From Portraits to Pin-ups: Representations of Women in Art and Popular Culture

Valie Export, Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969)

Academic Symposium: From Portraits to Pin-ups: Representations of Women in Art and Popular Culture

Saturday, May 14, 2011 at 11:30 a.m.–6 p.m.
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium, 3rd Floor

In conjunction with the exhibition Lorna Simpson: Gathered, this symposium will explore the implications of female artists using images of women in their work, the relationship between popular culture and fine art, connections between women's history and contemporary art, perceptions of race and gender, and representations of beauty. Dr. Wendy Steiner will speak on concepts of beauty, a panel of graduate students will present current research, and a panel discussion with comedian Erica Watson, drag king Shelly Mars, and illustrator Molly Crabapple will follow.

SCHEDULE:

10:15 a.m. Dr. Steiner and panelists arrive (aside from Molly, Erica, and Shelly) for technical check
10:15-11a.m. technical checks, refreshments served
11:00am Auditorium opens
11:25am Introduction and Welcome
11:30am Keynote speaker Dr. Wendy Steiner "Beauty, Woman, Art"

12-2pm Paper session 1: Women and Image
Paula E. Hopkins, Georgetown University: "Subverting the Image: Representations of Black Women in Lorna Simpson's photography"
Shannon Vittoria, CUNY Graduate Center: "Women Artists at Work: Picturing Professionalization in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century France"
Nicole Bebout, Hunter College: "How to Protect Your Virtue: Animal Transformations in the Work of Paula Rego"
Brooke Belisle, UC Berkeley: "Gathered: Portraits of Relational Identity"
Nicole Meyers, Hunter College: "Unpinning the Pinup: Axell’s Vicious Red Circle and the Coca-Cola Company”
Emilia Müller, New York University: "Fashion and Femininity in 1950s Sci-Fi Films"
Li Cornfeld, M.A., New York University: "Shooting Heroines: On Dina Goldstein's Fallen Princesses"

2-2:30pm: Lunch break. Light lunch will be served, cafe is also open.

2:30-4pm Paper session 2: Women and Embodiment
Kristen Lorello, Hunter College: "Kate Gilmore and goldiechiari: Re-envisioning the City in Rome and Beyond"
Joseph Shahadi, Ph.D, New York University: "Mona Hatoum: Foreign Body"
Aliza Shvarts, New York University: "Art, Hair, Beauty"
Thomas Naughton, Harvard University: "Performance Event or Pop Art Product: Lady Gaga's Instafilm Grimace and the new consumerist 'performance art'"
Al Janae Hamilton, New York University, "Radicalizing the Black Female Body: Fashioning Black Power from Olive Morris to Pam Grier"

3:30 p.m. Shelly Mars, Molly Crabapple and Erica Watson arrive

4:30-5:30pm Conversation with illustrator Molly Crabapple, drag king Shelly Mars, and comedian Erica Watson

The Scandals of Susan Sontag: One-Day Conference

On Friday, March 4th, the Center for the Humanities at the The Graduate Center (CUNY) will host the conference The Scandals of Susan Sontag, in collaboration with Stony Brook University’s Humanities Institute. The event will take place in the Skylight Room, The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York. The event will begin with registration at 10:00 a.m. and is free and open to the public.

Susan Sontag’s provocative career resulted in a body of artistic and intellectual work that is scorned as often as it is admired. This one-day conference brings together a renowned roster of scholars and critics to consider the impact of her work and life. The event is co-organized by Aiobheann Sweeney, Director of the Center for the Humanities, CUNY, and E. Ann Kaplan, Director of the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook. “The conference does not aim to glorify or make a saint out of Sontag,” explains Kaplan. “It rather aims to take a steady look at just some of the many contributions to thought Sontag offered across a range of topics.”

The event will feature the filmmaker Nancy Kates screening excerpts from her upcoming film, Regarding Susan Sontag. Other participants will include:Barbara Ching, Iowa State University ; Lisa Diedrich, Stony Brook University; E. Ann Kaplan, Stony Brook University; Laura Kipnis, Northwestern University; Susie Linfield, New York University; Heather Love, University of Pennsylvania; Nancy K. Miller, CUNY: José Muñoz, New York University; Deborah Nelson, The University of Chicago; Elaine Showalter, Princeton University; Catharine Stimpson, NYU and Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor, Pennsylvania State University.

The Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY, was founded in 1993 as a forum for people who take ideas seriously inside and outside the academy. The Center puts CUNY students and faculty from various disciplines into dialogue with each other as well as with prominent journalists, artists, and civic leaders to promote the humanities and foster intellectual community across the city. The Humanities Institute at Stony Brook was established in 1987 to promote interdisciplinary research. Its varied programs have built, and continue to build, bridges between the human sciences and the medical, technical and natural sciences, and to reach out to the local community.

For more information please contact Aoibheann Sweeney, The Center for the Humanities, ASweeney@gc.cuny.edu or (212) 817-2006 or Olivia Mattis, Humanities Institute at Stony Brook, olivia.mattis@stonybrook.edu or (631) 632-9957.

International Performing Arts Lab and Conference: Call for Artists

May 17 - 24, 2011
Leitring bei Leibnitz, Austria

International Performing Arts Lab and Conference is inviting participants to take part in an intensive programme of practical training, lectures, discussions guided by the Russian theatre director and teacher Sergei Ostrenko, and a conference programme with leading experts and teachers from different countries.

Special discounted fees are available for artistic ensembles and their leaders as well as senior students groups and their teachers!

Participants are actors of physical, dramatic, dance, musical theatres, circus performers, directors, choreographers, visual artists, sound and light designers. Talents from different backgrounds, genre and style can draw from Ostrenko's system and develop their skills according to their field of expertise, enlarge personal horizons and create connections with colleagues from all over the world.

Programme:
The programme is focused on Ostrenko's method of actor’s training, relying on the Russian Theatre Tradition and the newest experiments in performing arts. Participants will practically explore physicality as the principal creative instrument, the key to form, style, atmosphere and emotional palette in contemporary performance, stepping beyond the limits of habitual text-based acting. Performer's physicality in the methods of Stanislavsky, Meyerhold and M.Chekhov, Meyerhold's Biomechanics Etudes, Tai-chi for actors, Training by method of improvisation, scene composition from exercises to performance: these are some of the elements uniquely transformed and combined in Ostrenko's teaching system to suit performers, directors and teachers contemporary needs.

The Lab and Conference are a great opportunity to approach a unique methodological and practical material that will enrich your professional skills and will offer you the possibility to share an intense creative experience at a global level!

The event will take place in the "Green Heart" of Austria, Styria Region, at the historic 15th century castle. Nearest international airports - Graz and Vienna, Austria.
Accommodation and meals are organized.

Registration: candidates should send a letter of motivation stating the Lab dates and CV/résumé with photo to PhysikTheater@gmail.com

More details: http://www.iugte.com/projects/PhysicalTheatre.php
http://www.iugte.com/projects/program.php
http://picasaweb.google.com/globtheatre

“Show and Prove: The Tensions, Contradictions, and Possibilities of Hip Hop Scholarship in Practice”: New Work in Hip Hop Studies

“Show and Prove: The Tensions, Contradictions, and Possibilities of Hip Hop Scholarship in Practice”: A Symposium Featuring New Work in Hip Hop Studies

Call for Proposals Due May 21, 2010
Please submit a 200 word abstract and relevant contact information to ikj200@nyu.edu

New York University
Performance Studies Department
721 Broadway, 6th Fl. New York, NY
September 18-19, 2010

In Hip Hop performance communities, the “show and prove” attitude privileges action over words or the demonstration of skills over merely talking about them. “Show and prove” can also be an indirect critique of academics whose roles, in the simplest of terms, are to write on the actions of others. But with a growing number of practitioner-scholars and generations of those raised on Hip Hop taking classes, writing, and publishing work on the culture, today’s Hip Hop scholars feel as accountable to the academy as they feel to their own Hip Hop communities, seeking to give back in meaningful ways through their work. From negotiating the academy alongside varied Hip Hop audiences, these scholars must show and prove themselves in ways that may be conflicting or contradictory. At the same time, they struggle against the trappings of academic institutions that have historically objectified and even exploited such communities rather than recognizing them as active subjects in co
llaborative projects.

This symposium centers recent or unpublished work on Hip Hop by this new generation of scholars. It will be a forum for students of Hip Hop—whether in the classroom, the studio, the stage, or the streets—to exchange ideas, share their research, and ultimately contribute to an ever expanding body of work on Hip Hop. As a result, the symposium will showcase the current direction of the still-forming field of Hip Hop Studies. A select number of accepted papers will be included in a half-day, small group workshop on Sunday, September 19. This workshop will be an opportunity for presenters to get direct feedback on specific aspects of their projects from an invited scholar in the field.

Key Words:
Aesthetics of dance and visual art
Theory from cultural practice
Methodologies/ “Hiphopography”
Dance/ visual art/ theater/ music and education
Hip Hop as pedagogy
The complexities of commodification
Commercialization, Media, and Globalization
Hip Hop and community impact/activism
Is it Hip Hop?—e.g. graffiti art, “street jazz”, jerking, etc.
Racial and gender constructions/tensions
Gender and sexual identities in Hip Hop
Hip Hop and political possibilities
Shifting commitments of Hip Hop scholarship over time

Imani Kai Johnson, Ph.D.
Academic Diversity Post-Doctoral Fellow
Department of Performance Studies
Tisch School of the Arts, New York University
O: 212.992.8418
E: ikj200@nyu.eduNew York University
Performance Studies Department
721 Broadway, 6th Fl. New York, NY
September 18-19, 2010

In Hip Hop performance communities, the “show and prove” attitude privileges action over words or the demonstration of skills over merely talking about them. “Show and prove” can also be an indirect critique of academics whose roles, in the simplest of terms, are to write on the actions of others. But with a growing number of practitioner-scholars and generations of those raised on Hip Hop taking classes, writing, and publishing work on the culture, today’s Hip Hop scholars feel as accountable to the academy as they feel to their own Hip Hop communities, seeking to give back in meaningful ways through their work. From negotiating the academy alongside varied Hip Hop audiences, these scholars must show and prove themselves in ways that may be conflicting or contradictory. At the same time, they struggle against the trappings of academic institutions that have historically objectified and even exploited such communities rather than recognizing them as active subjects in co
llaborative projects.

This symposium centers recent or unpublished work on Hip Hop by this new generation of scholars. It will be a forum for students of Hip Hop—whether in the classroom, the studio, the stage, or the streets—to exchange ideas, share their research, and ultimately contribute to an ever expanding body of work on Hip Hop. As a result, the symposium will showcase the current direction of the still-forming field of Hip Hop Studies. A select number of accepted papers will be included in a half-day, small group workshop on Sunday, September 19. This workshop will be an opportunity for presenters to get direct feedback on specific aspects of their projects from an invited scholar in the field.

Key Words:
Aesthetics of dance and visual art
Theory from cultural practice
Methodologies/ “Hiphopography”
Dance/ visual art/ theater/ music and education
Hip Hop as pedagogy
The complexities of commodification
Commercialization, Media, and Globalization
Hip Hop and community impact/activism
Is it Hip Hop?—e.g. graffiti art, “street jazz”, jerking, etc.
Racial and gender constructions/tensions
Gender and sexual identities in Hip Hop
Hip Hop and political possibilities
Shifting commitments of Hip Hop scholarship over time

Imani Kai Johnson, Ph.D.
Academic Diversity Post-Doctoral Fellow
Department of Performance Studies
Tisch School of the Arts, New York University
O: 212.992.8418
E: ikj200@nyu.edu

Tenth National Black Writers Conference NYC March 25-28th

Toni Morrison

The Tenth National Black Writers' Conference, first presented in 1986 as a result of the visionary leadership of the late John O. Killens, will be held March 25-28, 2010. Toni Morrison, will be the Honorary Chair. The theme of the National Black Writers' Conference is And Then We Heard the Thunder: Black Writers Reconstructing Memories and Lighting the Way. Through a series of panel discussions, roundtables, author readings and storytelling, the National Black Writers' Conference will use the metaphor of thunder, memory and light to examine the historical representation of the literature of Black writers and the representation of new and future directions for contemporary and emerging literary voices. With Toni Morrison as the Honorary Chair, the National Black Writers' Conference will also honor Amiri Baraka, Kamau Brathwaite and Dr. Edison O. Jackson. Black writers will come from throughout America, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa.

The National Black Writers' Conference is a conference dedicated to the exploration of “emerging themes, trends and issues in Black American literature.” It is hosted by the Center for Black Literature at Medgar and attracts writers, scholars, editors, agents, faculty, students and the general public. The 2010 Conference will prove to be a “first” in that this premier Black writers’ event will have the distinction of celebrating its tenth anniversary while being chaired by the prize-winning renowned Black author during a time when the first Black American president is in the White House.

The National Black Writers' Conference has addressed the themes of stereotypes in Black literature, the direction of Black literature, the renaissance in Black literature, access and expanding conversations on race, identity, history and genre Each conference has built upon the previous one celebrating outstanding Black writers through the world.

Notable Off-Site Event:

Spoken Word Poetry Cafe
Staceyann Chin and Willie Perdomo, Featured Poets including Jo Nubian of the great blog Just Jo Nubian

...If you are in the city, go listen to her read and offer support.

Poetry Reading with a special appearance by Stacy Ann Chin. Please contact Joi M. Sears, Coordinator for additional information at:

theatreforthefreepeople@gmail.com

Time: 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Location: Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza
Audience: Open - ages High School age & up.
Admission: No Fee Required for viewing.

For more information & Registration
Conference Hotline: 718 270-4811

Email: Center for Black Literature:

Website: Center for Black Literature:

Online Registration Partner:African American Literature Book Club

The Message Is in the Music: Hip Hop Feminism, Riot Grrrl, Latina Music & More; A Conference at Sarah Lawrence

The Message Is in the Music:
Hip Hop Feminism, Riot Grrrl, Latina Music & More

A Conference at Sarah Lawrence College

Bronxville, New York (15 minutes north of Manhattan)
Friday & Saturday, March 5 & 6, 2010
Free and Open to the Public

Keynote Speaker: Carmen Ashhurst, former president of Def Jam Recordings and Rush Communications and author of the
forthcoming book Selling My Brothers: The Movement, The Media, and Me

Music has long served social movements as a soundtrack, as a means of communication, and as its own arena for activism. While multiple generations of feminists have used music in these ways, it has played especially vital roles for those born since the 1970s. This conference will explore the ways in which young feminists have defined and expressed politics through music and musical cultures and communities. Among the questions we will ponder are: How does music reflect sites of agreement and conflict among different groups of feminists? How have movements like Riot Grrrl and Hip Hop feminism attracted young women to feminist activism? How do young feminists’ uses of music compare with those of earlier generations?

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE:
Preliminary Schedule (subject to change)
Unless otherwise noted, all events take place in the Monika A. and Charles A. Heimbold, Jr. Visual Arts Center.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Registration
4:30 – 8 p.m., Heimbold Lobby

Opening Plenary
6 – 8 p.m., Heimbold 202

Welcome: Tara James, Associate Director,
Graduate Program in Women’s History, Sarah Lawrence College

Keynote Address: Carmen Ashhurst, former president of
Def Jam Recordings and Rush Communications, and author of the
forthcoming book Selling My Brothers: The Movement, The Media, and Me
Opening Reception
8 – 9:30 p.m., Slonim Living Room

Saturday, March 6, 2010

9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Heimbold Lobby
Registration
The Message is in the Music

Plenary Session
10 – 11:45 a.m., Heimbold 202

Opening Remarks: Priscilla Murolo, Director,
Graduate Program in Women’s History, Sarah Lawrence College

Plenary Panel
"Intersections: Music and Activism"

Mimi Nguyen, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
"Missing Persons"

Fiona Ngo, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
"Punk in the Shadow of War"

Christa D’Angelica, Law Clerk, New York Supreme Court, Sarah Lawrence College
"Beyond Bikini Kill: A History of Riot Grrrl, From Grrrls to Ladies"

Noon – 1 p.m., Heimbold Lobby
Lunch Break - (There will be a $10 charge for the conference lunch)

1 – 2:30 p.m., Breakout Session I

Panel: "Give Me Body": Reading the Latina and Black Female Body in Popular Music

Shanna Benjamin, Grinnell College
"Hot Sex on a Platter: Lil’ Kim and Reconstructions of the Black Female Body"

Lakesia D. Johnson, Grinnell College
"Black Queer Embodiment and Desire in the Music Videos of Me’shell Ndegéocello"

Michelle Rocío Nasser, Grinnell College
"Reading Shakira’s Body: Signs of Colombianidad in 'Hips Don’t Lie'"

Panel: Video Vixens

Loron Benton, Georgia State University
"'Shake What Your Mama Gave You': The Representation and Performance of the Female Body in Hip Hop Videos"

Zoe Spencer, Virginia State University
"Shake Dat Azz: Deconstructing the Sociopolitical Foundation of the Neo Jezebel"

Marita Buanes, University of Agder, Norway
"Flip It and Reverse It: Gender and Race in Missy Elliott’s Video 'Work It'"

Panel: Riot Grrrl

Julia Downes, University of Leeds
"'Resist Psychic Death': The Cultural Politics of Riot Grrrl and Queer Feminist Subculture"

Marisa Meltzer, Freelance Writer
"The Girl Power Revolution"

Jamielynn Varriale, SUNY Albany
"Embodying Riot Grrl: Fleshly Representations and Bodily Experiences and Images in the Work and Career of Corin Tucker"

Round-Table Discussion: "The Mode of Masculinity in the American Pop Patriarchy:
An Interactive Round-Table Discussion"

Jared Demick, University of Connecticut
Kristin Evans, University of Connecticut
Amber West, University of Connecticut
Jeffrey Wickersham, University of Connecticut

2:45 – 4:15 p.m., Breakout Session II

Panel: Women Rap

Emma Carmichael, Vassar College
"Female Subjectivity within Hip Hop: Rappers, Lyrics, and Performance"

Iresha Picot, Family Planning Council, Philadelphia
"Doorknockers: Black Female Rappers Knockin’ on a New Intellectual Discourse"

María Santana, University of Central Florida
"Her Sexy Stilettos Give a Women’s Point of View to Reggaeton: Ivy Queen and Latin Urban Music"

Panel: Performing Gender

Nafeesa Nichols, University of The Witwatersrand (South Africa)
"Gendered Identities in Black South African Creative Expression: Are We Running in Circles"

Barbara Anna Panuzzo, London South Bank University
"Writing Performative Identities: Discursive Traits of Femininity in Hip Hop Journalism"

Malaena Taylor, University of Connecticut
"Gender and Activism in the Punk Subculture"

Jessica Ronald – University of Louisville, Louisville, KY
"Potential Feminist Performances of Masculinity in Music: The Hip Hop Subculture of Nerdcore"

Panel: Divas

Brian Q. Torff, Fairfield University
Hilary Torff, High School Academic Core Teacher, Marymount Academy, Montreal, Canada
"Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Rosetta Tharpe: Black Women Who Shaped a Musical Future"

Elisabeth Wronzoff-Dashkoff, Independent Scholar
"Who’s That Girl?: Pop Stars as the Apogee of 1980s Feminist Discourse"

Panel: Say What: The Message in the Music

Vankita Brown, Howard University
"Me’Shell Ndegeocello and Womanist Music"

C. Chic Smith, Howard University
"African American Women in Hip Hop Music and Videos"

4:30 – 6 p.m., Breakout Session III

Workshop: Sophie’s Parlor Radio Collective

Facilitators:
Lakeisha R. Harrison
Kimberly C. Gaines
Andrea Thompson

Panel: "Love, Sex, and Magic: Hip Hop Feminism as a Tool
for the Creative Renegotiation of Black Female Desire"

Emily Unnasch, University of Alabama
"'F Love': Sex, Violence, and Hip Hop’s Turbulent Struggle to Define Love against the Grain"

Brittney Cooper, University of Alabama
'''She’s a Movement by Herself': Black Sexual Politics and Independent Black Womanhood in the Hip Hop Feminist Era"

Maigen Sullivan, University of Alabama
"'They Dykin': The Commodification of Lesbian Desire in Mainstream Hip Hop and Underground Attempts at Reclamation"

Tammy Owens, University of Alabama
“'It Must Be Your Ass'”: The Commodification of the Black Female Booty from Slavery to the Present"

Round-Table Discussion: Rhymes of Dissent: Identity Politics within Underground Hip Hop

Viviana Bernal, Sankofa Institute for Youth Development Inc.
Katie McGhee, Montclair State University
Maria Roumiantseva, Montclair State University

Panel: WomynSong

Amity Bryson, Avila University
"Women’s Music Festivals, Politics or Commodity?: The 1970s Experience vs. Lilith Fair"

Elizabeth K. Keenan, Columbia University
"If Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville Made You a Feminist, What Kind of Feminist Are You?: Heterosexuality, Race, and Class in the Third Wave?"

Andrea Fehring, University of Northern Iowa
“Womyn Only Space at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival: Is Separatism Based on Biological Sex, in Fact, Feminist?”

Closing Reception
6 – 6:30 p.m., Heimbold Lobby

6:30 – 8:30 p.m., Slonim Living Room

Alumni Reception for the Graduates of the
Sarah Lawrence College Women’s History Program

Conference: Critical Ethnic Studies and the Future of Genocide: Settler Colonialism/Heteropatriarchy/White Supremacy

Critical Ethnic Studies and the Future of Genocide:
Settler Colonialism/Heteropatriarchy/White Supremacy

A Major Conference
March 10-12, 2011 (NOT 2010)
University of California, Riverside

Jacqui Alexander·Keith Camacho·Cathy Cohen·Glen Coulthard·Angela Davis·Gina Dent·Vicente Diaz Roderick Ferguson·Ruth Wilson Gilmore·Gayatri Gopinath·Avery Gordon·Herman Gray·Judith Halberstam Sora Han·Cheryl Harris·David Lloyd·Lisa Lowe·Wahneema Lubiano·Manning Marable·Fred Moten José Muñoz·Nadine Naber·Hiram Pérez·Michelle Raheja·Dylan Rodríguez·David Roediger·Luana Ross Josie Saldaña-Portillo·Ella Shohat·Denise da Silva·Audra Simpson·Nikhil Singh·Andrea Smith·Neferti Tadiar João Costa Vargas·Waziyatawin

CALL FOR PAPERS

Ethnic studies scholarship has laid the crucial foundation for analyzing the intersections of racism, colonialism, immigration, and slavery within the context of the United States. Yet it has become clear that ethnic studies paradigms have become entrapped within, and sometimes indistinguishable from, the discourse and mandate of liberal multiculturalism, which relies on a politics of identity representation diluted and domesticated by nation-building and capitalist imperatives. Interrogating the strictures in which ethnic studies finds itself today, this conference calls for the development of critical ethnic studies. Far from advocating the peremptory dismissal of identity, this conference seeks to structure inquiry around the logics of white supremacy, settler colonialism, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy in order to expand the scope of ethnic studies. An interdisciplinary or even un-disciplinary formation, critical ethnic studies engages with the logics that structure society in its entirety.

As ethnic studies has become more legitimized within the academy, it has frequently done so by distancing itself from the very social movements that helped to launch the field in the first place. Irrefutable as the evidence is of the university's enmeshment with governmental and corporate structures, the trend in ethnic studies has been to neutralize the university rather than to interrogate it as a site that transforms ideas into ideology. While this conference does not propose to romanticize these movements or to prescribe a specific relationship that academics should have with them, we seek to call into question the emphasis on professionalization within ethnic studies and the concomitant refusal to interrogate the politics of the academic industrial complex or to engage with larger movements for social transformation.

We invite panel and individual paper submissions on a wide range of topics that may include but are not limited to the following:

• Settler colonialism and white supremacy
• Critical genocide studies
• Queering ethnic studies
• Heteropatriarchy
• Ethnic studies and un-disciplinarity
• Professionalization, praxis, and the academic industrial complex
• Decolonization and empire
• Social movements and activism
• Multiculturalism and colorblindness
• Critical race studies
• Liberationist epistemologies
• Critical ethnic studies and its relationship to other fields
  

We encourage submissions of traditional academic conference paper and panel formats, as well as alternative, creative, collaborative, and site-specific presentations, workshops, roundtables, etc. from academics, independent scholars, artists, cultural producers, activists, community workers, and others.

Please submit individual paper abstracts (250 words) along with a 1-page CV that includes contact information. If submitting a panel proposal, a panel abstract (250 words) should also be included.

Deadline for submissions: June 1, 2010
Email submissions to: criticalethnicstudies@gmail.com
All conference participants will need to register at: http://www.ethnicstudies.ucr.edu/

CRITICAL STRATEGIES IN ART AND MEDIA: PERSPECTIVES OF NEW CULTURAL PRACTICES

CRITICAL STRATEGIES IN ART AND MEDIA: PERSPECTIVES OF NEW CULTURAL
PRACTICES

September 10, 2009, 1:30–9:00 pm
Austrian Cultural Forum (ACF)
11 East 52nd Street New York, NY 10022
http://world-information.org/wii/critical_strategies

"A roundtable discussion of digital theorists and practitioners on the future of cultural intelligence and freedoms with: Ted Byfield, Steve Kurtz, Amanda McDonald-Crowley, Claire Pentecost, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Konrad Becker, Jim Fleming

Among the questions to be addressed during this conference are:

Beyond the obsolete models of artist or author as genius and their fetish objects, what collective and collaborative practices are inventing new terrains and flows? As information and communication technologies saturate our world, how is art giving way to new forms of cultural symbolic manipulation? Can we identify new models to replace the auteur and the artwork? If so, where do they come from and what might that say about the future of critical practices? What new kinds of “virtual” spaces are opening up for cultural practice in electronic media? As “old media” begin to collapse under the pressures of the virtual, what new media can we find? How are didactic illustration and channeled dissidence giving way to new forms of surprise and intensity? What strategies elude the creative industries’ seemingly infinite appetite for things radical? Are there any strategies that can elude being reduced to styles in the service of sales, or are critical practices doomed to play cat and mouse with the forces of consumerism?"

CONFLUX FESTIVAL 2009 / Submission Deadline Extended

Big Brother In Drag, Jill Magid (2007)

CONFLUX FESTIVAL 2009
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
NEW DEADLINE: AUGUST 15, 2009
http://confluxfestival.org/

ConfluxCity Deadline Extended!

"The sixth annual Conflux Festival, the art and technology festival for the creative exploration of urban public space, will take place September 17-20, 2009 and will be hosted by New York University.

In keeping with its commitment to urban artistic exploration, community participation, shared knowledge, and critical civic engagement, Conflux will organize a user-generated open format event on Sunday September 20th, 2009 from 10am-6pm.

Through an open submissions process, ConfluxCity will provide a platform for artists, urban geographers, technologists and others to organize and produce innovative activities dedicated to the examination, celebration and (re)construction of everyday urban life.

Drawing inspiration from Burning Man’s creed of radical self-reliance and BarCamp’s philosophy of openness and participation, ConfluxCity will adopt an open-space approach in which participants will be expected to organize, promote, and host their own activities and events. To facilitate this format, the Conflux Festival headquarters and website will serve as a central communications hub directing festival attendees outward to individual event websites and locations.

In response to the high level of interest in the initial call as well as requests for more time, the Conflux Team has extended the "ConfluxCity" submissions deadline through Saturday, August 15, 2009. We hope this extra time will allow all interested artists an opportunity to participate. Please help us spread the word."

To submit a proposal to participate in the festival, please see the submission guidelines at the Conflux Festival website: http://confluxfestival.org/2009/submit-a-project/.

The deadline for submissions has been extended to August 15, 2009.

Tracing Grotowski's Path, Year of Grotowski in New York.

Below is the information about the final events of Tracing Grotowski's Path, Year of Grotowski in New York.

Paratheatre, Theatre of Sources, and Objective Drama
Friday, July 10, 2009 7-10 p.m.
NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Performance Studies Studio, 6th Floor
721 Broadway, New York, NY 10003
This event is free. Please arrive early, seating is limited.
http://polishculture-nyc.org/index.cfm?eventId=1549

Grotowski and his Legacy
A three-day event at Lincoln Center

Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre and Theatre of Sources Period:
Film Documentation
Saturday, July 11, 2009,
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
70 Lincoln Center, W. 65th Street, New York, NY 10023

The Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards: Film
Documentation
Sunday, July 12, 2009,
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
70 Lincoln Center, West 65th Street, New York, NY 10023

For further information and tickets please go to:
http://polishculture-nyc.org/index.cfm?eventId=1550

Thomas Richards and Mario Biagini:
Grotowski’s Legacy and the Workcenter
Monday, July 13, 2009, 6:30 – 9:30 PM
Lincoln Center Festival
Rose Building, Kaplan Penthouse, 10th Floor
70 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023
This event is free. Please arrive early, seating is limited.

http://polishculture-nyc.org/index.cfm?eventId=1551

RELATED EVENTS:

THOMAS RICHARDS and MARIO BIAGINI: "Jerzy Grotowski and the Workcenter"
Thursday, July 16, 6 pm
Italian Cultural Institute,
686 Park Avenue, NYC
RSVP 212.879.4242 ext. 367
http://www.iicnewyork.esteri.it/IIC_NewYork/webform/SchedaEvento.aspx?id=358&citta=NewYork

Machines and Machinations, Graduate Student Conference

Machines and Machinations
Romance Studies Graduate Student Conference 2009
Cornell University
September 18-19, 2009

"In light of the current centrality of digital culture, we propose the necessity of a critical examination of the machine, understood in the broadest terms, from the machinations of philosophy, to technologies of writing and war, to the criteria of humanity. Literary texts and machines have often been praised and feared for their ability to imitate life. Both are in a relationship of intimacy and remoteness to man, standing alternately on the edges of these two limits. Whether stressing the verisimilitude or the unbridgeable gap between literary or concrete mechanisms and life, philosophers have always manifested concerns about the threats posed by these imitations. Does the inexhaustible productivity of machines endanger the definition of creation, or even writing, as a product of inspiration? Departing from a different understanding of "the machine", our conference also asks what to make of the machinations of rational thought against the mechanisms of poetics and technology. A similarly endless production of discourse on networks, systems, and new media now abounds in the humanities and social sciences. Yet, before and beyond the industrial revolution - from the influence of the catapult on medieval warfare, to the modern technologies of art - the paradigm of the "machine" has always been displaced, dissected, and dissolved. How do machines and machinations allow us to reconsider theoretical and historical gambits that would seem most removed from contemporary discussion? Furthermore, where does the machine speak in discourses on colonialism, post-colonialism, gender studies, biopolitics, modernity, manual and intellectual labor, among others?

Possible topics include:
. The writing machine: mechanical/mechanized/automatic generation of texts
. Literature as a machine: human/inhuman texts?
. Colonial machines and machinations: language, administration, religion, military
. Visual studies, art, art history
. Theatrical machineries, performance
. Archiving, immaterial memory, digital literature
. Defining the human: cyborgs, animal-machines, hybridity
. Feminism, gender, queer "machine(s)"
. Virtual realities and gaming
. Networks and mobilities, systems, new media
. Trauma studies
. Critical theory, philosophy, Marxism

We invite proposals from all fields related to Romance Studies and encourage interdisciplinary approaches across a broad range of theoretical and historical perspectives. Presentations will be in English and strictly limited to 20 minutes."

Anonymous abstracts (no longer than 250 words), should be submitted by June 15, 2009 to Ashley Puig-Herz (anp23@cornell.edu) and accompanied by an attached cover letter indicating
the title, author's name, affiliation, address, telephone number, and e-mail address.

Submissions are accepted
from graduate students only.

Conference: Transnational Tides and the Future of the Arab City

Yale Arab Alumni Association

Call for Proposals

Transnational Tides and the Future of the Arab City
A Conference in Beirut

October 2-4, 2009
At the American University of Beirut and other locations

Submission Deadline: March 27, 2009
http://conference.yalearabalumni.org

The Yale Arab Alumni Association invites professionals and scholars from all fields to submit proposals for our inaugural conference, "Transnational Tides and the Future of the Arab City." This interdisciplinary event encourages the exchange of cutting-edge expertise by environmental, cultural, business, political, design, and intellectual innovators, Yale alumni or otherwise.

Description and Aims of Conference

The Arab experience of globalization has resulted in the refashioning of Arab cities into unique spaces hosting transnational communities. These communities are distinguished not only by their demographic diversity but also by their extraordinary mobility. And despite the fluidity of these transnational communities, they are a fixture, at least for the foreseeable future.

The movements within the globalized Arab Middle East – of people, of capital, of ideas – can be understood as tide-like in their scale, force, and effect. Gesturing toward the historical dimension of these shifting patterns of migration and exchange, this conference explores how transnational leaders can use their mobility and resources to engage the new metropolitan network in the building of a sustainable, integrated regional future.

We welcome participants from all disciplines on topics such as:

-Education and globalization
-Urban planning and development
-Cultural sustainability
-Privatization
-National versus cultural identities
-Environmental sustainability
-Financial networks
-Migrant labor rights
-Cosmopolitanism

We particularly encourage the submission of working papers and projects on topics relevant to the transnational nature of Arab cities which, like the concept of transnationality itself, transcend established geographical, temporal, political, and academic boundaries.

Proposal Submission Guidelines

Interested individuals should submit a 250-word abstract by March 27, 2009. Those selected to attend will be notified no later than April 17, 2009.

Participants are encouraged to seek funding from their host institution or organization. In some instances, funds may be available to those without institutional support to attend the international conference.

Please send abstracts to conference@yalearabalumni.org.