The Body and Embodiment

The Body and Embodiment

Deadline: 10/10/2013

The Body and Embodiment Mini-Conference, Eastern Sociological Society, February 20-23, Baltimore Hilton

The significance of body studies has been demonstrated in its first few decades by the plethora of attention the body has received from feminist theory, cultural studies, queer theory, and critical race studies; the expansive treatment of the body’s representations in nearly all areas of cultural life; a renewed interest in embodied experience and phenomenology; and a rethinking of the materiality of the body in disability studies, science studies, health and illness, and social studies of medicine. New issues in the field include the role of affect in embodiment theory, the renewal of interest in ontology, the rise of new materialism, post-positivism and critical realism, a rethinking of the legacies of postmodernism, and transformations in the relation of the humanities to the natural sciences. This mini-conference will draw attention to contemporary sociological work on the body, addressing such themes as:

- the body and marginalized populations, and the embodiment of race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, nation, or how does the sociology of the body contribute to understanding inequality?

- sociological engagement with phenomenology, perception and embodiment

- health and illness, bioethics and the sociology of the body

- body projects and body modifications, including body-machine interfaces

- critical engagements with biology, epigenetics, and the neurosciences as they relate to embodiment

- assemblage and affect theories of the body and their applications

- the new materialisms and body studies

- the body in disability studies, including the prosthetics and assistive technologies related to disability, chronic illness and mobility, the role of the body in conceptualizing disability, and bodily variation

- transembodiment and queer embodiment

- fat studies

- culture, aesthetics, performance, art and the body

- the body and social theory now

- the body and “invisible work” - invisible, unpaid, unacknowledged, and under-valued work

Other topics related to the sociology of the body - and interdisciplinary body studies - are also welcome. Please send abstracts of up to 350 words directly to the mini-conference organizer, Victoria Pitts-Taylor, at vpitts@gc.cuny.edu. Submissions must have the subject line ESS Body Conference and be submitted by October 10, 2013. Abstracts that are not accepted will be forwarded to the main conference for general submission.