CfP: Bodies Matter (Event, 04/2021, Leiden); by: 31.08.2020

Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS), Elleke Boehmer, Willemijn Ruberg and Frans-Willem Korsten (Web)

Time: 15.–16.04.2021
Venue: Leiden
Proposals by: 31.08.2020

Keynote lectures:

  • Elleke Boehmer, University of Oxford: World Literature in English
  • Willemijn Ruberg, Universiteit Utrecht: Cultural History

Final remarks and a concluding session’s supervisor:

  • Frans-Willem Korsten, LUCAS

Since global antiquity, conceptions of the body have played a central role in culture and society. From physical figures to political metaphors, objects of analysis to sources of value, bodies take multiple forms. They ground emotions, desires and identities, and are inflected by technology. They connect to histories of place and space, both online and offline, and are framed by political, environmental, spiritual, and other discourses.

All too often, conceptions of the body have been to delimit or exclude bodies deemed “other” for reasons of race, gender, class or other markers of identity. Never isolated, bodies are also arranged into larger units, from cultural groups to nation states. Thinking through the body not only reshapes our body of knowledge, it also moves us to rethink our lives, together and apart, during unprecedented political, ecological and health crises.

The organizers welcome contributions from researchers across the humanities and social sciences. Participants are invited to consider topics including, but not limited to:

  • Normative and deviant bodies (outlaw, disabled, ill)
  • Performances and representations of the body in various media
  • Collective bodies and biopolitics (medicine, ethics, governance, coercion, control, surveillance, resistance)
  • Ecologies of the body (environmental relations, human and non-human bodies)
  • Read more and source … (Web)