VariAbilities
2025
Representing the Body:
Exploring Unique Representations across Visual Disciplines
To be held
at
Mercy University
11-15 June 2025, New York, U.S.A.
The representation of the body is a fundamental aspect of
human culture, reflecting societal values, norms, and power structures. From
ancient civilizations to contemporary times, various visual disciplines have
been employed to create different forms of bodily representation to convey meaning, express
emotions, to teach and tell stories. This conference seeks to examine a wide
range of representations across multiple visual forms, and across a wide
history, shedding light on the ways in which they intersect, diverge, and
influence one another.
Some of the key questions we
shall address might be: How do different visual disciplines (e.g., medical
imagery and illustration, painting, photography, sculpture) represent the human
body, and what are the implications of these representations? What role does
performance play in bodily representation, and how do various forms of
performance (e.g., doctor/patient interactions, dance, theatre, music) shape
our understanding of the body? How do word-based and image-based portrayals of
the body differ (e.g. literary and cinema, poetry and portraits), and what
insights can be gained by comparing these approaches?
In what ways do
representations of the body reflect social attitudes towards gender, race,
class, VariAbility, and other forms of identity?
These some of the many questions you may wish to explore, you may have others!
Please email
a 300 word proposal to Variabilities8@gmail.com
by 31st January 2025
www.peculiarbodies.org
The event will take place at
the Mercy University Campus in Manhattan, where there is some dorm
accommodation for delegates should they choose it. There is also some scope for
online presentations for those who have travel issues.
Come and
tell us what the “body” means to you.
Please disseminate this call for papers
as widely as you can – thank you!