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

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’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_at_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_at_ncl.ac.uk

         ==========================================================
              From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
                        CFP_at_english.upenn.edu
                         Full Information at
                     http://cfp.english.upenn.edu
         or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj_at_english.upenn.edu
         ==========================================================
Received on Tue Jun 28 2005 - 12:07:16 EDT