Tuesday 30 March 2010

quietriotgirl is cool

I've just stumbled upon the blog of Quiet Riot Girl.  It's well written, feminist and real.  Check it out here:

http://quietriotgirlelly.blogspot.com/

E

who is again taking a break from blogging to write her thesis

Tuesday 23 March 2010

CFP: The Other's Other: French Feminism


The Other's Others
Othering and Marginalisation in French Feminism and Beyond

London French Postgraduate Conference 2010
Wednesday 10th November 2010, IGRS, London

CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline for submission: 30th April 2010


'[La femme] se détermine et se différencie par rapport à l'homme et non celui-ci par rapport à elle; elle est l'inessentiel en face de l'essentiel. Il est le Sujet, il est l'Absolu: elle est l'Autre.'
Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième sexe, 1949

In her seminal work of 1949, Le Deuxième sexe, Simone de Beauvoir defined the status of women in society as being that of 'l'Autre'. However, just as society has evolved and changed, so have our methods of understanding and analysing it; with the emergence of subsequent waves of feminism and new forms of criticism, such as queer studies and postcolonial studies, new approaches to and conceptions of 'l'Autre' have developed. The question is how far we have really come: sixty years on, to what extent – or how – are women defined by their 'otherness'? The hope of the world's women standing in unity has been shattered by the alleged ethnocentrism and heterosexism of Western feminist movements, which creates its own Others: the Other's Others. Consequently, how have notions of, and reactions to, 'l'Autre' changed? What groupings are formed by the reconfiguration of the Other, and what are the intersections and tensions between these different forms of 'otherness'? Finally, how is ‘l’Autre’ represented in different cultural mediums such as French and Francophone literature and film, television, journalism and the internet?

With a view to examining the various conceptions of 'l'Autre' and how they have evolved over time, we welcome proposals for twenty-minute papers on any aspect of the conference theme in relation to the French-speaking world. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
  • Othering of non-white/lesbian/disabled women in literature/theory/film
  • Representation of 'l'Autre' by women from 'marginalised' groups
  • Feminist/Postfeminist/Queer/Psychoanalytic/Postcolonial understandings of 'l'Autre'
  • 'L'Autre' in French/Francophone literature, film, art, culture, history, theory, philosophy or politics
  • French national identity and the Other (including debates about the Burka and the Niqab)

It is anticipated that a selection of papers from the conference will be published.

Please send abstracts (300 words max.) for twenty-minute papers (in French or English) along with the name of your institution, the title of your PhD and your year of study to:
LondonPGConference2010@hotmail.co.uk no later than 30th April 2010. Informal enquiries and panel suggestions are also welcome.

We will review submissions and respond via email by 31st May 2010. Authors of accepted papers will be responsible for their own travel and accommodation costs.

Conference Organisers: Jenny Kosniowski (King’s College London) and Sara Leek (Queen Mary, London)

Thursday 18 March 2010

EVENT: Feminist Philosophy Conference Canada - June


Conference Announcement

International Association for Women Philosophers 


XIV IAPh Symposium 2010

Feminism, Science and Values 

June 25-28, 2010 
The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
co-hosted by the Department of Philosophy
and the Rotman Institute of  Science and Values


Featuring keynote addresses by  Barbara Duden (Leibniz Universität Hannover), 
Lisa Gannett (St. Mary's University),  Sarah Richardson University of Massachusetts, Amherst),
Vandana Shiva
 (Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology) 
and  Nancy Tuana (Penn State University) 


This will be the International Association of Women Philosophers' (
http://www.iaph-philo.org) first meeting in Canada and only its second meeting in North America. 

Session themes will include:
  • Race, Genomics and Social Values
  • Researching Sex Differences: Feminist Critiques and Their Antecedents
  • Facts in Feminist Philosophy
  • "Female Complaints": Medicine, Markets and Women's Health
  • Beauvoir and Arendt on Science
  • Feminism and Empiricism (Quinean Themes)
  • Technology and Intervention in Pregnancy and Childbirth
  • Sex and Gender: Military Contexts
  • Reconsidering Values in Feminist Philosophy of Science
  • Reductionism, Determinism and Feminist Values
  • Disability and Dependence
  • Gender and Sport
  • Science and Values: Global Perspectives

Registration and full program information can be found at: 
http://www.uwo.ca/philosophy/events/iaph2010/index.html

EVENT: 21 June - Sheila Rowbotham - London


Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century
Sheila Rowbotham
Monday 21 June 18.30 - 20.00
The British Library Conference Centre

Sheila Rowbotham’s groundbreaking new history of the early women’s movement, the unsung ‘dreamers and adventurers’, who sensed dramatic social change was possible. Drawing on a wealth of original research, Dreamers of a New Day explores how, struggling to define themselves as individuals, these women overturned norms and assumptions, transforming the conditions of their own lives and those of others.
Pioneering feminist writer and activist Sheila Rowbotham ( University of Manchester ) is the author of many books including the acclaimed Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love and articles for The GuardianThe Times, theIndependent, the New Statesman, and the New York Times.

£6 / £4 concessions  / Conference Centre
Tickets available at http://boxoffice.bl.uk, by calling 01937 546546 (9am-5pm Mon-Fri) or in person at The          
British Library.

Tuesday 16 March 2010

Summer School - Memory, Empire and Technology - London

Greetings blogland.  This summer school isn't particularly feminist, but I like Dr Katia Pizzi a lot so I thought I'd post it here.


I wasn't quite sure what cultural memory studies were when I first encountered them. Last week, I heard from some folks working on cultural memory, however, and I have to say that it's a really interesting way of looking at the world.  The IGRS (who has a hand in this summer school) does a PhD and, I think, an MA in cultural memory.



School of Advanced Study, University of London

SUMMER SCHOOL
MEMORY, EMPIRE AND TECHNOLOGY
29 JUNE-3 JULY 2010
Held at the School of Advanced Study and organised by the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory, this Summer School consists of a series of seminars, lectures and workshops on a broad range of subjects related to the relationship between memory and technology. The sessions will be taught by a team of internationally renowned scholars and range from experimental early flying to colonial memories in film, to photography and workshops on digital archives. These sessions will be complemented by afternoon activities centred round London understood as technological city: the Greenwich History Project, visits to the Stanley Kubrick Archives and the Warburg Library, and an architectural tour on the famous Routemaster bus. This School welcomes researchers, students, artists, archivists, conservation and heritage professionals and any others interested in memory, technology and the industrial legacy of London.
Deadline for Applications: 30 April 2010
or email: CMSS@sas.ac.uk

Tue 29 June: FILM
AMProust, planes and telephones'
Seminar/Workshopled by Dr Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck College, University of London)
Film and colonial memories
Seminar
led by Prof Robert Lumley, UCL
PM/Evening: 
Patrick Keiller: The view from the train

Plenary Lecture
chair: Dr Katia Pizzi (IGRS) 
(open to the public)

Wed 30 June: ARCHIVES
AM: The Warburg Library
led by Dr François Quiviger (Warburg Institute)

PMVisit to the Stanley Kubrick Archives, London College of Communication, University of the Arts
led by Richard Daniels (University of the Arts) and Dr Ricarda Vidal (IGRS)

Thu 1 July: PHOTOGRAPHY
AMWriting with light
Practical photography workshop 
led by Dr Junko Theresa Mikuriya (University of Kent
)
PM: Architectural tour of London on a Routemaster bus
led and driven by Prof Joe Kerr (Royal College of Art)
The Archway Polytechnic

Practical workshop led by the artist Ruth Maclennan - the session includes a presentation in Senate House and an exploratory walking tour in Archway (North London)
Fri 2 July: MUSIC/DIGITAL
AM: Digital memories
Seminar

led by Dr Eleanor Chiari (Harrow School)

Analogue memories: shellac and vinyl records
Seminar 

led by Dr Richard Osborne (Middlesex University
)
PM: The Big Smoke: Films from a Lost London 1896-1945
Film screening

Sat 3 July: LITERATURE/VISUAL ARTS
AM: 
The British Empire on film
Seminar at Imperial War Museum, 
led by Dr Richard Osborne (Middlesex University)
Guns and the memory of the First World War: The case of the Imperial War Museum
Seminar at Imperial War Museumled by Dr Gabriel Koureas (Birkbeck University of London)
PMLondon, the river, technology and memory
walking tour 

led by Prof Derek Keene (Institute of Historical Research)
Summer School Dinner

Monday 15 March 2010

Day 15 - Women's Month - Natasha Walter

Natasha Walter is speaking tomorrow evening at Southbank Centre.  The event is, disappointingly for those of us wanting to go, sold out.  http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/literature-spoken-word/tickets/natasha-walter-50498

The good news is, however, that her book Living Dolls is readily available on Amazon.  I've not read it yet, but have placed an order and am thoroughly looking forward to what she has to say.  Have any of you read it?  What do you think?

Saturday 13 March 2010

Day - 13 Women's Month - Birds Eye View Festival

Last night, I attended the closing night of the Birds Eye View Film Festival in London.  The Festival celebrates women filmmakers.  We went to see Whip It, dir. by Drew Barrymore, which is a good girl coming-of-age film about roller derby.

There were some awesome films highlighted last night that I wanted to mention here as most of us will never have the chance to see them unless we go looking:

Junior, dir. by Jenna Rosher
Lourdes, dir. by Jessica Hausner
The Door, dir. by Juanita Wilson
Slaves, dir. by Hanna Hellborn and David Aronowitsch

I didn't find out about the Festival until last week, which was disappointing.  However, you can sign up for their mailing list here:  http://www.birds-eye-view.co.uk/2/home/homepage.html

Wednesday 10 March 2010

Day 10 - Feminist critics

I've woken late. I've got a cold.  In America we call it a sinus infection, but in England it's a cold and no one will pay you any mind for it.  I tell you this because what I'm about to say is critical.

When did the dominant mode of feminist criticism turn to listing what various women (and men) fail to include in the story of feminism (or anything else for that matter?).  When did we decide that a good mode of critique is pointing out what hasn't been included?  Was it sometime in the late 80s after Derrida's deconstruction became popular in the states?  Did the watered-down version of his theory taught in undergrad programs all across America give rise to this tendency to point to exclusion?  If so, I think we all need to return to the text and re-think.

I'm responding here to the F Words recent review of the BBC4 series 'Women'.  You can see the review here: http://www.thefword.org.uk/reviews/2010/03/women

The reviewers point out that no women of colour nor any ethnic group has been portrayed in this series.  This is without question true.  However, the reviewer fails to take the text into consideration.  What is the purpose of this text?  Is it to present an all-encompassing history of the women's movement?  Will it become the dominant mode by which millions understand the history of the movement?  No.  Without doubt.  No.  The history will be written, luckily, by a multitude of participants and historians, who like many of us have access to Word Processing programs and camera equipment. 

The reviewers want the white Vanessa Engels to access a racial experience that she simply cannot. Sure, she can interview black leaders of the movement, but can she really talk to them about race?  Will the questions falling from her lips illicit from those women the truth and hardship of their struggle?  I doubt it.  Especially in America where to talk of race openly puts most of us into roles we have no idea how to negotiate. 

Race is an incredibly complicated issue for Americans.  If it had been included into these documentaries, it would have been been watered-down, or added on as a supplement to the larger history.  I'm certain that that is not where I want to see race placed - as an add-on, a 5 minute nod to unimaginable struggle. 

To accuse this series of documentaries of racial prejudice is to ask for tokenism.  It is to suggest that if you just put one or two black women into the picture, the picture will be clearer. It won't.  It will still be the picture created by a white, British woman. As it currently stands, the series owns that. 

What would be awesome is if someone talented and smart could find funding for a series on the ethnic struggle in America during the feminist movement.  I fully support that and if anyone is looking to make that happen, I'm here to help.

Tuesday 9 March 2010

Sexuality Summer School - Manchester


Sexuality Summer School



The Sexuality Summer School has been held annually by tbe CSSC since 2008. The Sexuality Summer School is coordinated by the Centre for the Study of Sexuality and Culture (CSSC) and the Research Insitute for Cosmopolitan Cultures (RICC).
The Centre for the Study of Sexuality and Culture (CSSC) in the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures (SAHC) at the University of Manchester is holding its second Sexuality Summer School in May 2009. This Summer School is an annual event intended for postgraduates and researchers working in the broadly defined area of sexuality studies. The Summer School addresses current debates within queer studies, emphasising in particular its implication for the interdisciplinary study of culture. It offers an opportunity for students to discuss queer debates with researchers in the CSSC as well as international scholars brought in for the event. The Summer School is organised in conjunction with the Queer Up North International Arts Festival. Applications welcome from Doctoral and Masters' level students from any university, as well as third-year undergraduates interested in taking the MA in Gender, Sexuality and Culture at The University of Manchester.
CSSC sponsors frequent public eventsQueer Methodology Seminar Series and conferences.
CSSC also offers an innovative MA program in Gender, Sexuality and Culture.

Sexuality Summer School 2010

Registration is now open for the Sexuality Summer School 2010.  The Sexuality Summer School will take place on the 24th, 25th, 26th and 27th May 2010.  Please download the poster below. To register, please download and fill in the registration form, and return it to Hannah Mansell in the Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama, University of Manchester.  
  • Sexuality Summer School poster, 2010 (PDF, 153 KB)

  • Sexuality Summer School registration form, 2010 (Microsoft Word, 37 KB)
  • Women's Month - Day 8&9 History

    I wasn't able to post anything yesterday for Women's Month as I was too busy writing about feminist philosophy.

    BBC4 is, over the next three weeks, presenting programs on the history of women's lib.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rbkkp/Women_Libbers/

    I hope you can see it in the states since so many of the women are American.

    Friday 5 March 2010

    Summer School 2010 - India

    This summer school looks fascinating!  And, as far as I can tell, the conversion rate favours those in the UK and US.

    _____________

    The Forum on Contemporary Theory has been conducting an intensive course in Theory/Praxis since 2003 for the benefit of scholars across disciplines interested in new developments in Theory and their application. The Course includes intensive textual readings in specific areas, supported by seminars and talks on broader but related issues. The Course will be held in the University of Pune from June 14 to July 10, 2010.

    COURSE OUTLINES
    The Course is organized around the following topics to be discussed in-depth by the core faculty, supported by public lectures and mini-seminars by the invited scholars.

    1) Matters of Life & Death (Faculty: Costica Bradatan)
    The recent resurgence of the phenomenon of “suicide bombing” has starkly reminded us of the important political functions that a dying body can perform. From the Buddhist monks who immolated themselves in Vietnam in early 1960s to Jan Palach, who did the same thing in Czechoslovakia in 1969, from the Japanese kamikazes during the WWII to today’s suicide-bombers, the ways in which one’s violent death can be turned into an expressive political gesture have been as different as have the ultimate goals sought through such an act. However, despite its persistence and shocking occurrences, this type of voluntary death hasn’t yet received the theoretical treatment it deserves; social and political theorists are still to come up with a comprehensive and interdisciplinary understanding of the dying body as a carrier of political, ideological and religious messages.

    This course has been born precisely out of the felt need for such a broader understanding of the body and the political functions it can perform in radical situations. The primary theoretical premise on which the course is based is Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s insight that the “use a man is to make of his body is transcendent in relation to that body as a mere biological entity.” Drawing on this insight, we will be looking at various practices through which a body can be made to transcend itself.

    The course is dedicated to exploring the body as the locus of a number of fundamental experiences: the experience of a living (embodied) being, “thrown into the world,” of living in limit-situations (torture, starvation, physical degradation), the experience of finitude and imperfection, of overcoming one’s natural fear of death, finally the experience of self-transcending and re-signification through dying a violent voluntary death. We will be discussing several types of such voluntary death: martyrdom, self-immolation as a form of political protest, suicide-bombing and the kamikaze pilots.

    In terms of textual resources, we will be analyzing texts on the phenomenology of the body (Merleau-Ponty), on the phenomenology of death and dying (Heidegger, Landsberg and Michelstaedter), as well as scholarly literature on the posthumous significance that a “martyred body” can acquire in radicalized contexts (Girard). We will also examine fiction literature (Lev Tolstoy), literature by Nazi camp survivors such as Primo Levi and Jean Améry, as well as personal diaries left behind by Japanese kamikaze pilots. Finally, in order to make our approach more intuitive and, at the same time, more interdisciplinary, we will be watching and discussing a number of films on the subject by such major directors as Bergman, Pontecorvo, Benigni, and Iñárritu.

    Course Structure:
    • Session I: The Body as a Philosophical Problem; the Body and the World; Being-in-the-World.
    o Readings: Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, pp. 77-232; Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 149-224.
    o Film viewing: 21 Grams (Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu)

    • Session II: Death as a Philosophical Problem; Living with Death; Death and (the Quest for) Authenticity; Death, Irony and Humor
    o Readings: Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 279-311; Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich; Michelstaedter, Persuasion and Rhetoric, pp. 7-57
    o Film viewing: The Barbarian Invasions (Dir. Denys Arcand)

    • Session III: Overcoming the Fear of Death; Self-Transcending; Dying as a Rite of Passage; Death and Meaning
    o Readings: Plato, Apology; Landsberg, “The Experience of Death”; Michelstaedter, Persuasion and Rhetoric, pp. 61-100
    o Film viewing: The Seventh Seal (Dir. Ingmar Bergman)

    • Session IV: Marked for Death; Torture and Resistance; Scapegoating;
    o Readings: Améry, “Torture,” pp. 21-40; Girard, The Scapegoat, pp. 1-75
    o Film viewing: The Battle of Algiers (Dir. Gillo Pontecorvo)

    • Session V: Dying vs. Death; the Body in the Concentration Camp; Death and Annihilation
    o Readings: Améry, “At the Mind’s Limits,” pp. 1-20; Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
    o Film viewing: Life is Beautiful (Dir. Roberto Benigni)

    • Session VI: Making the Most of the Dying Body. Various Political Uses of the Body; Narratives of Martyrdom
    o Readings: Girard, The Scapegoat, pp. 100-148; Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze Diaries; Luke Allnutt, “A True Martyr”
    o Film viewing: Paradise now (Dir. Hany Abu-Assad)


    2) Can Subaltern Studies Speak? A Critical Reading of Three Decades of Discourse on and of Subalternists and Subalternity (Faculty: Arjuna Parakrama)

    While detractors would admit that the subalternist intervention in colonial historiography and cultural studies was both important and influential, ardent acolytes will concede that there’s been a decline in both interest and interesting new work in the field. This course seeks to examine the ways in which subaltern studies has perceived itself and has been understood by others during the past three decades, in order to better predict its future trajectory. Thus, subaltern theory will be subjected to a discourse study, the assumption being that its reception and reproduction, both complex discursive processes, are (mis)appropriations of power/knowledge in globalised space.
    Since the public inauguration of Subaltern Studies in the early 1980s, and particularly with Ranajit Guha’s “manifesto” in Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society (1982) this loosely-knit group of Indian historians and cultural theorists enjoyed a two-decade-long wave of popularity in Indian and Anglo-US academe. Many imitations and applications were spawned during this period, even the inner circle of the Subaltern Studies Collective grew to around 15 amidst much soul-searching [See Hardiman 1986], and included adherents in the most prestigious US and Australian universities. Caricature accounts had US graduate students looking for subalterns in every nook and cranny, and the crudest misunderstandings degenerated into celebrations of primitivism and the romanticizing of marginality.

    To risk a generalization that this course will unpack, at a more serious level the British and US responses to Subaltern Studies have been markedly divergent because each sees different aspects as its core content. While the first response dealt almost exclusively with colonial historiography, this was quickly followed by a literary critical appropriation of Subaltern Studies which gradually became the one of the trendiest methodologies in US English Departments. Throughout this period the definition of the term “subaltern” came under constant scrutiny and regular revision, a discursive arena that will be meticulously mapped in our readings.

    Subaltern Studies’ origins as a critical engagement with Marxism is well-known. Hence, serious opposition to Subaltern Studies has most consistently come from the traditional left which argues that revolutionary struggle is being diverted to over-nuanced abstractions and obscurantist theory. A related major strand of criticism exemplified by members of the Cambridge School held that the Subalternists have nothing new to offer which either (British) Marxists and/or Indian historians had not discussed earlier. A rising antagonism from within India, including by a few former members of the Collective such as Sumit Sarkar, has critiqued what it perceives as the post-structuralist turn of later subaltern work. However, the early excitement, both pro and con has diminished, and during the last five or so years the output and interest in Subalternity has reached a low ebb, prompting some critics to express the view that it was merely a fad whose heyday was irrevocably past. We will track these changes in terms of their over-arching conceptual ramifications in the context of the global financial crisis and the rise of ethno-nationalist conflict and reconstitution of new social movements.

    This course seeks to map the trajectory of subaltern studies as well as critical responses to it over the past three decades, in the attempt to theorize future roles for this intellectual movement. Of particular interest in this regard will be the detailed examination of subaltern studies relationship to Marxism and postcolonial theories in the current conjuncture. The unabashedly elite status of subaltern scholars and the disciplinary privileging of India (even within South Asia) will also be scrutinized to identify how this gets played out in their analysis and presentation.
    As a capstone exercise, participants will be invited to present a preliminary analysis of a contemporary intervention of struggle or resistance that they feel strongly about from a subaltern perspective, which includes the use of alternative sources and methodologies to mainstream research.

    Course Structure:
    • Session I: Subaltern Studies and the Critique of Colonial Historiography: New Wine in Old Bottles?
    o Readings: Selections from Guha, Ranajit Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency, Dominance without Hegemony, and Guha and Spivak (eds.) Selected Subaltern Studies. Essays by Chandravarkar, Brass and Bayley in Mapping Subaltern Studies
    o Creative Expression: La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua [Film by Assia Djebar]

    • Session II: Subaltern Studies and Marxism: Fellow Travellers or Incommensurable Alternatives?
    o Readings: Essays by O’Hanlon, Washbrook, Prakash (Response), Lazarus & Varma
    o Creative Expression: Genesis [Film by Mrinal Sen]

    • Session III: Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Theory: Orientalism Revisited, Eurocentrism Reinscribed
    o Readings: Lazarus & Varma, Prakash, Spivak “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
    o Creative Expression: Kanafani “Men in the Sun” [See Bibliography]

    • Session IV: The Literary Appropriation of Subaltern Studies: Spivak and Subaltern Sources
    o Readings: Selections from Spivak, Gayatri In Other Worlds, Other Asias, and the interviews
    o Creative Expression: Devi, Mahasweta “Draupadi” and “Stanadayini” [English translation by Gayatri Spivak contained in In Other Worlds]

    • Session V: Synthesizing the Contribution of Subaltern Studies to Present Struggles: Public Debates and Private Wars
    o Readings: A collection of critical essays and responses from the Economic & Political Weekly in the 1980s and 90s, James C Scott.
    o Creative Expression: Selected Film Documentaries

    • Session VI: Whither Subaltern Studies Tomorrow? Subjects, Approaches, Saturation of an Area
    o Readings: Chatterjee (Selections), Gunawardena, Pandian, Arnold (Selection)
    o Creative Expression: Abaa (Sri Lankan Film by Jackson Anthony)

    • Session VII: Participant Presentations and Discussion: How is Subaltern Theory Useful Today?


    COLLABORATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL DETAILS
    The eighth Theory/Praxis course is jointly organized by the Forum on Contemporary Theory, Baroda and the Department of English, University of Pune. The program will be conducted by a core faculty and invited speakers for a period of four weeks. Study material will be made available to the participants after their registration; the participants are expected to have gone through the material before the commencement of the Course. Each participant is required to make at least one formal presentation during the course, which will be evaluated by a member of the core faculty. Both faculty and participants are expected to stay together in the same venue for greater interaction and exchange between them.

    PARTICIPATION CRITERIA
    Participation in the Course is mainly open to scholars in the humanities and social sciences, preferably those working toward research degrees, but post-graduate students and post-doctoral scholars in these disciplines and scholars from the disciplines outside the humanities and social sciences interested in inter-disciplinary studies can also apply. Maximum number of participants to be selected is 35.

    REGISTRATION FEE
    Each participant is required to pay a registration fee of Rs.7000/ (Rupees seven thousand only) to the Forum on Contemporary Theory through a bank draft drawn on a bank in Baroda. The registration fee is non-refundable. The fee will take care of his/her board and lodging, cost of course material and other related expenses. The participants will not be paid by the organizers for their travel.

    DEADLINE FOR APPLICATION
    The last date for receiving application for participation is April 5, 2010. The application may be sent to Director, Centre for Contemporary Theory, Baroda. Selection for participation will be made by April 20, 2010. Selected candidates are required to send the bank draft favoring Forum on Contemporary Theory before May 5, 2010. Course material will be mailed only after receiving the registration fee.

    CORE FACULTY
    Costica Bradatan is Assistant Professor of Honors at Texas Tech University. He has also taught at Cornell University, Miami University, as well as at several universities in Europe (England, Germany, Hungary and Romania). Currently (2009-2010) he is a Solmsen Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research in the Humanities. Bradatan has held research fellowships at, among others, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of California Los Angeles, and the Newberry Library in Chicago. His research interests include Continental philosophy, history of philosophy, East-European philosophy, and philosophy of literature. Bradatan’s most recent book The Other Bishop Berkeley: An Exercise in Reenchantment was published with Fordham University Press in 2006. He is also the author of two other books (in Romanian): An Introduction to the History of Romanian Philosophy in the 20th Century (Bucharest, 2000) and Isaac Bernstein’s Diary (Bucharest, 2001), as well as of several dozens of scholarly papers, essays, encyclopedia entries, book translations and book reviews. He has co-edited (with Serguei Alex. Oushakine) In Marx’s Shadow. Knowledge, Power and Intellectuals in Eastern Europe and Russia (Lexington Books, 2010) and guest-edited two special journal issues: one on “Philosophy as Literature” for The European Legacy (Summer 2009) and another on “Philosophy in Eastern Europe” for Angelaki (forthcoming).

    Arjuna Parakrama is currently Visiting Professor at the School of Language & Linguistics of the National University of Malaysia. He was Professor of English (Cadre Chair) at Sri Lanka’s oldest and most prestigious university, the University of Peradeniya, from 2004 - 2009. He has also served in the United Nations in Nepal and elsewhere as an expert on (post)conflict development and human rights, and has a parallel existence working with multiply marginalized communities in Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged “border villages”. Professor Parakrama was a Fulbright New Century Scholar in 2007/8, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council on Ethics & International Affairs (2000/1), a Senior Fellow at the US Institute of Peace (1999/2000) and a Guggenheim Research Grantee (2002). Among his publications are three books, De-Hegemonizing Language Standards (Macmillan, 1995), Language and Rebellion (Katha, 1990) and Collected Poems (2002) and a monograph Social Cleaving: Resistance and Loss within a Bereaved Culture (2004). His current research interests include anti-languages, extra-linguistic value systems embedded within everyday language, collective trauma and social cleaving in (post)conflict societies, and subaltern discourse.

    RESIDENCE
    Accommodation for outstation participants is made in the Guest House of the University of Pune

    ATTENDANCE
    The participants are required to attend all the sessions and to stay until the end of the program in order to get the certificate of participation.

    APPLICATION FORMAT
    The following format may be used for the application:
    Name
    Address (including telephone no. and email ID)
    Institutional Affiliation
    Date of Birth
    Department
    Teaching Experience (indicate number of years also)
    Academic Qualifications
    Areas of Research and Teaching
    Publications, if any
    Specific Research Topics, if any
    Whether Registered for Research Degree?
    Whether participated in any Course organized by the Forum? If participated, when?
    A Brief Statement (200 words) about what you expect to gain from the Course
    Names and Addresses of Two Referees
    Signature
    Date

    ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE
    Prafulla C. Kar
    Director, Centre for Contemporary Theory
    C-304 Siddhi Vinayak Complex,
    Behind Vadodara Railway Station (Alkapuri Side)
    Faramji Road,
    Vadodara- 390007
    Tel: 0265- 2320870
    Email: prafullakar@gmail.com
    Website: www.fctworld.org

    Bajrang S. Korde
    Local Coordinator
    Professor & Head
    Department of English
    University of Pune
    Tel: 020-25690648/25601332
    Mobile: 09422518108
    E-mail: korde@unipune.ernet.in

    To:
    Head of the Department
    Please circulate this flyer among the teachers, research scholars and students of your Department. Thanks for your cooperation.





    ***************************************
    Costica Bradatan, PhD
    Assistant Professor

    [AY 2009-2010]


    Solmsen Fellow


    The Institute for Research in the Humanities


    University Club Building


    University of Wisconsin - Madison


    Madison, WI 53703


    http://www.webpages.ttu.edu/cbradata

    Day 5 - Women's Month - Hypatia

    The skies are bright in merry ole England this morning.  The air is still and the market is on in the High Street. 

    Today, I think I'll take out some back-copies of Hypatia and read what I've failed to read before.  Hypatia has, for me, been hit or miss. Sometimes, I find things in it that are really relevant, interesting and thought provoking.  At other times, it seems like it caters to the same group of thinkers who all generally agree.  I'm not sure it always fosters a good debate.  That said, it's also given space to feminist philosophers in a way that no other publication has.  We have to respect it for that. 

    Currently, they have a couple of CFPs out.  Check them out here: http://depts.washington.edu/hypatia/index.html

    -----------------------

    Ethics of Embodiment


    Volume 26, Number 3, Summer 2011

    Guest Editors: Debra Bergoffen and Gail Weiss
    This Hypatia Special Issue will showcase the diversity of ethical approaches to embodiment. Despite the centrality of the body in discussions of gender, race, class, religion, ethnicity, and ability and their respective intersections, the implications of feminist analyses of the body as a ground for ethical theorizing, as the subject of ethical demands, and as the very means by which these demands are articulated, are yet to be the subject of a volume or journal issue. We seek to remedy this important gap by calling for original essays by feminists who draw from different philosophical traditions and practices to develop the ethical implications of human and/or nonhuman embodied experience.
    Contributors may wish to consider such questions as:

    •How does bodily vulnerability inform ethical demands?
    •What ethical traditions offer the most (or least) productive resources for considering the ethical implications of embodiment?
    •How might a focus on embodiment re-align existing ethical theories and practices (e.g. medical practices and public policy)?
    •What challenges does an emphasis upon the primacy of embodied experience pose to traditional, cognitive-based, ethical theorizing?

    •How might considerations of nonhuman forms of embodiment affect ethical understandings of human embodiment (and vice versa)?
    •What current bodily norms are challenged by an ethics of embodiment?

    •How can the suffering of people who have been socially, politically, medically, and/or legally disenfranchised be alleviated by considering the ethical dimensions of the body?

    •How would an embodied ethics contribute to new ways of thinking about space, time, and/or intersubjectivity?

    •How might an ethics, grounded in the body, affect and transform both individual and collective lives?

    Deadline for submissions: March 15, 2010.

    Papers should be no more than 8000 words, inclusive of notes and bibliography, prepared for anonymous review, and accompanied by an abstract of no more than 200 words. For details please see Hypatia's submission guidelines.

    Please submit your paper to: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hypa. When you submit, make sure to select "Ethics of Embodiment" as your manuscript type, and also send an email to the guest editor(s) notifying them of the title of the paper you've submitted:

    Debra Bergoffen: dbergoff@gmu.edu

    Gail Weiss: gweiss@gwu.edu
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Animal Others

    Volume 27, Number 3, Summer 2012

    Guest Editors: Lori Gruen and Kari Weil

    We are soliciting papers for a special issue of Hypatia on Animal Others. Scholarship in "Animal Studies" has grown considerably over the last few years, yet the feminist insights that much of this work borrows from and builds on remains relatively unrecognized. This special issue of Hypatia will remedy this by showcasing the best new feminist work on nonhuman animals that will help to rethink and redefine (or undefine) categories such as animal-woman-nature-body. The issue will provide the opportunity to re-examine concerns that are central to both feminist theory and animal studies and promote avenues of thought that can move us beyond pernicious forms of othering that undergird much human and non-human suffering.

    We are interested in submissions from a wide range of feminist perspectives. Possible topics might include, but are not limited to:

    • non-human animals and intimacy/affection/love/domestication

    • gendered ethics and the politics of animal rights discourse and activism

    • racial, gendered, and cultural conflicts about eating animal bodies/using animals

    • animals and “nature”/ animals in “culture”

    • the significance of gender differences in the study and/or care of non-human animals

    • violence against women and violence against animals

    • material feminism and companion species

    • pet love and the boundaries of kin, kind, and sex

    • technologies of seeing or the gaze of/on sex and species

    • otherness, empathy, and animal care ethics

    • the woman and the animal—pitfalls and strategies of essentialism.

    Deadline for submission of papers for consideration in the Special Issue of Hypatia: March 15, 2011.

    Papers should be no more than 8000 words, inclusive of notes and bibliography, prepared for anonymous review, and accompanied by an abstract of no more than 200 words. For details please see Hypatia's submission guidelines.

    Please submit your paper to: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hypa. When you submit, make sure to select "Animal Others" as your manuscript type, and also send an email to the guest editor(s) notifying them of the title of the paper you've submitted:

    Lori Gruen: lgruen@wesleyan.edu

    Kari Weil: kweil@wesleyan.edu

    Thursday 4 March 2010

    Day 4 - Women's Month - grandmothers

    It's 3pm and I haven't been able to come up with anything interesting for the 4th day of Women's Month. I haven't felt right. I woke up in a foul mood.

    It is only now that I return to my desk to work on an article that I realise what's stopping me: my grandmother died 3 months ago today.  She was, and is, my favourite person in the world: feisty and gutsy, funny and knowledgeable; and for this kid who's home was rather topsy-turvey, she was a constant source of love and friendship.

    So I think that today I hall celebrate my grandmother, Meredyth Appleton. In fact, I'd like to celebrate all those women who as grandmothers profoundly affect the lives of their grandchildren.  It's not a role we talk about very often.  I wish we did.

    Wednesday 3 March 2010

    Day 3 of Women's Month - Alison Bechdel

    Alison Bechdel is flat out cool.  If you're into comics, you're well aware that the genre is dominated by men.  Comics are by men, for men and about men.  In the late 80s Alison Bechdel brought us 'Dykes to Watch Out For' - a funny, politically minded comic that was about women, for women and by a woman.  Today, let go of the stress and exhaustion.  Sit back, and enjoy!  We deserve it.




    Check out more of her work at: http://dykestowatchoutfor.com/

    Tuesday 2 March 2010

    Day 2 of Women's Month: Christina Hoff Sommers

    It might seem odd to celebrate Christina Hoff Sommers during Women's Month.  However, without the gains made by the feminist movement, there would be no place in the world for Hoff Sommers. Well, there would, it would be in the kitchen. She, like many of us, would be sat at home, isolated, lonely and wishing the world was a bit different.  Luckily, it is!  And in this different world we get to hear the 'insights' of a woman who seems bent on maintaining the status quo. 

    Here's a recent article from Hoff Sommers.  In it, she argues that women are changing the male dominated culture of science. For Hoff Sommers, this change in culture is leading to bad science:

    http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0301/opinions-women-national-science-foundation-on-my-mind.html

    I suppose her message is: Girls, if you can get in and do science, please do it like a man. 

    My response: You do what you need to do to get paid, Christina.  It is, afterall, all about the bottome line.

    Monday 1 March 2010

    Day 1 of Women's History Month - Feminist Hero