Approaching Posthumanism and the Posthuman

by J J Cohen

I've promised to share the CFP for this conference, and so, I am sharing. It would be great to have a substantial medieval and early modern presence at the event, considering the presentism that often inheres in the topic.

Approaching Posthumanism and the Posthuman

Conference and Doctoral Workshop

June 4-6, 2015 – St. Maurice, Switzerland

Keynote Speakers:

Cary Wolfe, Rice University

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, George Washington University

Margrit Shildrick, Linköping University

Stefan Herbrechter, Coventry University

Organizers:

Deborah Madsen, Manuela Rossini, Kimberly Frohreich, and Bryn Skibo-Birney

CALL FOR PAPERS

A highly topical and sometimes contentious notion, posthumanism continues to spark debates as to how it is and should be defined, particularly in relation to humanism. One might ask whether the posthuman is merely an imaginative, literary, and/or theoretical figure or if we are already posthuman. Is posthumanism simply “after the human” or does it speak to a being beyond, above, within, encompassing, and surpassing what we currently know as “the human”? Moreover, even if we recognize that posthumanism is inextricably bound to and wound up in humanist discourse, does the posthuman figure effectively open up alternative perspectives and positions from which to question, to destabilize, and to decenter the human?

These questions permeate contemporary literature, film and television, comic books, video games, social media, philosophical and theoretical essays in which posthuman figures abound. From avatars and cyborgs to clones and zombies, the posthuman appears continually to challenge the line dividing the human from the nonhuman. Whether blurring the distinction between human and machine, human and animal, organic and inorganic, or the living from the dead, whether destabilizing gender, sexuality, race, class, age, the mind/body dichotomy, or species categorization, posthumanism points to the ways in which (the exclusion of) the Other is necessary to the self-bounded identity of the human(ist) subject. More than a contemporary issue, posthumanism appears whenever “humanness” or anthropocentrism is in crisis, and critics have accordingly noted the presence of posthumanist thought, themes, and figures not only in postmodern literature but in much earlier literary periods as well.

The aim of this conference is both to explore the multiple ways in which posthumanism in its various configurations questions, complicates, destabilizes, and “haunts” humanism and the human, as well as to discuss theoretical approaches to posthumanism and/or the posthuman. In addition to inhabiting a wide range of literary periods, genres, and media, posthumanism can also be said to blur the seemingly well-defined borders between humanities disciplines, lending itself to interdisciplinary approaches involving literary and cultural studies, media studies, animal studies, and fields like the digital, medical, and environmental humanities, as well as drawing from multiple theoretical frameworks such as feminism, gender studies, queer theory, race theory, disability studies, postcolonial studies, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction.

Please send 300 word abstracts to Kimberly Frohreich (kimberly.frohreich@unige.ch) and Bryn Skibo-Birney (bryn.skibo@unige.ch) by September 15, 2014. Paper topics can address (but are not limited to) any of the above areas and themes across disciplines, periods, genres, and media. An additional list of potential paper topics is below.

Posthumanist discourse and/or figures in medieval, early modern, modern or contemporary literature

Posthuman figures in film and television

Posthuman figures in comic books and graphic novels

Posthuman figures in contemporary media forms, e.g. video games, social media, etc.

Posthumanism and critical animal studies

Digital humanities and posthumanism

Medical humanities and posthumanism

Environmental humanities and posthumanism

Postcolonial posthumanism

Posthumanism and the Gothic (then and now)

Posthumanism and fantasy, science fiction and/or speculative fiction

Virtual versus embodied reality

Monsters, “freaks,” and/or superheroes

Metamorphoses and interspecies being/becoming

Posthuman(ist) subjectivities

Embodying posthumanism or the posthuman body

The posthumous

Language and the posthuman

Posthumanism and gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, and/or class

Anthropomorphism

Posthuman politics and ethics