THIRD ANNUAL GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE IN COMPARATIVE STUDIES
Hosted by the Department of Comparative Studies
http://comparativestudies.osu.edu
The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH USA
16 January 2009

As our lives are increasingly characterized by disembodied and mediated experiences, how is it that the individual comes to know pain and pleasure? For the person in pain, Elaine Scarry famously argues, “‘having pain’ may come to be thought of as the most vibrant example of what it is to ‘have certainty,’ while … hearing about pain may exist as the primary model of what it is ‘to have doubt.’” In other words, she argues that certainty is contingent upon the experiential reality of the body. Though Scarry is specifically addressing pain in the context of torture here, this same logic might be extended to pleasure – that to ‘have certainty’ of pleasure necessitates embodied experience. In terms of seeking certainty, Aristotle noted in Nicomachean Ethics “bodily pleasures are pursued by people who are incapable of experiencing other pleasures.” In an age, however, when individuals are increasingly divorced from their bodies, how are pain and pleasure known or understood?

To this end, we are seeking graduate student papers that look to address the body in pain and pleasure from a variety of (inter)disciplinary perspectives. We welcome projects that consider the following topics or others, as they illuminate our inquiry:

• Biopolitics and governmentality
• History and historiography
• Nation, state, and nation-state
• Religion
• Art, film, and literature
• Theatre and dance
• Popular culture
• Pornography and erotica
• Trauma
• The family
• Psychoanalysis
• Gender and sexuality
• Substance and substance abuse
• Terror and terrorism
• Crises and disasters
• Performance
• Philosophy and ethics
• BDSM
• Environmentalism
• Technology
• Race
• Illness, medicine, and death
• Justice and the law
• Sport and exercise

Please send 250-word abstracts for individual 20-minute papers (or panels of 3-4 presenters) to compstudiesconference@gmail.com. The deadline for submissions is November 10th, 2008. Accepted applicants will be notified by November 30th. In the body of the e-mail, please include the following information:

Presenter(s) name(s):
Institutional affiliation(s):
Level of graduate study:
Title of paper:
Contact information: