I will be attending the ISA Annual Convention beginning on Wednesday in San Francisco. It is going to be a busy conference for me. I've agreed to do a fair amount. Moreover, unlike previous years where the old Springsteen song about '57 channels and nothing on' seemed far too appropriate, a quick scan of the programme reveals that there is a lot of really interesting stuff going on this year.
My conference starts off bright and early on Wednesday morning (8:15 in Yosemite C) where I will be serving as the discussant for a panel called 'Through Both Ends of the Lens: Imagery and the Everyday Diffusion of the International'.
At 10.30am in Golden Gate 1, I will be presenting a paper called '"We can have eyes 24/7 on our adversaries": Remote Piloted Air Systems, Scopic Regimes, and the Aesthetic Subjects of Targeted Killing". This paper is a part of the panel on 'The New Materialisms of Affect' (sponsored by the British International Studies Association's Poststructural Working Group).
I then can take a mental break--which will probably include a disco nap--until 6.30pm when I am a participant on the 'Presidential Theme Roundtable—Film and Transnational Diffusion I: Moving Images, Emotions, Materialisms' in Continental 2. This will include a screening of the film Snijeg (Snow) directed by Aida Begić. Having a round-table on film included into the programme is a significant coup and full credit has to go to Aida Hozic for her efforts in expanding the ISA's horizons.
My next two days will be spent attending panels with a break to watch the Oakland Athletics matinee against the Seattle Mariners. I then have the good luck of being on a cracking panel called 'World Politics and Diffusion: The Case of Popular Culture'. The fly in the ointment is that it has been scheduled for the last possible time-slot of the conference: 4.00pm on Saturday in Golden Gate 3. My co-panelists--Nick Robinson, Michael Shapiro, Marianne Franklin, Aggie Hirst, John Sweeney and James Der Derian--are all fantastic and well worth sticking around for. And I will be dragging up the rear, presenting a paper whose latest title is 'Encounters Through the Cooking Glass: Geopolitics and Aesthetic Subjects in Breaking Bad'.
If you see me out and about at #ISA2013 do say 'hello'. I am also happy to meet to talk about papers, special sections, or special issue proposals for Politics and Critical Studies on Security as well as book projects for the Popular Culture and World Politics series. Please speak to me in San Francisco or get in touch with me via my institutional email address.
Photo credit: laverrue
