cfp.english.upenn.edu

GENDER & DIFFERENCE, 20-23 May 2010
Call for Papers

This interdiciplinary conference is organised by the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University and tbe Englisches Seminar at the University of Cologne.

It will be held at Gregynog Hall. This is the University of Wales residential conference centre, which is situated near Newtown in Mid Wales. It is set in beautiful landscaped gardens and extensive grounds. http://www.wales.ac.uk/en/UniversityConferenceCentre/GregynogHall.aspx

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: CLAIRE COLEBROOK AND MANDY MERCK

CLAIRE COLEBROOK holds a first degree in philosophy from the University of Melbourne, a Bachelor of Letters from Australian National University and a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh. She was Professor of Modern Literary Theory at the University of Edinburgh from 2000-2008. She has published articles on contemporary European philosophy, feminist theory, literary theory, contemporary music, dance, visual culture and political theory. Her books include New Literary Histories (Manchester UP 1997), Ethics and Representation (Edinburgh UP 1999), Gilles Deleuze (Routledge 2002), Understanding Deleuze (Allen and Unwin 2003), Irony in the Work of Philosophy (Nebraska 2002), Irony: The New Critical Idiom (Routledge 2003), Gender (Palgrave 2004), Deleuze: A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum 2006) and Milton, Evil and Literary History (Continuum 2008). She is currently completing two book-length studies, one on vitalism and another on William Blake and aesthetics.

MANDY MERCK is Professor of Media Arts. She is a former editor of the film and television journal Screen and series editor of Channel 4’s pioneering lesbian and gay programme Out on Tuesday. Her books include Hollywood’s American Tragedies (Berg, 2007), America First: Naming the Nation in US Film (Routledge, 2007), The Art of Tracey Emin (co-edited with Chris Townsend, Thames & Hudson, 2007), In Your Face: Nine Sexual Studies (New York University Press, 2000), Coming Out of Feminism? (co-edited with Naomi Segal and Elizabeth Wright, Blackwell, 1998), After Diana (Verso, 1998) and Perversions: Deviant Readings (Virago/ Routledge, 1993). Her next book, co-edited with Stella Sandford, is Further Adventures of The Dialectic of Sex: The Work of Shulamith Firestone (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

The conference will bring together scholars working in the broad area of gender and difference, across a wide range of social and cultural texts and practices. It will feature research by faculty and graduate students working in critical and cultural theory, literature, film studies, sociology and other relevant fields. We will discuss cuttting edge research that addresses the various ways in which differences of all kinds — ranging from ethnic, racialised and religious differences to location, time period, class and sexual orientation — complexify the analysis of gender and gender politics. Proposals are welcome from all relevant academic disciplines and theoretical frameworks, covering any historical period.

A selection of papers from the conference will be published in the on-line journals Gender Forum and Assuming Gender

Prospective speakers are invited to submit a 500 word proposal along with a short CV to the conference organizers at: gd@cf.ac.uk by 28 February 2010.