The Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University UGC-SAP-DSA-I sponsored
NATIONAL YOUNG RESEARCHERS' CONFERENCE 2016 (February 4th-5th, 2016) on "The Return of the Body: Revisiting Cultures of the Body" “I still think it’s worthwhile to continue to do research on the body as the challenging topic in cultural sciences.” - Christoph Wulf, March 2008 In her seminal work in 1985, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, Donna Harraway suggested that we have entered the post-human era, where fluidity is what defines the body. The demarcating lines, she argued, between man and animal, man-animal and machine, and the physical and non-physical have become sufficiently vague, or have collapsed entirely. Yet, shortly before her publication, anthropologists Christoph Wulf and Dietmar Kamper published their book on historical anthropology, 'The Return of the Body' (1982), arguing that in Europe the ‘Death of God’ led to a marked shift from theocentrism to anthropocentrism, ensuring that the body never goes out of focus in culture studies and cultural sciences. Furthering the debate in 2001, Wulf along with Claudia Benthien published 'The Body in Parts' looking at the “cultural significance of different body parts like the stomach, the back, the nose or the hair”. One school of classical Indian aesthetic tradition questions the relevance of the body with respect to the self, the swa. What happens to a person when the body disintegrates and dies? Is there more to the self, something intrinsic, something more essential, than the body? Classical Western philosophy too, since its inception, right down to Hegel’s notion of Idealism and Feuerbach’s Materialism, has been participating in the mind-versus-body debate. Can our discourses on culture, ethnography, anthropology, history, society, literature, arts and the aesthetics be complete without taking the body into consideration? Having decided to hold a Young Researchers' Conference to deliberate on these issues, we invite submissions of proposals for research papers within the scope of the critical spaces offered but not restricted to the following: • Different bodies: fat bodies, skinny bodies, pregnant bodies, queer bodies, disabled bodies • The ‘acceptable’ body • Performing bodies, bodies of performance • The State as a body • Productivity and economics of the body • Rituals of the body • ‘Untouchable’ body wastes • Forms, genres and the body • The self and the body Abstracts of 300 to 500 words, with a brief bio-note on the speaker, must be emailed to the Conference Coordinators at ces.sap....@gmail.com. Important Dates: • Last date for submission of abstract: DECEMBER 30th, 2015 • Notification of acceptance of abstract: JANUARY 10th, 2016 • Last date for submission of full paper: JANUARY 25th, 2016 Note: • Participants must be registered MPhil/ PhD Research Scholars at a recognized university, or a young academic actively engaged in research. • Food and accommodation (on a twin-sharing basis) for outstation participants will be arranged and paid for by the organizers, from February 3rd 2016 (14:00 hours) to February 5th 2016 (12:00 hours). • Outstation participants will also be given a travel allowance of 2000 INR per person or actual fare incurred, whichever is less, subject to submission of tickets in the original. Participants from the Delhi-NCR region will be given travel allowance of 400 INR per person or actual fare incurred, whichever is less, subject to submission of bills/ tickets in the original. • Selected papers will be published in a peer-reviewed, edited volume post the seminar. -- Avinash Shahi Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list..
