[ecrea] Transformations: New Call for Papers -- Thing Theory, Material Culture, and Object-Oriented Ontology

*CFP: Issue 27
**
Thing Theory, Material Culture, and Object-Oriented Ontology

*/Transformations/ is calling for submissions for /Issue 27/, which is 
dedicated to the topic of Things.

The investigation of /things/ is an important subject across many 
disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. In /The Social Life 
of Things /(1988), Arjun Appadurai provided an innovative exploration of 
how things, as commodities, shaped their human agents, rather than the 
other way around---an idea that would have important repercussions for a 
new scholarly interest in material culture. In attempting to illuminate 
the problematic notion of a "Thing Theory" (2001), Bill Brown has 
pointed to the complex relationship between objects and things, arguing 
that things lie outside a simple subject-object framework, leading a 
multifaceted "life" that humans only glimpse rather than truly see. More 
recently, in /Vibrant/ /Matter/ (2010), Jane Bennett has investigated 
the political ecology of things and scholars such as Gay Hawkins (2009) 
and Gillian Whitlock (2010) have taken up this rich field of enquiry in 
their explorations of topics as diverse as cultural detritus, the 
posthuman, the consumption of water and plastic, and the production, 
dissemination and reception of testimony and artifacts concerned with 
asylum seekers' life narratives.

We welcome expressions of interest in submitting articles addressing, 
but not restricted to, the following research themes:
· How can we understand "things" in relation to shifting technological 
and social contexts, to works of art or literature, or in relation to 
the cultural biographies or "lives" of things themselves?

· Where are the lines that divide the sentient from the non-sentient, 
the human from the non-human, and what are their consequences?


/Transformations /invites proposals for academic journal articles on any 
aspect of the theme of "Things."

Articles should be between 3,500 and 5,000 words and should conform to 
the style guide 
<_http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/style_guide.shtml_>  and 
submission guidelines 
<_http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/submission_guidelines.shtml_> 
 on the /Transformations/ website.

Please submit an abstract (200 words) as well as a succinct author 
biography (two sentences) and contact details via email to Associate 
Professor Jane Stadler at the University of Queensland 
((_j.stadler /at/ uq.edu).au_) by *13 March 2015*. Complete articles will be 
due by Monday *15 June 2015*.