Call for Papers:
Biopolitics and the Humanities: States of Subjectivity
2010 Rice University Graduate Symposium
Rice University in Houston, Texas
September 17th – 18th, 2010
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Timothy C. Campbell*
Submission deadline: June 15th, 2010.
Biopower, according to Michel Foucault, is the application and impact
of sovereign power and governmentality on all aspects of political and
biological life. The study of biopolitics invites interdisciplinary
connections between various theoretical approaches and disciplines
among the humanities. Since Machiavelli, the role of the sovereign and
its ability to control and manage populations has led to conflicting
understandings of biological matter’s relationship to political
subjectivities. Looking at the ways in which biological bodies
navigate, interrupt or are complicit in the sovereign power’s
machinations of control can complicate both theoretical constructions
of the body and also practical debates regarding the impact of
authority.
We invite submissions that examine and play with connections between
sovereign power, politics, biological and institutional subjectivities
and identities from a variety of disciplines and approaches including:
feminism, sexuality, gender, literature, history, anthropology,
philosophy, architecture, performance, political science, linguistics,
physics and mathematics.
Possible paper topics might include:
• Overlapping or competing claims of sovereignty and governmentality
vis-à-vis biopower,
• Sexual identity roles and their institutional and political
management,
• Enslavement and histories of subjectivity,
• Economic imperialism and the 3rd world,
• Literature as a laboratory for deconstructing ideology.
• Neoliberalism and the economy of biological bodies,
• Medicine and health care as a means of subject to government
interaction,
• History of mental health,
• Graphic representations of populations to signifying biological
relations to power,
• Global tourism and 1st, 2nd and 3rd world perspectives,
• The configuring of space to manage the biological body’s relation to
power.
We are now accepting abstracts of 250 words or less to
rice.symposium@gmail.com.
*Dr. Timothy C. Campbell will be joining us from Cornell University.
Dr. Campbell’s book publications include Wireless Writing in the Age
of Marconi, University of Minnesota Press, 2006 and Bios: Biopolitics
and Philosophy, Roberto Esposito, University of Minnesota Press, 2007
(translation and introduction). His teaching and professional
interests lie in biopolitics and contemporary Italian thought, fascist
films, fascist bodies, modern Italian travel writing and perspectives
in Italian culture.
