[Discussion] CFP: From Pornography to Politics (UK) (7/31/05; 11/11/05)

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

From: Megan J Todd <Megan.Todd@newcastle.ac.uk>

FROM PORNOGRAPHY TO POLITICS
An Inter-disciplinary Postgraduate Symposium
University of Newcastle, U.K.
Conference Organisers: Megan Todd and Melanie Waters
11 November 2005

Sponsored by the Feminist and Women&#65533;s Studies Association (FWSA) 
& hosted
by the Newcastle Institute for Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities 
(NIASSH).

Within the context of second wave feminism, pornography has been 
conceptualised
in relation to issues of censorship, privacy, exploitation, and violence. In
recent years, however, the proliferation of new digital media 
technologies, and
the pornographisation of popular culture, has opened the parameters of the
debate on pornography to reassessment.

This conference invites papers by postgraduates that address the notion 
of the
pornographic within a variety of contexts and across a range of academic
disciplines. We are particularly interested in work that displays a critical
engagement with the representational politics of pornography, the violent
dimensions of pornographic materials, and the issues surrounding the 
development
of functional definitions of the pornographic. This conference also aims to
examine pornographic constructions of sexuality, and to evaluate the 
extent to
which pornography might provide a (potential) space for the 
interrogation and
(re)formulation of binarized gender positions.

If, as Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon have famously argued, 
pornography
is the "graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through 
pictures and
words" (1984), then how do we account for the possibility of female agency?
Does such a view ignore changes to the (gendered) power structures of 
the porn
industry that have occurred in the wake of recent technological 
advancements?
If the Internet has effected the empowerment of some sex workers, then 
how has
it also facilitated the illegal operations of organised crime, 
prostitution, and
human trafficking? How do pornographers negotiate the boundary between 
fantasy
and reality, and what social, political, and legal issues are raised by the
production of "virtual" pornography? Is violence always at work within the
pornographic text, and how might it be used to formalise depictions of
masculinity and femininity? How have pornographic modes of representation
inspired writers, filmmakers, and artists, and to what degree are these 
creative
responses intended to be critical of pornography?

Please send proposals (250-300 words) for 20-minute papers 
<FPTP@ncl.ac.uk> by
31 July 2005. Proposals for complete panels of three participants are 
encouraged
and should include the panel title, paper titles, abstracts for each 
paper and
contact details for each speaker. All participants (both speaking and 
attending)
must be registered members of the FWSA. See http://www.fwsa.org.uk for more
information.

This conference is followed by the After Dworkin: Bodies/Politics 
conference on
12 November 2005, hosted by NIASSH and the Centre for Gender and Women's
Studies.

For more information contact Sarah Barber <S.G.M.Barber@ncl.ac.uk



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