CFP: Exegesis Journal

“It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Exegesis, the academic e-journal of the English Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, is now accepting submissions for the Spring 2013 edition on Testimonies and Confessions. In this issue we seek to generate discussion about the forms that testimonies and confessions have taken historically, theologically, and literarily from an interdisciplinary, cross-period perspective. Authors may choose to investigate this topic literally, metaphorically, or theoretically, and in terms of specific texts, authors, times, or places. Articles and creative pieces might address, but are not limited to, any of the following subjects:

• Confessional/Testimonial literature as autobiographical, fictional, or sensationalized for humour
• First person narratives, such as diaries or letters
• Monologues (in Shakespeare, for example)
• Literary and theological confessions (e.g. Confessions of St. Augustine, Rousseau’s Confessions)
• False confessions
• In a court of law, admitting guilt of a crime, or testifying as witness
• Testifying on war, violence, social oppression, etc.
• The meaning of ‘truth’, how we find it, and what can be considered ‘proof’
• The role of confession to religion (sinning, absolution)
• Confession as an interpretation of identity
• Philosophical testimony (Kant, Hume, Ricoeur, and others)

Submission deadline is 10th January 2013. Please submit using the following email links: to submit a critical work; to submit a creative work; to submit a book review. After peer review, refereed submissions will be selected and published in our April 2013 issue. Please take note of the Guidelines below.

All submissions will be considered for the [Exegesis Writing Awards] of £100 for one critical article and £100 for one creative piece, which will be granted on the basis of writing excellence.

SUBMISSIONS GUIDELINES:

Exegesis invites submissions from postgraduate students and early career academics from the field of English Studies and beyond, multi- and cross- disciplinary researchers, and any scholar with interesting and relevant work. We welcome previously unpublished essays, short articles, reviews, and creative pieces on each issue’s theme, and encourage you to fully explore the meaning of exegesis.

Essays and short articles should be between 4000-6000 words and reviews around 1000 words (including all references), and must adhere to the MHRA referencing and style guide. Creative pieces are welcomed of no more than 5000 words. A copy of the MHRA style guide can be found here. 

Your submission email should include your name, academic affiliation, the title of your submission, 5-7 keywords, and a 3-5 sentence abstract of the article or review piece. All attached submissions should be unnamed, to ensure impartiality during the selection process, and should be sent as Word documents (.doc format). Submissions which do not follow these guidelines will not be considered.

CFP: 1st Global Conference: The Boundaries of Reproduction

Sunday 12th May – Tuesday 14th May 2013

Prague, Czech Republic

Call for Presentations:

This conference seeks to explore the boundaries of reproduction, not merely as physical birth but more broadly as an agent of change, of bodily, sexual, cultural (and even viral) transitions.

From iconic images of the incarnation to depictions of monstrous births, the cultural rituals and mythologies of reproduction continue to fascinate us. Bodies that copulate, bodies that reproduce, bodies that replicate, change, decay—or divide—produce anxiety about the boundaries of self and identity. Reproduction, like evolution, reminds us that we are ever in flux, that change is inevitable. Birth, like death, forces us to acknowledge the limits of our bodies and our ‘selves.’ Additionally, this age of epidemics and viral warfare incites dystopic visions of a future where the effective reproducers are micro-organisms, where humans have been replaced by a replicating other. We seek to explore not only the biological imperative of preserving a species, but also our search for origins, our search for ourselves, our desires, our sexual identities, our gods.

We invite perspectives that explore identity, bodies, boundaries, sexuality and futurity. We likewise invite reflections on whether the nature of our origins tells us anything about who and what we are; whether it lays the ground for understanding what we will become and how our future will unfold. What is the nature of our transition from birth through life to death? Is the end present in the beginning, and does this complicate our notions of evolutions and transitions as forward progress? What does it mean to be pregnant? To impregnate? What concerns are raised about a woman’s body historically, culturally, politically, her ability to feed, grow and harbour new life, as well as her control over her own reproductive destiny? What about bodies that replicate without sex? Cloning? Hermaphroditic reproduction? What about non-human reproduction, about invasive species, about viral epidemics?

We encourage scholarly contributions from inter, multi and transdisciplinary perspectives, from practitioners working in all contexts, professionals, ngo’s and those from the voluntary sector. We will entertain submissions drawn from literature, medicine, politics, social history, film, television, graphic novels and manga, from science to science fiction.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

-Historical medical discourses about reproduction
-The monstrosity of birth: monstrous births
-Birth in the dystopic narrative
-Freak(s) – of nature; of technology; accidents of birth
-Religious discourse of reproduction
-Gender and biomedicine
-Queering reproduction
-Motherhood/fatherhood/parenthood
-Technologies of and for the body
-Reproduction and ethical practice
-Managing reproductive bodies: law, health care and medical practice
-The “changing” body: rebirth and metamorphosis
-Invading and possessing bodies
-Eugenics, social biology and inter-racial generation
-Genetic engineering and “nightmare” reproductions
-Science fiction: inter-species reproduction: non-human reproduction
-Viral reproduction and pandemic

What to submit:

The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. Presentations will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 4th January 2013. 300 word 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: BR1 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:

Brandy Scillace 

Rob Fisher 

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 the conference will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s).

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: Making Sense Of: Play

Monday 22nd July – Wednesday 24th July 2013

Mansfield College, Oxford

Call for Presentations:

The interdisciplinary project Making Sense Of: Play seeks to examine the various meanings of “play”, elucidate their inter-relationships and trace the origins of the patterns of play and their place in the human condition. Variations in cultural conditions naturally impact on play, its meanings and its forms, as do, often in a different way, economic inequalities both within and between different cultures. Our deliberations will necessarily takes this into account. In many languages, as in English, throughout its etymological history “play” has been closely connected to the world of children and make believe. Academic study of play, too, deals predominantly with various aspects of children’s play and its importance in development. There is, in fact, a lack of balance between the study of play in relation to children and childhood on one hand, and “play” more generally, as outlined above, on the other. For this reason our project explicitly emphasizes the comparatively under-explored aspects of play in linguistic, literary, philosophical, historical, psychological and evolutionary frames of reference.

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” (Plato)

Possible Themes and Topics:

Its evolutionary significance: Viewed from biological and paleoanthropoligical standpoint, how has play factored into the evolution of Homo Sapiens?

In politics: is politics a game? What are the “rules” and how can they be transgressed?

In literature and the arts: How do the arts function as play in our culture? Are artists game-masters? Are some forms of art especially “playful?” How is “the play the thing”- to quote Shakespeare? What should we make of artistic works in which “dark play” is featured?

Historical and cultural models of play: Does “play” mean and function differently in different cultures and societies? What can we learn by exploring other cultures’ models of play? Has the concept and practice of play evolved differently for adults and children?

In philosophy: How does play function in the divide between truth and appearance? Do philosophers “play” with ideas? How can we understand play beyond the limits of specific disciplinary boundaries? Why does play continue to be a “slippery concept”?

As a psychological issue: Do we need to play as a function of mental health and well being? Are there healthy and non-healthy forms of play?

Play/Work/Contemplation: does Aristotle’s analysis of the good life serve contemporary conditions?

In language: what does it mean to” play with language?” Are metaphors linguistic play? How is ‘deconstruction’ a form of playing with language?

As humour: How do jokes and other forms of humor operate as play? When might jokes and humor be “anti-play?”

Play of perception: How do our senses afford us opportunities to play? Is the artistic look a form of play? Can sounds, tastes, colors invite us to playfully engage in the world?

Play and the life-course: How does play figure into existential crisis (illness, death), love, hatred, and power? Does play serve as special form of communication? Can play be a form of addiction or can it be used to address addictive behavior? What forms does play take in adult lives and in the lives of the elderly?

Animal play: What does play mean in the animal world? Do animals play? Need to play? Can we play with animals in the sense that we are engaging in their own forms of play? Animal play has been an important tool in understanding how humans play. Given this, how are human and animal play different and similar?

Play and children: What role do toys serve in a child’s life? How does play function in the classroom? How do children play? What role does contact with the natural world play in child’s play?

Play and technology: How has technology changed and expanded/or limited how we play in our respective cultures?

Dark and dangerous play: Where does play veer from “playful” to dangerous and destructive? How does the example of “war as play” provide a paradigm of exploring the complicated nature of play? How can we understand “dark play” within the classic paradigm in which play is seen as predominantly “fun”?

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 8th February 2013. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 10th May 2013.

What to Send: 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 key words

E-mails should be entitled: PLAY2 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.

Joint Organising Chairs:

Wendy Turgeon (Project Leader) 

Rob Fisher (Network Founder and Leader) 

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.

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: Virtualosity: Gaming, Interfaces and Digital Arts

Monday 4th February – Wednesday 6th February 2013

Sydney, Australia

Call for Presentations:

Games and digital and virtual interactions proliferate throughout everyday life, from individual game players, to online communities; from the people that make and market games to their influence in and on popular media; leisure activities and to educational, professional and political activities. The impact of such a ubiquitous platform of individual and communal interaction has not just ethical dimensions but also in the ways we view ourselves, our society the future and the very notions of identity and being. In this light gaming and the designing and creating of interactive virtual environments offer us the chance to change both the world that we enter into but also the real world that we bring such technologies into. The resultant blurring of boundaries, if indeed this is the case, has dramatic consequences for ethical and political stances, not least for personal and communal responsibility, as well as gender construction and ‘real’ and ‘performed’ sexualities and hybridities. Also importantly within this framework are notions of inclusion and exclusion, not just within the particular environments and communities created but through access to the technologies themselves, be they geographical or financial, political or individual difference (i.e. non-normative bodies).

This project approaches videogames and interactive virtual spaces from a multi-, inter- and cross-disciplinary perspective that seeks to blend theoretical discussions with concerns of the industry in order to benefit both groups. We therefore welcome papers that explore how games work in society, how they are made, how they are analysed and discussed and current industrial trends. More importantly, because these concepts are often discussed separately, this is an opportunity to examine interrelationships and improve understanding of games across the board. It is of great importance for the industry to contribute to the development of games education just as it is important for the growing education sector to be more informed about production and industry practices.

Presentations, papers, performances, workshops and artworks are called for, but not limited to, the following themes:

Games and Worlds:

-Analysis and criticism of videogames as texts, games and cultural objects. Videogame and Virtual worlds theory, analysis, criticism

-Art, fiction, story, literature writing, transmedia

-Music audio and performance (voice, physical mo-cap etc)

-Their place with other platforms such as film, literature, graphic novels and other forms of gaming (i.e. Hasbro etc)

Contexts:

-Historical approaches and previous envisionings and practices.

-New Interfaces, cultural and individual strategies and mappings.

-Recording, archiving and gaming memory.

-Virtual versus real interactions, online and offline gaming.

-Virtual worlds in actual spaces, role playing, digital arts, interactive graphic novels and narratives.

-Pervasiveness and convergence.

-Gamings use and influence in other platforms and media.

-New interactions, immersions and collaborations and integrations with sound, music, textures and spaces.

-Games Marketing and Gamers as a market

Production:

-Exploration of new opportunities such as education, science, health and engineering.

-Videogames beyond the entertainment market such as commercial practicalities and academic concerns.

-Actual experiences from practitioners, artists, professionals, developers and educators.

-Works in progress, post-mortems

-Linkage diaries: academia, industry and independent projects, models, experiments etc.

-Approaches, methods and practices

-Technology, programming, design, innovations

-Performance notes (as above, music, voice, physical etc)

Creativity and Interactions:

-Fan cultures, communities and social networking.

-The impact of the above on other platforms such as film, graphic novels and science fiction. Interactive storytelling, emergent narratives, transmedia storytelling.

-The relationship between the game, producer, the game and the gamer.

-How can great game designs become great games that players can buy?

-The use of virtual worlds worlds and games in education, online learning, research networking and global and local learning.

-The uniqueness of particular geographical locations i.e. what specific opportunities exist in Australia and where does it stand in the global context?

Corporealities and Ethics:

-Bodily integrity, hybridity and cyborgism.

-Avatars, modifications and mutations; the impact on life, death, and social existence

-Gender and virtuality: new gender, new feminisms, new masculinities

-Human, animal, machine; Boundaries, frontiers and taboos in games and virtual worlds.

-Ethics in virtual world; and games; Rating, violence, sex, morality and game rape.

-Gaming ethics and their relation to maturity.

-Politics, propaganda, activism and censorship.

-In world surveillance and privacy, cybercrime and ethical hacking.

What to Send:

300 word abstracts or presentation proposals should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs by Friday 26th October 2012; 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.

E-mails should be entitled: DI1 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

Adam Ruch 

Rob Fisher 

The conference is part of the Ethos 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.

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: 21st Century Science: Health, Agency and Well-Being

Wednesday 30th January – Friday 1st February 2013

Sydney, Australia

Call for Presentations:

This project is about the conjunction of science, medicine, agency and well-being and the interface between modern, or institutionalised, and natural sciences. In particular this is about approaches that challenges the precepts of the accepted scientific establishment of a particular time and culture. Whilst focused upon current and emerging practices and methodologies it is also about the cultural and historical contexts from which they have previously emerged. This will necessarily reference previous ages, cultures and ideologies that find the roots of today’s anti-establishment medical movements in yester years occult and esoteric knowledge. Such knowledge which saw its birth and development in the natural sciences has become oppositional to the forces of modern empirical knowledge which can be largely seen to ignore anything which cannot be directly measured, categorised or controlled. As Foucault has stated, this form the basis of the medical gaze which restricts and controls as much as it heals and treats. Natural or anti-establishment methodologies then return control of the healing process away from large corporate or nationalised institutions back into the hands of those who require treatment.

In this framework the patient themselves become both agents and communicator of alternative methods of treatment, healing and well-being. As agents of the ‘anti-establishment science movements’, ‘lay’ people become involved into everyday science and knowledge production, they become protoscientists. For example, blog discussion on the side-effects of a particular medicine/drug can be more personal, revealing and informative and can go beyond what an information leaflet or a clinician may offer. While blogging, the ‘lay’ person generates and exchanges knowledge with the other bloggers that may be useful for one’s health. There is a paucity of literature depicting these movements as ‘bottom up’ challenges of establishment science literature. This kind of authority challenge has only marginally been considered by the ‘establishment’ science (for example: Fuller (2010)) and this conference will provide a platform for such consideration and discussion with specific focus on self-healing, health knowledge co-production and DIY treatments. This conference welcomes papers from various fields of study, such as social sciences, humanities, medical sciences and philosophy.

Presentations, papers, performances, work-in-progress and workshops are invited on any issues related to the following themes:

Ideological Approaches:

-The effect of the DIY practices on established health systems and peoples’ personal lives

-The embeddedness of protoscience in the everyday life and the philosophical underpinnings of protoscience as everyday science

-Alternative and self-healing practices beyond the relational milieu vis-à-vis a conventional/non-conventional medicine binary

-The consequences of the anti-establishment science movements for economic relations determining the health care industry

21st Century Practices Practices:

-Alternative and Complimentary Medicine

-Mind-Body Intervention, Meditation, Spiritual and Self-Healing

-Homeopathy, Energy Medicine, Manipulative Therapy and Holistic Healing

-Acupuncture, Chiropractic, Psychotherapy, Nutrition and Dietetics

Traditional and Non-Western Approaches:

-Faith Healing, Johrei, Crystals, Maharishi Vedic Medicine; Shamanism

-Folk Medicine, Herbalism, Ayurveda

-Traditional Chinese Medicine, Traditional Korean Medicine, Native American Traditional Healing, Traditional Aboriginal Bush Medicine; rongoā Māori (traditional healing), Traditional medicine in the South Pacific island countries

Historical and Anthropological Approaches to Health and Medicine:

-Historical-Anthropological accounts of pre-clinical medicine

-Ancient Health paradigms, Sramana and Classical Indian Philosophy, Gnosticism, Alchemy (Indian, Chinese and Modern), Kabbalah, Hermeticism

-Medical anthropology, applied medical anthropology

-Community Health Paradigms and culturally appropriate health provision

Diasporic and Minority Health

Literary and Media Representations of CAM and Scientific Medicine:

-Representations of CAM and Scientific medicine through Media: Medical Infotainment, Reality TV, Medical Soaps

-Doctors, Alternative healers and patients/health consumers in films and novels

-Media representations of health vis-à-vis Paganism, Occultism, Witchcraft, Magic

-Literary representations of health and healing agents: Gothicism, Romanticism and Science Fiction

Contemporary Communities of Health and Well-Being:

-The empowering effect of the free and open source technology vis-à-vis the status of the individual/the agent as knowledgeable agent in the field of health

-The effect of the DIY practices on established health systems and peoples’ personal lives

-Discussion of the relevance of these movements in relation to the existent theories of power

-The relevance of the historical and socio-political context regarding what constitutes ‘mainstream’ in the health sector

-E-health and online communities, representations in popular media and self-help and support groups

We actively encourage participation from practitioners and non-academics with an interest in the topic as well as pre-formed three paper panels

What to Send:

300 word abstracts or presentation proposals should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs by Friday 19th October 2012; 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.

E-mails should be entitled: SCIENCE 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

Irena Veljanova 

Rob Fisher 

The conference is part of the Ethos 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.

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: Special Issue of Gender and Language

Gender, Language, Communication and the Media

Gender and Language invite papers on the topic of gender, language, communication and the media for a forthcoming special issue in 2014. We invite papers that deploy various methods (e.g., linguistics, discourse analysis, pragmatics, content analysis, critical discourse analysis, conversation analysis, narrative analysis, and sociolinguistics) to explore the relationship(s) between gender and related topics (e.g. sexism, sexuality, sexualisation, post-feminism) and the media as broadly conceived (e.g. newspapers, television, radio, online environments).

Over recent years, issues to do with 'sex' and 'gender' have become increasingly visible across various forms of contemporary media. But how are we to understand the varied ways in which such phenomena are unpacked, reformulated, constructed, deleted, and so on, in and through these media?

This special issue aims to pull together a diverse range of papers that all coalesce around the following sorts of questions:

1. How are contemporary media representations, stereotypes and accounts of gender constructed in the media?

2. What, if anything, is new, unique and distinct about the ways in which gender is constructed in and through such media representations?

3. How is it possible, methodologically, to capture something like gender, and how can we know when we have found 'it'?

Please send a 750 word summary of your proposed paper, detailing *provisional* title, topic, methods, and findings. We will let you know at this outline stage whether or not your paper looks to be a 'good fit' for the special issue. Authors of papers that fit with the issue's aims will then be invited to submit a full length paper of between 5000-7000 words (including abstract, data and references). Papers will be subject to the usual peer review process.

In the event that we end up with more accepted papers than the special issue allows space for, papers may be accepted for future issues of Gender and Language.

The deadline for submitting 750 word summaries is November 30th 2012. Please submit your summary to the special issue editor, Dr Frederick Attenborough.

The deadline for full length papers is May 15th 2013.

Gender and Language is about to head into its 7th year. To promote the journal and establish its impact, the editors ­ Elizabeth Stokoe and Ann Weatherall ­ have recently moved to three issues per year, introduced 'early view' papers published online first with DOIs, and applied for an impact factor ranking. Special issues are part of our strategy for increasing the journal's profile.

GUEST POST: What's so fascinating about female werewolves by Jeanette Greaves

I'm pleased to welcome another guest post as part of the Wolf-Girls blog tour. Today Jeanette Greaves, author of 'The Cameron Girls', posts on her fascination with female werewolves...



Lions and tigers and bears are old hat, what we want these days are vampires, werewolves and zombies. All three were human once, all three infected by some agent that has changed them and taken them out of normal society, but the werewolf stands alone in still having life. Vampires and zombies are cold creatures, forever apart from humanity. The werewolf can pass for human and often does, struggling with its bloody secret, fighting to keep its human life and place in society, knowing that inside lies the monster, an animal that will break free, that will have its due. The secret beast within a werewolf is its power and its downfall.

The werewolf is ruled by the moon, the rise and fall of the beast subject to an inevitable, regular cycle. Once a month, the demon breaks free, and everything changes. Sounds familiar? The idea of linking the threat of a woman at the peak of her cycle with that of a werewolf's monthly rage comes inevitably, and it's no surprise that so many of our modern female werewolves are angry creatures, ready to use their sudden strength and power to strike back at those who have hurt and humiliated them in the past.

It's somewhat surprising that the werewolf has traditionally been a male creature, when the waxing and waning of strength and blood is so female. It is women who give birth to new life, who change the world with every child they bring forth. Perhaps it's a secret envy of that power to change that led to so many stories of the werewolf, the man who changes, the man whose body dances to the rhythm of the moon?

Many traditional western shapeshifter stories painted women who changed into animals as witches, fated to be caught out in their deceit by an injury carried from their animal form to their human form, revealing them as shapeshifters. Even in animal form, these women were rarely wolves, more often they were deer or hares, prey creatures. These women would be shamed and often killed, in their human form, driving home the message that women who stray from their given fate will be found out and punished. Male werewolves die in wolf form, allowed to keep their strength and power, even in death.

It's hardly surprising that today's writers are claiming the female werewolf as the essence of power, strong, uninhibited, and with a rare gift. Our werewolf girls and women are as varied as the writers who they spring from, some are kind and dread the escape of the beast within, some are ruled by the moon, others are in control of their inner wolf. They have one thing in common, strength and power, traditionally male attributes, which are being taken by our wolf girls and used for their own purposes. Will they be used for good or evil? We can only watch and wait, and hope for more stories about the wolf girls and their kin.

Read Jeanette's story in Wolf-Girls: Dark Tales of Teeth, Claws and Lycogyny, published by Hic Dragones.

GUEST POST: The Poetry of the Wolf-Girl by Kim Bannerman

It gives me great pleasure to welcome another guest post from a writer taking part in the Hic Dragones Wolf-Girls blog tour. Today I welcome Kim Bannerman, author of the story 'A Woman of Wolves Born'.



Question: What’s so fascinating about female werewolves?

Answer: For me, it’s simple. Female werewolves are fascinating because they are completely, utterly free. They embody the capricious, confident spirit that so many women desire: they are free of hesitation, free of obligation, free of restraint. Female werewolves do not cast fearful glances over their shoulders when they walk down dark alleys. They do not stay safe behind locked door. They don’t freak out when they find a bit of hair where society tells them none should be. Female werewolves can be bitches, and it’s totally okay, because it’s not an insult: it’s biology.

Image: Shawn Pigott

Of course, I can only speak to finding them fascinating in a female sort of way. I love to read about female werewolves because I love what they can do, and I wish I could do it, too. I can’t speak to why men find them fascinating, if they even do at all.

But while men might not find the concept of unrestrained liberation as intoxicating as I do, I wager there’s a good portion of the male population that finds female werewolves fascinating in a whole other way. A werewolf is powerful, unpredictable, and brimming with bestial sexuality. Female werewolves are sleek, lithe and strong, and unabashed by their body. (Vampires are sexy, too, but they don’t run around naked and athletic.) Have you ever seen a pack of wolves, running through the snow? Their bodies are fluid and fierce, and they slice through the air like arrows.

Now translate that into a woman’s form. See her move with grace through a crowded street, her head held high, her bright eyes catching every movement. She is an apex predator, a silent shadow that slips between the cacophonic traffic of an urban setting. Her heightened senses sample the delights that surround her: the smell of almond biscotti in a bakery window, the sound of the heartbeats of those around her, the touch of the cool autumn breeze as it ruffles the leaves of the elms in the park.

Image: Shawn Pigott

And tonight, when the moon is full, she will leave behind her human form to creep silently along silver-touched paths, a beast capable of poetry. She will embrace her bitchiness, delight in the taste of blood on her teeth, and drive all the wolf-boys wild.

Kim Bannerman's story is one of seventeen new female werewolf stories in Wolf-Girls: Dark Tales of Teeth, Claws and Lycogyny, edited by Hannah Kate and published by Hic Dragones. For more information, or to buy a copy, please visit the publishers' website.

CFP: Transmedia: Storytelling and Beyond

Thursday 31 January 2013, Friday 1 February 2013

Sydney, Australia

Call For Presentations Narratives and interactive experiences developed across different media platforms—each of which contributes something unique and valuable to the whole—have become standard fixtures in the contemporary digital landscape. The term ‘transmedia storytelling’ has enjoyed particular currency within academic circles while the media industry speaks in terms of multiplatform experiences. Much has been written on the subject in the academic and industry press, though new technologies and the pressure to do something innovative with the digital medium mean that the idea and practice of transmedia are in flux. While the debate over what to call this phenomenon remains unresolved, there is no denying its profound impact on the relationship between media producers, audiences/users, digital content and the devices used to consume and produce it. Naming conventions remain a contentious issue, however, there is also a need to examine other aspects of this emerging industry to ensure its ongoing sustainability. This call for presentations represents an invitation to introduce, highlight or clarify key questions concerning issues such as models for benchmarking, techniques for user engagement, value measurement, pedagogy and curriculum design, and evaluative techniques for complex and dynamic user engagement. Transmedia is, by its very nature, an interdisciplinary enterprise that draws from fields such as creative writing, IT, film, television, media studies, economics, public policy, creative design, and education. Thus, the project seeks to create a space for critical engagement that is enriched by the participation of academics, industry professionals and other stakeholders, as well as audience/users from across the disciplinary spectrum.

The project will launch in Sydney with 2 one-day events organised around separate, yet related themes. We therefore welcome proposals for presentations, papers and panels on topics on the following topics:

Day One: 31st January 2013—Innovation in Transmedia Design and Production

~ (Re)Defining and understanding the meaning of transmedia/multiplatform production

~ Narrative/Aesthetic/Thematic analysis of transmedia/multiplatform experiences

~ Social networking trends and their impact on transmedia/multiplatform development

~ Technologies that drive transmedia/multiplatform consumption, production and the post-broadcast era as a whole

~ Innovation in transmedia/multiplatform production

~ The future of transmedia/multiplatform development, uses and engagement

~ Pedagogies and curriculum design for teaching transmedia/multiplatform

~ Cultural policy and the promotion of transmedia/multiplatform innovation

Day Two: 1st February 2013—Innovation in Sustainable Business Practices

~ Transmedia/multiplatform production business models

~ Studies of transmedia/multiplatform audiences

~ Defining and measuring audience/user engagement

~ Uses and limitations of web analytics; new approaches

Abstracts and proposals not exceeding 300 words should be submitted jointly to the Organising Chairs by Friday 19th October 2012. Submissions 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.
 E-mails should be entitled: TM1 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

Ann-Marie Cook, Deirdre Hynes and Debra Polson 

Rob Fisher 

This event is part of the Global Transmedia Research Initiative, whose aim is to bring together people from different disciplinary and professional backgrounds in an ongoing series of events dedicated to generating dialogue and research around the many facets of transmedia production and reception.

For further details of the event, please click here. 

Please note: Since each day is a self-contained event, participants may opt to register for one or two days.

We regret that as a not-for-profit network, Inter-Disciplinary.Net is not in a position to assist with conference travel or subsistence.

GUEST POST: Female Werewolves, Fur and Body Hair by Carys Crossen

This is the fourth and final post in my short series on female body hair. Links to previous posts in the series can be found at the end of this piece.

Today's guest writer is Carys Crossen, recent PhD graduate and my collaborator on the 2010 She-Wolf: Female Werewolves, Shapeshifters and Other Horrors conference.

Carys Crossen was recently awarded her doctorate, entitled '"There is God and the Devil in Them": Gender and Sexuality in Post-1800 Werewolf Fiction and Film' by the University of Manchester, and is currently working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the university’s Department of English and American Studies. Her main research interests include the Gothic, psychoanalytic criticism, Monster Theory, Victorian literature, Young Adult fantasy and horror fiction, feminist theory and anything with werewolves. Her publications to date include a book contribution on celibate male vampires, a review of a new collection of stories by Robert Louis Stevenson and a forthcoming contribution to Hannah Priest's forthcoming collection on female werewolves, on the little-known authors Clemence Housman and Rosamund Marriott Watson.

Imagine this: you’re a werewolf. More specifically, you are a female werewolf. Life as a werewolf isn’t bad, despite what the films tell you. The full moon lends a whole new meaning to ‘that time of the month’, admittedly, and you like your meat rare, but it’s by no means a curse. If you eat the neighbours, you can always get new ones and property prices will recover soon. And you can cope with the fangs, the claws, the hair...

And it is here that, if you are a werewolf devotee, you may notice something odd. Hair. Not that being hairy is at all peculiar for a werewolf: sprouting hair every full moon is traditional and looks fantastic in cinematic transformation scenes. However, in the vast majority of werewolf fiction and film, particular that featuring a female protagonist, body hair is scarcely ever mentioned, let alone discussed in any detail. As an academic whose PhD thesis was focused on the contemporary lycanthrope, I thought this absence a striking one. Body hair is mentioned briefly in Faith Hunter’s Skinwalker (2009) and Sparkle Hayter’s Naked Brunch (2003) but only mentioned. The one pulp fiction series that deals with it in any depth is Karen MacInerney’s Tales of an Urban Werewolf series, in which the heroine has a ‘bic razor habit.’ (1) Rather frustratingly however, the series does not discuss body hair as signifier or cultural taboo, and focuses primarily on the disappointingly conventional removal of hair from legs, arms and other areas. And the classic Ginger Snaps film trilogy does indeed have hairy anti-heroines, but once again focuses on the removal of body hair rather than the hair itself.

Considering how the popularity of the female werewolf has mushroomed in recent years, it seems astonishing that these were the only instances of lycanthropic, female body hair being mentioned that I discovered during four years of research, but it is so. Body hair simply is not looked at, talked about or made visible in relation to the female werewolf, that hairiest, fuzziest of monsters. Moreover, it is hair that seems to be unmentionable – fur is another matter entirely. Fur has different connotations than hair: it implies luxury, decadence, softness, beauty and is just a little bit illicit in this enlightened era. Loving descriptions of beautiful wolf pelts are not uncommon in lycanthropic fiction. But hair brings with it an entirely different set of associations, particularly in relation to the female body. As Karín Lesnik-Oberstein in the appropriately titled academic text The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair (2007) comments, ‘women’s body hair is configured as a taboo: something not to be seen or mentioned; prohibited and circumscribed by rules of avoidance; surrounded by shame, disgust and censure’. (2) This taboo is so strong, it seems, that it extends to fictional female werewolves, for whom hairiness is an unavoidable fact of lycanthropic life.

The hairiness of the werewolf is an essential aspect of its monstrosity. As Marina Warner comments, ‘hairiness indicates animal nature: it is the distinctive sign of the wilderness and its inhabitants’. (3) The significance of the werewolf’s hairiness is obvious in this context – it is, if not quite an animal, the ‘beast within’, a representative of wildness, beastliness and ferocity. So, why exactly have female werewolf texts failed to examine the issue of body hair? Texts featuring female werewolves are seldom averse to embracing the lycanthrope’s potential beastliness – just look at Ginger Snaps or Clemence Housman’s story 'The Werewolf' (1896). So why have they resisted using the signifier of beastliness and animalism? Well, one thing I’ve noticed about a great many female werewolf heroines – often gutsy, independent and clever – is their overwhelming desire to be ‘normal’ or at least mimic normality. This usually means holding down a job, having a relationship, and most importantly conforming to society and its expectations. And society simply does not accommodate hairy women. As Lesnik-Oberstein comments, ‘"hairy" women, on the other hand, are monstrous in being like men, or masculine’. (4) In other words, you want to be normal, girl, that beard’s got to go. Never mind if your pack thinks it’s cute. Of course, not all female werewolves cling to their desire for normality, especially when they discover the perks of being a werewolf, but nor do they renounce it to the extent that they embrace their hairiness and all its negative cultural connotations. Ignoring hairiness, or removing hair, is a quick and easy way to integrate into human society, a discarding of an important indicator of wildness.

Moreover, the very fact that the werewolf is nearly always a hairy monster may be the reason why its hairiness is so seldom mentioned; it is hidden in plain sight, so to speak. The female werewolf’s hairiness is revealed for all to see when she is transformed; ergo there is no need to mention the issue. Hair, often an emblem of deviant sexuality, beastliness, and masculinity, is displayed on the transformed body and hence there is no need to address the issue of hairiness, not when it is flaunted by the lycanthrope in her transformed state. Or else, as I suggested earlier, feminine hair is more taboo than being a werewolf, which, looking at Western notions of feminine beauty may not be as far-fetched as you might imagine.

So, onto my final question – will feminine lycanthropic hairiness ever be embraced, or at least discussed in werewolf texts? I haven’t got a clue, I can’t predict the future. But I certainly hope so. There are stories about female werewolves and body hair out there, academic discussions are slowly starting up, attention is being paid. I’ll leave you with a quote from a story by Helen Cross, entitled ‘Fur’ – guess what it’s about? ‘In fact wolf lies deep in female nature. They are all capable of this, all of them have it in them – once they choose to let themselves go.’ (5)

References

(1) Karen MacInerney, On the Prowl (New York: Ballantine Books, 2008), p. 9.

(2) Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, 'The Last Taboo: Women, Body Hair and Feminism, in Karín Lesnik-Oberstein (ed.), The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 1-17, p. 2.

(3) Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers (London: Vintage, 1995), p. 359.

(4) Lesnik-Oberstein, p. 3.

(5) Helen Cross, ‘Fur’ in Hannah Kate (ed.), Wolf Girls: Dark Tales of Teeth, Claws and Lycogyny (Manchester: Hic Dragones, 2012), pp. 219-226, p. 226.

Read the other posts in the Body Hair blog series:

On Making and Publishing The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair, by Karín Lesnik-Oberstein

Damned if you do and damned if you don't, by Rosie Garland

On Body Hair, by LJ Maher

GUEST POST: On Body Hair by LJ Maher

This is the third post in my short series on female body hair. I'm pleased to welcome LJ Maher as today's guest blogger.

LJ Maher is a PhD student at the School for English Communications and Performance Studies at Monash University in Australia and is an affiliate of the Literature Research Unit and the Sídhe Literary Collective. She completed a combined Bachelor’s degree in Law and Performing Arts before redirecting her research toward literary studies. Her thesis interrogates representations of autobiography and identity in transmedial literacy, with a focus on the potential jurisprudential implications in intellectual property law.

It's cold and dark. I stand outside, wrapped up in my heavy blue gown while I pull the brush through my hair. It's longer now than it has been in years and every few weeks I see that glint of silver that reminds me to pour colour through it again. Once it was a familiar brown, red in the sun, short against my olive skin. Now I keep it black, and long and my skin is pale. There's a hole in the ozone layer and I worry about melanomas.

There are knots and gnarls that I pull my fingers through, and I leave a trail of curls and split ends on the paving. Eventually the magpies will line their nests with it and this is easier than vacuuming it from the carpet every morning.

My hair is still wet and I pull it back tucking it over itself and tie it up with a black elastic. When it dries, it will have an awkward curl to it. It takes so long to wash that I can't justify the time to blow-dry it. I try to keep my showers short, to preserve water, even though the dams are now at seventy percent. The dry has ended, but my habits have not. Wet my hair, shampoo once, rinse. Shampoo again, rinse. Condition and tie up. Do I have time to shave? Do I want to? I consider the down that covers my body. My skin is pale, my hair is dark. It is obvious. I don't usually bother, not unless I think I'm going to get laid. Even then, it depends on who I'm welcoming into my bed.

He's pretty, but not a thinker. He learnt about what women's bodies should look like from his father's magazines and he learnt how women will make them look that way from his mother's magazines. These are bodies pressed flat on smooth, shiny paper. These are bodies with the scars and shadows blurred out. He is not surprised to find my body smooth and hairless. He expects it. When we come together again, it is winter and he is surprised by my fur coat. He is not invited back.

She is political. She talks in clipped sentences. She keeps her hair short and doesn't wax or shave. She is surprised to find that although my hair is long, I do not look like a magazine woman beneath my clothes. She applauds me for my forward thinking, for challenging what it is to be a woman. I tell her to leave her internalised misogyny at the pub with the other girls who think that masculinity is androgynous.

I like the feel of my shins when I have shaved them. I rub oil into them. I rub them against each other. It is a delight. I am generally not phased by my legs, my cunt or my armpits. They are hairy or not, as I decide. I do not have to shape my eyebrows too often, they have a nice shape on their own. Every now and then I might pluck a stray hair.

But some of my hair is illicit. It shames me and I do nothing about it. The hair that shames me is the hair I angst the most about removing. I should leave it and show that this is my body and that I perform as a woman.

My toes. Like a man, I have coarse dark hair on my toes. I look at my feet and fancy myself a hobbit: short, stout, furry feet. More often than not I leave that hair as it is. No one is looking at my feet and I don't wear sandals or thongs.

My stomach. Trailing up from my mons is that path that I find so alluring on men. But mine is sparse and harsh, not thick and dark. I carry my weight on my stomach. I fancy that if I do situps, if I somehow lost that weight, I would also lose that awkward expanse. Every now and then it distracts me too much and I wax it. Then I feel that I have betrayed my sisters who refuse to shave their legs.

My breasts. I have one hair on my right breast. Just one. I pluck it out when I see it. It will be gone for months and then out of nowhere, hi! There it is. I pull it out.

My throat. I attack my whiskers each and every day with a small pair of black tweezers. They are rough, they interrupt the skin that covers my voice. They keep coming back. One day, when I am older and braver, I will be a bearded lady. I will relish my beautiful dresses and grow a black beard, it will match my hair dye. I will travel in a circus. I don't fool myself that I will be invited to nice parties once I grow my beard.

My lips. I have always joked that I grow a better moustache than my brothers. It is not quite true but it is not far from true. Every few weeks I tear these hairs from my lips. I hope that if I do it often enough, the hair will give up. It is definitely less thick that it used to be.

I take off my heavy blue gown and hang it behind my bedroom door. He calls to me from our bed. A question. Meow? I walk over to him and bury my face in his cotton fresh fur before I decide to face the day.

Read the other posts in the Body Hair blog series:

On Making and Publishing The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair, by Karín Lesnik-Oberstein

Damned if you do and damned if you don't, by Rosie Garland

Female Werewolves, Fur and Body Hair, by Carys Crossen

GUEST POST: Damned if you do and damned if you don't by Rosie Garland

This is the second in my short series of guest posts exploring the somewhat controversial subject of women and body hair. Links to the other posts in the series can be found at the end of this post.

I am very pleased to welcome today's guest writer, Rosie Garland.

Born in London to a runaway teenager, Rosie Garland has always been a cuckoo in the nest. She has an eclectic writing and performance history, from singing in Goth band The March Violets, to twisted cabaret and electrifying poetry as Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen, to conference presentations in the UK and overseas. As well as four solo collections of poems, her short stories and articles have been widely anthologised. She has won the DaDa Award for Performance Artist of the Year, the Diva Award for Solo Performer, and a Poetry Award from the People’s Café, New York. She is also the winner of the 2011 inaugural Mslexia Novel Competition with The Palace of Curiosities, a picaresque literary novel inspired by the life of Victorian Hairy Woman Julia Pastrana.

I’ve had an interest in the fraught female relationship with body hair since I started growing it anywhere but on my head. Years before I discovered feminism or any broader questioning of why women should present hairlessness to be acceptable.

I was the class geek. There was always one, sitting at the edge of school photos sporting a done-at-home haircut and a bewildered expression at just how unpopular a girl could be. Surrounded by pretty classmates wearing the right length skirt, the right size knot in the school tie (small one term, huge the next). Along with my mother, they gave out messages about hair. Basically, if it wasn’t on my head, it was gross and should be removed. Especially leg and underarm sproutings.

I resisted the pronouncements. I didn’t want to do it. It was just one item on the long list of things that made me an outsider, part of the same mindset that made my classmates obsessed with perfume, body spray and ‘feminine’ deodorant (you know, the stuff that brings on toxic shock). From where I stood, it seemed to be about spending a fortune on products that promised to hide the fact you were female.

No, I didn’t see myself as a rebel, but it struck me as overwhelmingly illogical (yes, I identified with Mr. Spock in Star Trek). For a start, it was such a mess: applying smelly cream, waiting for it to melt the hair away (never as successful as the adverts with their hysterically cheerful actors). If you didn’t use cream, there were cuts from shaving. Ouch. It was also a waste of time – the damn stuff grew back immediately, stubbly and far more noticeable than the soft fronds that covered my legs if I left them alone.

Being of an enquiring mind, I asked my mum why I needed to get rid of something that was occurring quite naturally, like my second set of teeth or the beginnings of breasts (I wasn’t being asked to get rid of them). She replied that body hair wasn’t ‘ladylike’. This confused me further. I was a ‘lady’, or at least one in miniature. Therefore if I was growing hair, then it was of or pertaining to the state of being a lady. I asked if I needed to shave the new growth on my vulva and was told to stop being rude. I didn’t get why it was supposed to be such a no-no.

Sure, hair or no hair can be personal taste. If you live in a culture where there is a modicum of choice then yes, you can choose to wax yourself to a standstill and ‘still be a feminist’ (whatever ‘still’ means). I don’t have a direct association of feminist = unshaved woman, which is the stereotype. If I choose to be unshaved, which I do, it goes back far earlier. I’m not of the Reductio ad absurdum opinion that intelligence evaporates with the removal of hair, in a female version of Samson being stripped of his strength when Delilah shaved him.

However. What does that ‘choice’ really mean when faced with a familial / societal / media barrage of ‘eeew’? Day in, day out, from the onset of the first spindly hair till we die – the message that it (and by extension we) = unhygienic / unladylike / unfeminine / dirty / messy / taboo and god damn it, ugly.

And don’t get me started on patriarchal / male reaction to women’s body hair. I’d need a dozen blogs for that. Feminism or not, I can still not get past this simple bottom line: the only females who are naturally free of hair under their arms, on their legs and on their pubis are children. The only acceptable females in porn are hairless. I do not need to say a word about how fundamentally this creeps me out. Let alone how mentally and socially infantilising it is. Sexual fixation on hairlessness in adult females is creepy. Go bloody figure.

Deep breath. I watched with interest as I grew into a world where nice girls depilate. Except the stuff on our heads which is our ‘crowning glory’. Just how integral these tresses are to being seen / read as female came home to me with a body blow when I got throat cancer, underwent intensive chemotherapy and my hair fell out.

I assumed that it would loosen its moorings overnight, in one go. But it left my body in a slow, piecemeal moulting which I found sufficiently distressing that I got a set of clippers and shaved my head. I chose to ‘go bald’ rather than wear the prescription wig. The wig felt all wrong, like I was trying to pass for human and ‘well’ when that was the last thing I felt like. I was not ashamed of having cancer. My hairlessness was part of the reality. Sod this, I thought. I shall not pretend, nor hide my cancer from the world, just to spare the healthy world’s collective delusion that no-one gets ill and no-one dies. As a signifier of our shared mortality, baldness is terrifying. People crossed the road so that I wouldn’t talk to them about ‘it’.

At this point I want to stress that this was my individual response to cancer. I am not suggesting it as a template. Others choose to engage with the illness differently, and each person’s response is as valid as the next.

To bolster a sense of self, I searched for positive images of bald women with shaved or bald heads. I repeat, positive. I was not interested in images of punishment, dehumanisation, imprisonment or torture. It was bloody hard work finding anything. I scraped together a meagre handful, and the first hits were from science fiction. Alice Krige as the Borg Queen in Star Trek First Contact, Persis Khambatta as Lieutenant Ilia in Star Trek The Motion Picture, Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Alien 3. All of them created as attractive, intelligent, ass-kicking or all three.

All of the above informed the creation of Eve, the central character in my upcoming debut novel The Palace of Curiosities (HarperCollins, forthcoming March 2013). I took the concept of female hairiness to its logical (that word again) extreme. Eve has hypertrichosis, a condition where the entire body is covered in a thick mat of hair. The novel is set in 1850s London, and in it I explore how Eve makes her way in a world where she is the only one of her kind. Her ‘difference’ is overwhelmingly visible, yet she is determined to get by on her own terms. She does not shave herself to pass for human. She fends off exploitation, discovers fulfilment, self-expression and self-reliance.

I’ve been told that Eve’s hairiness can be seen as an interesting analogy for being queer in a heteronormative world. I’m happy if she makes one person think about what it means to be female and have body hair.

If you would like to whet your appetite for The Palace of Curiosities in anticipation of its release next year, you can find Rosie's story, 'Cut and Paste', in the Hic Dragones Wolf-Girls anthology.

Read the other posts in the Body Hair blog series:

On Making and Publishing The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair, by Karín Lesnik-Oberstein

On Body Hair, by LJ Maher

Female Werewolves, Fur and Body Hair, by Carys Crossen

GUEST POST: On Making and Publishing The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair by Karín Lesnik-Oberstein

This is the first post in a series, so here's a little intro from me...

Working on, and reading about, female werewolves as much as I do, you become used to dealing on a daily basis with subject matter that most people find a little odd. Hyper-sexual creatures, brutal violence, animal transformation and the supernatural/occult all seem quite normal to me. Even conversations about anthropophagy and cannibalism are fairly routine for me, though these subjects tend to raise more eyebrows when I start talking about them at parties, and the subject of maternal cannibalism (the central theme of perhaps the most controversial of the stories in Wolf-Girls, an anthology I recently edited) is still something of a taboo.

However, there is one aspect of the female werewolf that is far less openly discussed. Female werewolves are hairy. They have body hair and they don't, on the whole, seek to remove it (apart from in Mattel's Monster High series, but that's another story...) And yet, we don't talk about this. This facet of the female werewolf is discreetly side-stepped or euphemized in (most, though not all) fiction. The silence, distaste and disgust surrounding female werewolves' body hair is not surprising, given that there is a silence, distaste and disgust surrounding all female body hair. It is something to be removed, reviled and certainly not spoken of in polite company. The hairy girl is, at best, an oddity, at worst, an aberration.

So, given my predilection for talking about subjects that are normally surrounded by silence, distaste and disgust, it gives me great pleasure to host guest posts from four female writers on the subject of female body hair. For the first post in the series, I welcome Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, editor of the only academic collection on female body hair, The Last Taboo.

Karín Lesnik-Oberstein is Professor of Critical Theory and Director of the ‘Graduate Centre for International Research in Childhood: Literature, Culture, Media (CIRCL)’ in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading, in Reading, UK. Karín’s research interest is in transdisciplinary critical theory, and she has published monographs on Children’s Literature: Criticism and the Fictional Child (1994) and On Having an Own Child: Reproductive Technologies and the Cultural Construction of Childhood (2008), as well as several edited volumes on critical theory and identity, focussing on gender primarily in The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair (2007, republished in paperback 2011).

I thought of my (edited) book The Last Taboo: Women and Body Hair in the early 1990s, very early on in my academic career, both because of my personal experiences with body hair and through discussing this as an issue with one of the very first students I taught (an American exchange student), in my first academic post as a Junior Research Fellow. I was discussing a personal decision I made in my early twenties no longer to remove my body hair with this student, and she told me in turn that she, like me, also had very dark and long body hair growth, according to her because of her Albanian ancestry. This student also told me she was training to be a contemporary ballet dancer (and, in fact, she became a very successful dancer), and that although contemporary ballet prided itself on breaking all kinds of taboos, for instance having dances danced in the nude, she was required to remove all the hair from her body. That was not up for question!

It was during this discussion that I decided to write a book on this whole topic, especially when I then discovered during subsequent research that nobody had done so already. There were a very few articles on the topic, psychological in orientation, examining ideas of femininity, gender and the body, but I discovered even feminist writers and academics had very little to say about why women remove their body hair; primarily, they discuss women’s body shape and weight. They either did (and do) not mention body hair at all, or, if they did, they only briefly advocated not practicing hair removal in order to return to a ‘natural’ body, or they celebrated hair removal as part of an idea of an enjoyment of beautification. In my book I did not want either to advocate hair-removal or to defend it, but try to understand more why it was done: what it meant.

This is also why I ended up not writing the whole book myself, but having different chapters written by different experts, although they all follow the theoretical framework I worked out in relation to body hair in my own introductory chapter, which is to see body hair and the body more widely (any kind of body, not just ‘female’ or ‘human’) as culturally constructed, not as ‘biologically’ determined. In terms of this approach, I was following (as I continue to do in all my work) my interest in critical and cultural theory, inspired by specific interpretations of the implications of psychoanalysis based on the work of, for instance, Jacqueline Rose, Shoshana Felman and Judith Butler. Having a range of different expertise also allows the book to illuminate the meanings of hair-removal across a range of fields and practices: literature, film, art, psychology, advertising, anthropology, and so on.

In the end it took me twenty years to get the book published. I wrote to over forty publishers during those years, but most of them either said the subject was too trivial to write about at such length and in an academic book, or they said that society was no longer interested in what they called ‘extreme feminism’. Interestingly, these responses in and of themselves completely supported the argument of the book and were predictable from what my contributors and I examine in the book, which is that body hair is an instance of how issues can be defined as socially, culturally or historically too silly and trivial to be discussed, on the one hand, whilst on the other they are simultaneously seen as too dangerous, mad and monstrous to be considered, and we argue throughout the book that this is in fact how social and cultural power acts itself out. This can be compared, for instance, to what literary critics Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar classically called the ‘madwoman in the attic’ in terms of the marginalisation and vilification of women as writers in nineteenth-century English literature and culture.

It was remarkable to see the kinds of comments publishers (from the UK and USA, as this is where I contacted academic publishers) made, even in the case of initially enthusiastic and supportive commissioning editors: one editor from a self-defined ‘radical’ academic press told me her sales team would not accept the book as they saw it as ‘too feminist’ to be able to sell. On the other hand, self-defined feminist presses such as Virago and The Women’s Press had no interest in the book at all and rejected it out of hand. Another publisher who initially did want to publish the book finally rejected it when a review-reader said they thought it should primarily be about men and body hair, not women (although, in fact, the book argues these are not separate issues). In another case, a publisher wanted me to change the title because they said that The Last Taboo ‘made it sound like it was about sex’; apparently they thought body hair had nothing to do with sexuality! Yet another publisher told me the book should not be theoretical, as there was nothing important theoretically about women and body hair, but that it should be written as a ‘sociological’ study.

My contributors and I were thrilled when the book was finally published by Manchester University Press in 2007. I worked on this book longer than on any other in my academic career, and making it not only was part of my own stubborn belief that this issue mattered, whatever many of the other publishers thought, but also confirmed to me that much of academia (and academic publishing), no matter how much it claims to be about original thinking, is often just as much in thrall to ideas of the acceptable and the valuing of ‘fashion’.

For more information about The Last Taboo, visit the Manchester University Press website, or Amazon.

The Body Hair blog series continues:

Damned if you do and damned if you don't, by Rosie Garland

On Body Hair, by LJ Maher

Female Werewolves, Fur and Body Hair, by Carys Crossen

CFP: 4th Global Conference: Storytelling

Tuesday 21st May – Friday 24th May 2013

Prague, Czech Republic

Call for Presentations

Human life is conducted through story, which comes naturally to us. Sharing stories is arguably the most important way we have of communicating with others about who we are and what we believe; about what we are doing and have done; about our hopes and fears; about what we value and what we don’t. We learn about and make sense of our lives by telling the stories that we live; and we learn about other lives by listening to the stories told by others. Sometimes, under the influence of the culture in which we are immersed, we live our lives in ways that try to create the stories we want to be able to tell about them.

Members of many professions, including medicine, nursing, teaching, the law, psychotherapy and counseling, spend a great deal of their time listening to and communicating through stories. Story is a powerful tool for teachers, because it is a good way of enabling students and other learners to integrate what they are learning with what they already know, and of placing what is learned in a context that makes it easy to recall. Story plays an important role in academic disciplines like philosophy, theology, anthropology, archaeology, history as well as literature Narrative methods for the collection of data are increasingly used in research in the social sciences and humanities, where the value of getting to know people in a more intimate and less distant way – almost as if we are getting to know them from the inside, begins to be viewed as having some value. Some academics have begun to realise the value of storytelling as a model for academic writing.

Most of us have lots of experience of relating to other lives through narrative forms, including the nursery stories we encounter as children; the books we read and the movies we watch. When we are moved by a play or a film or by a novel, we are moved because we begin imaginatively to live the lives of the characters that inhabit them. If we are lucky we will encounter as we grow up, fictional stories that stay with us like old friends, throughout our lives that we will revisit again and again as a way coming to terms with and responding to experiences in our own lives.

Storytelling: global reflections on narrative, will provide a space in which stories about story can be told, and in which the use of stories in the widest possible range of aspects of human life, can be reported. Abstracts are invited for individual contributions and for symposia of three closely related papers. They may address any aspect of story or narrative, including, for example:

Story as a pedagogical tool in academic disciplines such as history; anthropology, psychology, theology, cultural theory, medicine, law, philosophy, education, and archaeology.

Narrative and the gathering of stories of lived experience, as a research approach in any area of academic, professional and public life.

The place of story and storytelling in the practice of journalism; PR advertising; conflict resolution; architecture; religion; tourism, politics and the law, and in clinical contexts such as medicine, psychotherapy, nursing and counseling.

Finally abstracts may feature storytelling in any aspect of culture, including music (from opera to heavy metal, folk and sacred music); fine art; theatre; literature; cinema and digital storytelling.

Alongside traditional conference papers, participants are invited to propose presentations of other kinds including, for example, theatrical performance or song, or workshops aimed at engaging participants in active learning about story and its possibilities.

The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. Papers will also be considered on any related theme.

What to Send:

300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 30th November 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 15th February 2013 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: STORY4 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

Gavin J Fairbairn 

Rob Fisher 

The conference is part of the Persons series of ongoing research and publications projects conferences, run within the Probing the Boundaries domain which aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore innovative and challenging routes of intellectual and academic exploration.

All papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume. All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference.

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: Responsible Living: Ethical Issues in Everyday Life

Saturday 18th May – Monday 20th May 2013

Prague, Czech Republic

Call for Presentations

Taking their professional responsibilities seriously, practitioners of a wide variety of professions, including medicine, psychology and social work; journalism, tourism and the arts; architecture, civil engineering and the law, engage in reflection about ethical issues as part of their daily practice. Most professions have an ethical code with which its members are expected to comply. But ethical issues are not to be found only in the workplace. Whether we are aware of it or not, we all face ethical decisions every day. Or at any rate, each day we make decisions that have ethical significance – about, for example, what we eat; how we behave towards others, including strangers as well as family and friends; about the extent to which we are willing to share what we have with others who have less; about the energy we use in travelling and in heating our homes, and about where we should shop for food, clothes and the other essentials of modern life.

Probably the most talked about problems about the intention to live responsibly arise in relation to human induced climate change, which has provoked heated debate at every level, and global summits aimed at forging agreements about how to tackle the problems of global warming. As well as local and international regulation, reflection about the problems of climate change have led also to mountains of advice about what we can to do to limit our impact on the planet – from changes in the ways we produce and package goods, to how we build, heat and insulate our homes; and from the advantages of using locally produced food and other necessities, to those of recycling almost everything. Of course, global warming is not the only area of life in which ethical living has become a major focus for many people. For example, they are concerned also, about a wide range of other issues including:

The ethical realities that surround food production, such as the use of chemicals in farming and the introduction of genetically modified crops.
Corruption in public life.
The power of multi-national companies and of the media in changing the ways we think and live.
Ways of keeping children safe and allowing them to grow to their full potential, wherever they live.
Poverty in both developing and developed countries.
Whether to buy their clothes from cut price shops that source them from manufacturers that pay their workers such low wages that they are barely better off than slaves, or from swankier shops that they hope are more ethical.
The destruction of the rainforests and the depletion of the earth’s resources.

Living Responsibly: reflecting on the ethical issues of everyday life will facilitate dialogue about living more responsibly. It will be of interest to everyone who cares about living in ways that are respectful of others and respectful of the planet, whether they are lay people or, for example, ethicists, sociologists, theologians, anthropologists or psychologists who are interested in what it means to behave ethically, and in what motivates ethical behaviour.

Abstracts are invited about any aspect of ethical issues in everyday life, of which the following suggested topics and questions are merely exemplars:

FOOD

~What should we eat and where should we buy our food?
~Should concerns about animal welfare turn us into vegetarians, or persuade us only to eat meat from animals that have been reared humanely?
~Is it really morally better to eat organic, locally produced food?
~What’s more important – the air miles it takes to bring my mange tout here from Kenya, or the fact that the Kenyan farmer who grows them gets at least some money?
~Do organically fed, free range chickens really enjoy their lives more than factory made ones?
~Is eating organically grown beef really more ethical?

CLIMATE CHANGE and GLOBAL WARMING

~What should we do about the problem of global warming?
~Will it really make any difference if we recycle; consume less energy and take fewer foreign holidays?
~Should I pay the optional carbon offsetting charge every time I fly?
~What will we do when the oil runs out?
~Wind farms, nuclear power and the overuse of energy.

RELATING TO AND CARING FOR OTHERS

~What ethical demands do personal relationships with family or friends place on us?
~Does the role of ‘parent’ or ‘spouse’ create particular ethical responsibilities?
~How responsible are we for those who are less well off than we are?
~Should we give money to beggars in the street, even if we suspect they will use it for drugs and alcohol?
~Do we also have ethical obligations to strangers, whether they are from our society or more distant ones, that conflict with our obligations to friends and lovers?
~Must we donate to every global disaster fund, even if we believe that our money may not reach those who need our help?
~Should I feel guilty about the plight of folk in developing countries that are squandering their GDP on warfare?
~What special ethical considerations do sexual relationships involve?

BUSINESS

~What does it take for a business to be ethically sound?
~Should multinationals rule the world?
~What’s fair about ‘fairtrade’?
~Isn’t ‘Responsible and sustainable tourism’ just another way of capturing a share of the market from cyncial business people?
~Should we buy newspapers published by companies that have a track record of unethical behaviour?

Papers will be considered on any related theme. The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. Papers will also be considered on any related theme.

What to Send:

300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 30th November 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 15th February 2013. 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: RL3 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

Gavin J Fairbairn 

Rob Fisher 

The conference is part of the Persons series of ongoing research and publications projects conferences, run within the Probing the Boundaries domain which aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore innovative and challenging routes of intellectual and academic exploration.

All papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume. All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference.

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: Sensing the Sacred: Religion and the Senses, 1300-1800

The University of York
21-22 June 2013

Confirmed keynote addresses from:

Nicky Hallett (University of Sheffield)
Matthew Milner (McGill University)
& Chris Woolgar (University of Southampton)

Religion has always been characterised as much by embodied experience as by abstract theological dispute. From the sounds of the adhān (the Islamic call to prayer), to the smell of incense in the Hindu Pūjā (a ritual offering to the deities), the visual emblem of the cross in the Christian tradition, and the ascetic practices of Theravada Buddhism, sensation is integral to a range of devotional practices. At the same time, the history of many faiths is characterised by an intense suspicion of the senses and the pleasures they offer.

This international, interdisciplinary conference, to be held at the University of York from 21 to 22 June 2013, will bring together scholars working on the role played by the senses in the experience and expression of religion and faith in the pre-modern world. The burgeoning field of sensory history offers a fertile ground for reconsideration of religious studies across disciplinary boundaries. We welcome papers from anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, historians, literary scholars, musicologists, philosophers, theologians, and any other interested parties. Possible topics might include, but are by no means limited to:

- Synaesthesia: how do religious rituals blur sensory boundaries, and challenge sensory hierarchies?

- Iconography and iconoclasm: how might we conceive the ‘rites of violence’ in sensory terms? How does iconography engage the non-visual senses?

- The senses and conversion: how are the senses used to elicit conversion?

- Material cultures of religion: what role do the senses play in mediating between bodies and sacred objects?

- The senses and gender: are sensing practices gender specific?

- The inner (spiritual) senses: how do they relate to the external (bodily) senses?

- Sensory environments: to what extent do environments shape devotional practices and beliefs, and vice versa? How do we use our senses to orient ourselves in space?

- Affect: what role do the senses play in the inculcation of religious affect?

Proposals (max. 300 words) for papers of 20 minutes are welcomed both from established scholars, and from postgraduate students. Applications from panels of three speakers are encouraged, as well as individual proposals.

They should be sent to conference organisers Robin Macdonald, Emilie Murphy, and Elizabeth Swann by 6pm on 5 November 2012.