science and culture

Papers are invited for an  International webinar on Organised Higher Academics in South Asia: New Perspectives . Through this seminar we attempt to understand the contemporary nature of the Organised Higher Academics in South Asian region, keeping in mind the changes brought about by the dynamic scenario in technology, economics, international relations, etc. Details regarding conference and submission can be viewed at http://ohasa.sarsunacollege.ac.in/

Abstract deadline: 20th September, 2018

International Conference on Gender Studies Cambridge Conference2018 International Conference on Gender Studies“Gender (Mis)Representations”1-2 December 2018 – Cambridge, UKOrganised by: London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research The conference seeks to explore the past and current status of men and women around the world, to examine the ways in which society is shaped by gender and to situate gender in relation to the full scope of human affairs.Papers are invited on topics related, but not limited, to:

What is the relationship of infrastructure to the social, the historical, and the literary, and how might different methodological approaches help us understand this relationship? In the introduction to their book Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructure, Lisa Parks and Nicole Starosielski have described "critical infrastructure studies" as a way to consider and historicize "infrastructures as large technical systems, urbanization campaigns, and sites of material culture...from bridges to power grids, from railways to sewer systems." When dreams of development, of globalization, of prosperity, or of imperial power take physical shape, they often take the form of large-scale construction projects.

In his influential book Disability Aesthetics, Tobin Siebers makes two interventions. The first is to argue that modern aesthetics has long relied on disability as one of its defining features, even while neglecting to acknowledge this dependence explicitly. The second is to advocate on behalf of a deliberate praxis of disability aesthetics, which “embraces beauty that seems by traditional standards to be broken,” yet shows it to be “not less beautiful, but more so, as a result.” Ask literary scholars who work in the nineteenth century to think of a poet who best exemplifies Siebers’s argument, and few would be likely to name Walt Whitman.

Thirty years ago, in her seminal book, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: the Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, Caroline Walker Bynum proposed that the later Middle Ages witnessed the rise of the first women’s movement in Christian history. Looking within and beyond the purview of religious devotion, this panel welcomes papers that corroborate, qualify, or critique Bynum’s claim by examining medieval representations of female agency. What constitutes female agency in late medieval literature, society and culture? To what end is it exerted? How and by whom is it celebrated and/or censured?