[ecrea] cfp: Sexual Cultures 2: Academia Meets Activism

Call for Papers

Sexual Cultures 2: Academia Meets Activism

April 8-10 2015 University of Sunderland London Campus, South Quay, 
London, UK

Deadline for the submission of proposals is October 31 2014.


This conference, co-hosted by the Centre for Research in Media and 
Cultural Studies, University of Sunderland, and the Onscenity Research 
Network will take place on April 8-10 2015 at the University of 
Sunderland London Campus, London, UK

The conference will host several keynote panels, bringing together 
academics and activists on the topics of:

·         Sex and disability

·         Trans* and non-binary activism

·         Sex worker and stripper activism

·         Youth, race and sexuality

Confirmed Keynote Panelists include: Andrea Cornwall, Jade Fernandez, 
Kat Gupta, Kate Hardy, Laura Harvey, Alex Iantaffi, Tuppy Owens, Ruth 
Pearce, Emma Renold, Jessica Ringrose, Nabil Shaban, Jay Stewart.

The overriding theme of the conference is the bringing together of 
academia with activism. Submissions are particularly welcomed from: 
academics who are also activists, activists who are also academics, 
academic/activists on the inside and outside of conventional academia, 
and academics and activists who are working together on projects 
relating to sexual cultures.

The key themes of the conference are:

Intersecting sex

Many of the most important and current debates around sexual identities, 
practices and cultures in recent years have cohered around 
intersectionality. Sex is an area in which we particularly see 
intersections playing out between various forms and systems of 
oppression discrimination. For example, key debates concern the 
possibilities for consensual sex and agency within multiple intersecting 
structures of oppression; the ways in which ‘sexualization’ operates – 
and is discussed – in gendered, classed, and raced ways; which bodies 
and identities are considered to have the potential to be sexual or not, 
and which are regarded as intrinsically hypersexual or pathologically 
sexual. Papers in this strand will explore intersectional elements of 
sexual identity, practice, experience and culture, the ways in which 
academics and/or activists are engaging and intervening in these areas 
(online and offline), and the key points of tension and conflict that 
are emerging around these issues.

Advising/educating sex

Sex advice and education is a key area of concern in relation to sexual 
cultures. Sex advice and sex education are arenas in which cultural 
conceptualisations of sex are reproduced and perpetuated, as well as 
being potential sites for the resisting of dominant cultural 
understandings and offering alternative possibilities. Sex advice and 
education occur across various media and diverse professional contexts, 
including – for example – self-help books, problem pages, websites, 
online forums, news reporting, TV documentaries, and pornography, as 
well as school sex ed, youth work, sexual health clinics, sex therapy, 
sex coaching and sex work. Papers in this strand will explore the kinds 
ways in which intimacies are being mediated through various forms of sex 
advice and education, as well as considering the ways in which activists 
and/or academics are engaging and intervening in these areas (online and 
offline, in policy and in practice) and the forms of sex advice and 
education that are emerging from these engagements and interventions.

Sex and technology

Technologies of all kinds have been central to the ways in which sex is 
understood and experienced in contemporary societies. We are interested 
in papers that explore evolving technologies in the presentation of sex 
through print, photography, film and video to todays online and mobile 
media; the ways that technologies are increasingly integrated into 
everyday sex lives; the expansion of sex technologies in toy, doll, 
machine and robot manufacture, the marketing of drugs such as Viagra and 
cosmetic technologies such as body modification and genital surgery for 
enhancing sex; the expansion of sex work and recreation online; sex 2.0 
practices, regimes and environments such as porn tubes, sex chat rooms 
and worlds like Second Life; and the shifting relations between bodies 
and machines in the present and in predictions of futuresex.

Working sex

In recent years sex work has become a potent site for the discussion of 
labour, commerce and sexual ethics, attracting increased academic 
attention and public concern. Papers in this strand of the conference 
will seek to develop our understanding of commercial sex, focus on 
conceptualizing emerging types of sexual labour, and explore the place 
of sex work of all kinds in contemporary society. They will ask how an 
investigation of contemporary forms of sex work and sex as work may shed 
new light on the study of cultural production, industry, commerce, and 
notions of commodification and labour. We are also seeking papers which 
are interested in exploring the connections between work and leisure, 
work and pleasure, sex work as forms of body and affective labour, and 
the ethics and politics of sexual labour.

We invite proposals for the following:

Panels, roundtable discussions, and workshops of up to four 
presenters/facilitators (1 hour)

Papers/interactive events (20 minutes)

Short Ignite papers (5 minutes/20 slides)

Posters

We particularly welcome proposals for non-standard types of presentation 
which question the academic/activist distinction, such as fish bowl 
discussions, pecha kucha, creative methods workshops, and interactive 
workshops.

All presenters are requested to make their material accessible to an 
audience which will include academics, activists, practitioners and 
community members.

Deadline for the submission of proposals is October 31 2014.

For all individual papers please submit a 150 word abstract and 150 word 
biographical note. Please indicate which key theme of the conference 
your paper belongs to.

For panels, workshops and roundtable sessions please submit a 600-800 
overview and set of abstracts with 150 word biographical notes. Please 
indicate which key theme of the conference you want your panel to be 
considered for.

All submissions should be addressed to 
sexualcultures2[at]sunderland[dot]ac[dot]uk

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