[Discussion] Kibris'tan

Tue, 20 Jan 2004 13:40:33 -0800

I. CALL FOR PAPERS: Magical, Religious, Occult and Mystical Discourse

INSCRIPTIONS '04: an arts and culture conference and festival
at Eastern Mediterranean University
in Famagusta, on the island of Cyprus
June 3rd- 4th, 2004

Submissions are invited for a Panel Discussion on the relations
between language and belief in the preternatural; and on the interpretive
techniques involved in deciphering or determining the meaning and
significance of spoken or written texts and images in the traditions
variously classified as magical, religious, occult, or mystical. We welcome
in particular presentations which suggest points of intersection or
engagement between these relations and techniques, and contemporary
tendencies in critical theory.

Some possible topic areas (others are welcome):

-alchemical, cabalistic, or theosophical texts; Books of the Dead, grimoires
-oracular/trance speech, glossolalia, automatic writing
-Ouija boards, Tarot cards, astrology, techniques of divination
-symbolic, allegorical, anagogical readings of text/ the world as text
-spells, prayers, promises, incantations
-absence and presence; conjuration and exorcism
-runes, charms, amulets, talismans
-performative subjects/objects: satanism, witchcraft, voodoo, obeah
-magical moralities: the tales of Perrault, the Grimm brothers, and Anderson
-ideologies of magic: Lewis, Tolkien, Le Guin, and Rowling
-mystical desire, ecstasy, orgasm, and transcendent language
-witches and warlocks: gender roles in the experience of the supernatural
-sacred texts and ideologies of translation
-Meister Eckhart, Boehme, Swedenborg, and the language of angels
-angels, daemons, and hermeneutic mediation
-magic, medicine, and readings/inscriptions of the body
-Michel de Certeau's Mystic Fable
-visions, dreams, texts of revelation, the language of the possessed
-Biblical hermeneutics, revelation, and the death of god
-postmodern theologies
-madness, spirit/demonic possession, and psychoanalysis
-Faustian contracts and binding spells; knowledge and power

Prospective panelists are invited to send 250-word
abstracts/proposals for 15-20 minute presentations on any aspect of these
areas to
robert.dalonzo@emu.edu.tr
or
rodney.sharkey@emu.edu.tr
by 31st January, 2004.
We look forward to learning about your research, and to a provocative
discussion.

For more information about INSCRIPTIONS '04,
please visit our website at http://www.emu.edu.tr/elh/index_conference.html /> Please also check out our links to "Individual Research Presentations" and
"Creative/Performance Work."

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

II. CALL FOR PAPERS: Counter- and Sub-cultures

INSCRIPTIONS '04: an arts and culture conference and festival
at Eastern Mediterranean University
in Famagusta, on the island of Cyprus
June 3rd- 4th, 2004

The seventh annual Literature and Humanities Conference will be held at
Eastern Mediterranean University as part of Inscriptions '04, an Arts and
Culture festival taking place at the university and environs between June
3rd - 4th, 2004. In conjunction with a wide selection of music, performance
and film events, discussion friendly papers are being solicited for our
symposium. Although we will be publishing selected presentations from
Inscriptions '04, we encourage participants to move away from the standard
prewritten, "finished paper" format, towards a more open-ended presentation,
which will provoke and contribute to a genuine exchange of research and
ideas during the panel sessions. Our aim is to create a forum and publishing
venue for inspiring work in progress, where the exchange of ideas with
fellow academics participating in the conference will contribute to the
final form of participants' work.

With this in mind, we invite papers and/or presentations that examine the
current status of critical thinking on counter- and sub-cultures.

Possible topics might include but are not limited to:

- the intellectual as counter-culture icon
- the sub-cultural politics of music/fashion/art/literature/food
- resistance cultures: gay, lesbian and transgendered
- HMV cult classics: Irving Welsh, Kevin Sampson
- fashion as capital subversion/complicity
- sub-cultural prohibitions and counter-culture taboos
- civic dutywork ethic vs. the "idle hands" of sub-culture
- representations of youth in the media
- the poetics of sub-cultural identity
- sub-culture and alternative music: counter-culture or the new
hegemony?
- counter-culture and questions of taste and value.
- urban and rural counter-cultures
- snuff films and serial killers
- literary theory/deconstruction as sub-culture
- Waco or Wacko? Evangelist extremes and counter-culture
- criminal cultures: organised crime, informers, money launderers
etc.
- punk, rap, reggae, ragga, drum and bass, and jungle
- the politics of clubbing
- PlayStation II and the hyper-real
- drugs and sub-culture
- hackers and counter-cultural resistance
- sub-culture and age
- the revolutionary cell
- underground publications
- the fate of café culture
- skaters and (cyber)surfers
- sex in sub-culture
- the politics of smoking
- the legacy of Dick Hebdige
- Marilyn Manson and the gothic as sub-culture
- Slipknot to The Stooges? The longevity and performativity of
sub-culture.

Please send 250 word abstracts by 31st January, 2004 to:
rodney.sharkey@emu.edu.tr
or
robert.dalonzo@emu.edu.tr
and please visit http://www.emu.edu.tr/elh/index_conference.html for more
information.

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

III. CALL FOR PAPERS: Cyborgs and Cultural Systems

INSCRIPTIONS '04: an arts and culture conference and festival
at Eastern Mediterranean University
in Famagusta, on the island of Cyprus
June 3rd- 4th, 2004

The term "cyborg" (cybernetic organism) was originally coined by
Clynes and Kline in 1960 to characterize a self-regulating complex entity
made up of interacting electrical/mechanical and human systems-as distinct
from "robot," which was derived by Capek in 1923 from a Czech word meaning
"drudgery," and which still today describes a non-sentient machine
performing tasks set and ultimately controlled by a human being.
However, since the publication of Donna J. Haraway's "Manifesto
for Cyborgs" in 1985, the cyborg has evolved-in disciplines as diverse as
literature, film, sociology, cybernetics, and medicine-into a figure and a
trope of hybridity. As such, it interrogates and/or collapses the
differences between the sentient and the non-sentient, the human and the
non-human; it engages and undoes a wide range of binary oppositions from
Cartesian dualism to culturally coded distinctions of gender, class, and
race; and it exemplifies the breaching of boundaries and frontiers in
social, ethical, legal and technological issues from disability to genetic
engineering to computer privacy.
We invite proposals for a Panel Discussion aimed at extending
current concepts of the cyborg, and exploring the ramifications of the
interaction between human beings and their socio-cultural, technological,
and biological environments.

Some possible topic areas (others are welcome):

-the extensions of man and woman: from Marshall McLuhan to Donna Haraway
-the cyborg and the "posthuman": the work of N. Katherine Hayles and Bruno
Latour
-bodies without organs (Artaud)/desiring machines (Deleuze and Guattari)
-cyborgs and social systems: Niklas Luhmann on media and "ecological
communication"
-between biological and cultural systems: Humberto Maturana and Francisco Va
rela
-rethinking Enlightenment rationality: between La Mettrie, deism, and the
cyborg
-avatars and cybersex: desire, fragmentation and jouissance in cyberspace
-the hyperreal and the decay of lying: from Oscar Wilde to The Truman Show
-Lacanian cyberspace: the Imaginary and the Symbolic
-technomyths of fear and limitation: Icarus, Prometheus, and Pandora
-science/creation myths: Michelangelo's Creation of Adam to Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein
-reconfiguring the grotesque: monsters/hybrids from satyrs, centaurs and
mermaids to cyborgs, androids, replicants,
clones, and zombies
-cyborgs and hyperreality: Benjamin's aura, Debord's spectacle, Baudrillard'
s simulacrum
-deconstructing grand narratives: ecofeminism and narratives of empowerment
-monstrosity in film: from The Island of Dr. Moreau to Jurassic Park and
Monsters, Inc.
-technophilosophical utopias/dystopias: Zamyatin's We, Orwell's 1984, and
their progeny
-cyborg fiction: Asimov, Clarke, Gibson, Ballard, Dick, Coupland, etc.
-prosthetics in literature/film from Edward Scissorhands to Luke Skywalker
-cyber-environments, interactive/virtual realities: Tron, eXistenZ, Johnny
Mnemonic
-prosthetics in reality from Gotz von Berlichingen to Stephen Hawking
-magical technologies: from Perrault's seven-league boots to Oz and the Tin
Woodman's heart
-war, amputation, disability: the ethics of medical transplant/implant
technology
-the avatars of Arnold Schwarzenegger: Total Recall, Terminator, RoboCop,
The Sixth Day
-the ethics of reproductive technology: genetic selection, cloning, and
eugenics
-theorizing new technologies: Kevin Warwick, the VeriChip, "smart" clothing
-chemical enhancement: from cosmetics and steroids to genetically modified
foods
-cyborgs and superheroes: Spiderman, the Hulk, the X-Men, etc.
-Foucault's "political technology of the body": panopticism and cyborg
ideologies
-city machines: Metropolis, Logan's Run, The Matrix, Vanilla Sky
-language-instinct machines: the work of Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker, and
Marvin Minsky
-monstrosity and decadence: Des Esseintes, and Bouvard and Pecuchet
-art and technology: from Futurism and Constructivism to Borofsky and
Stelarc

Prospective panelists are invited to send 250-word
abstracts/proposals for 15-20 minute presentations on any aspect of these
areas to
robert.dalonzo@emu.edu.tr
or
rodney.sharkey@emu.edu.tr
by 31st January, 2004.
 We look forward to learning about your research, and to a provocative
discussion.

For more information about INSCRIPTIONS '04,
please visit our website at http://www.emu.edu.tr/elh/index_conference.html /> Please also check out our links to "Individual Research Presentations" and
"Creative/Performance Work."