CFP DEADLINE: January 5th 2007 Somatechnics: Bodily (Trans)formations Conference 2007

April 19th-21st 2007 Carlton Crest Hotel Sydney Australia

'Somatechnics' is a newly coined term used to highlight the inextricability and mutually co-constitutive nature of bodies and 'technologies' (in the broadest sense of the term), of soma and techne. This term, then, supplants the logic of the 'and', indicating that technes are not something we add to or apply to the body, but rather, are the means in and through which bodies are constituted, positioned, and lived. As such, the term reflects contemporary understandings of the body as the incarnation or materialization of historically and culturally specific discourses and practices, and of activities involving bodies - in medicine, information technology, education, the arts, surveillance, science, law - as fundamentally formative and transformative, cultural and social.

Abstracts (approx 500 words) are invited for papers/performances/panels for the Somatechnics Conference, hosted by the Department of Critical and Cultural Studies, Macquarie University, to be held in Sydney, Australia on April 19th-21st 2007.

This is the third in a series of bi-annual conferences: previous conferences were Body Modification: Changing Bodies, Changing Selves(2003), and Body Modification Mark II (2005) (see: www.ccs.mq.edu.au/bodmod ).

Possible topics include:

Technologies of gender/race/class/etc Body modification/sculpting Medical technologies Enhancement technologies Transgender practices and procedures genital surgeries Cosmetic/reconstructive surgeries Obesity, anorexia, and/or other body 'pathologies' Cyborgs Nanotechnology Euthanasia ageing Reproductive technologies Transplant technologies BIID and other 'pathologies' reproduction population control Disability Incarceration Racialization Torture Terrorism 'harm' War Sport Performance art Visual art Religious rituals Multi-media technologies Sense culture

Abstracts (of no more than 500 words) should be sent, as email attachments, to: nikki.sullivan [at] scmp.mq.edu.au AND smurray [at] unwired.com.au no later that 5th January 2007.

Further information

Nikki Sullivan Department of Critical and Cultural Studies Macquarie University North Ryde New South Wales 2109 Australia

Conference Website: http://www.somatechnics.org/conference

Contact Email: nikki.sullivan [AT] scmp.mq.edu.au