CALL FOR PAPERS
Representations of prostitution, sex work and sex trafficking
between the 19th
and 21st centuries
The Women's Library, London, 9th-10th September, 2010
Provisional Keynote Speakers:
Jane Arthurs, University of the West of England
Marianne Hester, University of Bristol
Russell Campbell, University of Wellington
Kirsten Pullen, Texas A&M University
The figure of the prostitute is a malleable cultural symbol, used to address
social fears and desires (Matlock, 1994; O'Neill, 2001). Representations of
prostitutes enable us to understand attitudes towards female mobility,
sexuality, ethnicity, and emancipation that cross national divides
and affect all
gender identities. The global centrality of such representations is
growing, as
debates about sex work, tourism and trafficking recur in a variety of border-
crossing forms.
When considered from a global and historical perspective, portrayals of
prostitution are many and varied, intersecting with different cultural and
historical moments, in different forms and for different audiences, and
functioning in dramatically different ways. Studies of the narratives of the
prostitute, sex worker and sex trafficking within specific
representational and
key national contexts point to a need for further collaboration to understand
the extent of their transnational nature, and the way in which
representational
forms may differ. This conference aims therefore to bring together studies of
the representation of prostitution from a range of cultures,
including Europe,
North Africa, the US, Latin America, China, Japan, Korea, and India. In this
transnational context we will examine how various representational forms
inflect the figure differently since little attention has been paid to the
evolution of the prostitute's representation over the past two centuries from
the novel and stage towards the globalized modes of film, television and the
internet.
We would welcome proposals on any aspect of the conference theme,
particularly in the light of the following questions:
1) Which features of the representation of prostitution cross a selection of
different media and national contexts, and which do not?
2) How have new representational forms affected portrayals of prostitution?
To what extent is there continuity between nineteenth, twentieth, and
twenty-first century approaches?
3) What are the contentious issues around the representation of prostitution,
and what strategies might one devise to negotiate them? How do different
understandings of feminism inflect the way we interpret images of
prostitution?
4) How do representations of prostitution overlap with other discourses about
gender?
5) How can we develop a transdisciplinary methodological approach to the
study of gender representation, in particular to the representation of
prostitutes, by bringing medical history, philosophy, sociology,
politics, and
geography together with more traditional studies of representation?
Please send abstracts of 500 words to the organizers Danielle
Hipkins and Kate
Taylor at (prostitutionconference /at/ hotmail.com) by February 28th, 2010
