Institute of Latin American Studies, School of Advanced Study, London (Web)

Venue: London
Time: 11 November 2016
Proposals by: 1 September 2016

Current scholarship increasingly recognizes the social role that the material plays in the construction of identity and self-fashioning. Considering materiality at its most expansive, this interdisciplinary conference will interrogate the myriad ways that objects and the material have come to shape and be shaped by the men and women who operated, built, wove, prepared, and otherwise interacted with them throughout the history of Latin America and the Caribbean. This conference will foster a productive dialogue between scholars of varied disciplines who can speak to the role of race, religion, politics, and nature in considering gender and the material.

How do objects and materialities reify or destabilize notions of gender across time and among different cultures within Latin America? What role does the material have in our consideration of power structures, religious institutions, and cultural identities? How do institutions like museums enshrine historical notions of gender and how can they be contested? What is the role of science, nature, and technology in considering gender identities? How are production and consumption gendered acts and how is the body itself made consumable through adornment?

Papers that challenge traditional assumptions about objects and materialities are especially welcome, as are topics related to the intersection of marginal genders and sexual identities within the material. We invite papers that treat any part of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as Asian territories linked to the Americas, and Latin American diasporas.

The keynote speaker will be James Córdova (University of Colorado at Boulder), who will address the materiality of holy death in colonial Mexican convents.

Papers may consider (but are not limited to):

• indigenous communities and race
• gender identity and queer theory
• socialization and childhood
• gifts and gift-exchange
• power, politics, and diplomacy
• textiles and craft
• corporeality and bodily materialities (including tattooing)
• food and the consumable
• religious materialities
• architecture and space
• patronage, taste, display, and consumption
• domestic labor and the home
• ritual and celebration
• nature and the environment
• technologies and scientific materialities
• the role of museums

Abstracts in English of up to 250 words should be sent to Kathryn Santner and Sophie Brockmann (genderandmateriality@gmail.com) by 1 September 2016.

Source: H-Net Notifications