cfp – Terror and the Inhuman

Call for Papers [Deadline: June 30, 2012]
Terror and the Inhuman Conference
Brown University
Department of Modern Culture and Media
Providence, Rhode Island
October 25 – 27, 2012

Keynote Lectures to be delivered by:
Adriana Cavarero (University of Verona)
Jared Sexton (University of California, Irvine)

This conference seeks to develop new lines of exchange between “terror” and “the inhuman,” two diverse – yet inescapably interrelated – figurations and theoretical concepts. We ask: What critical work are “terror” and “the inhuman” doing for media studies and cultural theory? How does terror traffic in and through the inhuman? What distinguishes terror from other anxious forms of affect such as panic, fear, horror, and shock, and from other modes of political violence such as war, revolution, and insurgency? And finally, how do literary, photographic, televisual, cinematic, and digital media represent the inhuman as well as focalize and mobilize anxieties over the inhumanity and terrorization of technical media as such?

We invite papers that will revisit and rethink the various kinds of links — of complicity, inseparability, causality, opposition, or even incommensurability — constructed between these terms by politicians, the media, philosophers, artists, and critical theorists from various disciplines. Recent considerations of the inhuman as techné, as animal, as thing, as woman, as Black, as terrorist and as queer prompt us to ask what precedes and what exceeds the human. They compel us, in other words, to confront the political, ethical, and theoretical task of critique in the face of permanent war, transformations in aesthetic practice, (bio)technological development, and ongoing political and epistemic (in)security. To our conference participants, we also wish to ask: what does it mean to value terror now and from an inhuman perspective? What is the history of this valorization? How does it account for the stasis or the shifts in contemporary global politics and nodes of power? What are the limits of the ideological work performed by the disciplinary divisions, mediums, and examples used in these formulations? How important is the role of historical and geographical specificity in this pro-revolutionary resurrection of terror and the inhuman? What is its link to the popular: why do mass audiences increasingly find themselves enthralled by representations of war, rape, torture, and international terrorism as well as by quotidian and seemingly banal forms of “terror” and “the inhuman”? And, last but not least, how should we pose the issue of “human rights” against or within the realm of inhuman terror?

As the Department of Modern Culture and Media is a thoroughly interdisciplinary program, we welcome papers from a variety of disciplines including but not limited to: Film and Media Studies, Critical Theory, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Native Studies, Feminist and Queer Studies, Art History and Visual Culture, Literature, Science and Technology Studies, Area Studies, and Philosophy.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Counter/terrorism, War, Insurgency, and State Violence
• Racial Modernity, Settler Colonialism, and Histories of the Inhuman
• The Inhuman as “Posthuman”: Cyborgs, Networks, Swarms, and Virtual Lives
• Mediating Terror (Print / Photography / Film / TV / Digital Media / Animation / Theater / Performance / Music)
• Theoretical Anti-Humanisms (Semiotics, Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction)
• Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology
• Genre Criticism: Horror, Sci-fi, Fantasy, Gothic, Detective
• Posthumous Celebrity, Spectacle, and Fandom
• Animal Studies
• The Figure of the Child
• Bodies of Terror
• Sexuality and the Inhuman
• Technology and/as the Inhuman
• Globalization, Revolt, and Terror
• Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights
• Figures of Gendered and Raced Monstrosity
• Postcolonial Terror
• The Sublime in Aesthetics
• Radical Empiricism and the Turn to Affect
• Biopolitics and Necropolitics
• Disability Studies
• The Global Prison Regime and U.S. Empire
• Affect, Value, Capital, Labor, and Measure
• The Inhuman and the Law
• The Ethical Turn and the “New Humanism”
• The “Inhumanities”: Terror, Justice, and the Academic Industrial Complex

Submission and acceptance to the conference will be based on blind peer reviews of your 250-300 word abstract. Faculty members, graduate students, and independent scholars interested in submitting a paper proposal should email an abstract, paper title, 2-3 sentence bio, affiliation [if applicable] and contact information to terror.inhuman.conference@gmail.com
by June 30, 2012. Presenters will be informed by August 1, 2012.

cfp – international conference on living with difference

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LIVING WITH DIFFERENCE
12-13 September 2012, Marriott Hotel, Leeds, UK

CONFERENCE THEME — how do we develop the capacity to live with difference?

We are witnessing an era of unprecedented population change. This is a product of the twin forces of the global economy and global conflicts which have accelerated patterns of international migration. Other forms of rapid population change are evident too. The historical shift from narrowly hierarchised forms of society to new modernities, in which individuals are assumed to be released from traditional constraints and to have more freedom to create their own individualized biographies, choosing between a range of lifestyles and social ties, has resulted in the more open public expression of a diverse range of social identities and ways of living (e.g. in terms of sexual orientation, disability, gender, religion and belief etc). In this context of super mobility and super-diversity, Stuart Hall (1993: 361) has claimed that ‘the capacity to live with difference is…the coming question of the 21st century’. It is an issue that is becoming even more pertinent given growing tensions arising from post 9/11 terrorism and subsequent Western military interventions and the current international financial crisis because historically there has been a hardening of attitudes towards ‘others’ and a rise in intolerance during times of crisis.

In this context one strand of interdisciplinary research has celebrated the potential for new hybrid cultures and ways of living together with difference to be forged. Yet, while an internalised globalisation of society has occurred at least in parts of many societies, not everyone has access to or sees themselves as part of this cosmopolitanism or will choose to participate in interactions with people different from themselves when such opportunities occur. Spatial proximity can generate positive intercultural encounters but it can also breed defensiveness and the bounding of identities and communities by generating or aggravating comparisons between different social groups in terms of perceived/actual access to resources.

We therefore invite papers from any discipline or geographical context that critically engage with this exciting topic to stimulate further debate about how societies can develop the capacity to live with difference, while also providing the chance to hear from leading thinkers on this topic.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS
Ash Amin
Zygmunt Bauman
Davina Cooper
Patricia Ehrkamp
Anne-Marie Fortier
Sophie Watson

THEMES
The conference will be organised around four strands:
•         Theorising and Researching Difference
•         Encounters with Difference
•         Contesting Values in the Public Sphere
•         Managing Difference: Socio-legal Responses

Potential topics for submissions might include, but are not limited to: identification and belonging; attitudes towards any form of diversity (e.g. sexual orientation, disability, gender, race and ethnicity, religion and belief, age etc.); embodied  encounters with difference; theories of cosmopolitanism; competing group rights claims; intercultural competencies; patterns of prejudice (e.g. homophobia, Islamaphobia, racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, disablism, ageism etc.); concepts of tolerance and intolerance; structural challenges to inclusion; strategies for managing difference.

SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 13 April 2012. Abstracts of up to 300 words should be emailed to geo-LIVEDIFFERENCE@leeds.ac.uk.  Abstracts should include a title, the presenter(s) institutional affiliation(s) and contact details and an indication of to which of the four conference themes the paper relates. Authors of accepted abstracts will be notified in the week commencing 23 April 2012.

ACCOMMODATION AND REGISTRATION
Leeds has a great range of accommodation to suit all tastes and pockets.  Delegates will have the opportunity to make on-line reservations at best rates, on a selection of hotels that are being reserved for use by LIVEDIFFERENCE conference delegates.   Details of the hotels and booking process will be available on the conference registration pages.  Registration will open on 23 April 2012. The conference registration fee is £60 per day, with a reduced rate of £30 per day for postgraduates.  Fees include all day catering and a wine reception on day one.  Evening dinner and accommodation are not included.

ABOUT THE VENUE
From shopping and dining, to contemporary arts and a vibrant nightlife, Leeds offers something for everyone. The compact city centre is easy to explore, and boasts interesting architecture like the Leeds Town Hall, and the Victoria Quarter.   Attractions include sport, theatre and an eclectic music scene, alongside Leeds Art Gallery (which includes the Henry Moore Institute) and Leeds City Museum. Leeds is also less than 20 miles from the Yorkshire Dales National Park, and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. For more information about Leeds see http://www.visitleeds.co.uk/, and the surrounding attractions in the Yorkshire countryside see http://www.yorkshire.com/

Organised by:
This conference is organised on behalf of the European Research Council funded project – Living with Difference led by Professor Gill Valentine, with colleagues Johan Andersson, Aneta Piekut, Joanna Sadgrove, Alison Suckall, and Nichola Wood.

If you require further information or have any queries please contact either: Gill Valentine – g.valentine@leeds.ac.uk; or Alison Suckall – a.j.suckall@leeds.ac.uk
http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/projects/livedifference/

cfp – materialism and world politics conference

territory, politics, governance journal cfp

New journal CFP. Territory, Politics, Governance, edited by John Agnew.

CFP – “Displacement and Uncertainty”

Session CFP for European Association of Social Anthropologists’ 2012 meeting, Nanterre, France, 10-14 July 2012.

Link here.

Convenors

Katarzyna Grabska (University of Basel)
Cindy Horst (PRIO)

Short Abstract

Displacement leads to great levels of uncertainty for individuals, groups and nations. We welcome papers that critically examine the links between displacement and social change, and ways in which displacement creates uncertainty in people’s lives and their place-/life-making projects.

Long Abstract

Worldwide, displacement leads to great levels of uncertainty for individuals, groups and nations. Protracted refugee situations like those of the Palestinians; Somalis in Kenya; and Afghans in Pakistan, often pose challenges to regional stability in both conflict and post-conflict situations. Challenges to peace arise from the political and military operations of refugees across the border, at times with support of authorities in hosting countries. Furthermore, there are situations in which refugees pose threats to the national security of their country of (temporary) settlement. Yet, the human security needs and human rights of the displaced in these situations are left in limbo, leading to great levels of uncertainty for the people involved.

Displacement of population leads to frictions in post-conflict situations, particularly regarding land, property rights and social norms. Peace-negotiations may stall over the fate of the displaced and over the return of or compensation for land and other property lost due to displacement. That land- and property issues can in fact be a cause of recurrent outbreaks of violent conflict. Lubkemann (2010) argues that the empirically most productive and relevant direction for future displacement studies is one that focuses on the effects that displacement has as a process on other mainstream processes of social transformation. We welcome papers that challenge and critically examine such assumptions. In what ways displacement creates uncertainty in people’s lives, their aspirations for the future and place-/life-making projects? How can we theorise about displacement, peace, social change and the types of uncertainties that displacement brings about?

CFP – “Deportation, Justice and Anxiety”

Session at the 2012 European Association of Social Anthropologists, Nanterre, France, 10-14 July 2012.

Link here.

Convenors

Heike Drotbohm (Albert-Ludwigs Universität, Freiburg)
Ines Hasselberg (Sussex University)
Christin Achermann (University of Neuchâtel)

Short Abstract

As a form of expulsion regulating human mobility, deportation is a practice of state power embedded in anxiety, uncertainty, fear and unrest that elicit different perceptions of (un)justice. We call for contributions covering the matter from different geographical sites, angles and perspectives.

Long Abstract

As a form of expulsion regulating human mobility, deportation is a practice of state power embedded in anxiety, uncertainty, fear and unrest that elicit different perceptions of (un)justice. Recent academic work has contributed to a contextualized understanding of the practice of deportation, the ‘production’ of deportability, and how both are experienced. If deportation policies may be justified by public authorities as measures responding to anxieties over (unregulated) migration, they also bring out uncertainty and unrest to deportable/deported migrants and their families. This panel takes EASA’s 2012 conference-theme to call for ethnographies approaching this issue from different geographical sites (contributions examining expulsion by ‘non-western’ states are particularly welcomed), angles (detention, surveillance, sending/returning countries, tribunals, public policy), and perspectives (government, public-opinion, deportees, activists). We call for contributions covering the matter from a multitude of starting points: What are the historical roots and contemporary continuities of expulsion in national contexts? What are the social logics of detention and ‘justice’ within multicultural societies? How is deportation reflected in public opinion? What impact deportability and deportation may bear in one’s sense of belonging and entitlement? What is the situation and mode of integration of deportees within their family networks, and alleged ‘home’ communities? How do people cope with and react to the threat of deportation and resulting uncertain future? What are the perceptions of the actors involved in enforcing deportation, e.g. staff of detention centers? What are the experiences of ‘untypical deportees’ as deported women or minors, and those left behind in the ‘host’ country?

CFP: SPEP 2011

Call for Papers for the 50th Annual SPEP Conference

50th Anniversary Meeting of SPEP

Wednesday, October 19 – Saturday, October 22, 2011

Sheraton Society Hill, Philadelphia, PA

Host Institutions: Villanova University and Penn State University

The Executive Committee of SPEP invites:

COMPLETE PAPERS (no more than 3,000 words) with abstracts (75-100 words)

PANEL PROPOSALS consisting of one panel abstract (no more than 500 words) and complete papers (no more than 3,000 words per paper).

Papers and panels from diverse philosophical perspectives in all areas of Continental Philosophy are welcome. As this meeting is the occasion of SPEP’s 50thAnniversary, the Executive Committee invites papers and panels that reflect on the rich history of SPEP as well as SPEP’s future.

All submissions will be considered under a blind review process. Please DO NOT SEND any submissions TO THE ANNIVERSARY COMMITTEE. SEND ALL PAPER AND PANEL SUBMISSIONS DIRECTLY TO THE SECRETARY/TREASURER.

Instructions for Submissions

Submitting Paper and Panel Proposals: Please note the specific requests in the instructions for submission as some specifics have changed since last year:

1. New for 2011: A person may submit only one paper for consideration each year. If you have a book under consideration for a special session, you may still submit a paper for consideration.

2. All submissions must be submitted electronically.  Please send your submissiondirectly to the Secretary/Treasurer, Shannon Lundeen at shannonspep@gmail.com.

3. Electronic Receipt Deadline: 11:59 p.m. EASTERN STANDARD TIME, Tuesday, February 1, 2011

4. The subject line of the email should read: 2011 SPEP Submission.

5. Your submission should contain TWO ATTACHMENTS: 1) Abstract AND Submission in one document prepared for blind review. Even if you are submitting a panel proposal, the panel abstract and all of the papers should be in one document. See “Format of Submissions” for more information.2) A Cover letter that provides detailed contact information (including physical and electronic addresses) of the author(s), lists the word count of the paper(s),and indicates whether the author wishes to have the paper considered for “Best Submission by a Graduate Student” or “Best Submission by a Junior Scholar”(please be sure to indicate how you meet the eligibility requirements; for a full description and eligibility conditions of each prize, please see below under “Prizes”). In addition, if you anticipate the need for audio/visual equipment should your submission be accepted in the 2011 SPEP Conference program please indicate exactly what you will need in your cover letter.

Format of Submissions:

New for 2011: All abstracts for single papers must include five key words. This will help the Executive Committee group single papers into panels when the conference program is being organized.

Single-paper submissions must include complete papers (of no more than 3,000 wordsexclusive of notes and references) and abstracts (of no more than 100 words).

Panel proposals must include a title, an abstract of no more than 500 words for the panel as a whole, and complete papers (no more than 3,000 words exclusive of notes and references) for each paper in the panel.

Since papers and panel proposals are chosen through an anonymous review process, names and addresses of authors must be stated only on one separate cover sheet and omitted from the abstracts, papers, and footnotes. The word count for papers should appear on the cover sheet; papers that exceed the 3,000 word limit will not be considered. The word limit is exclusive of notes and references; the limit of 3,000 words is strictly enforced. Please use gender-inclusive language in accordance with the “Guidelines for Non-Sexist Use of Language” published by the APA and available at: http://www.apaonline.org/publications/texts/nonsexist.aspx.

Notification:

A. Notification of receipt of your submission: Upon receipt of your submission, you will receive an automated electronic acknowledgement from the SecretaryTreasurer indicating she has received your email and its attachments. If you send your submission in within five days of the deadline (February 1, 2011) you can expect to receive an automated response from the Secretary/Treasurer within fifteen minutes of receipt. If you do not receive a response in this timeframe, please send a follow up e-mail immediately to ensure that your submission is received.

B. Notification of Inclusion in the 2011 SPEP Conference Program: Authors of single-paper submissions and the panel organizers of panel-submissions will hear from the Executive Committee by May 15, 2011 whether their submission has been accepted/rejected for inclusion in the 2011 SPEP Conference Program.

Prizes:

There are two prizes available: the best submission by a junior scholar and the best submission by a graduate student. To be eligible for the SPEP Junior Scholar Award you must have earned a Ph.D. in the last five years (no earlier than January of 2006). All currently enrolled graduate students are eligible for the SPEP Graduate Student Scholar Award. Each prize is $500.00 plus a travel and hotel allowance. Each of the award-winning submissions will be selected through an anonymous review process. You must declare your desire to be considered for an award and your status as a graduate student or as a junior scholar on the cover sheet that accompanies your submission, which has been prepared for blind review. Winners will be notified by June 1, 2011.

For further information, please contact either one of the Executive Co-Directors:

Cynthia Willett

Department of Philosophy

Emory University

214 Bowden Hall

Atlanta, GA 30307

cwillet@emory.edu

Anthony Steinbock

Department of Philosophy

Southern Illinois University

Carbondale, IL 62901

steinboc@siu.edu

SPEP Website: http://www.spep.org

anarchist geographers

So, I just submitted a paper proposal and offered to be on the panel for the following conference notice I received. It was a bit last minute, because I half forgot about it since I’ve been so busy lately. I basically submitted what I posted here, just cleaned up a bit. Not being a geographer, I don’t have a ton of confidence that I’ll get in, but I figured that I should submit since the topic so clearly touches on my dissertation project.

Here’s the CFP:

¡No Borders!  Towards a new political geography of “immigration”

Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers (Seattle April 12-16, 2011)

While from a historical perspective, the global system of migration controls is relatively new, it has become largely naturalized in both policy making circles and geographical scholarship. This lack of a critical perspective on international boundaries themselves results in a reading of ‘immigration’ that privileges the perspective of the state and inherently casts border crossing as a problem that needs to be solved. In solidarity with broad based movements for immigrants’ rights, however, a growing number of activists and scholars around the world have taken up a call for a politics that does not take the existence of borders, controls over the movement of people, or differential access to rights based on citizenship status for granted.  We seek participants for several sessions at the AAG who are interested in thinking through what it means to engage in geographical scholarship or organizing work from a “no borders” or “freedom of movement” perspective.

For example:
* How can geographers doing work on immigration and borders ground their work in a freedom of movement framework?
* What already existing or emerging forms of political thought and action are challenging the global system of migration controls?
* How do these challenges intersect with other struggles and bodies of political theory? (for example, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist traditions)
* What does it mean to advance a “no borders” politics in an era of rising anti-immigrant sentiment?

We seek participants for both a paper and panel session, and envision a format that prioritizes open discussion, rather than formal presentations.  If you are interested in being a part of these sessions, please send a brief abstract (for the paper session) or expression of interest (for the panel) to Hunter Jackson (hunter.jackson@gmail.com <mailto:hunter.jackson@gmail.com>) or Jennifer Ridgley (jen.ridgley@gmail.com <mailto:jen.ridgley@gmail.com>) by October 18th.  We welcome participants at all stages of their research and careers.

CFP – Waiting for the Political Moment

CALL FOR PAPERS

WAITING FOR THE POLITICAL MOMENT

Utrecht & Rotterdam, June 17-19, 2010

‘Hamm: What’s happening?

Clov: Something is taking its course.’

Beckett, Endgame

Over the last decades, several political and cultural theorists have argued that the domain of politics, and even the very idea of the political, has been hollowed out. Politics today appears to have lost its proper status or has been submerged in the more powerful and encompassing infrastructures of late capitalism. Instead of frantically affirming or denying the emptying-out of the political, this conference traces the appropriation of the political by apparatuses of state, church, capitalism and media in modernity to look for ways to reinvigorate it. To do so, the conference focuses on a key concept: the political moment – the moment in which political agency becomes possible, as well as the formative role of the moment in politics.

To get to grips with the political moment we not only need to understand our current moment; we need to have an idea of how it developed over time. Not considering the political moment from an exclusively contemporary point of view, this conference also calls for proposals that focus on the formation of the political in relation to its emptying-out from the late Middle Ages to the present.

Contributions in the form of a 4000 words positioning paper distributed in advance and to be discussed in a seminar setting could address (but are not limited to) the following issues: what is a political moment? What does the emptying-out of the political imply? How has the appropriation of the political by state, religion or media shaped the conditions of possibility of the political? What is the role of the moment in politics?

Confirmed speakers include: Mieke Bal, Bruno Bosteels, Rosi Braidotti, Simon Critchley, Martin van Gelderen, Olivier Marchart, Patchen Markell, Benjamin Noys, and Alberto Toscano.

If you are interested in participating, please send in a 300-words paper proposal and a short résumé of your current research by January 15 2010 to Frans-Willem Korsten, Professor of Literature and Society, Erasmus University Rotterdam, email: korsten@fhk.eur.nl; and/or to Bram Ieven, lecturer in comparative literature at Utrecht University, email: b.k.ieven@uu.nl.

For more information see: www.waitingforthepoliticalmoment.org

Politics and Ontology CFP

For the Society for Social and Political Philosopy’s meetings to be held in conjunction with:

SPEP (Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) in 2010.

The SSPP invites papers for two conference panels. We are seeking papers that address issues pertaining to:

Politics and Ontology

We seek to explore and challenge the hypothesis that all political theory presupposes an ontology. From the presumption of universal rationality, to the potency of class consciousness, to the privileges shaped by the social existence of race, gender and sexuality, political order always is or implies an ontological order. In many respects, the ontological question is the political question. Struggles for political change are as much about the expansion (or contraction) of shared ontological categories as they are about the rewriting of legislation or the redistribution of power and resources . The traditional allocation of rights, for instance, has been determined almost entirely on the basis of who, or what, one is presumed to be. While ontology and politics share a long, interconnected history, for much of modern history the connection between them has been downplayed or denied, since liberalism is premised on bracketing such supposedly insoluble and inherently conflictual metaphysical questions. In recent decades, however, this has changed. The explicit investigation of political ontology has taken center stage and, as a consequence, what we understand to be political or ontological has changed as well. Politics is no longer limited to the state, but permeates all of social existence to include the terrain of imagination, emotions, and representation. Ontology is no longer an ultimate foundation, but is constituted through relations of power and affects. In the works of such authors as Gilles Deleuze, Elizabeth Grosz, Giorgio Agamben, William Connolly, Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, Jean-Luc Nancy, Antonio Negri, and many others, the subject of political ontology has surfaced in an array of new formulations. For this panel, we invite papers that extend this investigation or that challenge this resurgence, both within the context of work that has already been done and in anticipation of work yet to be conceived.

Complete papers of 3000-5000 words (that can be summarized and presented in 20-30 minutes) should be submitted for consideration for the 2010 meeting (deadline: March 1, 2010). The SPEP Conference is scheduled for October 2010, in Montreal, Canada.

Authors should include their name(s) and contact information on the cover page ONLY.

Papers should be emailed as attachments in Word or RTF format to: papers@sspp.us