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Masculinities are routinely studied in one of two potentially incompatible ways: as exemplifying abstract systems such as patriarchy or kinship; or as concrete, corporeal phenomena. The very term “masculinity” has been examined in such a broad range of contexts that it can sometimes appear as a pure abstract form, some kind of configuration or relation practically devoid of any concrete, defining content. We might say the same thing about “crisis,” a term that seems as persistent as it is exhausted. And even concepts that have become staples of masculinity studies, like “hegemony” or “performativity,” seem to waver between concrete specificity and theoretical abstraction. This conference will explore masculinity as an idea or a concept that operates across, or at least in relation to, a distance that may or may not be bridgeable: between the systemic and the corporeal, the abstract and the concrete. With these dilemmas in mind, we invite theoretical, cultural, or literary analyses of masculinities in the US and/or the UK since World War II – a period in which differentiated masculinities proliferate for specifically national and transnational reasons, including global waves of decolonization, changing patterns of migration, the emergence of “new” subaltern subjects demanding social, cultural, and political recognition, as well as conservative reactions against these developments. We especially encourage papers with comparative and/or transnational emphases. Possible topics might involve (but need not be limited to) any of the following:
• Masculinities and/as Systems (which systems – military, symbolic, technological, post- or neocolonial, liberal or neoliberal, political or bio-political – can masculinity embody, exemplify, or perform?)
• Masculinities as Bodies – Bodies as Systems – Systems as Bodies
• Masculinities and/as Structures (structures of feeling, experience, possibility)
• Masculinities and/as Concepts (textual/narrative/discursive, historical/temporal, ethnic/social)
• Masculinities and/as Power (hegemony/kinship/relation to the symbolic order)
• Masculinities and/as "Crises" (an exhausted abstraction?)
Please send an abstract of no more than 500 words by February 15th, 2012 to both Prof. Dr. Stefan Horlacher
(stefan.horlacher@mailbox.tu-dresden.de) AND Prof. Kevin Floyd (kfloyd@kent.edu).
This conference will take place in Dresden, Germany, June 13-15, 2012. It is sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Dresden Technical University, and Kent State University. Funding will be available to subsidize travel expenses.
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