As you will have noticed, gender forum has moved to a new domain, www.genderforum.org. This was accompanied by some changes in our online appearance, which we hope our readers and contributors will approve of. Should you require assistance with the site, please contact us!

Conferences

MULTICULTURALISMS: THEORIES AND PRACTICE

AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

GREGYNOG HALL

14th – 17th May 2012

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Reconstructing Multiculturalism Research Network and the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory at Cardiff University are organizing an interdisciplinary conference on multiculturalisms from 14th – 17th May 2012.

The conference will be held at Gregynog Hall. This residential conference centre is situated near Newtown in mid Wales. It is set in beautiful landscaped gardens and extensive grounds. (http://www.wales.ac.uk/en/UniversityConferenceCentre/GregynogHall.aspx)

The conference will bring together scholars and practioners working in the broad areas of multiculturalism and difference, across a wide range of disciplines, social and cultural texts and practices.

Plenary Speakers:

Handel Wright – Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia

Charlotte Williams – Professor of Social Justice, University of Keele.

Glenn Jordan – Cardiff School of Cultural and Creative industries, University of Glamorgan and Director of Butetown History & Arts Centre

Helena Appio – Filmmaker, Lecturer and Course Leader on the Scriptwriting and Production BA at Regent's College

Sanjay Shama –School of Social Science, Brunel University

Papers are invited from people working in the areas of critical and cultural theory, cultural studies, religious studies, literature, the arts, media studiies, film studies, language studies, political theory, sociology, social policy, the built environment and other relevant fields.

We will discuss cuttting edge research that addresses the various ways in which multiculturalism has been theorized and how it works in practice in the social, political and cultural spheres. Papers that deal with multiculturalism from historical perspectives are also welcome.

Prospective speakers are invited to submit a 500 word proposal along with a short CV to the conference organizers at: multiculturalism@cf.ac.uk. Please send in your proposals as soon as possible and no later than 15th December 2011.

CALL FOR PAPERS

BODIES – SYSTEMS – STRUCTURES

MASCULINITIES IN THE UK AND THE US,

1945 TO THE PRESENT

International Conference, TU Dresden, Germany, 13-15/06/2012

Organizers: Prof. Dr. Stefan Horlacher (TU Dresden), Prof. Kevin Floyd (Kent State University)

This conference is funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and Kent State University. Partial subsidies for participants will be available.

Masculinities are routinely studied in one of two potentially incompatible ways: as exemplifying abstract systems such as patriarchy or kinship; or as concrete, corporeal phenomena. The very term masculinity has hitherto been examined in such a broad range of contexts that it can sometimes appear as a pure abstract form, some kind of con guration or ‘relation‘ practically devoid of any concrete, de ning content.

We might say the same thing about crisis, a term that seems as persistent as it is exhausted. And even concepts that have become staples of masculinity studies, like hegemony or performativity, seem to be wavering between concrete speci city and theoretical abstraction. This conference will explore masculinity as an idea or a concept that operates across, or at least in relation to, a distance/di erence that may or may not be bridgeable: between the systemic and the corporeal, the abstract and the concrete.

Thus, this conference will not only encourage scholarly movement in a direction that both builds on recent work in the  eld of masculinity studies and moves past it toward more comparative kinds of analysis, but it will also explore the relations between di erent abstract and corporeal, metaphorical and metonymical manifestations of masculinity. With these dilemmas in mind, we invite theoretical, cultural, or literary analyses of masculinities in the US and/or the UK since World War II – a period in which di erentiated masculinities proliferate for speci cally national and transnational reasons, including global waves of decolonization, changing patterns of migration, the emergence of ‘new‘ subaltern subjects demanding social, cultural, and political recognition, as well as conservative reactions against these developments.

We especially encourage papers with comparative and/or transnational emphases. Possible topics might involve (but need not be limited to) any of the following:

• Masculinities and/as Systems (which systems – military, symbolic, technological, post- or neocolonial, liberal or neoliberal, political or bio-political – can masculinity embody, exemplify, or perform?)

• Masculinities as Bodies – Bodies as Systems – Systems as Bodies

• Masculinities and/as Structures (structures of feeling, experience, possibility)

• Masculinities and/as Concepts (textual/narrative/discursive, historical/temporal, ethnic/social)

• Masculinities and/as Power (hegemony/kinship/relation to the symbolic order)

• Masculinities and/as ‘Crises‘ (an exhausted abstraction?)

Please send an abstract of no more than 500 words by February 15th, 2012 to both Prof. Dr. Stefan Horlacher (stefan.horlacher@mailbox.tu-dresden.de) and Prof. Kevin Floyd (kfloyd@kent.edu).