[Commlist] CFP: Politics of Vulnerability in Contemporary Women’s Writing and Creative Practices

*Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing (CCWW)*

*INSTITUTE OF MODERN LANGUAGES RESEARCH*

School of Advanced Study • University of London

*Call for Papers*

**

*Politics of Vulnerability in Contemporary Women’s Writing and Creative 
Practices*

*https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/event/25292 
<https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/event/25292>*

**

*Centre for Contemporary Women’s Writing (CCWW) 
<https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/research-centres/centre-study-contemporary-womens-writing>*

Abstracts deadline: *19 January 2022*

Conference dates: *19-20 May 2022, online*

Organisers: *Sandra Daroczi* (University of Bath); *Adina 
Stroia* (Newcastle University)

Questions of vulnerability abound in current women-centric literary, 
cultural, and social discourse focussing on a broad spectrum of areas 
including the body, affects and emotions, sexuality, and health. Within 
a current political and critical climate which invites us and even 
insists on us revealing and working through our vulnerabilities, this 
conference wishes to interrogate the effects that a continuous and 
persistent self-excavation has on modes of being and on cultural 
production in the contemporary era. Following on from developments such 
as the contemporary memoir boom, the increased popularity of the 
personal essay, or the interest in body-based performance art, this 
conference takes a two-pronged approach: we are not only interested in 
exploring notions of vulnerability, but we are also seeking to 
interrogate the potentially nefarious logic as well as damaging 
discourses subtending a politics of vulnerability. We are thus asking a 
series of structuring questions, chief among them: How do you preserve a 
self that is continuously on display as being vulnerable? Can the 
display of vulnerability through artistic creation become a political 
force? When does vulnerability lean into performance? Is female-centric 
cultural production at risk of using and abusing notions of vulnerability?

This conference freely interprets ‘writing’ as ‘creation’, and we thus 
invite proposals pertaining to the spheres of literature, visual art, 
film, philosophy, critical theory and beyond. We also welcome proposals 
from activists and practitioners. Proposals are invited for both 
individual papers and fully constituted panels. Below, we suggest a 
series of themes and questions that could be used as a springboard. The 
list is by no means exhaustive, and we invite proposals from themes 
outside the ones listed below, belonging to a variety of cultural 
backgrounds. If your paper follows one of the themes listed below, 
please feel free to indicate this in your abstracts.

*1.          Online/offline: translating vulnerability*

At a time when large portions of our lives have been forced to shift 
into an online mode and when we are paradoxically both hungry for and 
sated by narratives of the self and their displays of vulnerability, a 
salient question is imposing itself: How does social media contribute to 
our contemporary constructions of vulnerability, be it in the social or 
the artistic realm?

*2.          Consenting to uncertainty: a vulnerable point of view*
Following on from Katherine Angel’s assertion that ‘desire isn’t always 
there to be known. Vulnerability is the state that makes its discovery 
possible’,  we are keen to explore the thorny notions of consent, 
desire, self-knowledge, and uncertainty before and after the #metoo era.

*3.          Age vulnerability: a cradle to grave question*
Notions of age vulnerability have been at the centre of our attention 
throughout the pandemic across the temporal spectrum. With children, 
youth, and the elderly living under the spectre of potential loss (be it 
of health, life, opportunities, ‘innocence’, or self-governance), this 
particular strand wishes to interrogate the potential hierarchy of 
vulnerabilities that questions of age may set in place.

*4.           Humour and vulnerability*
This strand aims to explore whether there are limits to using the 
vulnerability of the self, whether corporeal, emotional, or 
psychological as the focus of humour in media as diverse as stand-up 
comedy, cinema and television, art, and literature. If so, what happens 
beyond those limits?

*5.          Technology: how vulnerable is the human?*
Women’s relations to technologies are fraught with contradictions. We 
wish to look at the ways in which literature, visual arts, and critical 
discourses may help us make sense of the current and future relations 
between the human and the technological. We would furthermore be keen to 
explore the ways in which the feminisation of AI and AI-powered devices 
could contribute to patriarchal notions of female servitude.

*6.          Success and failure*

Taking our cue from recent debates around women’s successes and 
failures, pertaining to athletes such as Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka, or 
Emma Răducanu, or to authors, such as Sally Rooney, we ask whether being 
in a position of success is a more vulnerable venture than ‘failure’, if 
these notions can even be considered oppositional. We are particularly 
interested in how achieving success may lead to pressure to replicate 
the effect and the ways in which this can influence the creative process.

Please send a 250-300 words abstract for papers (15-20 minutes) as well 
as a short author bio to both organisers, *(adina.stroia /at/ ncl.ac.uk) 
<https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/event/(adina.stroia /at/ ncl.ac.uk)>* and 
*(s.daroczi /at/ bath.ac.uk) 
<https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/event/(s.daroczi /at/ bath.ac.uk)>* by *Wednesday, 
19th of January 2022*. If you would like to submit a full panel, please 
add to the above a reasoning of approx. 150 – 200 words.


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