CFP: Breaking Boundaries: Body Politics and the Dynamics of Difference, Deadline Dec. 3, 2010

Sarah Lawrence College
Bronxville, New York
March 4-5, 2011

Keynote Speaker: Marilyn Wann, Fat Activist and Author of "Fat!So?"

Also featuring: Susan Schweik, Author of The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public

When it comes to “the body,” the definition of normal is fluid and changes across cultures and time. In each context, there are those who have been exploited and oppressed because they do not fit prevailing notions of beauty. This conference will explore the body politics around those with “deviant” bodies.

This conference will address these and other questions:

What are the dominant narratives and perceptions about beauty and bodies? How do these perceptions affect public policy around issues of health, civil rights, education, and accessibility? How do those whose bodies do not fit into the “proper” cultural norms challenge attitudes, laws and perceptions? How have they negotiated for and found power in unwelcoming environments, both now and in the past? How do the categories of race, class, gender, sexuality, age and disability complicate prevailing ideas about embodiment? Are there and have there been communities and cultures that have welcomed those whose bodies are currently perceived as deviant in dominant popular discourse? And, what is the relationship between promoting and continuing the dominant discourse and capitalist consumer culture?

Specific topics may include, but are not limited to:

Representations of deviant bodies in popular culture Social justice and fat and disability activism

Intersectionality: race, gender, class, sexuality and the body

HAES: Health at Every Size

Stigma

Feminism and the body

Social construction of disability

Objectification and commodification of the deviant body Fiction and the deviant body Language and the body Deviant bodies across cultures and time

Please email a brief abstract and c.v./resume to:
Tara James
Women’s History Graduate Program
Sarah Lawrence College
Bronxville, NY 10708
Email: tjames@sarahlawrence.edu
Phone: 914-395-2405

Tara Elise James
Associate Director
Women's History Graduate Program
Sarah Lawrence College

Comments