"Exposed Bodies: The Vital Politics of Matter"

I'm happy to have my latest book, Exposed, featured at this Symposium coming up in February.

Call For Papers : Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture (CSLC) Annual Symposium Exposed Bodies: The Vital Politics of Matter University of Southern California February 22-23, 2018

The CSLC Symposium Graduate Planning Committee invites students and scholars across the Humanities at USC to participate in a critical and multidisciplinary conversation with Dr. Stacy Alaimo of the University of Texas at Arlington, author of several books including Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times. The symposium will investigate the urgent questions around ecological catastrophe and the ontological, political and ethical attachments that define our discussions of the anthropocene and/or an “end” of the world. Against the backdrop of a realist political atmosphere in which the challenges of climate change are superseded by market demands and human rights are imperiled by austerity measures, resurgent nationalisms and the rhetoric of “'national security,” this symposium will engage the feminist posthuman ethics put forth by Dr. Alaimo to think the material agencies which might survive beyond the uncertain futures of the human and this world.

Our annual symposium takes place over two days, with the first reserved for an address by our keynote speaker (Dr. Alaimo) and the second day devoted to the work of the CSLC graduate community. We invite graduate students and scholars to submit papers proposals addressing the theme of the symposium from any number of linguistic, theoretical, geographic, or mediatic perspectives. Questions to consider include: In what ways can art or philosophy respond to our current environmental predicament? What subjectivities are possible when we expand our notion of the human? What kind of politics might emerge when we think about the entanglements between posthuman bodies and our material world? Is an environmental ethics possible?

Keywords: eco-feminist thought; critical posthumanism; critical race studies; new materialisms; art and activism; (post)anthropocene; livable futures; nonhuman; inhuman; posthuman agency; environmental media

Submission: 250-word abstract, submitted to cslc.symposium@gmail.com Deadline: Jan 12, 2018

Sincerely, The CSLC Symposium Graduate Planning Committee and Event Organizers

Michaela Telfer Jayson Lantz Noraedén Mora M. Matthew Berger

For inquiries, please contact the event organizers or cslc.symposium@gmail.com.