*** Keynote Speaker announced: Dr. Philip Auslander, Professor, Georgia Tech and author of _Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music_ (U Michigan P, 2006) & _Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture_ (Routledge, 1999). ***

The 2008 Battleground States Conference will explore the still contested and always over-determined term: "the body." The human body, both as a site of agency and subjectivity and as an object of knowledge, features prominently in the work of disciplines from all branches of the academy. However, rather than limit ourselves to this meaning, the Battleground States Conference will be a space in which different but interconnected meanings of "the body" (human bodies, bodies of land, bodies of work, canonical bodies, bodies politic) can be discussed, debated, and explored together. Thus this conference seeks presenters interested in exploring any and all "bodies" in a wide range of academic and activist contexts, using diverse methodologies and voices. We welcome creative interpretations of the conference theme such as, but not limited to, papers on:
* The body as site of social construction, contestation, identity, & authenticity
* The body, ethics, & scientific study
* Bodies in and as visual texts
* Bodies, borderlands, & the body politic
* Consuming and producing bodies in global economies
* Cyborg bodies and postmodern media technologies
* Representations of disability/disease in performance

"Battleground States 2008: The Body & Culture" will take place February 22-23, 2008 on the campus of Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio. Sponsored by Culture Club: The Cultural Studies Scholars' Association of Bowling Green State University, this conference invites proposals from graduate students, as well as artists, activists, filmmakers, educators, and everyday people whose work engages with relationships between the body and culture.

Proposals for presentations will be accepted by regular mail and e-mail to the following:

Battleground States Conference
113 East Hall
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH 43403
E-mail: battlegroundstates@gmail.com
Web: www.battlegroundstates.org

Proposal Guidelines: Proposals of 300 words or less are due by December 15, 2008. Paper proposals should include the presenter's name, institutional affiliation (if applicable), mailing address, phone number, e-mail address, title for the proposed presentation, abstract, A-V equipment requests (see website for logistics of A-V usage), and special needs, if any. Panel proposals are also welcome and should include information and abstracts for all proposed participants and the panel as a whole.