual or imagined, these places of wonder, fear and horror speak of the symbiotic relation between humanity and location that sees morality,
ideology and emotions given physical form in the house, the forest, the island, the nation and even far away worlds in both space and time. These places act as magnets for destructive and evil forces, such as the island of Manhattan; they are the source of malevolent energies and forces, such as Transylvania, Area 51 and Ringu; and they are the fulcrum for chaotic, warping energies, such as the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis and Pandemonium. Alongside this, there exist the monstrous geographies created by scientific experimentation, human waste and environmental accidents, creating sites of potential and actual disaster such as the Chernobyl nuclear plant, the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the BP oil disaster, and the devastated coastline of Tohuku, Japan. These places raise diverse post-human quandaries regarding necessities in the present leading to real or imagined futures of humanity and habitation.

Encompassing the factual and the fictional, the literal and the literary, this project investigates the very particular relationships and interactions between humanity and place, the natural and the unnatural, the familiar and the unfamiliar, and sees a multitude of configurations of human monstrosity and evil projected, inflicted, or immanent to place. Such monstrous geographies can be seen to emerge from the disparity between past and present, memory and modernity, urban and rural and can be expressed through categories of class, gender and racial difference as well as generational, political and religious tensions.

Papers, reports, work-in-progress, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on issues related to any of the following themes:

Monstrous Cartographies:

~Terra incognita

~Real and Mythic lost lands: eg., Atlantis, D’yss, and Shangri-La

~Utopias/Dystopias, future cities in time and space

~Malevolent regions: eg., Lemuria, Bermuda Triangle, Transylvania

~Sublime landscapes

~Bodies as maps and maps as bodies, eg. Prison Break

Monstrous Islands:

~As sites of experimentation. Dr. Moreau, Jurassic Park etcAs a
beacon for evil: eg., Manhattan in Godzilla and Cloverfield

~As site of ritual evil and incest: eg., Wicker Man, Pitkin Islands,
Isle of the Dead

~Imperialist intent and construction: eg., Prospero’s Island, Hong
Kong, Hashima

Monstrous Cosmographies:

~Evil planets and dimensions

~Comets, meteorites and beings from unknown worlds

~Worlds as dark reflections/twins of Earth

~Planets and alien landscapes that consume and mutate earthly
travelers

Monstrous Environmental Geographies:

~Polluted lakes and landscapes

~Landfills, oil spills and mining sites

~Melting icecaps and landforms at risk from global warming

~Land impacted by GM crops and associated experimentation

~Sites of starvation, disaster and pestilence

~De-militarized zones and no-man’s lands

Monstrous Religious Sites & Ritualistic Monstrosity:

~Armageddon, Apocalypse and final battlegrounds

~Hell, the Underworld and Valhalla

~Eden, Paradise, El Dorado, Shangri La

~Sites of religious ritual, sacrifice and burial

~Houses and haunts of murderers and serial killers

Monstrous Political Environments

~The land of the enemy and the other

~Sites of attack and retaliation.

~Sites of revolution and protest

~Landscapes of incarceration

~Border crossings

~Magical realist landscapes of escape

~Ghettos, shanty towns and relocation sites

~Urban and rural, cities, towns and villages and regional and
national prejudice

Monstrous Landscapes of Conflict:

~Battlefields and military graveyards

~Concentration camps and sites of genocide

~Minefields and sites of damage, destruction and ruin

~Arsenals, bunkers and military experimentation

Uncanny Geographical Temporalities:

~Old buildings in new surroundings

~Buildings with too much, and those without, memory

~Soulless Architecture

~Ideological architecture, palaces, museums etc

~Places held in time, UNESCO sites and historical and listed
buildings

~Old towns and New towns, rich and poor

~Appearing and disappearing towns/regions, eg., Brigadoon, Silent
Hill.

Monsters on the Move:

~Contagion, scouring and infectious landscapes

~Monsters and mobile technologies: phone, video, cars, planes,
computers etc

~Fluid identities, fluid places

~Touring Monstrosities, dreamscapes and infernal topologies

This project will run concurrently with our project on Apocalypse – we welcome any papers considering the problems or addressing issues on Monstrous Geographies and Apocalypse for a cross-over panel. We also welcome pre-formed panels on any aspect of monstrous geographies or in relation to crossover panel(s).

300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 27th February 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 25th May 2012.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords

E-mails should be entitled: Monstrous Geographies Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in
cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Jessica Rapson
Goldsmiths University,
London,
United Kingdom

Rob Fisher
Network Founder & Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Freeland, Oxfordshire
United Kingdom

The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume. Some papers may also be invited for inclusion in the Journal of Monsters and the Monstrous.

For further details of the project, please click here.

For further details of the conference, please click here.

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.

CFP: 1st Global Conference: Apocalypse: Imagining the End

Thursday 19th July – Saturday 21st July 2012

Mansfield College, Oxford

Call for Papers:

From Christian concept of the “Apocalypse” to the Hindu notions of the Kali Yuga, visions of destruction and fantasies of the “end times” have a long history. One purpose of the conference is to explore these ideas by situating them in context – historical, literary, cultural, political, and economic (to name a few). However, the modern period is especially marked by a mixed sense of concern and fascination with apocalypse, and today we are surrounded by scenarios of imminent destruction and annihilation. The second aim of conference is therefore to examine today’s widespread fascination the apocalyptic thought, and to understand its appeal across broad sections of contemporary society around the world.

Papers, reports, work-in-progress, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on issues related to (but not limited to) the following themes:

* Decline, Collapse, and Decay

* The Second Coming

* The Hindu Kali Yuga

* Sex at the End of Time

* Ironic and/or Anti-Apocalyptic Thinking

* Utopia, Redemption and Rebirth

* Intentional Communities as Communities of the End Times

* Selling the Apocalypse, Commodifying Disaster, and Marketing the End Times

* Death Tourism and Disaster Capitalism

* The Age of Terror

* Global Warming and Its Denial

* Zombies, Vampires, and Werewolves in Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

* Disaster Fiction/Movies

* History as Apocalypse

* 2012

* Remembering and Reliving the Collapse of the Western Roman Empire

* Technology and Mass Destruction

This project will run concurrently with our project on Monstrous Geographies we welcome any papers considering the problems or addressing issues on Apocalypse: Imagining the End and Monstrous Geographies for a cross-over panel. We also welcome pre-formed panels on any aspect of tmonstrous geographies or in relation to crossover panel(s). Papers will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 17th February 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be
submitted by Friday 23rd May 2012. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords.

E-mails should be entitled: Apocalypse Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Charles W. Nuckolls
Department of Anthropology,
Brigham Young University,
USA

Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Freeland, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

The conference is part of the ‘Ethos’ series of research projects, which in turn belong to the Critical Issues programmes of ID.Net. It aims to bring together people from different areas and
interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and challenging. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be published in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into 20-25 page chapters for
publication in a themed dialogic ISBN hard copy volume.

For further details of the project, please click here.

For further details of the conference, please click here.

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.

Wednesday 23 March 2011

CFP: 1st Global Conference: Space and Place

Wednesday 14th September – Friday 16th September 2011
Mansfield College,
Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers

Questions of space and place affect the very way in which weexperience and recreate the world. Wars are fought over both real and imagined spaces; boundaries are erected against the “Other”constructed a lived landscape of division and disenfranchisement; and ideology constructs a national identity based upon the dialectics of inclusion and exclusion. The construction of space and place is also a fundamental aspect of the creative arts either through the art of reconstruction of a known space or in establishing a relationship between the audience and the performance. Politics, power and knowledge are also fundamental components of space as is the relationship between visibility and invisibility.

This new inter- and multi-disciplinary conference project seeks to explore these and other topics and open up a dialogue about the politics and practices of space and place. We seek submissions from a range of disciplines including archaeology, architecture, urban geography, the visual and creative arts, philosophy and politics and also actively encourage practitioners and non-academics with an interest in the topic to participate. We welcome traditional papers, preformed panels of papers, workshop proposals and other forms of performance – recognising that different disciplines express themselves in different mediums.

Submissions are sought on any aspect of space and place, including the following:

1. Theorising Space and Place
* Philosophies and space and place
*Surveillance, sight and the panoptic structures and spaces of contemporary life
* Rhizomatics and/or postmodernist constructions of space as a “meshwork of paths” (Ingold: 2008)
* The relationship between spatiality and temporality/space as a temporal-spatial event (Massey: 2005)
* The language and semiotics of space and place

2. Situated Identities
* Gendered spaces including the tension between domestic and public spheres
* Work spaces and hierarchies of power
* Geographies and archaeologies of space including Orientalism and Occidentalism
* Ethnic spaces/ethnicity and space
* Disabled spaces/places
* Queer places and spaces

3. Contested spaces
* The politics and ideology of constructions and discourses of spaceand place including the construction of gated communities as aresponse to real/imagined terrorism.
* The relationship between power, knowledge and the construction of place and space
* Territorial wars, both real and imagined.
* The relationship between the global and the local
* Barriers, obstructions and disenfranchisement in the construction of lived spaces
* Space and place from colonisation to globalisation
* Real and imagined maps/cartographies of place
* Transnational and translocal places

4. Representations of place and space
* Embodied/disembodied spaces
* Lived spaces and the architecture of identity
* Haunted spaces/places and non-spaces
* Set design and the construction of space in film, television and theatre
* Authenticity and the reproduction/representation of place in the creative arts
* Technology and developments in the representation of space including new media technologies and 3D technologies of viewing
* Future cities/futurology and space
* Representations of the urban and the city in the media and creative arts * Space in computer games

300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 22nd April 2011. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper shouldbe submitted by Friday 22nd July 2011.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order: a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract

E-mails should be entitled: SP Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might belost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs:

Shona Hill & Shilinka Smith
Conference Leaders
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
New Zealand

Colette Balmain
Inter-Disciplinary.Net,
London,
United Kingdom

Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader,
Inter-Disciplinary.Net,
Oxfordshire,
United Kingdom.

The conference is part of the ‘Ethos’ series of researchprojects, which in turn belong to the Critical Issues programmes of ID.Net. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and challenging. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be published in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers maybe invited to go forward for development into 20-25 page chapters for publication in a themed dialogic ISBN hard copy volume.

For further details about the conference, please click here.

For further details about the project please click here.

Tuesday 8 February 2011

CFP: 4th Global Conference: Madness: Probing the Boundaries

Tuesday 27th September - Thursday 29th September 2011

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers

This inter-disciplinary research conference seeks to explore issues of madness across historical periods and within cultural, political and social contexts. We are also interested in exploring the place of madness in persons and interpersonal relationships and across a range of critical perspectives. Seeking to encourage innovative inter, multi and post disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from all disciplines, professions and vocations which struggle to understand the place of madness in the constitutions of persons, relationships and the complex interlacing of self and other.

In particular papers, workshops, presentations and pre-formed panel proposals are invited on any of the following themes:

1. The Value of Madness or Why is it that We Need Madness?
  • Critical explorations: beyond madness/sanity/insanity
  • Continuity and difference: always with us yet never quite the same
  • Repetition and novelty: the incessant emergence and re-emergence of madness
  • Profound attraction and desire; fear of the abyss and the radical unknown
  • Naming, defining and understanding the elusive

2. The Passion of Madness or Madness and the Emotions

  • Love as madness; uncontrollable passion; unrestrainable love
  • Passion and love as a remaking of life and self
  • Gender and madness; the feminine and the masculine
  • Anger, resentment, revenge, hate, evil
  • I would rather vomit, thank you; revulsion, badness and refusing to comply

3. The Boundaries of Madness or Resisting Normality

  • Madness, sanity and the insane
  • Being out of your mind, crazy, deranged... yet, perfectly sane
  • Deviating from the normal; defining the self against the normal
  • Control, self-control and the pull of the abyss
  • When the insane becomes normal; when evil reigns in social life

4. Lunatics and the Asylum or Power and the Politics of Madness

  • The social allure and fear of madness; the institutions of confining mad people
  • Servicing normality by castigating the insane and marginalizing lunatics
  • Medicine, psychiatry, psychology, law and the constructions of madness; madness as illness
  • Contributions of the social sciences to the making and the critique of the making of madness
  • Representations, explanations and the critique of madness from the humanities and the arts

5. Creativity, Critique and Cutting Edge

  • Madness as genius, outstanding, out of the ordinary, spectacularly brilliant
  • The art of madness; the science of madness
  • Music, painting, dance, theatre: it is crazy to think of art without madness
  • The language and communication of madness: who can translate?
  • Creation as an unfolding of madness

6. Unrestrained and Boundless or The Liberating Promise of Madness

  • Metaphors of feeling free, unrestrained, capable, lifted from reality
  • Madness as clear-sightedness, as opening up possibilities, as re-visioning of the world
  • The future, the prophetic, the unknown; the epic, the heroic and the tragic
  • The unreachable and untouchable knowledge of madness
  • The insanity of not loving madness

7. Lessons for Self and Other or Lessons for Life about and from Madness

  • Cultural and social constructions of madness; images of the mad, crazy, insane, lunatic, abnormal
  • What is real? Who defines reality? Learning from madness how to cope with reality
  • Recognising madness in oneself; relativising madness in others
  • Love, intimacy, care and the small spaces of madness
  • Critical and ethical implosions of normality and normalness; sane in insane places and insane in sane places

Papers will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes.

The 2011 meeting of Madness will run alongside the third of our projects on Strangers, Aliens and Foreigners and we anticipate holding sessions in common between the two projects. We welcome any papers or panels considering the problems or addressing issues that cross both projects.

Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 25th March 2011. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 22nd July 2011.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract

E-mails should be entitled: Madness Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Gonzalo Araoz
Project Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net and University of Cumbria, Cumbria, United Kingdom

Maria Vaccarella
Hub Leader, Making Sense of:, Inter-Disciplinary.Net and Marie Curie Research Fellow, King's College, London

Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net, Freeland, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

The conference is part of the 'Making Sense Of:' series of research projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.

For further details about the project, please click here.

For further details about the conference, please click here.

Monday 7 February 2011

CFP: 1st Global Conference: Beauty: Exploring Critical Issues

Monday 19th September - Wednesday 21st September 2011

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers

"The first real problem I faced in my life was that of beauty," wrote the poet-playwright-novelist Yukio Mishima, in Temple of the Golden Pavilion as he pondered beauty's relevance, meanings, and the spell it cast over him. Beauty is complicated by the word beauty itself. Limited or overloaded, beauty has been celebrated as essential or denounced as irrelevant. The existence of beauty has been challenged, called a search for Eldorado. Some find no beauty in life, a recurring motif in subcultures, music lyrics, and the notes left by suicides. Others dismiss that perspective, arguing that common sense, experience, and multidisciplinary research reveal the reality and centrality of beauty in our lives. But what exactly is beauty? Speculations about the nature of beauty are various and contradictory. Some philosophers have argued that it will remain a mystery. Other theorists have held less modest beliefs, arguing that beauty expresses a basic spiritual reality, has universal physical properties, or is an experience and construction of mind and culture. The beauty 'project' will explore, assess, and map a number of key core themes. Papers, presentations, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on issues to any of the following themes:

  • Defining beauty
  • Studying beauty
  • Power of beauty
  • History of beauty
  • Politics of beauty
  • Experience of beauty
  • Pursuit of beauty
  • Expression of beauty
  • The quality of beauty
  • Beauty and emotion
  • Look of beauty
  • Making beauty
  • Beauty in nature
  • Beauty and desire
  • Beauty and culture
  • Beauty subcultures
  • Anti-beauty movements
  • Beauty and social stratification: gender, sexuality, class, race, ethnicity, age, etc.
  • Beauty, consumer culture, and cultural capital
  • Beauty collectors
  • Beauty business
  • Representations of beauty
  • Beauty in a globalized world
  • Beauty in the 21st century

Papers will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes.

The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. Papers will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 25th March 2011. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 8th July 2011. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract

Emails should be entitled: Beauty Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Jacque Lynn Foltyn
Professor of Sociology, Dept. of Social Sciences, College of Letters and Sciences, National University, CA, USA

Dr. Rob Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House, Wroslyn Road
Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HR

The conference is part of the Critical Issues series of research projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.

For further details about the project, please click here.

For further details about the conference, please click here.

CFP: 9th Global Conference: Monsters and the Monstrous

Saturday 10th - Tuesday 13th September 2011

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers

This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary project seeks to investigate and explore the enduring influence and imagery of monsters and the monstrous on human culture throughout history. In particular, the project will have a dual focus with the intention of examining specific 'monsters' as well as assessing the role, function and consequences of persons, actions or events identified as 'monstrous'. The history and contemporary cultural influences of monsters and monstrous metaphors will also be examined.

Papers, reports, work-in-progress, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on issues related to any of the following themes:

  • The 'monster' through history
  • Civilization, monsters and the monstrous
  • Children, childhood, stories and monsters
  • Comedy: funny monsters and/or making fun of monsters (e.g. Monsters vs. Aliens, the Addams Family)
  • Monstrous Avatars or objects
  • Monsters and subjectivity
  • Monsters and Sexuality
  • Making monsters; monstrous births; childhood
  • Mutants and mutations and freaks
  • Technologies of the monstrous (including Role Playing Games)
  • Horror, fear and scare
  • Do monsters kill because they are monstrous or are they monstrous because they kill?
  • How critical to the definition of 'monster' is death or the threat of death?
  • Human 'monsters' and 'monstrous' acts? e.g. perverts, paedophiles and serial killers
  • Revolution and monsters
  • Enemies (political/social/military) and monsters
  • Iconography of the monstrous
  • The popularity of the modern monsters; the Mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein, Vampires, Cannibals
  • The monster in literature
  • The monster in media (television, cinema, radio, internet)
  • Religious depictions of the monstrous
  • Metaphors and the monstrous
  • The problematic attraction and admiration of monsters
  • Monstrous (In)Humanity/(In)Human Monstrosity
  • Monstrous Politics
  • Critical Theories on the Monstrous

Papers can be accepted which deal solely with specific monsters. This project will run concurrently with our project on Space and Place - we welcome any papers considering the problems or addressing issues on Monsters and Space and Place for a cross-over panel. We also welcome pre-formed panels on any aspect of the monstrous or in relation to crossover panel(s).

300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 25th March 2011. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 8th July 2011.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract

E-mails should be entitled: Monsters Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Sorcha Ni Fhlainn
Hub Leader, Evil Hub, Inter-Disciplinary.Net
School of English, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

Rob Fisher
Network Founder & Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Freeland, Oxfordshire
United Kingdom

Stephen Morris
Hub Leader
Independent Scholar
New York, USA

The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBoook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume. Some papers may also be invited for inclusion in the Journal of Monsters and the Monstrous.

For further details of the project, please click here.

For further details of the conference, please click here.

CFP: 1st Global Conference: Gender and Love

Monday 19th September - Wednesday 21st September 2011

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers

The study of gender is an interdisciplinary field intertwined with feminism, queer studies, sexuality studies, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies (to name just some relevant fields).

This project calls for the consideration of gender in relation to various kinds of love (with regard, for example, to self, spirit, religion, family, friendship, ethics, nation, globalisation, environment, and so on). How do the interactions of gender and love promote particular performances of gender; conceptions of individual and collective identity; formations of community; notions of the human; understandings of good and evil? These are just some of the questions that occupy this project.

This conference welcomes research papers which seek to understand the interaction and interconnection between the concepts of love and gender; and whether, when, how and in what ways the two concepts conceive and construct each other.

Papers, presentations, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on issues related to any of the following themes:

1. Love as a Disciplinary Force: Productions of Gender
  • Love, Gender, Essentialism and Ontology
  • Love, Gender and Narrative
  • Love, Gender and the Law
  • Love, Gender and Religion

2. Norms, Normativity, Intimacy

  • Rituals and Rites
  • Conventions, Commitments and Obligations
  • Choices and Respect; Loyalty and Trust
  • Transgressions and Taboos

3. Gendered Yearnings

  • Personhood and Identity
  • Body Politics and Belonging
  • Love and Gender Performativity
  • Transgender Desires
  • Queer Kinship Formations
  • Queer Conceptualisations of the State

4. Global Perspectives on Gender and Love

  • Transformations of Intimacy in a Global World
  • Sex and Choice
  • Reproductive Rights
  • Sexual Citizenship
  • Gender, Love and Trans/Nationalism

5. Representations of Gender and Love

  • Aesthetics and Intelligibility
  • Gendered Narrations of Love
  • Media, Gender and Love

The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. Papers will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 25th March 2011. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 8th July 2011. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract

Emails should be entitled: GL Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs:

Dikmen Yakali Camoglu
Department of Communication Sciences
Dogus University, Istanbul
Turkey

Dr. Rob Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House, Wroslyn Road
Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HR

The conference is part of the 'At the Interface' series of research projects run by ID.Net. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and challenging. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into 20-25 page chapters for publication in a themed dialogic ISBN hard copy volume.

For further details about the project, please click here.

For further details about the conference, please click here.

CFP: 3rd Global Conference: Heroes and Villains: Justice and Punishment

Saturday 10th September - Monday 12th September 2011

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers

A villain (also known in film and literature as the "bad guy", "black hat", or "heavy") is an "evil" character in a story, whether a historical narrative or, especially, a work of fiction. The villain usually is the antagonist, the character who tends to have a negative effect on other characters. A femae villain is sometimes called a villainess (often to differentiate her from a male villain). Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines villain as "a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or a crime; scoundrel; or a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot".

Indicative themes for research and development will include (but are not limited to):

  • How do we define a villainous act?
  • What is a villainous act? How do we define it?
  • When we look at actions which are deemed and judged to be right/wrong, good/bad, how are such actions classified?
  • What is a crime?
  • How are crimes classified?
  • What disciplines are needed to uncover, discover and identify a crime?
  • How do we define crime scenes, ex. Scenes of atrocity, "crimes against humanity"?
  • What do we learn about our view of "crime" via the depiction of forensic investigations of crime scenes?
  • How does the idea of a criminal "underworld" which exists beneath, underneath, below the everyday world influence us?
  • Why are villains more intriguing/interesting/attractive than heroes?
  • How is the perception of crime and villainy shaped by space, place AND time?
  • Does villainy belong to the realm of the night?
  • Does villainy belong under cover of darkness?
  • Does criminality and villainy depend on being hidden or concealed?
  • Who are the people charged with doing the investigation, detection, sleuthing?
  • What do villains do and why do they do it?
  • What tools/skills do they have/use?
  • Does the villain create the person who catches him/her - i.e. a nemesis?
  • Does the existence of a villain create the need for a hero?
  • What kind of personality/character traits/deviance creates a villain?
  • What is the nature of the criminal mind?
  • Is it differentiated from the minds of those who do good?
  • What is the character of the heroic mind?
  • Why do good? Why be a hero?
  • Why side with/dispense justice?
  • Why do we have 'criminal' psychology?
  • Why don't we have 'goody two-shoes' psychology?
  • How do notions of responsibility and diminished responsibility factor into the debate?
  • How is crime defined by punishment?
  • What are the causes of crime/villainy?
  • What are the consequences of crime/villainy?
  • How does fear define crime/villainy?
  • Can villains actually be heroes?
  • Can villains be portrayed as sympathetic or gain our sympathy?
  • Is the villain sometimes on the side of right? Can criminality be an attempt at social justice against unjust regimes?
  • Are heroes made villainous by blind allegiances to moral codes?
  • Must 'justice' involve 'punishment' of the villain?
  • Is punishment of the criminal required by 'justice'?
  • How does the punishment of the hero increase his heroism or the lack of punishment increase the villainy of the villain?
  • How does the depiction of heroes/villains evolve?
  • How does such a depiction shape or reflect society?

Papers will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes.

The 2011 meeting of Heroes and Villains: Justice and Punishment will run alongside our project on The Patient and we anticipate holding sessions in common between the two projects. We welcome any papers considering the problems or addressing the issues that straddle these two themes.

Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 25th March 2011. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 22nd July 2011.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract

Emails should be entitled: Villains Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Sorcha Ni Fhlainn
Evil Hub Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

The conference is part of the 'At the Interface' series of research projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.

For further details about the project please click here.

For further details about the conference please click here.

CFP: 5th Global Conference: Fear, Horror and Terror

Tuesday 6th September 2011 - Thursday 8th September 2011

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary conference seeks to examine and explore issues which lie at the interface of fear, horror and terror. In particular the project is interested in inverstigating the various contexts of fear, horror and terror, and assessing issues surrounding the artistic, cinematic, literary, moral, social, (geo)political, philosophical, psychological and religious significance of them, both individually and together.

We are also looking towards a 'track' theme in the area of the relationship between fear, horror and terror and the audio-visual (sight/sound/silence) this year. We invite proposals on any area listed below that relates to this track theme, as well as any areas related to the conference. This thematic track is envisioned to develop with each subsequent meeting.

In addition to academic analysis, we welcome the submission of case studies or other approaches from those involved with its practice, such as people in religious orders, therapises, victims of events which have been provoked by experiences of fear, horror and terror - for example, lawyers or others involved with law enforcement, medical practitioners, or fiction authors whose work aims to evoke these reactions.

Papers, reports, work-in-progress and workshops are invited on issues related to any of the following themes:

1. The Contexts of Fear, Horror and Terror
  • case studies
  • professions dealing with the Fear, Horror and Terror (Therapists, Clergy, Lawyers, Law enforcement etc.)
  • creating and experiencing fear, horror and terror
  • the properties of fear, horror and terror
  • contexts of fear, horror and terror
  • the language of fear, horror and terror
  • the meaning of fear, horror and terror
  • the significance of fear, horror and terror

2. At the Interface of Fear, Horror and Terror

  • the role of fear, horror and terror
  • emotional releases (pleasant or negative) achieved by Fear, Horror and Terror
  • techniques of fear, horror and terror
  • marketing fear, horror and terror
  • recreational fear, horror and terror
  • aesthetic fear, horror and terror
  • the temperature of fear, horror and terror
  • the sound of fear, horror and terror
  • silence as a strategic subversion of the operation of fear, horror and terror
  • fear, horror and terror and the visible/invisible

3. Representations of Fear, Horror and Terror and:

  • the imagination
  • pleasure
  • art, cinema, theatre, media and the creative arts
  • survival horror video games
  • literature (including children's stories)
  • the other
  • technology
  • hope and despair
  • relations to anxiety, disgust, dread, loathing
  • hope and the future
  • the sublime

For 2011, the Fear, Horror and Terror project will meet alongside our project on Making Sense of: Health, Illness and Disease. It is our intention to create cross-over sessions between the two groups - and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between health, illness and disease and fear, horror and terror. Themes could include: fear and global threats to health (swine flu, bird flu, SARS, for example), or horror and disease (fear of our bodies, contagion, HIV/AIDS, for example), or terror and biological warfare. Papers will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes.

300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 25th March 2011. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 22nd July 2011. 300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract

Emails should be entitled: FHT Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times New Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Colette Balmain
Independent Scholar, London, United Kingdom

Sorcha Ni Fhlainn
School of English, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net, Freeland, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

The conference is part of the At the Interface series of research projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.

For further details about the project, please click here.

For further details about the conference, please click here.

CFP: 3rd Global Conference: Fashion: Exploring Critical Issues

Thursday 22nd September - Sunday 25th September 2011

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers

Fashion is a statement, a stylised form of expression which displays and begins to define a person, a place, a class, a time, a religion, a culture, and even a nation. This interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary conference seeks to explore the historical, social, cultural, psychological and artistic phenomenon of fashion. Fashion lies at the very heart of persons, their sense of identity and the communities in which they live. Individuals emerge as icons of beauty and style; cities are identified as centres of fashion. The project will assess the history and meanings of fashion; evaluate its expressions in politics, music, film, media and consumer culture; determine its effect on gender, sexuality, class, race, age and identity; examine the practice, tools, and business of fashion; consider the methodologies of studying fashion; and explore future directions and trends.

Papers, presentations, workshops and pre-formed are invited on issues related to any of the following themes:

1. Understanding Fashion
  • Fashion, Style, Taste-Making, and Chic
  • Fashion and Fashionability
  • Fashion and Zeitgeist
  • History of Fashion
  • Fashion Theory
  • Fashion, Politics, and Ideology: e.g. 'message' fashion; fashion as a political platform, fashion as defiance; graffiti as a fashion statement

2. Studying Fashion

  • Tools and Methodology; disciplines and perspectives; professions and trades
  • Documentation
  • Identifying, defining and refining concepts: e.g. 'style', 'fashion', 'look', 'fad', 'trend', 'in & out'
  • 'Chasing' Fashion: Studying fashion collections, archives, and museums
  • Fashion collections; fashion archives
  • Designers and Muses

3. Cultures of Fashion

  • Fashion in the City
  • Men and Fashion; Children and Fashion
  • Fashion Subcultures: e.g. pets and fashion, sports and fashion, supermodels, The Red Carpet, celebrity, vintage, glamour, gothic, etc.
  • Fashion and Nostalgia
  • Fashion and Professional Dress: e.g. Fashion and the Law
  • Ethical Issues in Fashion: e.g. cruelty free fashion; PETA anti-fur movement; slave labour. sweatshops, child labour; the growing 'fakes' market

4. Fashion and Identity

  • Fashion, Culture, and the Human Body (e.g., beauty standards, body art, weight, plastic surgery)
  • Self-fashioning: e.g., fashion as performance; body modifications, including make-up, hair design, piercings, tattoos, body sculpting, plastic surgery
  • Fashion and Social Status: Gender, Sexuality, Class, Race, Age and Fashion
  • Fashion and National Identities
  • Fashion and Transnational Identities
  • Fashion and Religion

5. Fashion, Representation, and Evolving Patterns of Communication & Criticism

  • Fashion Photography, Magazines, Blogs, and Twitter
  • Fashion Icons
  • Fashion, Films and the Performing Arts
  • Fashion and Music
  • Fashion and Fantasy
  • Fashion and Television

6. Fashion Practice

  • Fashion and Curatorial Practice: e.g. possibilities and problems of creating fashion Archives; creating and accessing private and public fashion collections
  • Fashion Design
  • Fashion Specialists: e.g. pattern makers, fitters, embroiderers, tailors, textile experts
  • Fashion Economies and the business of fashion, e.g. traditional markets, the luxury industry, the design industry, producing and displaying fashion (building showrooms, production sites, runway)
  • Beyond Dress: e.g. architecture, food, furniture, kitchens, perfume
  • Style Guides and Makeover Shows

7. The Future of Fashion

  • Trends and Cycles; predicting fashion
  • The Materials of Fashion: e.g. eco-fashion, intelligent textiles, nano-technology, etc.
  • The rise of the Accessory as the Driving Force of Fashion: e.g. handbags and shoes
  • Branding the Mass Market, and Consumerism: e.g. designer collections at H & M, Top Shop, M & S, Target, Wal-Mart
  • Celebrities as Fashion Designers: e.g. J LO, Jessica Simpson, Kate Moss, Victoria Beckham, P Diddy
  • Anti-Fashion

Papers will be accepted which deal with relate areas and themes.

The 2011 meeting of Fashion - Exploring Critical Issues will run alongside our project on Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging and we anticipate holding sessions in common between the two prjects. We welcome any papers considering the problems of addressing issues of Fashion and Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging.

Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 4th March 2011. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 22nd July 2011.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formates, following this order:

a) author(s) b) affiliation c) email address d) title of abstract e) body of abstract

Emails should be entitled: Fashion Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times New Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs:

Jacque Lynn Foltyn
Chair, Dept. of Social Sciences, College of Letters and Sciences, National University, CA, USA

Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net, Freeland, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

This conference is part of the Critical Issues series of research projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.

For further details about the project click here.

For further details about the conference click here.