CFP 4th Global Conference on Monstrous Geographies, Lisbon, March 22-24

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Inter-Disciplinary.Net

4th Global Conference: Monstrous Geographies

Sunday 22nd March – Tuesday 24th March 2015
Lisbon, Portugal

Call for Presentations:
This inter- and multidisciplinary conference focuses on the relationship
between the monstrous and the geographic. We welcome proposals by
academics, teachers, independent researchers, students, artists, NGOs
and anyone interested in manifestations of monstrosity in space.
Possible topics may include topics as diverse as ancient burial sites,
haunted houses, post-apocalyptic landscapes, and even recent
topographical manifestations of the Gaza conflict or the crash site of
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Even if they no longer bear the physical
markers of violence, devastation and human suffering geographical
locations are often imbued with memories of horror that are passed on
from generation to generation through various textual, audial and visual
media.

Apart from historical events of monstrosity the scope of our conference
entails imagined monstrosities and future landscapes of annihilation and
death. Philosophical discussions are just as much welcome as artistic
performances and explorations of literary, filmic or musical case
studies of evil and the monstrous. The following questions may trigger
ideas for presentations: What is the relationship between evil and the
monstrous? Is the monstrous always rooted in the element of evil? Can
disasters caused by nature be regarded as evil? Can we talk about
geographies of poverty, hunger and homelessness in relation to
monstrosity? Can evil and/or monstrosity be immanent to place or are
they performed by cultural discourse, rituals and practices of memory?
How do the monstrous and the geographic intersect in architecture, the
arts, popular culture, politics, and the sciences?

We welcome presentations, papers, reports, performances,
work-in-progress, workshops and pre-formed panels from all academic
disciplines. Presentations may include but are not limited to the
following topics:

-Unknown worlds
-Dystopic landscapes
-Sites of heterotopia
-Malevolent regions
-Bodies as maps and maps as bodies
-Places of isolation, incarceration and madness
-Places of rituals and incest
-Sites of experimentation
-Evil planets and dimensions
-Worlds as dark reflections/twins of Earth
-Alien landscapes
-Sites of environmental disasters (both natural and manmade)
-Sites of starvation, disaster and pestilence
-De-militarized zones and no-man's lands
-Monstrostiy and liminality
-Religion, ritual and monstrosity
-Haunted sites and spectral spaces
-Graveyards
-Sites of conflict and violence
-Terrain vague, abandoned buildings
-The architecture of death and destruction (sites of torture and
extermination)
-Geographical manifestations of the uncanny
-Tourism and monstrous geographies
-Monstrous Dreamscapes
-Mazes
-Monstrous materialities
-Ethics and morality in relation to monstrosity and evil
-Monstrous geographies of the body and the mind

The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed
panel proposals.

What to send:
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 31st October 2014. All
submissions are minimally double blind peer reviewed where appropriate.
If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should
be submitted by Friday 23rd January 2015. Abstracts should be submitted
simultaneously to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF
formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in
programme, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract,
f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: MG4 Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any
special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or
underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals
submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should
assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace!
We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs:
László Munteán: l.muntean@let.ru.nl
Rob Fisher: mg4@inter-disciplinary.net

The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different
areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which
are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at
the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication
in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be developed for publication in a
themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will
require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference.

Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and
professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend
for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this
commitment, please do not submit an abstract for presentation.

For further details of the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/evil/monstrous-geogra...

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we
are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or
subsistence.