[Commlist] CFP: “Biopolitics: In Many Ways”

*Call for Papers*
*/Interdisciplinary Graduate Student/*
*/Conference on Biopolitics/*

Ryerson University
Toronto, Canada
February 17, 2019

Jointly hosted by:

Ryerson and York University Joint Graduate Program Communication & Culture
Cultural Analysis and Social Theory MA Program, Wilfrid Laurier University
Technē: Wilfrid Laurier University Biopolitical Research Group

◦ ◦ ◦

*BIOPOLITICS: IN MANY WAYS*

Biopolitics is a predominant paradigm in the social sciences and 
humanities, which begins from the premise that life is central to modern 
politics. In the early nineteenth century, biopolitics emerged alongside 
concerns with overpopulation, public hygiene, pseudo-scientific theories 
of ‘race,’ and into state institutions such as the socio-biological 
regime of the Nazis. More recently, contemporary issues such as 
combating climate change, prevention of the global spread of infectious 
diseases, as well as rethinking the meaning of being human (given 
biomedical advances in such areas as genetic engineering, reproductive 
technologies, and even prosthetics), life has become a central issue for 
politics.

In our “biopolitical” era governing means to manage, regulate, control, 
and protect life in all its forms. This line of thinking first gained 
prominence in the mid-1970s with Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish 
(1995), /The History of Sexuality, Volume 1/ (1990), and his famous 
lectures at the Collège de France (2003, 2007, 2008).

We are accepting proposals on any topics that relate to biopolitics from 
across the social sciences and humanities. Contributions from graduate 
students from all disciplines and critical perspectives are welcome.

Possible topics include, but are not restricted to:

•   Biopolitics and the commons
•   Communication, media and the politics of life
•   Disrupting biopolitical borders (immigration, (de)colonization, 
settlement, and globalization)
•   Epidemics, eugenics, bioethics
•   Humanism, anthropocene, or post-humanism
•  Affirmative biopolitics, Negative biopolitics, the politics of death 
(thanatopolitics, necropolitics), immunization, or vitalism
•   Governmentality, debt, state of exception, crisis management, total 
institutions
•   Bare life (zoē) versus political life (bíos)
•   Immaterial labour, the precariat, or the biopolitical economy
•   The extent the discourse of biopolitics possessing emancipatory 
educational practices
•   The biopolitics of social inequalities (gender, race, sexuality, and 
etc.)
•   Theories of biopolitical resistance and social justice

We welcome submissions from all graduate students at the Masters and PhD 
levels. Paper proposals of 200 to 250 words, accompanied by a short 
biography (including name of program/school), should be submitted no 
later than *Monday, January 18, 2019* to:

*(biopolitics2019 /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(biopolitics2019 /at/ gmail.com)>*

Notifications of acceptance will be given by *January 25, 2019. *

*Organizers:*
·      Philippe Theophanidis (Communications Program & Joint 
Communication and Culture Graduate Program, York University)
·      Greg Bird (Sociology & Cultural Analysis and Social Theory 
Program, Wilfrid Laurier University)

*Affiliated Groups:*
​
Technē: WLU Biopolitical Research Group <https://technebiopoliticalrg.com/>
Italian Thought Network <http://italianthoughtnetwork.com/>

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