Radical Bodies
Human bodies and, by extension, human subjectivity have long been contested spaces. Against traditional Eurocentric and anthropocentric definitions of the human as a stable identity abstracted from its surrounding environment, movements like feminism, anti-racism, anti- and post-colonialism, and ecocriticism have called out the human’s complicated entrenchment in and with other/othered bodies and landscapes. Posthumanist scholars like Rosi Braidotti define the (post)human body as necessarily relational, nomadic, ever-changing with and in response to others. As such, the body becomes a site for radical transformation through which we may interrogate contemporary issues such as gender and race equity, income inequality, and climate change. Bodily engagements through fiction, nonfiction, performance art, and more ask us to contend with the human as, at once, vulnerable and resilient, acting on and being acted upon by the world. Radical bodies highlight our potential to (re)imagine and revolutionize our present and future.
This panel invites papers that interrogate the shifting roles of bodies (physical and metaphorical) within and across various Humanities fields. How are bodies depicted in fiction and media as a way to think through our place on the planet? What role does biopolitics play in shaping bodies of the present and future? How do radically different bodies pose solutions to or highlight the extent of today’s problems? Abstracts must be submitted through the NeMLA portal (https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21286).
We welcome considerations of radical bodies from myriad perspectives, such as:
- Mediated bodies
- Gendered and/or racialized bodies
- Ill/diseased bodies
- Disabled/debilitated bodies
- Queer bodies
- Bodies and ecology
- Body politic
- Biopolitics
- Hybrid bodies
- Cyborg/robotic/android bodies
- Invented/created/built bodies
- Othered bodies
- Collective bodies
- Phenomenological bodies
- Afrofuturism and Indigenous futurism
- Post and transhumanism
https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21286
Sara Santos