European Conference on Cultural Studies 2014

The International Academic Forum in conjunction with its global university partners is proud to announce the Inaugural European Conference on Cultural Studies, to be held from July 24-27, 2014, at the Thistle Hotel Brighton, in the United Kingdom.

Hear the latest research, publish before a global audience, present in a supportive environment, network, engage in new relationships, experience the UK, explore Brighton, London and the South-East of England, join a global academic community…

2014 Conference Theme: Borderlands of Becoming, Belonging and Sharing

Local, national and global cultures have been transformed by an intensification of human migration, mobility and multi-culture with multiple and complex claims of home, identity and belonging. Gloria Anzaldua’s idea of the borderland has become a critical conceptual rubric used by cultural researchers as a way of understanding, explaining and articulating the in-determined, vague, ambiguous nature of everyday life and the cultural politics of border-knowledge, border crossings, transgression, living in-between and multiple belongings. Borderlands is also about a social space where people of diverse backgrounds and identities meet and share a space in which the politics of co-presence and co-existence are experienced and enacted in mundane ways. This conference, which focuses on the borderlands of becoming, belonging and sharing, is therefore about examining how the culture of everyday life is regulated and contested across diverse political, economic and social contexts, and whether and how it creates spaces of belonging with others.

The aim of this conference theme is to open up discussion, critical reflection and analysis about emerging social, political and cultural identities that are formed at the intersection of multiple and multi-sited belongings and their expression and about the possibility of making them shared across differences.

We welcome papers that focus on (but not limited to):

• Trans-cultural displacement/belonging
• Belonging and the intersections of gender, race, religion, sexuality
• Seeking refuge, unruly belonging(s) and border politics
• Trauma and joy of becoming and belonging
• Communication, new technologies and belonging
• Cultural narratives of belonging/not belonging
• Cultural politics of survival/transgression
• New imaginings/formations of home
• Citizenship beyond borders
• Multicultural exhaustion/renewal
• Belonging in the Anthropocene
• Multiple and complex belongings
• Re-locating culture across borders
• Convivial cultures and the imagined communities
• Creation of shared space(s) of multiple belongings

We hope that the 2014 conference theme will encourage academic and personal encounters and exchanges across national, religious, cultural and disciplinary divides. We look forward to seeing you in cosmopolitan, diverse and fun Brighton, the perfect European home for IAFOR’s latest Cultural Studies event!

Professor Baden Offord
Professor of Cultural Studies & Human Rights, Southern Cross University, Australia
Vice President-International, Cultural Studies Association of Australasia
Conference Co-Chair

Professor Stuart Picken
Chair, Japan Society of Scotland
Chair, IAFOR IAB
Conference Co-Chair

Professor Koichi Iwabuchi
Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, Monash University, Australia
Director of the Monash University Asia Institute
Conference Program Adviser

IAFOR Global University & Institutional Alliance – Working Together

IAFOR works with our university partners to nurture and encourage the best in international, intercultural and interdisciplinary research. We work with senior administrators and professors in our partner institutions to develop programs which are timely, thought-provoking and academically rigorous. The global partnership alliance means that our interdisciplinary conferences are backed by some of the world’s foremost institutions of learning. For a full list of university and institutional partners, click here.

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Journals

Publishing Opportunities: Authors of Accepted Abstracts will have the opportunity of publishing their associated paper in the official conference proceedings, and a selection of papers will be considered for inclusion in the internationally reviewed IAFOR journals associated with the conference. For more information about the IAFOR Journal of Cultural Studies and other journals, click here.

International, Intercultural, Interdisciplinary

The European Conference on Cultural Studies is organized as part of a month long series of academic events in the UK organized by IAFOR. Those attending the ECCS will have the opportunity of attending the following conferences held in parallel for no extra charge:
ECP2014 – The Inaugural European Conference on Psychology & the Behavioral Sciences
ECERP2014 – The Inaugural European Conference on Ethics, Religion & Philosophy

About the Event

Date/Time: Thursday, July 24, 2014 - Sunday, July 27, 2014 (All Day)
Venue: Thistle Brighton, Brighton, East Sussex, United Kingdom
Abstract Submission Deadline: March 15, 2014
Registration Deadline: June 15, 2014

Streams: Belonging and the intersections of gender / race / religion / sexuality,Belonging in the Anthropocene, border politics Trauma and joy of becoming and belonging, Citizenship beyond borders, Communication & new technologies and belonging Cultural narratives of belonging/not belonging, Convivial cultures and the imagined communities, Creation of shared space(s) of multiple belongings, Cultural politics of survival/transgression, Multicultural exhaustion/renewal, Multiple and complex belongings, New imaginings/formations of home, Re-locating culture across borders,Seeking refuge, Trans-cultural displacement/belonging, unruly belonging(s)

Call for Presentations

7th Global Conference

Sunday 7th  September – Tuesday 9th September 2014
Mansfield College, Oxford

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Call for Presentations

Madness: what is it? Why does it exist? Where and when does it happen? How does it happen, and to whom? Like otherness to identity, madness might have always been used to define its opposite, or defined by what it is not. Madness or its absence are intrinsically linked to everything we do and do not, to all we aspire and escape. It could even be linked to our origins and fate. This international, inter-disciplinary conference seeks to explore issues of madness across historical periods and within cultural, political and social contexts. We are interested as well in exploring the place of madness in persons and interpersonal relationships and across a range of critical perspectives. Seeking to encourage innovative inter, multi and post disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from all disciplines, professions and vocations which struggle to understand the place of madness in the constitution of persons, relationships and the complex interlacing of self and other. In the six previous conferences we had the participation of people who have experienced forms of madness in their personal lives, and their presentations have always been not only welcome, but also moving and illuminating for all: Such contributions based on the actual experience of madness from within have been an essential part of our conferences and this year we encourage again the submission of abstracts based on first hand experience.

In particular presentations, papers, workshops, performnaces and exhibitions are invited on any of the following themes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In order to support and encourage interdisciplinarity engagement, it is our intention to create the possibility of starting dialogues between the parallel events running during this conference. Delegates are welcome to attend up to two sessions in each of the concurrent conferences. We also propose to produce cross-over sessions between these groups – and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between Time, Space and Body and Madness and Empathy.

What to Send:
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 4th April 2014. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 11th July 2014. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: MADNESS7 Abstract Submission.

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

Organising Chairs

Gonzalo Araoz: gon@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher: mad7@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the ‘Making Sense Of:’ series of research projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All proposals accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook.  Selected proposals may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conferenc

Call for Presentations

8th Global Conference

Thursday 11th September – Saturday 13th September 2014
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

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Call for Presentations
This multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the new and prominent place that the idea of culture has for the construction of identity and the implications of this for social membership in contemporary societies. In particular, the project will assess the context of major world transformations, for example, new forms of migration and the massive movements of people across the globe, as well as the impact of globalisation on tensions, conflicts and on the sense of rootedness and belonging. Looking to encourage innovative trans-disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from all disciplines, professions and vocations which struggle to understand what it means for people, the world over, to forge identities in rapidly changing national, social and cultural contexts.

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

1. State borders and mobility
- State’s obligation in admitting migrants
- State security and border control
-  Immigration policy and political ideology of nation-state
- Permeability of state boundaries under globalization
- Redefining borders under globalized world

2. Irregular migration
- Illegal migration or irregular migration?
- Irregular migration: whose account?
- Irregular migration and transnational mobility
- Irregular migration, exploitation and human rights violation
- Rights and protection of irregular migrants

3. Religion and gender
- Gender differences in migration
- Religious practices and gender equality under migration
- Migrants and freedom of religion
- Religious and ethnic minorities under multiculturalism
- Religious extremism and the challenge on pluralism

4. Human rights and citizenship
- Universality of human rights
- Citizenship and rights entitlement
- Caste system in the contemporary world
- Human rights protection for non-citizens
- Conflicting rights

5. Identity formation and belongingness
- Identity formation and transnational migration
- Integration and preservation of minority cultures
- Intergenerational differences on identity formation of migrants
- Value conflict and belongingness
- Recognition or redistribution under contemporary economic development

6. Redefining multiculturalism
- Changing concepts in the study of ethnicity and multiculturalism
- Researching multiculturalism
- Multiculturalism: the East-West discourse
- States commitment towards multicultural practices
- Multiculturalism versus nationalism
- Historical construction of multiculturalism and its application in the contemporary world

Proposals will be considered on any related theme.

In order to support and encourage interdisciplinarity engagement, it is our intention to create the possibility of starting dialogues between the parallel events running during this conference. Delegates are welcome to attend up to two sessions in each of the concurrent conferences. We also propose to produce cross-over sessions between these groups – and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between Fear, Horror and Terror and Multiculturalism.

What to Send
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 4th April 2014. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 11th July 2014. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: Multiculturalism 8 Abstract Submission

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

Organising ChairsRaees Baig: raees.baig@gmail.com
Rob Fisher and Ram Vemuri: mcb8@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the Diversity and Recognition research projects, which in turn belong to the At the Interface programmes of Inter-Disciplinary.Net. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore discussions which are innovative and challenging. All proposals accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook.  Selected proposals may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference.

Call for Presentations

3rd Global Conference

Sunday 7th  September – Tuesday 9th September 2014
Mansfield College, Oxford

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This conference seeks to explore the multifaceted nature of space, time and the body in order to question the ways in which we construct, experience and understand our world. We encourage an examination of time, space and/or the body as either independent or interconnecting areas ‘suspended in webs of significance’ (Geertz, 1973). Exploring our existence and interaction within these ‘webs’, it becomes apparent that societies consist of embodied people who constantly participate in specific tasks, at particular times and in constructed spaces. For example, Turner (2004:38) has suggested ‘every society is confronted by four tasks: the reproduction of populations in time, the regulation of bodies in space, the restraint of the interior body through disciplines and the representation of the exterior body in social space.’ Taking these four tasks as our starting point, this conference project invites proposals from a range of disciplines such as architecture, social geography, the visual and creative arts, sociology, anthropology, literary studies, law and religious studies, archaeology, media and audience studies, the classics and philosophy, social and natural sciences, business studies, information science, popular culture and politics. We also welcome case studies or other approaches from practitioners such as artists, health professionals, psychologists, writers, law makers and policy analysts.

Recognising that different disciplines and practitioners express themselves in different mediums, we welcome traditional papers, panels, workshop proposals and other forms of performance (as can be accommodated in the space provided). Accordingly topics are sought on different aspects and/or relationships between any combination of space, time or the body or on how these categories are understood, mythologised and constructed in order to affect, effect, order and/or control each other.

Invited topics can include any of the following themes and related areas:

Understanding Space, Time and the Body
- Academic theories
- Narratives, definitions and perceptions
- Interdisciplinary studies, cross cultural comparisons
- Institutions, organisations, constructions, and deconstructions
- How access to information on space, time and the body is controlled, distorted and facilitated

Contexts for Space, Time and the Body
- Architecture: the construction and constraints of space
- Art, sculpture and installation practices
- Work and power as a temporal-spatial event
- Time and the spatiality of movement
- City planning and change over time or terrain
- History and public/social policy changes towards crime and punishment
- Age and the impact of space and time
- Boundaries and controls

Representations of Time, Space and the Body
- Language and embodied/disembodied characters in literature, film, theatre, TV, graphic novels, games:
narrative, music and mis-en-scene
- Different genres over time: changes in interpretation, popularity and relevancy
- Novels, plays, poems, short stories and time (eg: short time span, the inter-generational epic – how does this work, what are the impacts?)
- The voice, dance and music
- Time as the ‘enemy’

Relationships within Time, Space and the Body
- The body as a place and space for storytelling (eg: the body as victim/survivor, tattoos)
- Non-human or post-human bodies in space and time
- The ‘body politic’ or the political body: Who ‘owns’ the body? – patient or practitioner or …?
- Monetising/economics of production between time, space and body
- Accounting: the consequences of periodic reporting and impact on the valuation of space
- Legislative/legal constructions as related to time, space, body
- Changing attitudes toward: pain, death, suffering, religion, family, gender, sexuality, disability or fashion

Experiencing Time, Space and the Body
- Time, ‘performativity’ and identity
- Religion, spirituality, forms of altered consciousness and ritual
- Indigenous cultures and cosmologies in space and time
- Cyclical, spiral, dreamtime, memory or linear time
- Doing Time: space and punishment
- Body modification and body horror
- Emotions or rationality: reactions to space, particularly public spaces (eg: how do we ‘feel’ when … can that reaction be replicated, can it impact or trigger other reactions?)
- Monstrosity, technology and futurology

At the end of the conference, the aim will be to further develop the discussions and dialogues presented at this conference into new and continued interdisciplinary research that will help us make sense of the contested categories of time, space and the body.

In order to support and encourage interdisciplinarity engagement, it is our intention to create the possibility of starting dialogues between the parallel events running during this conference. Delegates are welcome to attend up to two sessions in each of the concurrent conferences. We also propose to produce cross-over sessions between these groups – and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between Time, Space and Body and Madness.

What to Send:
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 4th April 2014. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 11th July 2014. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: TSB3 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

Shona Hill & Shilinka Smith: shs@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher: tsb3@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the Making Sense Of: 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 proposals accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook.  Selected proposals may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference.