The Nordic Network Gender, Body, Health in collaboration with RIKK – Center for Women’s and Gender Research and EDDA – Center of Excellence at the University of Iceland

Time: 2-4 November, 2011
Venue: University of Iceland, Reykjavik
Information/program: www.genna.gender.uu.se/bodiesincrisis
The body has become a veritable hot spot in contemporary theorizing that forcefully disrupts given disciplinary identities and fields of investigation. Bodies make themselves present at the very core of a range of different phenomena, such as emotions, desires, identity, and agency. Resisting rigid dichotomies and categories, the materiality of bodies sticks to our thinking in not always comfortable ways, and their singularities question the very possibility of retaining stability in generalizing notions and frameworks of thinking. The field of feminist thinking on the body and materiality has a long history. We might even say that the body has always figured in one way or another into the field of feminist theory and that contemporary understandings of the body have been directly or indirectly shaped by this field.
From discussions of motherhood, pregnancy and abortion, of pleasure and sex, of eating disorders and the incorporation of disciplinary regimes to theoretical discussions of embodiment and individuation of bodies, feminist thinkers have played a key role in forming different ideas and understandings of the body in numerous areas.
With the conference „Bodies in Crisis“ we turn attention to a range of different ways in which bodies are brought to presence in times of crisis and bring times and states of crisis to presence, are lived in crisis and are produced and normalized as being in crisis. The conference highlights topics such as bodily integrity, representations and discourses of bodies in crisis, violence and trauma, body weight, organ donation, stigmatization of bodies in crisis, self-injury, sexual health perspectives, reproductive technologies.
For registration information and updates of possible changes in the program please see www.genna.gender.uu.se/bodiesincrisis. For more information, please contact the network coordinator Lisa Folkmarson Käll at body@gender.uu.se.