Fifth Annual Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference and Workshop at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

April 12-13, 2013

Pleasure, Pain & Perversion: Embodied Violence & Eroticism in Cultural Representations

Key note lecture to be delivered by: Dr. Liz Constable, UC Davis

The body serves as an important point of intersection, a site where ideology, material cultural practice, and narrative come together to form an understanding of the self. "Embodied Violence & Eroticism" asks us to explore this site in the various ways the body acts and is acted upon, demanding that we go beyond mere linear abstractions of ideology and look at how these ideologies converge upon the individual. Power relations use eroticism and violence as discourse to highlight the dichotomies between masculine and feminine, public and private spheres, colonizer and colonized, the body's function and representation, and other binary relations. The complexity of erotic discourses lies in the manifold ways in which they encapsulate and transport desires, thereby blurring the boundaries between the acknowledgement of the self and the acknowledgement of the self's desire.

Possible session topics include but are not limited to:
• Pornography, Power, and the Performance of the Erotic
• Performance and the Embodiment of Culture
• Biopolitics and Sexuality
• The Psychosomatic
• The (Trans)gendered Body
• Violation and Forgiveness: Living Through Trauma
• Post-colonialism, the Racialized Body, and Psychic Colonization
• Wars and Embodied Borders
• Sartorial Rhetoric and Semiotics
• The Cinematic/Virtual Body
• Taboo: Sex, Identity, Nudity and Erotic Subjectivity
• Psychoanalysis and Perversions
• Semiotics of Desire
• Erotic Justice
• The Erotic in Feminism/The Erotic in Feminine vis-à-vis Masculine Discourse
• Morality, Lust, and the Semiotics of Desire
• Fetishism and Popular Culture

Conference Structure: This conference/workshop will be comprised of the keynote address and panels on Friday, followed by additional panels on Saturday. Central to the conference is a graduate seminar style workshop on Saturday. This workshop is led by the keynote speaker and designed to explore the issues presented and discussed in more detail and depth. Presenters are requested to arrange their travel so that they can participate in the entire event, including the workshop. There will also be a closing reception Saturday evening, which is open to all participants and audience members.

Please send a 500 word abstract along with a brief biographical statement, in a separate document, to csconference.unm@gmail.com by Thursday, February 14. Selected participants will be notified by Monday, February 25. You can also visit our webpage (coming soon) for additional information about the conference: http://www.unm.edu/~fll/grad-conference.htm (check for updates).