[ecrea] Call for Papers: Cosmo-graphies: Textual and Visual Cultures of Outer Space

Call for Papers:Cosmo-graphies: Textual and Visual Cultures of Outer Space
2-day conference, Falmouth University 24-25 July 2014. Supported by the
British Interplanetary Society.
http://www.cosmographies.co.uk


Keynote Speakers:
Prof. Chris Welch ­ Professor of Astronautics (ISU, Strasbourg), and
Vice-President of the British Interplanetary Society

Prof. Philip Gross ­ Professor of Creative Writing (Glamorgan, UK), T.S.
Eliot prizewinner and author of Deep Field (2011)


Organisers: Dr. Niamh Downing (Senior Lecturer in English and Writing);
Dr. Dario Llinares (Senior Lecturer in Film); Dr. Sarah Arnold (Senior
Lecturer in Film)


In his introduction to Space Travel and Culture (2009), David Bell
suggests that the neglect of Œouter space¹ in the humanities and social
sciences is in part due to the negative stance towards the technological
utopianism of the mid-twentieth-century Œspace race¹, where ŒApollo stands
now as a future that never happened, or a history that seems not to
connect with our present¹ (4). For James Hay the emergence or invention of
Œouter space¹ as a Œhistorical, geographic, and theatrical stage for
shaping discourse about rights and responsibilities, war and peace,
security and risk¹ is profoundly tied to the cold war era (2012: 29). Yet
even while the Œspace race¹ may be understood as historically and
culturally last century, Œouter space¹ continues to serve as a sphere of
human technological enterprise, a battleground of political discourse and,
a rich source of socio-cultural production.


The critical neglect of Œouter space¹ has been remedied in part by Bell,
Denis Cosgrove, Fraser MacDonald, whose work collectively offers the
beginnings of a Œcritical geography of outer space¹ (MacDonald 593).
MacDonald observes that Œthe last fifty years has seen the outer-Earth
become an ordinary and accessible sphere of human endeavour, our presence
in (and reliance on) space making it one of the enabling conditions for
our current mode of everyday life in the west¹ (593). Further
interventions, such as Alexander Geppert¹s, Imagining Outer Space:
European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century (2012), provide a
historiographical perspective, interrogating the Œheterogeneous array of
images and artifacts, media and practices that all aim to ascribe meaning
to outer space while stirring both the individual and the collective
imagination¹ (8). A cross-disciplinary series of essays published in Down
to Earth: Satellite Technologies, Industries, and Cultures (2012), edited
by Lisa Parks and James Schwoch, along with Dario Llinares' study, The
Astronaut: Cultural Mythology and Idealised Masculinity (2011) attempt to
bring together geographical, historical and cultural/ media studies
approaches to examine astro-culture.


A common aspect of these approaches is an acknowledgement of the need to
encompass cultural, filmic, artistic, and literary engagements with outer
space as objects of enquiry. The influence of spatial thinking on film and
literary scholarship, demonstrated by an increasing concern with urban
space, mobility and the proliferation of terms such as Œcinematic-¹ or
Œliterary geographies¹, has rarely resulted in a turn towards Œouter
space¹. Indeed, the arrival of Œcyberspace¹ could arguably be said to have
had a profound effect on the cultural understanding and importance of
Œouter space¹ in the collective imaginary. Visual and textual scholarship
has arguably under-engaged with the fields of cultural geography, cultural
history and cultural studies that are re-imagining
Œastroculture¹/Œcelestial space¹ as part of what Cosgrove calls a
Œcosmography for the twenty-first century¹ (35).

This 2-day conference seeks to explore the significance of Œouter space¹
in textual and visual culture, including literature
(fiction/non-fiction/scientific or legal texts), film
(cinema/documentary/youtube/television/NASA or ISS clips or
broadcasts),digital media (games/twitter/social media), photography,
material culture, ephemera and popular culture. We especially welcome
papers that move beyond the paradigms of science-fiction studies, and
engage with geographical or historical approaches to visual or textual
cultures of Œouter space¹. We invite papers on the following themes (but
not limited to):

- 20th century and post-millennial representations of outer space
- Poetics/poetries of outer space
- Non-fiction and outer space, from film documentary to the non-fiction
novel (for example, Al Reinert¹s For All Mankind, Patricio Guzmán¹s
Nostalgia for the Light, Oriana Fallaci¹s If the Sun Dies, Norman Mailer¹s
Of A Fire on the Moon)
- Digital games and outer space
- Visual/textual representations of rockets, satellites, telescopes, the
International Space Station, and other material technologies of outer space
- Posthumanism: visual/textual representations of sentient/non-sentient
life
- Weird fictions and outer space
- Papers that seek to establish frameworks for a cinematic or literary
geography of outer space
- Papers that examine terms such as Œcosmography¹, Œcelestial space¹,
Œastroculture¹, in relation to literature, film, other visual/textual media
- Visual/textual gendering of Œouter space¹
- Governance, laws, and capital of outer space in visual/textual culture
- Discourse analysis of space law, treaty, governance in technical
literature
- Non-western/Non-Soviet space programmes and their representation (for
example Cristina De Middel¹s Afronauts (2012)
http://www.icp.org/support-icp/infinity-awards/cristina-de-middel)
- Space tourism/personal space flight
- Heritage and outer space (archaeologies of outer space, space debris,
heritage sites, museum orbit)
- Ecology and outer space (space as wilderness or environment,
terraforming, pollution, waste, life, texts such as Charles Cockell¹s
Space on Earth (Palgrave 2006), Guy Laliberté
http://www.onedrop.org/en/projects/projects-overview/GAIA.aspx


Abstracts of 250-300 words for final presentations of 15-20 minutes should
be sent to (cosmographies /at/ falmouth.ac.uk) by Friday 25th April 2014. Please
include name, affiliation, title of paper, and brief bio. Participants
will be notified by Friday 2nd May.







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