The Gender Question - A MIC and UL Sibeal symposium

The Gender Question

A MIC and UL Sibeal Postgraduate Symposium

Call for Papers

DATE:

Wednesday May 15^th 2013 5-7pm

VENUE:

G08

Mary Immaculate College

Limerick

When Judith Butler tried to undo gender, she questioned whether the traditional categories of gender were still important today, or if they were restrictive. Do we still need the category of woman? Or should we remove gender as a category entirely? What does gender mean? And how is it represented, differentiated, exploited or maintained?

We invite papers of 15 minutes duration from all disciplines on the topic of gender, it's construction, deconstruction, function and requirements for what promises to be a multivalent symposium. Topics include, but are not limited to:

Gender

Sexuality

Queer/Intersexual/Transexual/Feminist Theory

Construction of gender identity

Gender in literature, film, tv, theatre, art, music and culture

The other/The second sex

Corporeality

Submission requirements:

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted along with a short bio to thegenderquestion@ymail.com before April 17^th

^{For more information on Sibeal - the Irish Postgraduate Gender and Feminist Network check out www.sibeal.ie}

Seminar 5 – Gender in the 21st Century

This month we will be looking at gender and sexuality, and if the norms of the 20^th century still hold weight today. Are traditional ideals about gender and sexuality still necessary important or recognisable? Or are they restrictive? And how is sexuality and gender constructed in contemporary society, culture and thought?

To inform our discussion we will examine the introduction to Judith Butler's text Undoing Gender available here:

http://selforganizedseminar.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/butler-undoing_gender.pdf

We will meet on Thursday, March 7^th at 5pm in T1.01, Tara Building, Mary Immaculate College. All are welcome!  

Call for Papers

I would like to draw your attention to a number of interesting calls for papers

Transcultural Imaginaries
Making New, Making Strange

14–17 June 2013

A Moving Worlds Conference
organized by

Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS), NTU
and Division of English, NTU

Organizing Committee:
Neil Murphy, Shirley Chew, Jennifer Crawford, Daniel Jernigan, Lim Lee Ching, Bede Scott

 

We invite papers and proposals for panels (of 3-4 papers).
Suggested topics include, but are not restricted to:

Translation and transcreation
Interregional exchange — the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean
Forms in Architecture
Rewriting diaspora
The transport of styles
Postcolonial aesthetics
Technology and visual arts and media
Inventing Asia
Travelling theory
Sustainability: contesting paradigms
Contact zones and linguistic identity
Transcultural cities

Abstracts of 250 words to be sent by email to <movingworlds@ntu.edu.sg> by 20 Feb 2013.
http://portal.cohass.ntu.edu.sg/TransculturalImaginaries/default.asp

 

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10th Ralahine Utopian Studies Workshop

Cognitive Mapping in Contemporary European Literature

University of Limerick (Ireland)

Thursday 13 June 2013

Proposals (300 words) are thus invited for papers (in English) on instances of cognitive mapping observable in contemporary European literature(s), and should be sent (as an e-mail attachment) to Dr Michael G Kelly (michael.g.kelly@ul.ie) by Friday 8^th March 2013.

 

http://www3.ul.ie/llcc/10th-ralahine-utopian-studies-workshop/

 

 

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International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures Annual Conference
URBAN CULTURES
School of English, Queen's University Belfast
22-26 July 2013
Call for Papers

We welcome proposals for individual papers and panels on topics including but not limited to:
Literary and cultural representations of the city;
Cognitive geographies;
The literature and culture of individual cities;
The Belfast Group;
Diasporic and migrant cities;
Re-reading The Irish Writer and the City (1984);
Gender and the urban;
Urban sexualities;
Urban coteries;
The divided city;
The archipelagic city;
Urban genres;
Class and the city;
The city and memory.

Abstracts (250-300 words) to be sent to iasil2013@qub.ac.uk<mailto:iasil2013@qub.ac.uk> by 17 March 2013.

Please also include a brief biography (50 words including affiliation).
Individual papers should be no more than 20 minutes in length.
Research students in good standing who have papers accepted will have the conference registration fee waived.

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Emerging Perspectives graduate conference

May 2-3, 2013 at University College Dublin in association with the UCD English Graduate Society and Humanities Institute
The UCD English Graduate Society warmly invites MA and PhD students of all levels to submit abstracts of no more than 300 words which engage with the theme ‘Emerging Perspectives’ for the 2013 EGS Postgraduate Symposium.

We invite submissions from a broad range of areas within the below disciplines including but by no means limited to:

• New approaches to literature, multiculturalism, devolution, globalisation, migration, diasporas, historical materialism (American, British, Irish Literature.)

• Medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Romantic, Victorian, Realism, Naturalism.

• Modernism, the Beats, Surrealism, Peripheral Modernities.

• Postmodernism, Digital Age/ Post-postmodernism?

• Theory: Materialism, structuralism, deconstruction, postmodernism, gender & queer theory, psychoanalysis, postcolonialism, world literature, digital humanities.

• Novels, poetry, film, drama

This event will be held in the UCD Humanities Institute on the UCD Belfield campus. A selection of the proceedings from the conference will be published in the fourth volume of Emerging Perspectives.
Deadline for submission of abstracts, 300 words maximum, by March 1st 2013 for 20 minute presentations. Submissions for panels are also invited.
Please email submissions as well as any queries regarding the event to englishgradsoc@ucd.ie
http://www.facebook.com/egs.ucd 

 

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If anyone wants me to include any other call for papers just email them to me deirdre.flynn@mic.ul.ie



Seminar 4 - Security, Terror, Democracy and Violence

For our first seminar of 2013 we are going to be looking at something very upbeat - the concepts of security, terror, democracy and violence after 9/11.

The seminar will take place on Thursday, February 7th at 5pm in T101 in the Tara Building in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick.

Looking at the ideas of state, we will discuss how all of these concepts have changed dramatically in the 21st century, and how this is reflected in society.

Using a lecture from Giorgio Agamden "The State of Exception" we will look at the idea of emergency powers and increased control exercised by Governments in supposed times of crisis. What does this extension of power mean for the individual, the citizen and democracy?

The essay is available on the European Graduate School website:
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/giorgio-agamben/articles/state-of-exception/

For those interested in further writing a number of Giorgio Agamden's articles are available here:
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/giorgio-agamben/articles/

*****

Also I just wanted to draw your attention to a performance of The Third Policeman on next week in The Lime Tree Theatre

The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien
With Stephen Rea as The Narrator
Music by Colin Reid

Accompanied by a live quartet:  Neil Martin (Cello), Niamh Crowley (Violin), Colin Reid (Piano) and Becky Joslin (Cello).

A murder thriller, an hilarious comic satire about an archetypal village police force, a surrealistic vision of eternity, the story of a tender brief unrequited love affair between a man and his bicycle, and a chilling fable of unending guilt…

A music and spoken word presentation of Brian O’Nolan’s blackly comic masterpiece, featuring one of this country's most exceptional actors, Stephen Rea.

Saturday, 9th February @ 8pm

Tickets €20/€16

Lime Tree Theatre Box Office - 061 774 774 or book online www.limetreetheatre.ie.

The work of art in the digital age - Seminar 3

In 1936 Walter Benjamin questioned the uniqueness and permanence of the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Benjamin was concerned with a move towards transitoriness and the reproducibility of art as a result, and what this was reflecting in society.

However, in the 21st century, with the onset of digital reproduction, photoshop and the ability to share images, videos and stories instantly is it possible to achieve a unique work of art? What effect do self publishing and the internet have on the quality or authenticity of art? And more importantly what does this say about society?

For this months seminar we are examining what Walter Benjamin's essay means today in the digital age, and if the work of art in the contemporary era has lost its legitimacy. 

I would like to thank Dr Steven Leddin for suggesting such an interesting reading. 

A copy of the essay is available here:

http://adht.parsons.edu/designstudies/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Work-of-Art.pdf

The next seminar will take place on Thursday, December 6 at 5pm in T2.02

Centre for Studies in Otherness Postgraduate Symposium

The Centre for Studies in Otherness is hosting a postgraduate symposium on Otherness in philosophy, theory and art practice this coming Friday 23^rd November 2-5pm. The symposium will take place at The Captain’s Room of The Hunt Museum and brings together postgraduate researchers from the departments of English Language & Literature, and Philosophy at MIC, and Limerick School of Art and Design.

The event is open to the public and in particular welcomes postgraduate students from both institutions to attend and participate in discussion. 

Contributors: 

Michelle Cooney (PhD Student, Department of Philosophy, Mary Immaculate College) “Heidegger and the Death of the Other”

Kristy Butler (PhD student, Department of English Language & Literature, Mary Immaculate College) “The Nightmare of Reversals: Alien and Alienating Others in H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds”

Deirdre Flynn (PhD student, Department of English Language & Literature, Mary Immaculate College) “Positioning the Postmodern Female”

Breda Lynch (Lecturer in Printmaking and Contemporary Practice, Department of Fine Art, LSAD) “Other Drawings”

Una Spain (MA student, Centre of Postgraduate Studies, LSAD) “St. Brigid’s; the construction of the other in psychiatric discourse”

Deborah McDonagh (MA student, Centre of Postgraduate Studies, LSAD) “The Phenomenology of Perception; the otherness of masculinity in contemporary society”

The Centre for Studies in Otherness initiates a collaborative project that brings together postgraduate scholars from Mary Immaculate College and Limerick School of Art and Design to consider the notion of Otherness as it relates to current issues in Literary Criticism, Cultural Theory, Philosophy and Art Practice. 

Check out http://www.otherness.dk/ for more information on the Centre for Studies in Otherness.

Have we become Posthuman?

Following on from some of the points raised at the last seminar on Post-postmodernism we are moving on to Posthumanism, and what it means to be posthuman. 

Sometimes referred to as transhumanism, we will look at the influence that technology has on life and evolution, and importantly what it means for contemporary identity. Do we have to reposition our identities to take into account the role that technology plays within our lives? And how is this redefining then represented in culture? 

I would like to thank Dr Kathryn Laing for suggesting the reading from N Katherine Hayles' book How we became Posthuman: Virtual bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. 

The first chapter of the book is available here: 

http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/Hayles-Posthuman-excerpts.pdf

Additional information on N. Katherine Hayles can be found here:

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/321460.html

http://www.english.ucla.edu/faculty/hayles/

Our second seminar will take place on Thursday, November 8th at 5pm in room T202 in Mary Immaculate College.