Friday 16th November - Sunday 18th November 2007
Salzburg, Austria

Call for Papers
This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary project aims to explore the challenging and paradoxical nature of the 'erotic'. It has three overarching aims:

* To explore the erotic in respect of the range and diversity of sexual identities, relations, orientations, acts and behaviours.
* To explore the erotic as an ethical, political, social, cultural and philosophical terrain of study
* To explore the erotic through thinkers beyond disciplines or fields as a subject that is elusive, ever present but often absent in both social and intellectual discourse.

Whilst it is possible to see the erotic as being increasingly specialised within disciplinary boundaries, this has the consequence failing to recognise cross-disciplinary connections which centre on this theme and neglecting important historical and cultural perspectives on the development of the 'erotic' as a locus of attention. It also involves the erotic in being subsumed by those disciplines and narrowly defined, when one of its strengths is precisely that it cuts across and between disciplinary vocabularies to provide new synergies, eclectic domains and inter-disciplinary possibilities.

The conference and the project aims to instigate inter-disciplinary dialogues which will simultaneously explore the historical and cultural development of the 'erotic' in human societies and enable creative and imaginative inter-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives on its forms, meanings and manifestations.

Papers, presentations, reports and workshops are welcome on any of the following themes:

* the erotic and identity: disability, ethnicity, gender, class and otherness
* the erotic, law and crime
* the erotic in education and the education of the erotic
* the erotic in popular culture
* the erotic in literature and on the screen
* the erotic and its relationship to pornography and exploitation
* the erotic, ethics and philosophy
* the erotic and the eroticised or de-eroticised body
* the erotic: absence, control and excess
* the erotic and sexual representation
* the erotic in media - film, print, tv, internet
* the erotic and (neo-)colonialism
* the erotic as the making of the exotic
* the erotic and the phenomenological

This is only an indicative list; papers will be considered on other related themes. Papers, reports on research and workshop proposals ranging from academic papers to forms of performance are acceptable providing they demonstrate academic rigour and clear thinking in their approach to the erotic.

Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 10th August 2007. If your paper is accepted for presentation at the conference, an 8 page draft paper should be submitted by Friday 19th October 2007.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to both the Organising Joint Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, PDF or RTF formats.

Paul Reynolds
Reader in Sociology and Social Philosophy
Department of Social and Psychological Sciences
Edge Hill University
Ormskirk, Lancashire L39 4QP
Email: reynoldp@edgehill.ac.uk

Rob Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House, Wroslyn Road
Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HR
Email: er3@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of a larger series of ongoing conferences entitled Critical Issues, which aim to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting.

All papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be published as an ISBN eBook. Selected papers accepted for and presented at this conference will be published in a hard copy themed volume.

For further details about the project please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ci/erotic/er.htm

For further details about the conference please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ci/erotic/er3/cfp.html