3rd Call for Papers and Panels – Regulated Liberties. Negotiating Freedom in Art, Culture and Media
1st Rethinking Art Studies (REARS) conference in Turku, August 20-22 2009, University of Turku, Finland.
Freedom is a heavily charged notion with a vast conceptual width. Yet, the question of freedom and its regulation remains inadequately studied in the field of art, culture and media. Research has often relied conceptually on dichotomies and concentrated on revealing different kinds of power structures and forms of oppression, which tends to simplify the complex nature of freedom and constraint. The conference is dedicated to rethinking cultural power in new inventive ways not based on a dichotomous logic of domination and resistance. The concept of „regulated liberties“ denotes a more complex relationship of negotiation between the dominant and its subjects.
The aim of the conference is to relate art, culture and media to questions concerning freedom, emancipation and resistance. The overall conference topic disperses on the theoretical fields of subjectivity, social structures, and representation. The conference provides a forum for the development of innovative and creative research concerning
temporal/spatial dimensions, genres and identity production in art, culture and media.
It is with great regret that we have to inform you of the recent passing of one of our keynote speakers, Professor Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Professor Sedgwick passed away on April 12th in New York. In the wake of this loss we have the honour of welcoming two replacing keynote speakers, philosopher and political theorist Brian Massumi and artist,
theorist and psychoanalyst Bracha L. Ettinger. In light of these changes, we are extending our call for papers to enable the participation of those researchers who are inspired by the new keynote speakers. There is room for a limited number of new papers and panels.
Keynote speakers:

• Angela McRobbie (The Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)
• Brian Massumi (Department of Communication, University of Montréal, Canada)
• Bracha L. Ettinger (Media & Communications, European Graduate School, Switzerland)
• Colin B. Grant (The Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, UK)
• Marianne Liljeström (The School of Art Studies, University of Turku, Finland)
• Altti Kuusamo (The School of Art Studies, University of Turku, Finland)

Proposals for panels and individual papers:
The conference organizing committee invites proposals for panels and individual papers. Possible topics may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• How have the concepts of freedom and emancipation been employed in the context of art, culture and media?
• In what ways do culture and art regulate conduct in (neo)liberal regimes and vice versa?
• How do culturally sanctioned representations impose hegemonic identities?
• In what ways should genres be (re)thought in art? Are they regulating regimes?
• Under what circumstances does resistance take place, and is it necessarily conscious and intentional?
• In what ways are subjects produced both as objects of regulatory norms and as agents capable of resisting these norms?
• How does embodiment work as a corporeal nexus for several axis of power, as a gendered, racialised, and sexualised signifier of multiple regulatory norms?
• How could the role of institutions and economy be conceptualised in new and productive ways?

Abstracts should be sent in the following format:
(1) Title
(2) Presenter(s)
(3) Institutional affiliation
(4) Email
(5) Abstract.
Panel proposals should include:
(1) Title of the panel
(2) Name and contact information of the chair
(3) Abstracts of the presenters.
Please use your surname as the document title. Abstracts (200–300 words) for twenty-minute papers as well as proposals for 2 hour panels should be submitted as an email attachment to reglib(a)utu.fi by *May 14th 2009*. Presenters will be notified of acceptance by the end of May 2009.
The preliminary conference programme, including already accepted papers and panels, is available: www.hum.utu.fi/regulated_liberties/ For more information, contact us at reglib(at)utu.fi.
The School of Art Studies, University of Turku, Finland, organizes the conference.