Please see attached announcement.
-------- Original Message --------
Jason
Morris
PhD
Student, Cultural Studies Program
George
Mason University
703.403.2290
(cell)
Ecological
Inequalities and Interventions:
Contemporary
Environmental Practices
The
Cultural Studies Student Organizing Committee (SOC) of George Mason
University invites paper proposals for our 5th annual Cultural Studies
Graduate Student Conference. The Conference will take place on Friday,
September 23, 2011 at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Dr.
Timothy Luke, Chair and University Distinguished Professor in the
Department of Political Science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, will
deliver the keynote address.*
Call
for Papers
“Since
most of history’s giant trees have already been cut down, a new Ark
will have to be constructed out of the materials that a desperate
humanity finds at hand in insurgent communities, pirate technologies,
bootlegged media, rebel science and forgotten utopias.”
(Mike
Davis, “Who Will Build the Ark?”, New Left Review, January 2010)
The
current and future impacts of ongoing, globalized environmental crises
have animated scholars, activists, and professionals from a wide
variety of disciplines and backgrounds and generated a burgeoning field
of work that seeks to come to grips with the ecologies of the present
as well as the possible ecologies of the future. This conference will
provide a forum for emerging scholars and practitioners involved in
cultural studies, environmental studies, the arts and
humanities, public policy, political ecology and related fields to
engage in conversations regarding contemporary and prospective
environmental practices and politics.
We
seek to engage in efforts to develop a deeper understanding of human
interventions – in the forms of work, art, and politics – into the
environment. We also wish to examine the ways in which concepts such as
“nature” and “human practice” inform, articulate with and determine one
another. “Ecological Inequalities and Interventions: Contemporary
Environmental Practices” will offer an appropriately interdisciplinary
forum for work in this emerging area of inquiry.
Possible
paper topics include:
·
Environmental activism: past, present, and future
·
Labor, Nature and Culture
·
Marxism and Ecology
·
Ecology as critique and self-critique
·
Creative expression and Ecology
·
Neoliberalism and Discourses of Sustainability
·
Ecology and the Politics of the Global South
·
Environmentalism and Citizenship
·
Green economies
·
Academic interventions and public policy
We
welcome proposals for traditional academic paper presentations, as well
as alternative formats such as panel discussions, workshops, and film
screenings. In addition we hope to publish select conference papers in
an edited volume or curated journal issue.
Abstracts
of 300 words and a current CV should be sent to Jason Morris (jmorrisf
AT masonlive DOT gmu DOT edu) by 10 June 2011. Please include the
title, presenter’s name, institutional affiliation, contact
information, A/V requests and any other special needs required.
Abstracts should be sent as .doc, .rtf or PDF file attachments.
*Biography
of Dr. Timothy Luke
In
addition to his duties within the Department of Political Science Dr.
Luke serves as Program Chair of the Government and International
Affairs Program in the School of Public and International Affairs, and
Director of the Center for Digital Discourse and Culture. In 2003, he
also initially organized and directed the new interdisciplinary PhD
program in Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought at
Virgina Tech. His areas of research include environmental politics and
cultural studies as well as comparative politics, international
political economy, and modern critical social and political theory. He
is the author of numerous monographs and articles including: A Journal
of No Illusions: Telos, Paul Piccone, and the Americanization of
Critical Theory, Timothy W. Luke and Ben Agger, eds. (New York: Telos
Press Publishing, forthcoming 2011); There is a Gunman on
Campus: Tragedy and Terror at Virginia Tech, Ben Agger and Timothy W.
Luke, eds. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), Museum
Politics: Powerplays at the Exhibition (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2002); Capitalism, Democracy, and Ecology: Departing
from Marx (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), The Politics of
Cyberspace, co-edited with Chris Toulouse (New York: Routledge, 1998),
and Ecocritique: Contesting the Politics of Nature, Economy, and
Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).