Conference: Body Projects Conference, 9 March 2013, York

 

The often contestatory themes of body modification and feminism meet for a day of discussion at the University of York on 9 March 2013. The "Body Projects Conference" adopts a wide definition of body modification - "from shaved legs to buttock implants; from the honed 'fit' body to 'fat-reducing' surgery; from self-tanning to pro-ana; from piercings to gender reassignment, and much more" within an interdisciplinary academic environment.

 

Organisers are currently seeking proposals for twenty-minute presentations and ideas for performances and/or artwork, to be submitted by 10 December 2012. The call for papers can be found here. The program and guest speakers have yet to be announced, but further details will soon be posted on their website.

"It has been claimed that the unaltered female body is an unacceptable entity in the contemporary west and that the female body physically bears the marks of contemporary culture through the modification enacted upon it. The body is part of the embodied experience of an individual, but also, and increasingly, an object for critique."

 

Conferences: Zombies: Walking, Eating and Performance, Plymouth, 13 April 2013; and Cannibals: Cannibalism, Consumption and Culture, Manchester, 25-26 April 2013

For the brave amongst us, April 2013 presents a cornucopia of UK conference choices to whet the appetite of the serious horror buff. On 13 April, Plymouth University hosts a one-day symposium entitled Zombies: Walking, Eating and Performance, designed "to explore, interrogate and celebrate zombies as a cultural phenomenon through the paradigms of performance, as well as models of performance through the quintessential zombie activities of eating and walking". Contributors are asked to focus on the contemporary (rather than historical) zombie mythos, and are encouraged to take an interdisciplinary approach to a wide range of topics from the ethics of survival in zombie landscapes to zombie gaming and acting dead.

The deadline for proposals to this symposium is set for 30 November of this year. All delegates will also be invited to a zombie film festival which takes place the evening of 12 April and will have the option to participate in an "early morning performance, Just after Dawn of the Dead, in the streets of Plymouth, followed by a conference breakfast".

Manchester-based creative writing and literature collective Hic Dragones follows up zombie marches with a like-minded conference focus, Cannibals: Cannibalism, Consumption and Culture, on 25-26 April 2013. Not quite as specifically concentrated on contemporary modes, this two-day conference seeks papers from all disciplines which address cannibalism in any setting, "from contemporary horror film to Eucharistic devotion, from Freudian theory to science fiction" and beyond. It seeks proposals on topics such as theorisations of cannibalism, maternal infanticide and eating the enemy. The deadline for proposal submission is set at 31 December 2012.

Conferences: Dis-Placing the East/West Binary, Cardiff, 2 November 2012; and Sensualising Deformity, Edinburgh, 15-16 June 2012 (program)

The Centre for Interdisciplinary Film and Visual Culture Research at Cardiff University plays host to the one-day international symposium, Dis-Placing the East/West Binary: Aesthetic and Cultural Crossover in Film and Visual Culture at the tail end of this year. Taking place over the course of a full day from 10am to 6pm on 2 November 2012, the symposium examines and interrogates "contemporary displacements and transformations of relations between East Asian and Euro-American film and visual culture", with an emphasis on exploring the loaded concept of "place" in East/West visual culture.

The event features a keynote from Jane Chi Hyun Park, whose book, Yellow Future: Oriental Style in Hollywood Cinema was published by University of Minnesota Press in 2010. The organiser is currently inviting presentation proposals for the event.

On a slightly different note, the Edinburgh-based conference Sensualisng Deformity: Communication and Construction of Monstrous Embodiment (which we blogged about before) has now released their provisional programme, packed with a full schedule of talks and with keynotes by Margrit Shildrick, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Peter Hutchings and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen.