*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, "QUEER TEMPORALITIES" IN LITERATURE, CINEMA, AND VIDEO GAMES INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

“Queer Temporalities” in Literature, Cinema, and Video Games International Conference.

2-4 December 2021

Online

 

While the study of space has been part of the Queer Studies agenda for a very long time, time has been a more recent addition. This International Conference sees the study of time as being central to the understanding of identity configurations. Studying time as a producer and reproducer of identities can be approached as the unearthing of past events, the imagining of other futures, or as the exploration of time as a formal factor that shapes cultural texts. While conceptions of time as something linear, stable, singular, and unequivocal favor existing discourses about equally unequivocal identities, approaches to time as being defined by multiple rhythms, interruptions and uncertainties allow for other identities and cultural / social practices to come to life in time or through specific representations of time. 

*CFP* "THE WORK OF LU YANG IN TRANSNATIONAL CHINESE AND GLOBAL CONTEMPORARY ART AND VISUAL CULTURE", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE RISING ASIA JOURNAL

One of “the most innovative and imaginative artists coming out of China right now” (New York Times, November 18, 2020), Lu Yang ( 陸揚) (1985-) has provocatively re-envisioned the notions of identity, the body, sex and gender in complex, layered and at the same time highly entertaining videos and multimedia installations. His work also reflects on darker themes like death, destruction and reincarnation. Lu Yang creates experimental virtual environments where cutting-edge technologies meet philosophical considerations inspired by Buddhism. 

 

The goal of this special issue is to explore the different aspects of Lu Yang’s works and aesthetic in the context of Chinese and East Asian contemporary art and global visual cultures. We encourage proposals by scholars, art critics, curators, and graduate students working in and across the fields of Chinese and East Asian contemporary art and visual cultures, cultural studies, feminist and queer/LGBTQIA+ theory, new media and postinternet/postdigital art, game studies, religious studies, Chinese and East Asian cinemas and more. 

 

Proposals could explore topics such as the following:

*CFP* "TRANSGENDER INDIA: UNDERSTANDING HIJRAS AND SADHINS THROUGH THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, ARTS AND HUMANITIES", EDITED BOOK

Chapters are invited for Transgender India, which examines hijras and sadhins from antiquity to the present, drawing on scholarship in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Contributions may explore a range of Indian transgender identities and experiences—including but not limited to individuals identifying as third gender, MTF, FTM, and nonbinary.

Chapters understanding hijras and sadhins from a wide range of disciplines are encouraged, including but not limited to anthropology, art history, Asian studies, biology, cultural studies, economics, education, ethics, gender studies, geography, history, Indology, journalism, law, literary studies, media studies, medicine, musicology, philosophy, political science, popular culture, psychology, queer studies, religious studies, sociology, transgender studies, and visual arts. Proposals to write the introduction to the book are especially welcome.

A sampling of confirmed chapters includes:

*CFP* "INTERCONNECTIONS", SPECIAL ISSUE, JOURNAL OF POSTHUMANISM

We invite new submissions for future issues of Interconnections: Journal of Posthumanism/ Interconnexions: revue de posthumanisme. Our peer-reviewed, international, bilingual, open-access, interdisciplinary journal is devoted to theorizing what it means to think beyond both historical and current conceptions of 'the human' in ways that transcend the traditionally anthropocentric parameters of the humanities and social sciences. We seek to create a broad network of collaboration across disciplines, research areas, and language. 

We provide a forum for investigating problems and questions related to posthumanism and encourage contributors to devise tools and concepts to tackle the critical issues emerging within contemporary life that impact humans and nonhumans. We foster interdisciplinary engagement by publishing work that theorizes the interrelated workings of philosophy, politics, the arts, and the sciences. We seek contributions that move beyond Humanist frameworks and endeavour to construct theories and conceptual approaches that dismantle perceived hierarchies and categories of thought. Our journal is the expression of posthumanism’s engagement and embrace of interconnections.

*CFP* "EL POSTHUMANISMO Y LA NARRATIVA BREVE HISPÁNICA", NÚMERO 14, LEJANA: REVISTA CRÍTICA DE NARRATIVA BREVE 2021

Lejana. Revista Crítica de Narrativa Breve invita a colaborar en el número 14 en el monográfico `El posthumanismo y la narrativa breve hispánica´. 

Este número tiene el objetivo de reflexionar sobre la vigencia del posthumanismo y los conceptos afines enumerados, ofreciendo tanto reflexiones teóricas como análisis de obras concretas de narrativa breve en español, entendida esta categoría como una que abarca toda obra en prosa peninsular o hispanoamericana, escrita en español, desde la época medieval hasta nuestros días, que tenga extensión limitada, comprendiendo géneros y subgéneros variadísimos en la amplia gama desde el microcuento hasta la nouvelle o la novela corta.

Se esperan artículos monográficos relacionados con las siguientes líneas de investigación, dejando posibilidades abiertas para proponer otras:

*CFP* "WEIRD SCIENCES AND THE SCIENCES OF THE WEIRD", PULSE: THE JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND CULTURE

Recent scientific discoveries in climatology, animal cognition and microbiology have radically altered our conceptions of ourselves and the environment we live in, both on micro and macroscales. Zooming in on the human microbiome and out to the planetary ecosystem, or even further into infinite cosmic spaces, the sciences are revealing strange dynamics of human-nonhuman interconnectedness, doing away with the established anthropocentrism and the idea of human exceptionalism. Current theoretical discussions revolving around the human-environment relation have shifted their interests from discourse to matter, shedding new light on strange bodily assemblages composed of anaerobic bacteria which live in symbiotic relationships with the human body (Jane Bennett, Stacy Alaimo), other types of cognition and intelligent life apart from our own (Steven Shaviro) and, especially, the mechanisms by which human action, no matter how abstract or invisible, contributes to the global ecological transformations (Donna Haraway, Timothy Morton). The ultimate effect of these conceptual transformations is a certain sense of estrangement that is often, but not necessarily, tied to feelings of unease, horror and/or fascination. This specific affect is commonly referred to as the weird because it operates through disrupting our ordinary perception and experience, creating confusion and a sense of disorientation.

*CFP* "WEIRD SCIENCES AND THE SCIENCES OF THE WEIRD", SPECIAL ISSUE, PULSE: THE JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND CULTURE

Recent scientific discoveries in climatology, animal cognition and microbiology have radically altered our conceptions of ourselves and the environment we live in, both on micro and macroscales. Zooming in on the human microbiome and out to the planetary ecosystem, or even further into infinite cosmic spaces, the sciences are revealing strange dynamics of human-nonhuman interconnectedness, doing away with the established anthropocentrism and the idea of human exceptionalism. Current theoretical discussions revolving around the human-environment relation have shifted their interests from discourse to matter, shedding new light on strange bodily assemblages composed of anaerobic bacteria which live in symbiotic relationships with the human body (Jane Bennett, Stacy Alaimo), other types of cognition and intelligent life apart from our own (Steven Shaviro) and, especially, the mechanisms by which human action, no matter how abstract or invisible, contributes to the global ecological transformations (Donna Haraway, Timothy Morton). The ultimate effect of these conceptual transformations is a certain sense of estrangement that is often, but not necessarily, tied to feelings of unease, horror and/or fascination. This specific affect is commonly referred to as the weird because it operates through disrupting our ordinary perception and experience, creating confusion and a sense of disorientation.

*CFP* "BODY, MIND, AND THE POSTHUMAN: A COROLLARY TO POSTMODERN THOUGHT", LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES JOURNAL

“Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?”

Nietzsche

Within post-Enlightenment thought supremacy of a disembodied and ahistorical Cartesian subject, surveying the objective world lying before and imparting it meaning in accordance to its own wishes, becomes the ground of what is understood as being human. This anthropocentric conception, challenged in various manners—most comprehensively in Heidegger’s reformulation of human subject as Dasein—within the history of ideas, however remains the frame of reference till the end of 20th century. With the advent of 1990s epistemologies are remodelled, tracing their roots to Heidegger’s Letter on Humanism, to incorporate first an anti-human strain of thought and then, subsequently, announce the death of a coherent human subject—whether in Derrida’s concept of differánce, or in Foucault’s dirge on death of man with the corollary of the author being reduced to a “function”—as an essential and stable entity, an announcement that contributed to a scattered and de-constructed postmodern landscape of mind.

*CFP* “TRANSMEDIA SELVES: IDENTITY AND PERSONA CREATION IN THE AGE OF MOBILE AND MULTIPLATFORM MEDIA”, BOOK CHAPTERS

Edited by Matthew Freeman (Bath Spa University) and James Dalby (University of Gloucestershire)

With digital technologies continuing to develop and expand their functionality and reach, mobile devices have cemented their essentiality in the average individual’s daily life. More than this, the ubiquity of media content is one of the defining characteristic of the early 21st century era, in the developed world. Driven by the ongoing synthesis of human and device in the form of mobile internet and media communications technologies - including the behaviours, interactivities and reliances associated with this - and as notions of media become less about ‘entertainment’ and more closely aligned with the fundamentals of a contemporary life, traditional conceptions of ‘the self’ become perhaps harder to define.