Please see the call for papers for the 4th (!) annual Popular Culture and World Politics Conference at the University of Lapland. Many thanks to Laura and Julian for organizing and hosting what will prove to be a great event!
Popular Culture and World Politics IV (PCWP 4): Call for Papers
23-25 November 2011 at University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Lapland, Finland
We study popular culture to understand the representational practices through which power relations are constructed worldwide, and grasp the aesthetic practices through which the intolerability of power relations are given political expression, and out of which new political subjectivities and peoples are brought into being. Deconstructing the former is integral to the processes of struggle by which we can contribute to the composition of the latter.
The Department of Politics and International Relations (Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lapland) is pleased to invite you to continue this effort at the Popular Culture and World Politics Conference (PCWP 4) to be held in Rovaniemi, Finland, 23-25 November 2011. The conference is the fourth in a groundbreaking series of annual events that began in the University of Bristol in 2008. Since then the series has developed into an exciting annual event which attracts scholars, practitioners and artists from throughout the world and across the disciplines and fields to debate and discuss the world politics of popular culture.
This year, the conference will be held on the ultra-northern verges of Europe, in Lapland, which occupies liminal space in-between popular imaginaries of Western modernity and Arctic wilderness.
The three-day conference will attract papers and presentations from thinkers whose work is inspiring contemporary forays into the relations between politics and culture across the humanities, social sciences and the arts. Invited keynote speakers include Michael J. Shapiro (Hawai'i), Tiziana Terranova (Napoli, Italy), and Scott Wilson (Kingston, UK).
With this Call for Papers we invite participation in all possible forms. In addition to panels and individual papers, we welcome proposals for art exhibitions, screenings, performances or other modes of expression. In so doing we hope to build the event into a rich experience which involves not only talking about popular culture but also experiencing, sensing, feeling, producing and, in most cases, enjoying it.
Suggested themes for panels, papers and other presentations include (but are not limited to):
- Challenging the theory/practice divide
- Aesthetics and the constitution of new subjectivities
- Decolonizing methodologies
- Popular culture and climate change
- The politics of Santa Claus
- Representation and race
- Senses, sensibilities and the redistribution of the sensible order
- Art and political activism
- Popularization of indigenous cultures
- Imaginaries of hope in contemporary politics
- Aesthetics of security
- War and media
- The politics of cinema
- Digital aesthetics
- The biopolitics of popular culture
All other themes will be entertained too.
If you are interested in attending the conference please Click here to submit a brief abstract of your paper, panel proposal (including the names and titles of each presentation) or artistic contribution (max. 450 words). The deadline for abstract submissions is June 30th.
More information about practical issues and forms for advance registration will be added on this website by the end of May.
For any queries about the scientific contents of the conference, please contact:
Julian Reid (julian.reid(at)ulapland.fi) and Laura Junka-Aikio (laura.junka-aikio(at)ulapland.fi)
For any queries about practical issues, please contact:
Rovaniemi-Lapland Congresses
University of Lapland
PO Box 122
96101 Rovaniemi, Finland
Tel. +358 40 484 4462 and +358 40 721 8260
Fax +358 16 362 940
Email: congress@ulapland.fi
Original site can be found here.
Image credit: Eemil Karila and Julija Goyd
