Call For Papers: Cute #Ecologies: a critical-creative Symposium 7th June 2024 Online (Zoom)

 Hosted by AWW-STRUCK, this day of lightning talks and presentations on critical research and creative practice features a roundtable conversation between invited speakers (confirmed):

• Miranda Lowe (principal curator of Crustacea at the Natural History Museum London).
• Claire Catterall (curator of Cute at Somerset House, London)
• Hugh Warwick (author of Beauty in the Beast and spokesperson for The British Hedgehog Preservation Society)

Encountering cute forms of nature, from bunnies and hedgehogs to monkeys and deer, is an everyday experience for most of us. They appear on tea towels, cakes and images gone viral on social media. The cute nonhuman might even be our companion animal. The apparently simple, benign nature of cuteness means it goes unexamined, especially in the context of the environmental crisis where the aesthetic is likely to appear irrelevant, if not irreverent. This symposium challenges such thinking by asking: Can cuteness prompt care-giving behaviour for environments? What power dynamics exist in the ‘cutification’ of flora and fauna? What fate for ‘uncute’ species? 

Recent developments in cute studies demonstrate the power of cute to increase pro-social and pro-environmental behaviours. Conservation charities know as much, employing the cutest species to drive public donation. However, the bias toward charismatic megafauna is also known to be a problem. Anthropomorphism and domestication emerge again and again in our encounters with the nonhuman. And perhaps ourselves. As cute studies scholar Joshua Paul Dale recently suggested, Homo sapiens may well have emerged because women preferred cuddlier companions to cavemen. 

We welcome papers that address topics through critical research and/or through creative practice (poetry, film, performance, music, visual artwork). Topics or areas of research may include:

• Animal studies and plant studies
• Childhood culture and children’s geography
• Charismatic megafauna 
• Domestication and scale
• Conservation science and political ecology
• Popular culture, Disney studies, anime and manga studies
• Commodification, material objects and waste
• Technology, cyborgs and artificial intelligence 

Possible formats include: 5-minute lightning talks, 20-minute presentations.

Please submit abstracts and/or short proposals (300 words max), telling us whether you’d like to give a lightning talk or presentation to awwstruck.info@gmail.com by 19 April 2024. Please include a short bio (100 words max). If you are a creative practitioner, please include two samples of your work.

This event is organised by Dr Isabel Galleymore (University of Birmingham) and Caroline Harris (Royal Holloway, University of London) who founded AWW-STRUCK in 2021. This symposium is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation.

Attachments

aww-struck-cute-ecologies-cfp-2-240419.pdf

CFP: International Conference(Hybrid Mode) on “Posthuman Condition in the Anthropocene” on 02-03 March 2024. -Centre for Research in Posthumanities, Bankura University

CFP & Concept Note:

Humans are no longer biological agents of this planet. They have become geological agents in the Anthropocene era. What does this agentic transmutation imply? Since a ‘geological force has no sense of purpose or sovereignty’(Chakrabarty 2023: 33), how, then, are we supposed to re/configure ‘the human’ who is attributed with autonomy and freedom-seeking agency? Critical posthumanists, who argue for an inclusive way of thinking, might be tempted to rearticulate the normative conception of the human in the first place: who or what is anthropos? Perhaps, the ontic problem rests with the European Enlightenment modernity’s projection of the human, which now stands on an increasingly slippery ground. Bernard Stiegler, Bruno Latour, Michel Serres, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Donna Haraway argue for locating human in entanglements with nonhumans. Many of them even view human autonomy as the mankind’s self-created myth; and also argue that the human is always already entangled with nonhumans. 

Despite the heated debate surrounding the term Anthropocene for promoting the return of white universal man, naturalizing tendency, colonial outlook and exclusivity, the term is nonetheless being used as an operative critical tool for interrogating and re-assessing our understanding of the existing relation between humans and nonhumans. Rather than pondering too much on the term’s limitations, it would be more profitable to think of the future produced by the mingling of human history  and planetary history. It will be worthwhile to think about collaborative survival with other planetary cohabitants. As the humanity’s ecological footprint affect the trajectory of the Earth System, ‘humans now unintentionally straddle three histories (the history of the earth system, the history of life including that of human evolution on the planet, and the more recent history of the industrial civilization) that operate on different scales and at different speeds’ (Chakrabarty 2023: 89).

The collision of human and planetary temporalities calls for a new totalizing framework and requires a new way of thinking in the social sciences and humanities. In the Anthropocene, socio-cultural and political world orders get entangled with material and energy cycles of the Earth, which eventually co-produces a new (post)human condition. The Anthropocene pushes the boundaries of our existing disciplines to their limits and makes the social-only understanding ineffective.

The proposed conference also seeks to cite India’s G-20 presidency (2023) as an articulation, on a diplomatic level, of the theoretical premises of this conference. The pro-planet theme of India’s G20 presidency – “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam”(the world is one family) – significantly seeks to recognise the entangled planetary existence, which embraces both the human and non-human. The emphasis on green and sustainable development, climate finance, ‘net-zero’ carbon reduction testifies to the fact that social-only understanding of human politics is no longer tenable. Incorporation of green elements in its conceptual construction was long overdue.

The proposed conference seeks to focus on, though not strictly limited to, the following areas:

• Re-figuring the anthropos in the Anthropocene

• Problems in Nomenclature: Anthropocene or Capitalocene

or Plantationocene or Homogenocene or Chthulucene?

• Anthropocentrism and its Discontents

• Thinking Through Harman’s ‘OOO’ in the Anthropocene

• Configuring New Onto-Epistemic System in the Anthropocene

• Planetary Crises and Planetary Solidarity in the Anthropocene

• Future of the Humanities and Social Sciences in the Anthropocene

• Greenhouse Culture in the Anthropocene

• Non-human Turn in the Anthropocene

• New Materialisms and the Anthropocene

• Posthumanities and the Anthropocene

• Animal Studies in the Anthropocene

• Plant Humanities and the Anthropocene

• Greening Democracy and International Relations

in the Anthropocene

• (Re)writing Cli-fi in the Anthropocene

• India’s G-20 Presidency and Green Diplomacy

• Plastic Pollution and E-/Waste Management in

the Anthropocene

• Populism and Climate Change Denial

• Re-thinking Carbon democracy in the Anthropocene

• Blue Humanities and the Anthropocene

• Global Climate Activism and Climate Solidarity in

the Anthropocene

[Suggestive Bibliography:

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. One Planet Many Worlds: The Climate Parallax. Brandeis UP, 2023.

Haraway, Donna. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke UP, 2016.

Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Translated by Catherine Porter. Harvard UP, 1993.

Stiegler, Bernard. The Neganthropocene. Translated by Daniel Ross. Open Humanities Press, 2018.

Serres, Michel. The Parasite. Translated by Lawrence Schehr. U of Minnesota Press, 2007.]

Key Facts and Necessary Information:

Abstract might be sent to crpbku2.0@gmail.com in within 25.02.2024

(Participants are advised to send an abstract of about 200 words and a short bio-note in single word file. ‘CRP Conference

Submission 2024’ should be mentioned in the subject line of Gmail.)

Registration Form (Mandatory):

Time & dates of the conference: 02-03 March 2024; 09 am to 4 pm IST

Registration Fees:

Faculty: 2000 INR

Researcher and Students: 1500 INR

International Participants: 50 USD

Participation Fees: 800 INR

Fee Payment Details

G-pay/PhonePay: 9832850405
HDFC BANK
A/C- SUKHENDU DAS
Account Number: 50100174070610
IFSC: HDFC0002505, Branch: BANKURA, Account Type: SAVING

Registration fees cover conference kit, tea, snacks, working lunch on both days.

Publication Prospect: Select papers will be considered for an international publication after double-blind peer review process. However, the

discretion and recommendation of the peer-board will be considered final in this case.

Participants are advised to attend the conference in person. Virtual presentation slots are very limited and not open to all.

All queries relating to conference might be directed to the email id mentioned above.

CFP: Virtual International Interdisciplinary Conference on "MEMORY, FORGETTING AND CREATING" 18-19 January 2024

 

ABOUT CONFERENCE: 

In our increasingly fast-paced societies, where information is abundant and its reception is superficial, human memory appears to be an endangered phenomenon. This is why we would like to take a closer look at the complex processes of memory. These include forgetting, neglecting, negation, and detachment, along with creating, recollecting, remembering, regaining memories, and reconstructing one’s relationship with the past. We are deeply interested in examples and consequences of altered memories: invention, fabrication, deception, indoctrination or propaganda. We invite reflection on mutual relations between memory and imagination, fantasising and manipulating, forgetting and creating.

We would like all these problems to be contextualised as broadly as possible, with reference to historical, social, religious, cultural, psychological, artistic and other factors. Different forms of presentations are encouraged, including case studies, theoretical investigations, problem-oriented arguments, and comparative analyses.

The conference is intended as an interdisciplinary event. Hence, we invite researchers representing various academic disciplines: anthropology, history, sociology, philosophy, psychology, psychoanalysis, neurophysiology, literary studies, theatre studies, film studies, memory studies, consciousness studies, dream studies, gender studies, postcolonial studies, animal studies, medical sciences, psychiatry, social policy, cognitive sciences and others.

We will be happy to hear from both experienced scholars and young academics at the start of their careers, as well as doctoral and graduate students. We also invite all persons interested in participating in the conference as listeners, without giving a presentation. We hope that due to its interdisciplinary nature, the conference will bring many interesting observations on and discussions about the role of memory in the past and in the present-day world.

​

Our repertoire of suggested topics includes but is not restricted to:

1. Lost Memory:

- forgotten history

- forgotten nations

- forgotten heroes

- forgotten legacy

- forgotten times

- forgotten revolutions

- forgotten identity

- forgotten authors

- forgotten texts

- forgotten languages

2. Memory Loss:

- amnesia

- Alzheimer’s disease

- dementia

- sclerosis

- selective memory

- repression

- psychopathology of everyday life

3. Stolen Memory:

- denationalisation

- eradication

- expulsion

- disinheritance

- exclusion

- manipulation

- propaganda

- indoctrination

- Holocaust (and other genocide) denial

-“historical politics”

-“cultural revolution”

4. Abandoned Memory:

- non-action

- negligence

- indifference

- insouciance

- decline of attachment

- emotional atrophy

- disownment

- betrayal

5. Memory as a Trap:

- the terror of memory

- trauma

- post-memory

- memory and mourning

- nostalgia

- fixation

- the return of the repressed

- “primal scenes”

- compulsions

- stereotypes

6. Memory Regained:

- recollection

- anamnesis

- insight

- epiphany

- “time regained”

7. Dubious Memory:

- déjà vu

- confabulation

- fabrication

- rumour

- apocryph

- parallel histories

8. Memory and Imagination:

- facts and phantasms

- political phantasms

- historiography and fantasizing

- the realness of memories

- national mythologies

- reconstructions and narrations

- memory and representation

- memory and fiction

- non-fiction

- autobiography

- para-documentary film

- imagination in mnemonics

- collective memory and collective imagination

9. Memory and Art:

- literature, art, film, theatre as memory “media”

- socially engaged art: artists in defense of memory

- Joseph Conrad and Heart of Darkness

- Marcel Proust and In Search of Lost Time

- Thomas Mann and The Magic Mountain

- Gabriel Garcia Marquez and One Hundred Years of Solitude

- Tadeusz Kantor and the “cliches of memory”

10. Memory and Science

- mirror Neurons

- diseases and syndromes of memory

- “creating memory” in the lab

- memory of matter (inorganic memory)

- memory processing in technology

​

Please submit abstracts (no longer than 300 words) of your proposed 20-minute presentations, together with a short biographical note, by 31 December 2023 to: conferencememory@gmail.com  or by REGISTRATION FORM

Notification of acceptance will be sent by 3 January 2024.

The conference language is English.

Note:

As our online conference will be international, we will consider the different time zones of our Participants.

The conference will be held virtually via Zoom. Different forms of presentations (also posters) are available

REGISTRATION :

In order to participate in the conference (as a speaker or an audience member) you need to pay a REGISTRATION FEE via bank transfer or PayPal:

PRESENTERS: EUR 35 or USD 40 or GBP 35 or PLN 120 - by 11 January 2024

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: EUR 25 or USD 30 or GBP 25 or PLN 70 - by 17 January 2024

NOTE: We offer a discount for our returning Participants.

THE FEE COVERS:

- LIVE access via individual link to all conference sessions (without installing any additional applications)

- the conference programme in PDF

- certificate of attendance  for Presenters and Audience Members (sent by email or/and by post)

- online community gathering

- easy access on any device (phone, tablet and computer) with the possibility to join or leave the conference at any time

Banking details:

Beneficiary name: InMind Support Beneficiary Address: Jelitkowski Dwor 4

Beneficiary Bank name: SANTANDER   

The SANTANDER Swift code is:  WBKPPLPP

Beneficiary Bank account numbers (IBAN):

Payment in PLN:           

95 1090 2590 0000 0001 4259 8763   

Payment in EUR:           

PL58 1090 2590 0000 0001 4259 8847     

Payment in USD: via PayPal - please ask for a special link     

In the description field, please quote your first and last name and a note " memory conference".

All banking charges are to be covered by the Sender.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

NOTE: PAYPAL PAYMENTS (USD, GBP or EUR) ARE ALSO ACCEPTED (on request) - Please ask for a  link.

 

CANCELLATION FEES:

3 months before the conference and more - 50%

from 3 months to 1 month - 75%             

1 month before the conference and less - 100%                 

 

Our email: conferencememory@gmail.com

Scientific Committee:
Professor Wojciech Owczarski – University of Gdańsk, Poland
Professor Polina Golovátina-Mora – NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology