[Air-L] Fwd: CFP: Visual Culture Division, Cultural Studies Association 2013

[Adrienne Shaw]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Cathy Hannabach <channabach at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 7:01 AM
Subject: CFP: Visual Culture Division, Cultural Studies Association 2013
To: Cathy Hannabach <channabach at gmail.com>


Please forward widely...


*Call for Papers*

*
*

*Visual Culture Division, Cultural Studies Association (USA)*



Visual Studies investigates the production, dissemination and remediation
of images and imaging systems in all forms—artistic, popular, scientific,
commercial, etc. It is inclusive and broad-ranging both in its methods and
approaches as well as in its objects of inquiry, which include a wide
variety of media forms: digital technologies, the internet, photography,
film, traditional arts, television, performance, gaming, video, the built
environment, popular culture, etc. Visual Studies also addresses work
produced across a broad spectrum of the humanities and natural sciences,
engineering, medicine, cartography, circuit design, mathematics,
information science, military applications, logic, and the many zones of
graphic production in commercial and public sectors. Yet, its work is not
about representation alone, but includes considerations of knowledge
production, theory, and methods within Visual Studies itself. As a thematic
division of the Cultural Studies Association (USA) the Visual Culture
Division is dedicated to visual culture broadly conceived. Please find
below the cfp for *our annual conference, which will take place in Chicago,
23-26 May 2013*. If you have questions please feel free to contact the
Chair of the Visual Culture Division, Randal Rogers (
randal.rogers at uregina.ca), or the respective session contact.



Submissions: please forward paper proposals to session contacts and the
division chair by *24 September*. Proposals of 300 words (max.) must
include: title; short description; contact information; institutional
affiliation.

____



*Session: Viralities Virtual and Visual*


It has become commonplace to describe the circulation of epidemics,
protests, war, capital, and media through the cliche "going viral."
Indexing something about speed, medium, and audience participation, "viral"
has come to signify a method of movement that both references but exceeds
the biological. In media as diverse as cell phone videos of the Occupy
Movements and revolutions across North Africa and the Middle East to CSI
shows, bioterror video games, and Twitter feeds tracking TSA airport
screening practices, visual culture seems inextricably linked to the viral
both in terms of representation and media production. Viral has become both
metaphor and materiality, linking digital technologies and social media
practices to medical cultures, disease patterns, and military networks.
This panel seeks papers that explore the specifically visual dimensions of
"viral"--what role do visuality and visual media practices play in
producing, circulating, and consuming ideas about the viral, viruses, and
virality? How does the viral necessitate a redefinition of what visual
culture and visual studies is, and how we engage it?

Topics may include:
- Surveillance: ID cards, biometrics, monitoring, law
- War and militarisms: friend/enemy distinctions, tracking movements,
military networks, drones
- Medicine: biological viruses, pandemics/outbreaks, STIs/STDs,
pharmaceutical practices, surgery/medical films, genetics
- Power networks and resistance/revolution: Arab Spring, Occupy Wall
Street, Wisconsin
- Life beyond the living: metaphors, materialisms, vitalisms
- Social media and networking: viral videos, memes, Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube, Vimeo, Academia.edu
- Circulation: bodies, capital, ideas, resources, objects, affects
- Species: animals, biopower, life and death
- Viral economics: capitalism, socialism, risk, speculation, credit, the
commons
- Replication: reproduction, monstrosity, mutation
- Digital lives: hacking, crowdsourcing



Contact:

Cathy Hannabach

Women’s Studies and American Studies

Temple University

channabach at gmail.com and randal.rogers at uregina.ca



____



*Session: Visual Studies and Sport*



This panel investigates the relationship between sport and visual
culture.  Sports
have traditionally had a curious relationship with the academy and
particularly within the arts, where they are often treated as ‘low-brow’,
anti-intellectual and popular pursuits.  Of the academic work that has
addressed sport, very little has focused on its highly visual nature.  Rather,
the dominant approach, found in the history and sociology of sport,
situates sport as a social phenomenon and highlights the social and
economic structures of sporting events, sports organizations and
professions, as well as the mediation of sport, most specifically through
television.  By contrast, this panel examines the specific intersection of
sport and visual representation.



Sports are inextricably bound to visual technologies and, as such, are a
rich site of analysis for visual studies scholars.  Importantly, the panel
emphasizes the myriad ways in which sports and images intersect: images are
used as pedagogical tools in sport as they are produced, circulated and
read by coaches, athletes, trainers and sports medicine professionals; they
are used as juridical tools that either replace or augment the human eye in
sporting events; they serve commercial purposes as in television and print
advertising; they are used as entertainment in television, film and new
media; and they form an essential part of visual culture as manifest in
visual art, pop culture and other forms of visual culture production.



The panel calls for a rethinking of sport and its relationship to visual
studies.  Whether pedagogical, juridical, commercial, aesthetic or
otherwise, images of sport are fundamental components of contemporary
visual culture: they are bound to cultural conceptions of class, race,
nation and gender and are enmeshed in the fundamental economic and
institutional infrastructures of society.  The panel seeks to explore this
topic in hopes of bringing new perspectives, theories and approaches to
analyzing sport and visual culture.



Contact:

Jonathan Finn

Department of Communication Studies

Wilfrid Laurier University
jfinn at wlu.ca and randal.rogers at uregina.ca


-- 
Cathy Hannabach
Women's Studies & American Studies
Temple University
837 Anderson Hall
channabach at gmail.com