The Brandeis English Department is holding its sixth annual graduate
student conference.
“Rated X: Perversion and Exclusion”
Keynote Speaker: Lee Edelman, Chair, English Department, Tufts University
In celebration of the 36th anniversary of the initial publication of
Foucault’s first volume of The History of Sexuality, the 6th Annual
Brandeis Graduate student conference will explore the ins and outs of
various forms of an X-Rating. Being Rated-X implies being marked as
other/as outside/as unacceptable as well as being marked as
desirable/as visible/as exceptional. Rated-X implies the nakedness of
porn and the openness that comes with that. For some there is
liberation in this openness. For others there is only exposure. This
necessitates the question of whether certain populations are made
disposable through exile or instead through visibility; through the
erasure or marking of bodies as other. We would like to use this
conference to explore some slippage—between these two (and more) types
of identification with otherness: the transgression that empowers and
enables pleasure versus the polarizing otherness that disenfranchises
and dehumanizes. Relevant questions include: Who is doing the marking?
Who draws the boundary lines? Does an “X” marking/rating make the
bodies of those so-rated untouchable or excessively available for use;
or does an “X” rating elevate a body to exceptional status or release
it from the strictures of its prescribed social identities? Thus, we
will be accepting papers about the exiled body, porn, and anything in
between.
This conference will be held at Brandeis University, Department of
English, on Friday March 30. Abstracts of 250-500 words are due on
February 15th. Please submit abstracts via email:
brandeis.grad.conference@
Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions:
brandeis.grad.conference@
No comments:
Post a Comment