CFP's-2/3/10

"GENERATING BODIES: DISCURSIVE SEXED PRODUCTIONS”
full name / name of organization:
Body and Textuality Research Group, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain)
contact email:
cg.lostextosdelcuerpo@uab.es
cfp categories:
gender_studies_and_sexuality
In the 21st century, the body is all but a certainty, and raises endless questions.
How do we live in the body that we are / we have? How does it represent us, and to what extent? How does it become readable, understandable? What does it tell? What can it say and what can’t it say? Who or what does it say from? How can I get involved in what the body I am /I have says or represents ? Does my body belong to me or do I belong to it? Is this a relationship of belonging, or rather of participation without belonging? Which is the power of my body? What are the categories that hide or reveal it? What is the body?

These questions invite us to think about the relationship between our body, the discourses that constitute it, and the texts that have materialized it along with its socio-political potential. None of them, however, runs outside the articulation of sexes, genders and sexualities.
This time, the second conference “The texts of the body” will focus on the generation of bodies (and their regeneration and degeneration), understanding that these "attributes" --sex, gender and sexuality-- are inseparable from the materialization of bodies, of their own becoming bodies.

The conference, then, is structured as an interdisciplinary meeting to reflect and debate on the body as a gendered and sexualized cultural issue.

Suggested topics:
* Body and literature: the body as text, the body as a literary theme ...
* Body, culture and anthropology: customs, rituals, fashion, media, popular culture ...
* Body and mind: language, theology, scientific discourse ...
* Body and rules: deviated body, transsexuality, transgenderism, monstrosity ...
* Body and technology: artificiality, cyberbody, surgery, bodybuilding ...
* Body, science and medicine: knowledge, vision, look ...

The official conference languages will be Catalan, Spanish, and English. Communications will also be welcome in Galician, Portuguese, French, and Italian.

The full text of the communications should not exceed 2,500 words, excluding references. The maximum time for each presentation is 20 minutes.

Accepted papers will be subject to assessment by an expert committee which will select them to be published in thematic volumes of the collection Bodies that Matter. The publication rules, deadlines, etc. will be forwarded to interested people in due course.

Interested individuals must submit by email, before June 1, 2010, an abstract of 150 to 300 words summarizing the content of their communication and a list of keywords. They must also
provide the contact details: participant's full name, institution to which s/he belongs and e-mail address.
The Scientific Committee will notify acceptance of the proposed communication from September 1, 2010.
The registration fees are:
• Participants with communication: 90 Euros
• Attendees without communication: 25 Euros
E-mail contact: cg.lostextosdelcuerpo@uab.es
Body and Textuality Research Group
http://cositextualitat.uab.cat
Coordination: Dr. Meri Torras
Faculty of Philosophy and Letters
Autonomous University of Barcelona
08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès)
Spain

By web submission at 01/21/2010 - 15:56

Language inscribed onto bodies.

Here is an interesting article in the Times about how the body literally translates abstract (linguistic) stimuli.