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Call for Papers Theme: Critical Ecologies Subtitle: Digital Habitats, Material Governance, and Global Inequalities Type: 2014 ASPECT Graduate Conference Institution: Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought (ASPECT), Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Location: Blacksburg, VA (USA) Date: 21.–22.3.2014 Deadline: 15.11.2013 __________________________________________________ In the aftermath the global financial crisis of 2007-09, questions of digital habitation, material governance, and global inequalities have gained new force and urgency. Inhabiting the digital ecology, once a turn-of-the-millennium sensation and spectacle, has now become commonplace – posing questions of material governance, as increased government surveillance, issues surrounding intellectual property rights, and a widespread lack of access to the means of inhabiting the digital remind us of the politics of digitization among global inequality. Material governance, the governance of matter, and the materiality of governance, is deeply embedded in digitally mediated global inequalities as global financial markets allow ungoverned flows of capital to govern the material and social habitats of the most vulnerable members of the global society, while ascendant countries are forced to comply with a global architecture still benefitting the powers that be. Global inequalities do not end there, as the ontological governance of ecological boundaries continues to deepen the existing inequalities between generations; between humans, other-than-humans, and nonhumans; between bodies and transcorporealities, flows and entities, the social and the natural, the conceptual and the nonconceptual. We invite graduate students to submit essays that engage a broad variety of topics related to critical ecologies, ecological critique, and ecologies of critique: digital habitats, material governance, and global inequalities. Particularly, we invite papers that engage issues in an interdisciplinary, challenging, and explorative fashion. Likewise, we warmly welcome papers emphasizing practical issues as well as nontraditional, marginalized, and non-heteronormative perspectives relating to global and local inequalities, policies and policing of material boundaries and digital habitats, questions of access and recognition, challenge and subversion, nonconformity and antihabitation. Graduate students of any level and disciplinary affiliation are encouraged to submit abstracts. Papers presented at the conference may be solicited for peer review and possible publication in the Spring 2014 issue of Spectra, the ASPECT Journal. Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Timothy W. Luke - Virginia Tech Sarah Sharma - UNC Chapel Hill Antonio Vazquez-Arroyo - Rutgers Newark Dylan Wittkower - Old Dominion University Possible topics include: - new materialism: vibrant matters and assemblages; ecological boundaries, their policing, their challenges; biopower and biopolitics - environmental governmentality, ecogovernmentality, sustainability & politics of ecologies - the political economy of bodies: genome patenting & clone technologies; health apparatuses & technologies of self; insurance economies, ageism and ableism; technology and the body: techno-social assemblages; apparatuses of bodily production - gendered digitalisms: the politics of gender in social media; challenges to heteronormativity in digitally mediated spaces; cyber-bullying; content blockages & censorship debates - material governance of the virtual realm: space theory, hyperreality, dromology, media theory; cybersecurity; digital currencies & digital finance; “clicktivism” & digital social movements; whistleblowing & whistleblower persecution - the political economy of crisis: credit & debt economies; international regulatory policies; subjectivities & ethnographies of debt and credit - international relations: waning sovereignty & security apparatuses; financial governance & economic ascendancy; emerging markets, BRIC economies - postsecularism and the resurgence of religions and fundamentalisms - global inequalities: human rights; humanitarian interventions; global affective networks & non-profit organizations; mediated charity; gendered activism; human, subhuman, other-than-human or nonhuman suffering Please submit the following information to Ryan Artrip at artrip_aspectconfere...@vt.edu no later than 5:00 pm on November 15, 2013. 1. Paper Title 2. Names, affiliations, and contact information for each author – please include an email address and contact phone number along with your home institution, the degree you are pursuing and your area(s) of study. 3. Abstracts should be approximately 300 words. 4. Paper Themes/Topics - select up to three topics or themes from the above list that best describe your paper. 5. A recent curriculum vitae (CV) for each author Note: full drafts of conference papers must be submitted to the conference organizers no later than 5:00 pm on Friday, March 7, 2014. Conference organizers will circulate final papers to respondents. Contact: Ryan Artrip Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 202 Major Williams (0192) Blacksburg, VA 24061 USA Email: artrip_aspectconfere...@vt.edu Web: http://www.aspect.vt.edu __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org __________________________________________________
