Conference: Critical Pedagogies: Equality and Diversity in a Changing Institution, 6 September 2013, Edinburgh

With labels such as "austerity" and "service delivery" currently dogging university institution across the globe, a carefully considered and critical approach to the pedagogical seems simultaneously urgent and shunted aside. The symposium "Critical Pedagogies: Equality and Diversity in a Changing Institution", scheduled for Edinburgh on 6 September of this year, draws our gaze back to the strategies of the educator in a climate of neoliberal change and investigates how critical pedagogical practices can be recognised, reworked and lived in and beyond the academy.

The event features two keynote lectures from Heidi Safia Mirza (University of London) and Joyce Canaan (Birmingham City University) as well as what will likely prove to be an excellent roundtable involving six discussants (listed here) reflecting on "numerous issues surrounding antiracism, intersectionality, education and social change".

"In the context of changing institutions as well as public life, issues of equality, diversity and inclusiveness in the classroom become more and more imperative. Critical pedagogy is conceptualised as an inherently crossdisciplinary praxis, encouraging and fostering discussion and development around issues of equality and diversity."

The call for papers for this symposium has closed but registration is still open. Those in the area the day before may also like to attend a "warm-up" workshop scheduled for the afternoon of 5 September. More information, including a provisional programme, can be found on their website.

Colloquium: Extending Gesture, Edinburgh, 26-28 October 2012

After a busy early July and sadly prolonged absence, Ky is back again to flag a fascinating colloquium to take place in Edinburgh on 26-28 October of this year. Extending Gesture, organised by Tami Gadir and Fiona Hanley, who some of you may recognise from the BiM Conference two years ago, addresses the much overlooked and undervalued notion of the gestural in its many expressions, contexts and phenomenologies.

The organisers are currently calling for proposals of any length, form and discipline on the embodied nature of gesture. Arranged with a view towards academic intimacy and discussion, attendance will be limited to twelve, including keynote guests Dr Nancy Ann Roth (senior lecturer at University College Falmouth and key translator of the writings of Vilém Flusser into English) and Rolf Inge Godøy (professor in Musicology Studies at the University of Olso). Each presenter wil be given a full hour to present and discuss their work in whatever manner and distribution of time they deem is appropriate to the content.

Enquiries and proposals should be submitted to the organisers at edinburghextending@gmail.com by 10 August; further information and a contact form can also be found at their website.

"...What provokes the pulsating body to dance? Or the scribbling hand to scratch? What are the urges and itches that manifest the various gestures of our being? What is the character of their inception and how do we conceptualise them? What too, is this strangeness that shadows our gestures? What is its unique character in relation to each particular gesture? How can we capture and de–scribe such strange movements? What can the pauses in–between the gesture tell us about its nature? What role does anticipation play in gesture?"

Conference: Sensualising Deformity: Communication and Construction of Monstrous Embodiment, Edinburgh, 15-16 June 2012

The "Sensualising Deformity: Communication and Construction of Monstrous Embodiment" conference has recently been scheduled for 15-16 June of next year at the University of Edinburgh. This extremely exciting event features two already-confirmed plenary speakers, teratologist and object-oriented ontology theorist Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (George Washington University) and academic in horror cinema Peter Hutchings (Northumbria University).

Targeted at reinserting the senses and the sensuous into discussion of the monstrous and/or deformed body from the early modern period to the mid-twentieth century, the conference is divided into three strands: Sensed Diagnostics, Conceptualised/Sexualised Monstrosity, and (De)-forming and Aesthetics. The call for papers deadline is set at 31 January 2012.

"This two-day interdisciplinary conference aims to bring the senses and the sensuous back to the monstrous or deformed body, and to explore the questions, anxieties, and denials which surround deformity when it is located within a continuum of sense."

The conference blog itself features its own steadily growing cabinet of digital curiosities including links (so far) to music, articles and images, and is geared to providing links to "all things related to the conference themes, be they articles, seminars, exhibitions, websites, films, or general miscellanea".

Performance: Palæophonics, 27 May 2011

Anyone loitering in Edinburgh tomorrow, Friday 27 May 2011, may have the opportunity to attend the multimedia, multi-sensorial and multi-disciplinary event, Palæophonics, which will be held in the George Square Theatre at the University of Edinburgh from 7pm. Exploring the ways in which we engage with sounds and they, in turn, engage with us, the 170 minute concert will feature various original projects by artists and academics all engaging with the elements of sound and human history.

"Palaeophonics is a live multimedia performance event which will take you on a journey backwards through time, exploring ways we have created and used sound and music since our early human origins. It brings together eight new collaborative works by composers, film-makers and archaeologists from across Europe and the Americas at the first concert of its kind..."

Palæophonics is the brainchild of producer and director Farès Moussa and director Paul Keene, both from the University of Edinburgh. The event includes a host of experimental visual and soundscapes from around the world in the form of live performances, film projection and installation. Tickets for the concert are selling at a standard price of £10.50 or a discounted student price of £5.

Lecture: Steven Connor, "Intact"

On 20 May 2011, Steven Connor will give a public lecture entitled "Intact" at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh. A focus piece for the Embodied Values: Bringing the Senses Back to the Environment seminar series at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) (see our previous post), the lecture will address the relationship between touch/touching and the environment.

The public lecture will be preceded by a full day of seminar-based presentations at the IASH building on the topic of touch, the environment and value-construction. Full details are still to be announced. Check back at the Embodied Values website for more details soon.

Conference: Bodies of Thought: Fleshy Subjects, Embodied Minds, & Human Natures

With remarkable serendipity, a new conference has been announced to take place in the cool climes of Edinburgh less than two weeks after the Bodies in Movement conference. Bodies of Thought: Fleshy Subjects, Embodied Minds, & Human Natures will be held at the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 8-9 June.

"The aim of this event is to foster a dialogue between researchers in feminist philosophy working on debates around the body, and researchers in philosophy of cognitive science with interests in embodied cognition and the extended mind. Many theorists of embodiment now think of mind and cognition as being continuous with life, in some theoretically significant way. Thus, contributions from those working in relevant areas of philosophy of biology will also form a natural part of this dialogue."

Abstracts for this event are due on the 4th March and a small amount of bursaries are available for postgraduates and early career academics. With a slightly stronger foundation in philosophy but an almost parallel intent of offering an opportunity for cross-/interdisciplinary engagement, "Bodies of Thought" promises to add further depth and complexity to the conversation between the humanities, the sciences and philosophies of materiality. The Network in the Arts and Humanities which has organised this event also plans some exciting subsequent events focusing on gender and sexed embodiment in the visual arts, and on the links between feminist philosophy and philosophy of education.

IASH Lecture Series and Conference, "Embodied Values: Bringing the Senses Back into the Environment"

The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) in Edinburgh is organising an ongoing lecture series which culminates at the end of 2011 in a three-day interdisciplinary conference.

Dedicated to expanding our engagement and relationality with sensory environments, the topics of engagement for these varied and wide-ranging addresses include the five senses, the haptic, the senses in motion and being-in-the-world.

"The inadequacy of contemporary models of human-environmental relationships suggests the need to reconfigure existing and historical models of the senses within new paradigms informed by the inter-dependent exchange between mental and physical ecology: that is, embodiment. This Sawyer Seminar series seeks to challenge, and to re-think, presuppositions of Western twentieth-century engagement with the world such as anthropocentrism, mind-body dualism, and isolated subjectivity. The rationale for these comparative seminars is clear: to clarify the degree to which sensory engagement in the world is a necessary precondition for the ethical self, for the intellectual self and the fully realized human being, and to articulate ways in which bodily, sensory and extra-sensory perception are being or may be re-engaged with the environment – 'nature' as both immediate experience and independent reality. Cumulatively, the intention is to think what has been lost and what acquired in our historical sensory engagements; to meditate on the effects of sensory loss and deprivation, and on the conditions for enhancement."

The next day-long seminar in the series on scenting/smell by Professor David Howes (Concordia University, Canada) is scheduled for 28 January 2011.