Cultural Studies Association of Australasia annual conference 2012

Hosted by the Department of Gender & Cultural Studies, University of Sydney

Dec 4th-6th (pre-fix pre-conference Dec 3rd)

‘Materialities: Economies, Empiricism, & Things’

Organising committee: Fiona Allon, Prudence Black, Catherine Driscoll, Elspeth Probyn, Kane Race & Guy Redden

Second Call for Papers

Cultural studies has a long history of investigating material practices – indeed it was a founding tenet of British cultural studies – but recently a new turn or return to materialism seems to be emerging in the field.  What this materiality now means is still open, but we suggest that it flags a renewed interest in questions of how to study cultural objects, institutions and practices (methods), what constitutes matter and materiality (empiricism), and how things (humans and non-humans) are being reworked at a time of global economic, environmental and cultural flux.Our keynotes have all directed critical attention to these questions – to the more-than-human, to new philosophies of matter, to the gendered material and economic circuits of media, and to ‘the heavy materiality of language’. We have invited them to help us in reinvigorating what cultural studies can do today.

Keynote speakers: Jennifer Biddle (UNSW), Ross Chambers (Michigan), Brenda Croft (UniSA), Katherine Gibson (UWS), Ros Gill (University of London), Gay Hawkins (UQ), Lesley Head (Wollongong), Bev Skeggs (Goldsmiths, London).

Other plenary speakers will include: Ien Ang (UWS), Tony Bennett (UWS),  Stuart Cunningham (QUT), John Frow (Melbourne), John Hartley (Curtin), Meaghan Morris (Sydney), Stephen Muecke (UNSW), Tom O’Regan (UQ), and Graeme Turner (UQ).

We encourage proposed panels and individual papers that engage with the wide spectrum of issues flagged by our title, including submissions that focus on:
· the crossing of science studies and cultural studies;
· questions of method;
· the relation between culture and economy;
· cultural histories of objects and forms;
· new ideas about empiricism;
· placing sexuality, gender and race within the more-than-human;
· the materiality of texts and genres;
· the future and the past of material cultural studies;
· environmental humanities and changing ecologies;
· cultural studies within the anthropocene;
· cultural relations with/in primary and natural resources;
· the new materiality of globalism
Papers and panels not focusing on the theme are also welcome.Please send submissions to csaa.2012@gmail.com by August 24th and include your name and affiliation. Abstracts for papers should be 250-300 words. Panel submissions must include three individual abstracts, a panel title and 100-150 word rationale for the panel as a whole.

We will advise all proposers of accepted papers within 4 weeks of this deadline. Please note that accepted presenters will need to register before their paper will be scheduled in the program.

Early bird registration for the conference up to 1 October 2012 will shortly be opening. Please register here http://www.csaa2012.org/registration.html

There will also be a separate event, “Pre-Fix”, geared to the needs of postgraduates and early career researchers, on December 3rd. Details of this and the main conference are on the website.

CSAA website: http://www.csaa.asn.au/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CSAA2012
Twitter: csaa2012