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.

Department of Translation Studies

The English and Foreign Languages University

Hyderabad, India-500 007

Call for Papers

3-day National Seminar from 24^th – 26^th March, 2014

on

Translating Oral/Folk texts from Indian Languages into English:

A Relook at the (Re)Formations of Orientalism/Nationalism/Community in the Colonial and Postcolonial contexts

Understanding the Orientalist discourse in the Indian context has heavily relied on colonial archive in English and also the Indological work in 18^th and 19^th century. The role of translation in constituting the Orientalist discourse on India or in the emergence of Indology is also relatively only slightly explored, and the researchers have shown how translations of Sanskrit texts into English played a major role in constituting India (Indology).  There are also quite a number of studies of translations into Indian languages from English which explore how modernity was translated through such acts of translations, and how the colonial texts were morphed into nationalist ones during this period. But there seems to be a whole lot of other texts that were in Indian languages and in oral form were translated into English during the colonial period. Some of these texts which have been retranslated and reissued in print form have become iconic texts in the context of linguistic nationalism in India. Translation of “poems” of Bhakti saints like Sarvajna, Valluvar,  Tukaram, Kabir, Meera etc.; translation of folk stories, songs from different languages including tribal languages in 19^th century and early 20^th century; translation of classical/written texts of some of the Indian languages like Telugu,  Tamil and Kannada into English and other European languages are yet to be understood in terms of their implications for the twin discourses of Orientalism, Nationalism that emerged in the 19^th and  20^th century India. Some of these texts/saints whose popularity was limited to a particular caste/community/region become the icon of a language through such translations into English during the 19^th century. The seminar examines such oral/folk non-Sanskrit texts translated into English both by the colonizers/missionaries and the native elite, and probes the implications of these translations in certain socio-political discursive formations. It is hoped that this seminar, by bringing scholars who are working on such translations to deliberate on the issues, will produce a sizable body of knowledge in the area which might bring to light the neglected areas of research within the academic field now come to be known as post-colonial studies/ translation studies.

Following are some of the textual translation corpus on which proposal for papers can be submitted:

·         Translation of Bhakti Literature in 19^th and early 20^th century into English by the missionaries/colonizers

·         Translation of Folk/Oral literature of Tribal and Non-tribal Indian languages in the form of anthologies by the colonizers/missionaries

·         Translation of same set of texts by the native elite  subsequently.

·         Problems of bringing such oral texts, which are dynamic, into static book form and into an alien language and the politics of this process.

·         Role of such canonical non-Sanskrit texts in Understanding/constituting India in 19^th and early 20^th century

The papers can focus on answering any of the following issues or any other related ones:

§  Who were the translators? Why did they choose these texts for translation?

§  What were the modes of documenting the dynamic oral texts in print form?

§  What were the methods of translation adopted to bring them into an alien language?

§  What functions did such translations perform in Indology?

§  What role did such translations play in constituting Orientalism and Nationalism?

§  What were the consequences of translating/canonizing such texts in the Indian language cultures/societies?

§  If some of these texts/authors (like Thirukkural,  Sarvjna, Tukaram) went on to become the icons of a particular language, can we say that translations played a major role in this?

§  If multiple translations of the text have appeared over a period of time what prompted the subsequent translations?

§  Do the subsequent translations play the role of critiquing the earlier translations? If yes how?

Important Dates:

Submission of Abstracts: 20^th January, 2014

Acceptance will be conveyed by 31^st January, 2014

Submission of Full Papers by 5^th March, 2014

Please send an abstract of 500 words (maximum) in ms word format or any other compatible format to the Coordinators of the Seminar:

Send  your abstracts to   tsnseflu2014@gmail.com

Registration

Local Participants:   200

Non-local Participants:  500

Students:  100

Note: The organizers are not in a position to pay TA or DA to any participants due to the paucity of funds. However, local hospitality at Hyderabad would be extended to all participants.

Dr. H. Lakshmi

Associate Professor  & Head

                  &

Dr. Tharakeshwar V.B.

Associate professor

Department of Translation Studies

The English and Foreign Languages University

Hyderabad-7

 For  further information  mail us:  tsnseflu2014@gmail.com

Call for Presentations

12th Global Conference

Friday 2nd May – Sunday 4th May 2014
Lisbon, Portugal

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Call for Presentations

This conference is one of a continuing series that aims to bring together people from a wide range of disciplines to focus on Violence. Our intention is to contribute to the body of thought which seeks to understand the nature and causes of this endemic feature of society.  Such a complex phenomenon has many faces, a multitude of contexts (real or imagined), and many possible explanations in relation to causation and to the role Violence has played and still plays in societies all over the world and at every stage of development. Perpetrators may be states, political or religious factions within states, military groups, state or private institutions, communities, gangs, families or individuals. The range of possible victims is equally diverse and possible explanations range across historical, cultural, political, ethical, literary, functional, psychological, criminological, sociological, biological and economic sources. We therefore invite contributions from any and all of these disciplinary areas.

Our inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary approach seeks to do justice to the richness of this theme at a conference where fruitful dialogue between and across disciplines is highly valued.

The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals.

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 two and possibly all three groups – and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between evil, women, femininity and/or violence and/or femininities and masculinities.

What to send:
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 6th December 2013 If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 14th March 2014. 300 word 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 abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords..
E-mails should be entitled: Violence 12 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:

Diana Medlicott: diana@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher: v12@inter-disciplinary.net

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 must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook.  Selected papers 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.

Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this commitment, please do not submit an abstract for presentation.

Details on the conferences running alongside this project in 2014 can be found here: Femininities and Masculinities, Evil, Women and the Feminine.

Call for Presentations

4th Global Conference

Friday 2nd May – Sunday 4th May 2014
Lisbon, Portugal

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Gender studies is an interdisciplinary field of academic study on the issues of gender in its social and cultural contexts. Since its emergence from feminism, gender studies have become one of the most deliberated disciplines. The following project aims at an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and perspectives on the issues of femininities and masculinities in the 21st century. It invites ground-breaking research on a plethora of topics connected with gender, to propose an interdisciplinary view of the frontiers and to stake out new territories in the study of femininities and masculinities.

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

1. Representations of Femininities and Masculinities
- Femininities and masculinities in history and the history of gender
- The representation of gender in culture, art, film, literature
- The representation of gender in popular culture and media
- Gender in the relation to politics, law and social studies

2. Gender Borders and Transgressions
- Performativity of gender
- Female masculinities/male femininities
- Androgyny
- Transgender issues
- The body and its transgressions

3. New Directions in Feminisms and Masculinity Studies
- New perspectives in masculinity and boyhood studies
- Men in feminisms
- Third wave feminism, womanism
- Postfeminism, post-feminism and postfemininity
- Lesbian feminism
- Eco-feminism
- Cyberfeminism
- Individual feminism
- Feminist disability studies

4. Global and Regional Perspectives on Gender
- Gender and race
- Gender and nationality
- Gender and (post)colonialism
- Case studies of gender issues in local/regional/national perspectives
- Global masculinities/ femininities
- Gender across borders

5. Investigating the diffusion of feminism and feminist theory in non-West contexts
- Teasing out the tensions between competing feminisms
- The politics of representation: examining the “white woman’s burden” to voice/uplift her sisters of colour
- De-centring the onus of western feminism ‘as’ feminism proper
- Postulating masculinities in changing world-order
- Negotiating the back-story: the history of homosociality in pan-Asian societies

6. Gender in Relationships
- Motherhood/fatherhood
- Gender and family
- Matriarchy/ patriarchy
- Sororophobia and matrophobia
- Misogyny and misandry
- Female genealogy
- Gender and maturity

7. Gender in Experience
- gender in visual and performance arts
- gender in advertisement
- gender mainstreaming
- gender in psychotherapy
- gender, health and illness
- gender and the ethics of bodies and embodiment
- gender and education
- gender, education and equity
- gender in religion
- gender and NGOs

We welcome not only academic research presentations, but also case studies and creative proposals (creative writing, drama, visual art, performance, etc.)

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 two and possibly all three groups – and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between evil, women, femininity and/or violence and/or femininities and masculinities.

What to Send:
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 8th December 2013 If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 14th March 2014. 300 word 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 abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: FM4 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:
Barbara Braid and Malwina Degórska: barbara.braid@gmail.com
Rob Fisher: fm4@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the At the Interface 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 must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook.  Selected papers 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.

me >  At the Interface > Evil > Monstrous Geographies > Call for Presentations

Call for Presentations

3rd Global Conference

Wednesday 14th May – Friday 16th May 2014
Lisbon, Portugal

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This conference focuses on the relationship between the monstrous and the geographic? From historical landscapes of purgation and judgement to contemporary topographical manifestations of the War on Terror and “enhanced interrogation,” and from haunted houses and ancient burial grounds to GM crops and biological futurescapes of cloning and purposeful mutation, geographical locations may act as the repository or emanation of human evil, made monstrous by the rituals and behaviours enacted within them, or by their peculiarities of atmosphere or configuration. Whether actual or imagined, these places of wonder, fear and horror speak of the symbiotic relation between humanity and location that sees morality, ideology and emotions given physical form in the house, the forest, the island, the nation and even far away worlds in both space and time. They may engage notions of self and otherness, inclusion and exclusion, normal and aberrant, defence and contagion; they can act as magnets for destructive and evil forces or become the source of malevolent energies and forces themselves. Alongside this, there exist the monstrous geographies created by scientific experimentation, human waste and environmental accidents, creating sites of potential and actual disaster such as Chernobyl or the Fukushima nuclear plants and , the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the BP oil disaster, and the devastated coastline of Tohuku, Japan. These places raise diverse post-human quandaries regarding necessities in the present leading to real or imagined futures of humanity and habitation.

Encompassing the factual and the fictional, the literal and the literary, this project investigates the very particular relationships and interactions between humanity and place, the natural and the unnatural, the familiar and the unfamiliar, and sees a multitude of configurations of human monstrosity and evil projected, inflicted, or immanent to place. Such monstrous geographies can be seen to emerge from the disparity between past and present, memory and modernity, urban and rural and can be expressed through categories of class, gender and racial difference as well as generational, political and religious tensions.

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

Monstrous Cartographies:
~Terra incognita
~Real and Mythic lost lands: eg., Atlantis, D’yss, and Shangri-La
~Utopias/Dystopias, future cities in time and space
~Malevolent regions: eg., Lemuria, Bermuda Triangle, Transylvania
~Sublime landscapes
~Bodies as maps and maps as bodies, eg. Prison Break

Monstrous Islands:
~As sites of experimentation. Dr. Moreau, Jurassic Park etc As a beacon for evil: eg., Manhattan in Godzilla andCloverfield
~As site of ritual evil and incest: eg., Wicker Man, Pitkin Islands, Isle of the Dead
~Imperialist intent and construction: eg., Prospero’s Island, Hong Kong, Hashima

Monstrous Cosmographies:
~Evil planets and dimensions
~Comets, meteorites and beings from unknown worlds
~Worlds as dark reflections/twins of Earth
~Planets and alien landscapes that consume and mutate earthly travelers

Monstrous Environmental Geographies:
~Polluted lakes and landscapes
~Landfills, oil spills and mining sites
~Melting icecaps and landforms at risk from global warming
~Land impacted by GM crops and associated experimentation
~Sites of starvation, disaster and pestilence
~De-militarized zones and no-man’s lands

Monstrous Religious Sites & Ritualistic Monstrosity:
~Armageddon, Apocalypse and final battlegrounds
~Hell, the Underworld and Valhalla
~Eden, Purgatory, Paradise, El Dorado, Shangri La
~Sites of religious ritual, sacrifice and burial
~Houses and haunts of murderers and serial killers

Monstrous Landscapes of Conflict:
~The land of the enemy and the other
~Sites of attack and retaliation.
~Sites of revolution and protest
~Concentration camps, prisons and other sites of incarceration
~Sites of genocide, battlefields and military graveyards
~Border crossings
~Ghettos, shanty towns and relocation sites
~Urban and rural, cities, towns and villages and regional and national prejudice
~Minefields and sites of damage, destruction and ruin
~Arsenals, bunkers and military experimentation

Uncanny Geographical Temporalities:
~Old buildings in new surroundings
~Buildings with too much, and those without, memory
~Soulless Architecture
~Ideological architecture, palaces, museums etc
~Places held in time, UNESCO sites and historical and listed buildings
~Old towns and New towns, rich and poor
~Appearing and disappearing towns/regions, eg., Brigadoon, Silent Hill.

Monsters on the Move:
~Contagion, scouring and infectious landscapes
~Monsters and mobile technologies: phone, video, cars, planes, computers etc
~Fluid identities, fluid places
~Touring Monstrosities, dreamscapes and infernal topologies

Architectural Monstrosity
~Mazes and labyrinths (with or without the Minotaur)
~Unsettling/revolting geometries (E.A. Abbot’s Flatland, H.P. Lovecraft’s City of R’lyeh)
~Monstrous/abject building materials (bones, concrete, excrements, the corpse in the wall)
~The architecture of death (hospices, death row, funeral homes, slaughterhouses)

The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals.

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 two and possibly all three groups – and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between Cybercultures and/or transmedia narratives, immersive worlds and/or monstrous geographies.

What to send:
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 6th December 2013 If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 14th March 2014. 300 word 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 abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: MG3 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

Rob Fisher: mg3@inter-disciplinary.net

The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook.  Selected papers 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.