CFP: Feminism: Body, Image, Power

2014 Call for Papers -19th Annual Philosophy Conference at Villanova University Sponsored by PGSU
Feminism: Body, Image, Power
Friday, March 21 – Saturday, March 22, 2014
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Lisa Guenther (Vanderbilt)

“The personal is political,” the well-known slogan of the Women’s Liberation Movement, continues to demand that we explore the ways in which our most intimate embodied practices, experiences, and images can be the site of politics, and alternately, how politics are carried out and enacted in the desires, affects, self-consciousness, and relationships of personal and interpersonal life.  Focusing on the highly productive concepts of body, image, and power, this conference aims to engage in discussion of a number of philosophical themes, topics, and approaches that are feminist in method or that deal with the topic of feminism.  How does the body stand at the juncture of the public and the private?  How do our private and collective images conceal or reveal the intersections of imagination and representation?  How does power operate as the conjunction of identity, knowledge, and praxis?  Feminist philosophy and feminism more broadly has much to tell us about the nature of our embodiment, our imaginaries, and the power relations that structure our lived experience, and this conference welcomes papers and artwork that deal with these topics, broadly construed. While all papers addressing feminism and feminist issues, works, authors, etc. are welcome, we especially encourage papers that take on these perennial issues of feminism in a contemporary context.

Possible topics of discussion include, but are not limited to:
–       Public and private spaces of embodied experience
–       Biopolitics and new technologies
–       Reproductive rights, natality, and motherhood
–       Autonomy, dependency, and vulnerability
–       Feminism and affect theory, body image, and imagination in cultural productions (e.g. film and media)
–       Intersections of gender, class, race, sexuality, and ability
–       The relationship between critical phenomenology, feminist philosophy, and political activism
–       Reciprocity of feminist theory with queer theory, critical race theory, postcolonial theory, globalization, and environmental ethics
–       Feminism and psychoanalysis
–       Postfeminism and postmodern feminisms

The Philosophy Graduate Student Union at Villanova University welcomes individuals (including graduate students and faculty) to submit abstracts, papers, proposed panels or artist presentations to be considered for our conference. Please send submissions formatted for anonymous review to: conferences.library.villanova.edu/gradphil
Submission Deadline: December 15, 2013