This is the fourth biennial, international, interdisciplinary TALKING BODIES conference, and 20-minute papers/presentations/performances are invited on topics related to its themes.
Scholars, specialists, researchers, and postgraduate students from a wide range of disciplines and experiences (art, performance, art history, social history, history of science, medical humanities, literary criticism, theology, feminism, political theory, medicine, jurisprudence, and more) are invited to submit proposals.
Questions to be considered might include (but are absolutely not limited to):
- Where do gender and ideology intersect on the site of ‘the body’?
- How do visual artists represent the complexities of the embodied self? Or, how can writers, performers, or musicians do so?
- How does the idea of the ‘taboo’ impact on self-perception?
- How do writers and artists articulate that taboo? How is sexual identity articulated by and in the body? What happens when the ‘talking body’ conflicts with the ‘talking mind’?
- How do (consensual or non-consensual) body modifications silence the body, or ‘allow’ it to ‘talk’?
- What relationships do erotica, porn and the ‘obscene’ have with the embodied self?
- How does representation of the body facilitate political activism?
- Is language ever sufficient in talking about bodies?