Mansfield College, Oxford
Call for Papers
Mapping the field of the erotic is a complex and frustrating endeavour; as something which permeates lived experience, interpersonal relationships, intellectual reflection, aesthetic tastes and sensibilities, the erotic is clearly multi-layered and requires a plethora of approaches, insights and perspectives if we are to better to understand, appreciate and define it.
This inter- and trans- disciplinary project seeks to explore critical issues in relation to eroticism and the erotic through its history, its emergence in human development, both individual and phylogenetic, as well as its expression in national and cultural histories across the world, including issues of transgression and censorship. The project will also explore erotic imagination and its representation in art, art history, literature, film and music. These explorations inevitably touch on the relationship between sexualities, gender and bodies, along with questions concerning the perverse, fetishism and fantasy, pornography and obscenity.
Papers, presentations, workshops and pre-formed panels are also invited on any of the following themes:
* the erotic and identity
* disability, ethnicity, gender, class and eroticism
* the erotic in education and the education of the erotic
* eroticism in popular culture and media: cinema, tv, theatre, radio, newspapers and magazines, the internet in all its forms
* the erotic in literature and on the screen exploitative eroticism, e.g., pornography
* the erotic, ethics and philosophy the eroticised (or de-eroticised) body
* absence, control and excess of the erotic
* the erotic and sexuality: is there a difference, and if so, what? the erotic in representation
* the erotic and (post- neo-)colonialism
* eroticism in the making of the exotic
* the erotic in mythology
* the erotic and the non-human’ (vampires, zombies, cyborgs, etc)
* eroticism and technology: sex toys and other turn-ons
This project will run concurrently with our project on Monsters and the Monstrous – we welcome any papers considering the problems or addressing issues on Monsters and The Erotic for a cross-over panel. We also welcome pre-formed panels on any aspect of the monstrous or in relation to crossover panel(s).
We welcome submissions from within specific disciplinary boundaries, but we are also particularly interested in interdisciplinary contributions that balance the scope of insight that disciplines bring with the limitations that disciplinary boundaries create in failing to recognise cross-disciplinary connections, which neglect important historical and cultural perspectives on the development of the ‘erotic’ as a locus of attention. Consequently, we are particularly keen to encourage submissions that are not subsumed within disciplines, but cut across and between disciplinary vocabularies to provide new synergies, domains and inter-disciplinary possibilities. We warmly welcome proposals which go beyond traditional paper presentations and encompass also panels, performances and workshops.
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 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: The Erotic 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:
Natalia Kaloh Vid
University of Maribor,
Slovenia
Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Freeland, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
The conference is part of the Gender and Sexuality series of 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.
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.
