Conference: Thought as Action: Gender, Democracy, Freedom

Thought as Action. Gender, Democracy, Freedom

This conference marks the completion of a four-year international research project, THOUGHT AS ACTION: Gender, Democracy, Freedom, funded by the Norwegian Research Council. The project has had a theoretical focus, organized around three major themes: ”Bodies and Sexualities”, ”Citizenship” and ”New Technologies”, themes that will also serve as an overarching structure for the conference. The program will consist of plenary sessions with keynote addresses as well as parallel sessions that will be organized around the three theme clusters, to which we will devote one day each. We invite scholars to submit abstracts for papers that will touch upon at least one of the theme clusters. Empirically based papers will be welcomed, provided that they touch upon theoretical questions.

THOUGHT AS ACTION: Gender, Democracy, Freedom, funded by the Norwegian Research Council. The project has had a theoretical focus, organized around three major themes: ”Bodies and Sexualities”, ”Citizenship” and ”New Technologies”, themes that will also serve as an overarching structure for the conference. The program will consist of plenary sessions with keynote addresses as well as parallel sessions that will be organized around the three theme clusters, to which we will devote one day each. We invite scholars to submit abstracts for papers that will touch upon at least one of the theme clusters. Empirically based papers will be welcomed, provided that they touch upon theoretical questions.

Bodies and Sexualities:
This section will address key theoretical questions relevant to the overall problematic of gender, democracy, freedom, papers which explore how we can rethink the body and sexualities today. What are the main challenges, given some of the theoretical developments in our research field? How can we theorize the body and sexuality in the wake of post-humanist theories of corporality, affect theory, disability theory, post-colonial and transnational critiques of the hegemony of the white, middle-class perspective as well as critiques of constructionist theories?

Citizenship:
In this section we will explore multi-dimentional approaches to citizenship, gender and sexuality. What are the consequences within these fields in light if of recent transformations of the state, due to diminishing state sovereignty in the global North as well as the global South? We want to pursue the implications of these shifts for gender and sexuality. How do neo-liberal market rationalities impact on conceptions of citizenship? And how are the global forces of deterritorialization and reterritorializations connected to the way in which sexuality and gender are reconfigured? How do we understand the complex techniques pertaining to the governmentalization of the state, when sexuality and gender are taken into account? More generally, how are gender and sexuality implicated in the different aspects of citizenship?

New Technologies:
In this section we want to ask: How do current developments and innovations in (info/bio/reproductive) technologies shape our thinking on gender, democracy and freedom? Feminists theorizing technology have made obvious how technologies are intimately entwined with bodies. Hence, it becomes problematic to think of embodiment and difference (such as gender, sexuality, race, class, age, and ability) as intelligible ‘before’ or ‘beyond’ technology. In which ways do technologies form and transform bodies and their politics? What would the implications be if we approached intersectionality and embodiment through the lens of technology? In which ways do corporeal differences challenge or transgress the boundaries between natural and artificial, human and machine?

In addition to the papers that will be presented in the parallel sessions, the following scholars have accepted the invitation to speak at our plenary sessions:

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
Professor Elizabeth Grosz, Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University, USA

"Willful Queers, Or a Queer History of Will"
Professor Sara Ahmed, Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College, UK

"The  Lung Cancer Patient is a Young Asian Female Non-smoker"
Professor Aihwa Ong, Socio-Cultural Anthropology and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, USA

"Conundrums of citizenship post conflict"
Professor Malathi de Alwis, Women’s Studies, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka

"Thinking Reproductivity: conceptive technologies revisited"
Professor Sarah Franklin, Sociology, University of Cambridge, UK

"Corporeal Anachronisms"
Associate Professor Jenny Sundén, School of Gender, Culture and History, Södertörn University, Sweden

See PROGRAM

DEADLINE FOR REGISTRATION: June 1^ST, 2012
REGISTRATION FORM

CONFERENCE FEE: NOK 500 (Including meals) / BANQUET: NOK 250

The conference will be held at Clarion Hotel Admiral, C. Sundts Gate 9, 5004 Bergen.
SKOK has reserved a number of rooms at Clarion Admiral Hotel (single 1210 NOK/double 1360 NOK) as well as at Comfort Hotel Holberg close by (single 1125 NOK/ double  1225 NOK). Those of you who will need accommodation, please contact the preferred hotel before 30 June.

For further details on the conference, contact Tone Lund-Olsen (email: tone.lund-olsen@uib.no tel: +47 55 58 33 12)
For further details on the academic aspects of the conference, contact Ellen Mortensen (ellen.mortensen@skok.uib.no) or Randi Gressgård (randi.gressgard@skok.uib.no).

Sponsors:
The Norwegian Research Council
The Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK), University of Bergen
Stein Rokkan Centre for Social Research, Bergen