CFP: 2nd Global Conference: Beauty: Exploring Critical Issues

Friday 21st September – Sunday 23rd September 2012

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 El Dorado. 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.

These will include:

1. Understanding Beauty
- Defining beauty
- Theorising beauty
- Power of beauty
- History of beauty
- Politics of beauty
- Culture of beauty
- Religion of beauty

2. Experiences of and Representations of Beauty
- Pursuit of beauty
- Expressions of beauty
- Appearance of beauty
- Making beauty
- Documenting beauty
- Emotion and beauty
- Beauty and seduction
- Representing beauty in art, literature and popular culture

3. Beauty and Nature
-Beauty and the natural world
-Beauty and the Sublime
-Beauty and desire
-Science and mathematics of beauty
-Medical aspects of beauty

4. Beauty, Culture, and Identity
- Beauty subcultures
- Beauty and social stratification: gender, sexuality, class, race, ethnicity, age, etc.
- Beauty collectors
- Beauty specialists
- Beauty disciples
- Enhancing the body beautiful: cosmetics, tattoos, piercings, surgical interventions, and other forms of body modification

5. The Business of Beauty
-Beauty and consumer culture
-Beauty and cultural capital
-Beauty professions and trades
-Beauty cities
-Beauty marketing and forecasting
-Professional beauties (models, actors, celebrities, beauty pageants etc.)
-Fashion and beauty
-Glamour and beauty

6. Diminishing the Beautiful
-Beauty and transgression
-Beauty and ugliness
-Beauty and aging
-Defiling the beautiful
-Destroying the beautiful
-Beauty and death
-Beauty and decay

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

The 2012 meeting of Beauty will run alongside a second 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

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: 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). 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 Jacque Lynn Foltyn
Project Leader
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.

The Steam King

Recently, I've been working as a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant on a project involving searching databases of nineteenth-century newspapers. Though it has nothing to do with the project, I've become quite enamored with the following poem by Edward P. Mead, which was originally published in The Northern Star and reprinted in Engels' Conditions of the Working Class in England. I was also pleased to see it discussed in a recent conference paper, at the De Montfort The Monster Inside Us, The Monsters Around Us conference.

If you're interested in the industrial revolution, and the ways in which some people of the time viewed it, or if you're a steampunk writer or fan, I think you'll enjoy...

The Steam King by Edward P. Mead
Originally published in The Northern Star, and Leeds General Advertiser (vol. 6, February 1843); reproduced in Engels, Conditions of the Working Class in England (1845)

There is a King, and a ruthless King;
Not a King of the poet’s dream;
But a tyrant fell, white slaves know well,
And that ruthless King is Steam.

He hath an arm, an iron arm,
And tho’ he hath but one,
In that mighty arm there is a charm,
That millions hath undone.

Like the ancient Moloch grim, his sire
In Himmon’s vale that stood,
His bowels are of living fire,
And children are his food.

His priesthood are a hungry band,
Blood-thirsty, proud, and bold;
’Tis they direct his giant hand,
In turning blood to gold.

For filthy gain in their servile chain
All nature’s rights they bind;
They mock at lovely woman’s pain,
And to manly tears are blind.

The sighs and groans of Labour’s sons
Are music in their ear,
And the skeleton shades, of lads and maids,
In the Steam King’s hell appear.

Those hells upon earth, since the Steam King’s birth,
Have scatter’d around despair;
For the human mind for Heav’n design’d,
With the body, is murdered there.

Then down with the King, the Moloch King,
Ye working millions all;
O chain his hand, or our native land
Is destin’d by him to fall.

And his Satraps abhor’d, each proud Mill Lord,
Now gorg’d with gold and blood,
Must be put down by the nation’s frown,
As well as their monster God.

CFP: 10th Global Conference: Monsters and the Monstrous

Monday 10th September – Thursday 13th September 2012

Mansfield College, Oxford

Call for Papers:

For this 10th Anniversary of the Monsters and the Monstrous Project we are looking forward to the future, and so are starting from Franco Moretti’s comment that “the monster expresses the anxiety that the future will be monstrous.” Our focus then will be on Monsters of the Future, no matter from which time or place that future is viewed. So whether the present is Medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Romantic, Modernist or Post Modernist it is the ways that, as further noted by Moretti, a “new order of beings” makes manifest the terror of an unknown and uncontrollable tomorrow and the forms these creatures take.

As such the monster becomes not the return of the repressed but an immanent Imaginary that constantly harasses and harangues the borders of the Real. Just as Grendel, Caliban, Frankenstein’s Monster, Dr. Moreau’s creatures and the clones from Blade Runner can be seen to manifest a hybrid future that blurs the borders between human/non-human, the humane and the in-humane, the converse is equally true where the tomorrow they envision is as much degenerative as it is evolutionary. Here, as in Wells’ the Time Machine, or Lovecraft’s Mountains of Madness, the future is in fact a portal to the past and that the true anxiety we feel is not for inevitable change but for a monstrous stasis that, like the vampire, will lock us forever in a never-ending present (not unlike Wittgenstein’s immortality of the never-ending moment). This then is a call for monstrous visions of the future, whether it is a new and alien land or one that is only too familiar; for the Post-Human, the Non-Human and the Anti-Human, the Robot, the Golem and the Cyborg, the Pure-bred, the Hybrid and the Mudblood, the Unborn, the Unliving and the Undead.

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

Monstrous Places/Spaces of the Future:
~The city, the town, the home of the future
~Environmental disasters, global warming, nuclear meltdowns, plagues and terra incognito
~Dystopias/utopias
~New Worlds, forgotten worlds, undiscovered worlds: Atlantis, Shangri-la, Eldorado

Human Monsters:
~Medical experimentation, cloning, reproduction
~Cyborgs, robots and inanimate bodies made real
~Hybrids, both real and supernatural, post-human and beyond human
~Evolution and degeneration
~Actual bodies and supernatural bodies.
~Monsterisation of the human body: fragmentation, surgical modification and bodies without organs

Monstrous Aliens & Alien Invaders:
~Invasions of unknown beings, conquistadors, Martians, heavenly or alien life forms
~Humans as invaders, Starship Troopers, Iain M. Banks’ The Culture
~Parasites, diseases, flora and influences

Monstrous Generations:
~The glorification of Youth, Logan’s Run and In Time
~Monstrous adolescents
~Demonic children and alien babies
~Middle-aged zombies and serial killers, possessed grandparents
~Romantacising the Monster: Paranormal Romance, dark lovers and heroes, Twilight, Vampire Diaries and Dexter.

Monstrous Politics:
~Protest, revolt and revolution
~Zombie Capitalism and undead labour
~Class, status and the aristocracy
~Post colonialism, diasporas and migration
~Ageism, sexism, health-ism and separatism e.g, District 9, Metropolis, Matrix, Daybreakers

Papers can be accepted which deal solely with specific monsters. This project will run concurrently with our project on The Erotic – 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).

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: 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). 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

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

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

Simon Bacon
Poznan,
Poland

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: Reframing Punishment

Monday 3rd September – Wednesday 5th September 2012

Mansfield College, Oxford

Call for Papers:

The concept of punishment has a long history and diverse cultural, social and criminological meanings. Research and debate is often focused on the offender, the offence, the state and legal codification. In contrast, this project seeks to re-frame these debates in order to combine the insights they produce with broader cultural meanings, social representations and ritualistic or other activities. Therefore, the aim of the project is to develop different ways of understanding the penetration and complexity of shared understandings of punishment from a variety of perspectives, approaches and practitioner experiences. Reframing the debate might be done through papers aimed the personal or social levels. We encourage unique approaches to punishment in terms of boundary control, whether it is control of evil, the politically subversive, the economically disruptive, or punishment in pursuit of system stability or marginalisation of liminality. Papers might also cover punishment issues relating to defining the contours of disgust, desire, dread, or the abject. They may even consider the operation and consequences of both wrongdoing and various forms of societal/social punishment. Accordingly the project welcomes papers, work-in-progress and pre-formed panels from diverse areas of study such as the humanities, social sciences, business, science, law schools and the arts, as well as practitioners.

Papers, presentations, reports and workshops are invited on issues broadly related to any of the following themes:

* Cultural (including cross-/inter-cultural) notions of what constitutes punishment

* Religious/spiritual punishment, asceticism, whether self-inflicted or externally imposed

* Pain, fear and corporal punishment

* Punishment, public services and performance measurement

* Punishment and child development/child rearing

* Punishment rituals

* Punishing the body for pleasure (modification, BDSM, smoking, etc)

* Punishing the body in the name of beauty and fashion

* Representations of punishment in contemporary times and across historical periods

* Theories of punishment and deviants: What is punishment’s purpose? Ideal methods? Is punishment limited to humans? What about animals or nature, and in some societies, why is imprisonment such a key form of punishment?

* Proportionality, materiality and other concepts used to administer punishment(s)

* Shame, forgiveness, vengeance, retribution and punishment

* The limits of punishment: whether controlled by the state, institutions or groups, including sports groups, cults, gangs, the military, etc.

* Shifting social attitudes toward punishment

* Self-harm, abuse and control

* Space and its role in enhancing or ameliorating punishment

* The relationship(s) between discipline and punishment

Papers on any other topic related to the theme will also be considered.

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

This project will run concurrently with our project on Space and Place– we welcome any papers considering the problems or addressing issues on Reframing Punishment and Space and Place for a cross-over panel. The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. 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 all 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 key words

E-mails should be entitled: PUNISH 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.

Joint Organising Chairs:

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

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

The conference is part of the Probing the Boundaries programme of research projects. It aims 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 will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers maybe invited for development for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s).

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: 6th Global Conference: Fear, Horror and Terror

Friday 7th September 2012 – Sunday 9th September 2012

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers:

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 investigating 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.

In addition to academic analysis, we welcome the submission from practitioners, such as people in religious orders, therapists, or victims of events which have been provoked by experiences of fear, horror and terror – for example, social workers, those involved with the legal system, 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, etc.)
- creating and experiencing fear, horror and terror
- the properties of fear, horror and terror
- contexts of fear, horror and terror
- the language, meaning and 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 body, temperature, touch, taste or sound and 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 or the sublime
- pleasure, hope, despair, anxiety, disgust, dread, loathing
- art, cinema, theatre, media and the creative arts
- survival horror video games
- literature (including children’s stories)
- the other
- technology
- the future

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

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

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 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: 3rd Global Conference: Space and Place

Monday 3rd September – Thursday 6th September 2012

Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers:

Questions of space and place affect the very way in which we experience 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 econstruction 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 practioners 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 space and place including the construction of gated communities as a response 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

Papers on any other topic related to the theme will also be considered.

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

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: 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). 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 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:

Matt Melia
Conference Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Kingston University, United Kingdom

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

CFP: 7th Global Conference: The Erotic

Tuesday 11th September – Thursday 13th September 2012

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.

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: 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.

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: Preternature 2.2

Monstrophy: The Academic Study of Monsters

''Monstrophy'' is a term referring to the academic study of monsters as representational and conceptual categories, which has gained recent currency in several related fields of study (literary and cultural history, sociological theories of identity and difference, et al.), as well as in a number of recent books and articles about monsters as subjects of theoretical interpretation. Etymologically derived from Latin ''mōnstrum'' (meaning prodigy, ominous sign, monstrous creature or person, abomination) and Greek ''sophia'' (σοφία, wisdom), hybrid compounding of monstrophy is not uncommon in disciplinary names, e.g. [[sociology]], another Greek and Latin compound.) Monstrophy literally means "wisdom about monsters," and in academic usage refers to the broader study of monsters in society and history.

Monsters have been widely catalogued in their historical and ethnographic contexts, and have been commonly included in cultural products such as epic, folktale, fiction, and film, but have only begun to be studied seriously as semiological markers indicating the seams of internal cultural tension. Interpreters commonly note the "monstrous" as occupying space at the borders of a society's conceptual categories, such as those relating to sexual and behavioral transgression, or to inherent prejudice and internal conflict (for instance, in race, gender, politics, and religion). Monsters are rarely fully distinct from the "human," but are often comprised of hybrid features
of the human and non-human. This issue of Preternature invites contributions that explore how the category of "monster" is used to define and articulate what a certain group of people articulates to itself to be properly human.

Contributions are welcome from any discipline, time period, or geographic provenance, so long as the discussion highlights the cultural, literary, religious, or historical significance of the topic.

Contributions should be roughly 8,000 - 12,000 words (with the possibility of longer submissions in exceptional cases), including all documentation and critical apparatus. If accepted for publication, manuscripts will be required to adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (style 1, employing footnotes).

Preternature also welcomes original editions or translations of texts related to the topic that have not otherwise been made available in recent editions or in English. Submissions are made online here.

Final Papers are due February 15, 2012

Queries about submissions, queries concerning books to be reviewed, or requests to review individual titles may be made to the Editor.

Inquiries about book reviews should be sent to the Book Review Editor.

For more on the journal, please consult the website.

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.

Call for Submissions: Black & BLUE

Black & BLUE
A Monthly Publication of New Writing

DRAMA
POETRY
PROSE

Black & BLUE is a new paper. Our first issue will be published in September 2012. We are looking for fresh, innovative voices to rival the lifeless literary scene. We are looking for sad and beautiful writing. We will publish lists, receipts, fictional notes, short sketches as well as conventional poetry and prose We are happy to look at anything you feel like writing. We like strange, unique voices.

Send submissions to this address.

And the winner is...

For the last month I've been running a poll to find out people's favourite female werewolf. The response has been great. There's been some controversy along the way, and I like to think we've all learned a little something, but it's finally time for me to wrap things up and announce the winner.

But, before I do, here's a little summary of the response I got (like all good awards ceremonies, I know I have to keep my audience waiting).

Apart from the winner(s), the votes were pretty evenly distributed. Honorable mentions go to Nina (from Being Human), Vivien (from Annette Curtis Klause's Blood and Chocolate), Jolie Garoul (from Gill McKnight's Garoul series) and Brigitte Fitzgerald (from the Ginger Snaps trilogy), who blew her sister Ginger out of the water.

Of all the writers whose work was nominated, Martin Millar definitely came out top, getting three characters in the list: Dominil, Kalix and Thrix (from Lonely Werewolf Girl and Curse of the Wolf Girl) placed equally in the final tally.

The she-wolf whose nomination caused the most controversy was Stephenie Meyer's Leah Clearwater. Not only did Leah not get many votes, I actually had two requests to remove her from the list in the first place. I think this says more about the readership of my blog and Twitter account than anything else. Leah is obviously a popular she-wolf, and I would hazard a guess (though I haven't got time to get the stats for this) there is more fanfiction written about her than any of the other nominees. I wonder how much different the voting would have been if any Twilight fans had found my poll?

One other piece of controversy was a vote for Bryn from Jennifer Lynn Barnes' Raised by Wolves. Some people felt that this vote didn't count, as Bryn is not 'technically' a werewolf, she is rather 'raised by wolves'. After some deliberation, I decided to let the vote for Bryn stand. Those of you who read my review of Raised by Wolves might remember that I ended it by suggesting that 'Snarling in anger and revelling in the unrestrained physical freedom of "running with the Pack", Bryn seems to be part-werewolf, despite the impossibility of this. This all raises an interesting question: is it nature or nurture that makes a werewolf?' For that reason, and since we didn't start this poll with a particular definition of 'werewolf', I'm going to let Bryn stay.

And so... with no further ado... to our winner...

Most Popular Female Werewolf

With a huge share of the votes, one werewolf undoubtedly proved herself the alpha female of the pack. She's feisty, sexy and ironically named. She's faced the midnight hour, gone to Washington and raised Hell. From the pen of best-selling author, Carrie Vaughn, she is, of course:

Kitty Norville


Take a bow, Kitty.


But wait... that's not all from the poll... we have another category (that I've just invented)...

As some of you may have noticed, another female werewolf attracted a large number of votes. L.L. Raand (aka Radclyffe)'s Sylvan Mir got a lot of write-in nominations. Some of you suggested that this was a case of spamming or ballot-stuffing, but I can assure you (since I can see the traffic sources for the blog) it wasn't. It was a write-in campaign by Raand's growing band of enthusiastic fans.

I'm going to cite precedent here (and I'd like to thank my good friend, Mike Whalley, for giving me this info). In 1991, the votes for the BBC Sports Person of the Year award were hugely skewed when The Angling Times encouraged all its readers to vote for award-winning angler Bob Nudd. Nudd got a dazzling 100,000 votes from Angling Times readers, despite the fact that the majority of BBC viewers hadn't actually heard of him. The BBC decided to discount these votes, and give the award to athlete Liz McColgan. I have to admit, Kitty Norville is the Liz McColgan of this race.

However, while the BBC decided to ignore the mobilization of Nudd's fans, I'm not going to do that with Raand's. Instead, I am going to name Sylvan Mir

Best New She-Wolf


She might not have the following Kitty has, but she's definitely one to watch. In December, I will be welcoming L.L. Raand (aka Radclyffe) as a guest blogger, and I'll also be posting reviews of the Midnight Hunters books.

So congratulations to Kitty and Sylvan, and to the other fantastic she-wolves that were nominated. And thank you to everyone who voted.

Review: Melissa Marr, Darkest Mercy (HarperCollins, 2011)

This review begins rather anecdotally. A few years ago, when I was in the first year of my PhD and had just turned my attention to fairies in medieval romance, I bought a book on a whim. The book, which was shelved next to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, was called Wicked Lovely and the blurb on the back read:

“Rule #3 Don’t stare at invisible faeries.
Rule #2 Don’t speak to invisible faeries.
Rule #1 Don’t ever attract their attention.”

I was (reasonably) intrigued by this, and by the funky cover, so I decided to buy it.



I didn’t expect too much of the book. I thought that modern fairies would probably be saccharine, Disney-inspired creations. I had no experience of reading urban fantasy, and assumed it would be a sort of cross between sci-fi and high fantasy. Hard as this might be to believe, I was also dubious about reading a book aimed at young adults. I hadn’t read a book aimed at teenagers since I was 12, and I’m pretty sure that was Sweet Valley High. Still, I decided to give it a go.

I took Wicked Lovely to a festival, so I had something to read in my tent when the weather was bad. It might sound corny, but I really wasn’t prepared for the impact that book would have on both my reading habits and my career. Suffice to say, I didn’t leave my tent much at the festival, and I’ve been hooked on YA urban fantasy since. By the time I came home, I was determined to read (and write) much more YA fantasy.

Since then, I’ve completed a manuscript of my own YA novel, and begun work on the sequel. I’ve also written several articles on YA, including one piece on Marr’s fiction, and written numerous blog posts and reviews of new YA releases. During this time, Marr has published four more titles in the Wicked Lovely series, as well as number of graphic novels and audiobooks in the series. Where Wicked Lovely began by telling the story of Aislinn, a high school stalked by the Summer King Keenan, the subsequent books in the series (Ink Exchange, Fragile Eternity, Radiant Shadows and Darkest Mercy) introduced a whole world of characters and fairy courts: Niall, Irial and the Hounds of the Dark Court; Sorcha, the embodiment of Order, and her twin sister Bananach; Aislinn’s once-mortal boyfriend Seth and close friend Leslie; and Donia, the Winter Girl of Wicked Lovely transformed into the powerful regent of Winter.

Marr’s fairies – like those of Holly Black – are very much in the medieval (rather than the Victorian) mode. They are callous, haughty, cruel – but also seductive, attractive and joyful. They are bound by an inability to lie, loyalty to their courts and centuries-old vows and oaths. Marr consistently follows Celtic (mostly Scottish and Irish) traditions, bringing to life some of the darker beings of folklore (the Ly Ergs and the Gancanagh, for instance), alongside original creations (like the Dark Court’s use of tattoo-spells to bind them to mortals). In addition to this, Marr’s characterization is well-observed and compelling – it is easy to have sympathy for all her characters, despite their marked differences and occasional ‘wrong’ behaviour.

And now, with the release of Darkest Mercy, the series comes to a close – with a climactic finale that brings the stories of all the characters to a (mostly) satisfying endpoint.

Darkest Mercy begins immediately after the events of Radiant Shadows. Bananach has attacked the Dark Court, leaving Irial injured and the daughter of the Hound Gabriel dead. A new court, the Shadow Court, has been formed, and the veil to Faeries has been sealed. The various regents – Keenan, Aislinn, Donia and Niall – are all suffering various turmoils, and no-one truly knows how to deal with War (as Bananach is known).

As a series finale, Darkest Mercy ticks a lot of boxes. It resolves a number of the plot-threads that have run through the series. For example, since Book One, the love triangle between Aislinn, Seth and Keenan has been a constant problem, only made worse when Keenan began a relationship with Donia. This storyline, I would say out of all of them, comes to a satisfying conclusion in the final book. (The epilogue of Darkest Mercy is a very clever piece of writing, and will definitely make fans of the series smile.)

The book also offers some development of what has gone before, particularly in its further exploration of the relationship between Irial and Niall. Antagonists in Ink Exchange, these two fairies have been intertwined since the second book. Darkest Mercy offers us more of their history, which is both heart-breaking and heart-warming. The final hint of the resolution of the Niall-Irial-Leslie triangle (which has always been so much more complicated and, in my opinion, more moving than the Aislinn-Keenan-Seth storyline) is a nice, and rather brave, touch to this YA fantasy.

The fifth book still holds some new introductions though. After the events of Radiant Shadows, Keenan seeks support from fairies not attached to any of the courts. These fairies, though only making a brief appearance in the novel, are fantastic creations, and reminded me of why I am such a fan of Marr’s writing. And it was nice to finally meet Far Dorcha – the Dark Man who has previously only been spoken of.

Reflecting on the series as a whole, it should be noted that Darkest Mercy is the endpoint of a gradual shift in the focus of the series. While Wicked Lovely and Ink Exchange were very much urban fantasy, telling the story of ‘ordinary’ girls with one foot in the ‘real’ world and one (reluctant) foot in the supernatural, the subsequent books have focused more and more on Faerie. By Darkest Mercy, there is almost no mention of the ‘real’ world. Aislinn, the mortal girl with ‘Sight’ is now a powerful fairy embodiment of Summer; Leslie, who ended her book leaving her supernatural lovers and going to college, is now brought back into the otherworld. The only mortals who are mentioned in this final book are hapless bystanders, shielded from fairy conflict by Donia’s winter fey.

This is not necessarily a criticism, as Marr’s fairy world always seems to be grounded by the ‘modern’ and ‘human’ behaviours, mannerisms and language of its inhabitants. However, this shift made me realize how far the story had come, and how much the central characters have given up during their stories.

As a writer of YA fiction, Marr has always impressed me with her focus on the ‘adult’, rather than the ‘young’. While her books are more than suitable (and recommended) for teenage readers, they do not feel constrained or condescending. Marr tackles ‘difficult’ questions of death, addiction (to fairy love, if not to drugs or alcohol) and sexuality with a light touch. Her treatment of sex and sexual relationships is particularly striking, as her characters inhabit a range of identities (heterosexual, bisexual, polygamous and androgynous) without any heavy-handed moralizing or imposition of heteronormativity. I’d suggest that the only other YA writer who is comparable to Marr in this respect is Holly Black.

I am sad to say goodbye to the Wicked Lovely series. Darkest Mercy was a more than suitable farewell to characters I have come to love, and I suppose the good thing about books is that I can always read them again! My only criticism would be that not all the characters got to be a part of the finale. Some (Sorcha, Devlin, Ani and Rae) were notable by their absence. Still, this fills me with a little bit of optimism… maybe, one day, Marr will revisit those characters, and we’ll find out that the story isn’t quite finished.

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.

CFP: Capturing Witches: Histories, Stories, Images.

400 years after the Lancashire Witches.

17-19 August
Lancaster, UK

2012 will mark the 400th anniversary of the trial and execution of the Lancashire Witches. This conference is part of a year long programme of events which will take place in Lancaster and the surrounding area. This interdisciplinary conference uses the Lancashire witches as a focal point to engage with wider questions about witchcraft, and in particular how witchcraft is theorised and represented in and through history and across cultures.

CALL FOR PAPERS:

This interdisciplinary conference uses the Lancashire witches as a focal point to engage with wider questions about witchcraft: its definitions as maleficium will focus particular attention on how witchcraft is theorised and represented in and through history and across cultures. We particularly encourage considerations of literary, musical, artistic and filmic representations of witchcraft.

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers and panels on witches and/or witchcraft which might address - but are not limited to - the following themes:

- antiquity;

- religion and belief;

- Neo-Paganism;

- the developing world;

- human rights;

- gender;

- corporeality;

- location;

- ritual (ceremony, performance, magical practice);

- childhood;

- language;

- law;

- consumption ( dress, fashion, food);

- the arts (literature, music, film, painting, dance, theatre, graphic novels);

- the Gothic;

- new media

Proposals for contributions which go beyond the conventional academic format are also welcome.
Proposals (paper: 250 words, panel/other format: 500 words) including a 50-word bio for each contributor should be sent to the conference team by 1 December 2011 to the conference organizers. Decisions on submissions will be made by 31 January 2012. For more information, see the conference website.

Conference team: Charlotte Baker, Alison Findlay, Liz Oakley-Brown, Elena Semino, Catherine Spooner