[ecrea] CFP: Materiality of Love Conference

The Institute of English Cultures and Literatures, University of Silesia 
(Poland) and Love Research Network are happy to announce the CFP for the 
upcoming conference:



The Materiality of Love



The interest of love studies in the ways affection can be materialized 
has been reflected through various scholarly perspectives. Although 
material culture studies have given the issue less attention, there has 
recently been a revival of research into the intersection of materiality 
and love. The conference is seeking to reexamine love from the 
perspective of materiality studies, especially new materialism and 
object-oriented philosophy, to sparkle a debate on a relationship 
between love, objects and new forms of materializing affection. The 
conference aims to analyze the role of things and material culture in 
practicing and conceptualizing love. It intends to provide an insight 
into how materiality (in its broadest sense) impacts the understanding 
of love today (its meanings and practices), and reversely, how love 
contributes to the production and transformation of the material world.

With a focus on rereading the emotional through the material and vice 
versa, the event intends to revisit the already existing academic 
approaches towards objectification of love, and address the following 
areas of interest / investigation:

(1)    affectionate fetishism (the ways in which objects extend or 
embody “the loved being” (Barthes, 1977); the forms in which people use 
things to attach themselves to beloved subjects; being in love with the 
objects of love through collecting and display)

(2)    cultural semiotics of love (new cultural tokens / representations 
of love; the development of “collective symbols and meanings [to help] 
people make sense of their romantic experiences” (Illouz 1997))

(3)    narratives of love (representations of love through objects in 
literature, art, film)

(4)    technologies of love (love’s (self)constructedness, its 
self-engineering and “the technology of being together” (Pettman 2006); 
the impact technology has on practicing love today: the new media and 
digital realities in practices of affection)

(5)    cultural transfer, cultural mobility in love practices (global 
flow and the circulation of “goods, signs, slogans and styles” 
(Appudurai 2005) in shaping the materiality of love; transcultural 
experiences (practices, activities, phenomena, texts) that impact 
geographically local contexts of love;

(6)    love’s physiological materiality in cultural perspective (human 
physiology and cultural manifestations of affection; the significance of 
bodily substances for communicating (objectifying) feelings, emotions 
and desires (Nicholson 2011)).

The conference invites interdisciplinary perspectives and welcomes 
proposals from all approaches and disciplines including (but not limited 
to) cultural studies, cultural history, sociology, anthropology, 
literary studies, critical theory, philosophy, media studies, art etc.  
It expects papers and panel proposals to explore the variety of themes 
and problems at the intersection of love and material cultures (as 
specified in points 1-6), and to engage in a debate on:

·        contemporary material discourses of love,

·        cultural history: objects and love in historical perspective,

·        philosophy of love and the material,

·        love and the digital-material: accessibility, image-making and 
non-contact togetherness,

·        love and/in the “old” and new media,

·        nature, senses, technology: the use of science and data in 
materializing affection,

·        romanticizing of the objects of love (meta-fetishism),

·        collecting as love / love as collecting,

·        love and the problem of agency,

·        the ethics of chemical intervention in relationships,

·        the form of conceptualizing / communicating love,

·        material qualities of affection,

·        objects and the forbidden love.



The conference, cohosted by Love Research Network, will take place at 
the Institute of English Cultures and Literatures, University of Silesia 
(Poland) on 2-3 July 2015, and is intended as a one panel event to 
ensure the highest quality of the debate.

Proposals for presentations, papers and full panels (of approx. 500 
words) followed by a short bio note should be submitted to 
(materialityoflove /at/ gmail.com) by 30 March 2015.

All proposals will be peer reviewed. The cost of the conference is 400 
PLN (Polish participants); £90,  100€; 120$ (international 
participants). Conference fee includes lunch, coffee and snacks, 
conference dinner and conference materials. For further queries, please 
contact Dr Karolina Lebek ((karolina.lebek /at/ us.edu.pl)), Dr Ania Malinowska 
((anna.malinowska /at/ us.edu.pl)) or Professor Michael Gratzke 
((M.Gratzke /at/ hull.ac.uk)), or follow the conference website 
materialityoflove.wordpress.com





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