[ecrea] CFP "From Cyborg to Facebook: Technological dreams and Feminist Critiques"

SOPHIA, the Belgian Bi-community Network for Gender Studies is 
organizing a colloquium to investigate the latest developments in theory 
and research on the many aspects of gender and technology from a 
Feminist angle.


Women and technology don't sleep in the same bed. The relation between technological possibilities and gender is tense. 'Technology', the use value of science, embodies power relations. Some see technology as a tool for liberation, others see it as a trap of enslavement.
Donna Haraway's vision of the Cyborg (1985) was a water shed. The idea of the thinking but bodiless human has been a subject of wide ranging debate for feminists, theoreticians and feminist activists ever since. The cyborg makes us question the pure boundaries of gender and the human as opposed to the animal and the machine. What does the body mean if we can transcend the body? Would body-linked inequalities disappear? Today, the bodiless and sexless voice is a reality thanks to the communicative but commercialized possibilities of social media. In Facebook people create their own (gender) identities. In the web world of games and interaction, the cyborg can be a reality.
> From a feminist perspective there has always been a love-hate relationship between technology and feminist projects. Technology seems to promise liberation from the confines of the corporal and the duties of the everyday. The female body is often the basis of inequality (bearing children, weak, and marked). Technology offers freedom from reproduction, controlled reproduction, strength and transformation. But at what price comes a cyborg liberation of the mind from the body? While the debate is not new, ongoing technological advances pose new issues. Technology 'frees' us from our sexed bodies through reproductive technology, and through the faceless communication of the internet. Yet at the same time it enslaves us in an ever more incomprehensible net of global relations and consumer requirements. You can't leave home without your mobile, but you don't know how to fix it.Technology empowers, but excludes.

Sophia's colloquium welcomes papers on the relations between gender and technologies from both theoretical and empirical standpoints and will focus on the following themes:

1. Feminist visions on science and technology

2. The enhanced body after Haraway's Cyborg?

3. Biology, bodies, technology and the nature-nurture debate

4. Technology and gender in everyday life

5. Communication, technology and gender: (New) media and gender

6. Technology and the expression of Gender in culture

7. Technology and gendered power

8. Technology policy and the academy

9. Technology, heteronormativity and the erotic

Abstracts of 300 words with an indication of the choice of theme section should be sent to (info /at/ sophia.be) for the 15th of June 2011. They should include name(s) of author, affiliation (university or organisation) and contact information (e-mail, phone, post adress). Abstracts may be submitted in English, French or Dutch.

All questions can be addressed to (info /at/ sophia.be). Telephone contacts during office hours at 0032 (0)2 229 38 69.

Scientific board: Mylene Baum-Botbol (UCL), Sander De Ridder (CIMS, UGhent), Nathalie Grandjean (FUNDP), Stéphanie Loriaux (ULB/Sophia), Marta Roca I Escoda (Université Autonome de Barcelone/ ULB), Sarah Sepulchre (UCL/Sophia), Femke Snelting (constant vzw), Patricia Vendramin (Fondation Travail-Université/UCL), Alison Woodward (VUB/Sophia), Laurence Claeys (Ugent/Bell Labs).

Plaats: Amazone, Middaglijnstraat 10, 1210 Brussel

Meer informatie en de uitgebreide call for papers: http://www.sophia.be/app/webroot/files/CFP%20sophia%20conference%202011(6).pdf


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