[Commlist] Call for Abstracts - Posthuman Bodies and Embodied Posthumanisms

We would like to share with you the following*call for abstracts*for 
"Posthuman Bodies and Embodied Posthumanisms: An Interdisciplinary 
Conference," to be held both online and in-person at the University of 
Warwick, 12-14^th  October 2022. Deadline for submission of abstracts 
is*29*^th * April 2022,*to be sent to 
*(posthumanbodiesconference /at/ gmail.com)* 
<mailto:(posthumanbodiesconference /at/ gmail.com)> (more details below).

For the CfAs, you can visit @PosthumanBodies on Twitter or follow the 
link https://posthumanbodiesconference.wordpress.com/call-for-papers/ 
<https://posthumanbodiesconference.wordpress.com/call-for-papers/> to 
find out more.


*Keynote speakers:**
*Claire Colebrook, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, Philosophy, 
and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University.
Professor Richard Dyer, most recently of King's College London and the 
University of St. Andrews.

The ongoing ecological crisis, recent technological developments, and 
the attempt to address in new ways issues concerning race and gender 
have spurred a surge in important scholarship on the concept of the 
posthuman, situating in new light questions of what it means to be human 
and what constitutes the human, nonhuman, and inhuman body. Against this 
backdrop, we want to provide a space for interrogating how our relation 
to bodies might have transformed since the emergence of the notion of 
the posthuman, for investigating the ways in which we might have 
always-already been entangled with the bodies of nonhuman and inhuman 
others, and to consider how posthuman bodies can make an impact outside 
of academia.

Jack Halberstam and Ira Livingston (1995) define posthuman bodies as 
‘the causes and effects of postmodern relations of power and pleasure, 
virtuality and reality, sex and its consequences.’ The posthuman body is 
‘a technology, a screen, a projected image,’ ‘a contaminated body, a 
deadly body, a techno-body;’ it is ‘a queer body’ (Halberstam and 
Livingston 1995). Transgressing the deep-seated boundary between human 
and machine, action and inertia, subject and object, culture and nature, 
the posthuman body is a plural, non-binary or post-dualist notion that 
defies the perception of the human, or/some/humans, as superior to other 
humans and nonhumans. The ‘post’ prefix in posthuman bodies does not 
mean the end of humanity or a period after which human embodiment has 
been transcended (Wolfe 2010). It denotes, instead, ‘theend of a 
certain conception of the human’(Hayles 1999).

What passes for posthumanism is contested, being adjunct to related 
fields, such as transhumanism and antihumanism, and bearing different 
and, in several cases, contradictory and irreconcilable usages. This 
conference, therefore, focuses on the ever-evolving understanding of 
posthuman bodies—that is, the various ‘posthuman’ approaches to the 
body—and its implications for issues of ecology, race, gender, ethics, 
and socio-politics in the 21^st century. It aims to explore critical, 
creative, performative, experiential, and interdisciplinary perspectives 
on the posthuman body that ultimately challenge, examine, and elaborate 
the strengths and weaknesses intrinsic to this notion. We invite 
contributors to engage with posthuman bodies as a site of critique and 
an ongoing mode of inquiry to be applied in everyday life. In this 
sense, the posthuman body is both a theory and a praxis that strives 
towards and is motivated by gender fluidity and differences, cyborg and 
animal rights, racial equities, environmental and economic 
sustainability, and more.

Situated at the transdisciplinary crossroads of (philosophical, 
cultural, critical, and performative) posthuman studies, film and 
television studies, media studies, cultural studies, literary studies, 
and the sciences, this conference welcomes multiple perspectives and 
approaches to converge on the different questions and aspects of the 
posthuman body. We interrogate this notion not only from an 
epistemological point of view but also from an empirical one, so 
thatacademic, activist, and artistic performances, workshops, and 
papers are welcome. The following areas of reflection are only suggestive:

  * Racial, social, and sexual identities that challenge historical
    definitions of the human
  * Posthuman approaches to the Anthropocene, Capitalocene,
    Plantationocene, Chthulucene, and other -cenes
  * Posthuman approaches to disability studies
  * Posthuman monstrosity and monstrous becomings
  * Human and nonhuman embodiments
  * Posthuman geographies and decolonisation
  * Exploration of ethical economies and sustainable technologies that
    challenge greenwashing
  * Biotechnologies and ethical repercussions
  * Posthuman bodies in visual media and literature
  * AI, cyborgs, and big data
  * The overlaps, intersections, and contradictions between
    transhumanism and posthuman bodies

    Please email*(posthumanbodiesconference /at/ gmail.com)*
    <mailto:(posthumanbodiesconference /at/ gmail.com)>with:

 1. A title of your presentation*and*your anonymised 300-word abstract
    for a single contribution*or*your anonymised 500-word proposal for a
    panel, as a Word document.
 2. A 100-word biography written in third person,including your
    research, institutional affiliation, and pronouns, as
    a*separate*Word document to allow for anonymity.
 3. Your preference for online*or*in-person participation.

The deadline for submission is*29**^th **April 2022*. Presentations 
should be around 15-20 minutes. We are interested in developing the 
conference into a book or a special issue – more details will follow on 
this after the conference.



This conference is organised by Annelise Edwards-Daem (Nottingham Trent 
University), Camilla Pitton (University of Warwick), Liam Rogers 
(University of Warwick), and Trang Đặng (Nottingham Trent University).

This conference is made possible by generous funding provided 
by*Midlands4Cities*.

Further details regarding the conference can be found in the 
conferencewebsite <https://posthumanbodiesconference.wordpress.com/>.

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