Call for Papers: "Zones of Representation: Photographing Contested Landscapes"

Contemporary West Coast Perspectives on Photography and Photograph-Based Media 

SF Camerawork, San Francisco, April 23, 2016

Deadline: January 8, 2016

Contemporary global events and phenomena continue to shape visual interpretations of economic, social, environmental, and political geographies, and to disrupt conceptions of region, nation, citizenship, and community. “Zones of Representation” will consider how photographers and time-based media artists have responded to transformations in the global landscape through new ideas about the function of photographic media, and the shifting roles of makers and audiences. We want to know: how can novel visual practices disrupt traditional narratives of spatial representation?; in what unique ways do artists in time-based media acknowledge and respond to the historical contribution of their medium in defining, producing, and perpetuating these same narratives?; what new connections do these practices demonstrate and reveal?; and, in what ways do contemporary technologies, modes of distribution, and access impact interactions with the land?

We invite papers that address the expanded role of photography and time-based media in global landscape discourses and social fabrics. Proposals on contemporary topics or new perspectives on historic materials are encouraged. Proposals from image makers are also welcome. Please send a 300-word proposal, a one-paragraph biographical statement, and full contact information to zonesofrepresentation@gmail.com by January 8, 2016. 

“Zones of Representation” aims to connect artists, historians, curators and arts professionals, and students in Northern California, facilitating a regional network for the latest art historical scholarship. The symposium is organized by Makeda Best (California College of the Arts), Bridget Gilman (Santa Clara University), and Kathy Zarur (California College of the Arts). It is presented in collaboration with SF Camerawork and is co-sponsored by the Northern California Art Historians (NCAH), a College Art Association affiliated society.

CFP: Moving Cities: Contested Views on Urban Life - Krakau 11/15

European Sociological Association Research Network 37 - Urban Sociology

10.11.2015, Krakau 

Deadline: 29.01.2016 

Contemporary cities are traversed by a diversity of movements, making them very special locus for analysing society. The ESA's Research Network 37 - Urban Sociology - coordination team is working to stimulate scientific debate within the area of urban sociology. In times of digital information, conferences are very important spaces to debate current issues, showcase emerging research and discuss new approaches. 

The ESA Research Network 37 - Urban Sociology - Midterm Conference will take place at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland, June, 29th July, 1st, 2016. Our will is to create a cross-disciplinary space of scientific debate open to sociologists and scientists from other disciplines interested in analysing and understanding urban life in moving cities around the globe. We welcome papers from young and senior academics developing research on cities and urban life, expecting that everyone can take useful insights to their works from their participation in this conference. We hope that this meeting can be a starting point for joint research and networking. 

The conference is organised in five tracks (see below) and open sessions. Authors are invited to submit their abstract either to one of the five tracks (see below) or to the open sessions. Please submit one abstract to a single session only. 

Abstracts in English of maximum 300 words should be submitted to esamovingcities@gmail.com until December, 15th. Please indicate in the subject of the e-mail either if you are proposing a paper for discussion in a specific track (identifying the number of the track) or to an open session (indicating Open Session). Notifications of acceptance will be sent by January, 29th. 

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CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: 

Saskia Sassen, Columbia University in the City of New York Talja 

Blokland, Humboldt University of Berlin 

Ayo Mansaray, University of East London 

Jacek Gadecki, University of Science and Technology in Krakow 

Track 1 - Methodological approaches to the moving city 

Track 2- Moving cities: between structure and agency. Urban institutions and the pop-up city 

Track 3- Social processes in the globalised moving city 

Track 4- Dynamics and meanings of public spaces in the moving city 

Track 5- Changing Neighbourhoods in the Moving City 

If your work does not fit in these tracks, you can submit your proposal to the open sessions. 

POSTERS

In this conference scientific posters are used as tools for networking. We welcome poster proposals (abstracts in English of max. 300 words) presenting draft projects and ideas for future projects from teams and individual researchers who are looking for research partners. The organization will print and display the selected posters in a visible place and will assign specific times to meet the authors.

Exhibition, Istanbul: Passion, Joy, Fury

11 December 2015 - 30 April 2016, Maxxi Contemporary Art Museum, Rome. 

The passion for creativity - The joy that emerges from achieving objectives- The fury of the city

An exploration through major works and new artistic production with in-depth examinations and first-hand testimony, Istanbul: Passion, Joy, Fury tackles the dynamics, the changes and the cultural demands of contemporary Turkey, a bridge between the western and eastern worlds. Starting out with the recent protests at Gezi Park, the exhibition examines five major themes: urban transformations; political conflicts and resistance; innovative models of production; geopolitical urgencies; hope, by the works of invited artists and architects.

curated by Hou Hanru with Ceren Erdem, Elena Motisi and Donatella Saroli
http://www.fondazionemaxxi.it/en/events/istanbul-passione-gioia-furore/

 

CfP: Masculinity and the Metropolis

Deadline for submissions: 20 December 2015.

This interdisciplinary conference, hosted by the University of Kent, takes as its starting point the range of complex and contradictory engagements between masculinity and the developing metropolis since the beginning of the twentieth century. Throughout this period the metropolis maintained a paradoxical status as a place of liberation and possibility, but simultaneously as one of alienation, sin, and oppression. What do responses to the modern city in visual art, film, and literature tell us about masculinity as it both asserts itself and registers its own anxieties, and subsequent representations of the city? In what ways do these contrasting positive and negative conditions, which encouraged complex responses, fit within the framework of masculinity?

In the wake of industrialization artistic reactions to modern urbanity were spurred on by the rapid growth of cities and the transition from rural to metropolitan living. This caused socio-cultural changes and a diverse range of masculinities to develop within the metropolis in terms of race, class, and sexualities. How has masculinity been visualized with the construction of this modern cityscape and ideas of the urban? And later in the 20th Century, how did artists registering with ideas of deindustrialization or feminist and queer art forms affect or approach theories of masculinity and the urban? Can we construct an overarching lineage on this relationship? As one starting point, the so-called “crisis of masculinity”, and the way it is represented in various media, can be connected in interesting ways to the rise of the metropolis. This conference will bring together scholars from varying fields in order to begin a dialogue regarding the way theories of masculinity and the metropolis have developed in tandem, charting their evolution from the beginning of the 20th Century to the present day. Scholars with diverse interests and approaches to this broad subject are welcome with papers concerning various media within the 20th and 21st centuries.

Examples of subjects invited for submission include, but are in no way limited to:

- Representations of the male and masculinity in metropolitan society within literature, film, and fine art. Contributions from theatre, and music are also welcome.

- Male as artist or witness to the evolving physical cityscape

- Modern and contemporary responses to 19th Century representations of industrialisation and the urban / de-industrialization and the changing nature of the urban and the masculine

- The metropolis as a milieu of capitalist oppression, and how this can be related to masculinity

- Urban photography and the metropolitan male identity

- Masculine national identities within the cityscape

- Masculinity and the nocturnal city

- The modern or contemporary flâneur

- Cityscape planning and the organization of male spaces

- Destruction of the city and the crisis of masculinity

- The male Superhero

- Masculinities and sexualities within the metropolis

- Depictions of the urban male and race

- The relationship of masculinity to musical sub-cultures / the protest song and music as social commentary

- Feminist, gay, and / or trans artistic reactions to masculinity and the urban

- Masculinity and dramatic performance within the metropolis

Submission process

We invite submissions of short abstracts (300 words) accompanied by a brief biography (100 words). The time slot for presentations is 20 minutes with a 10 minute session for questions at the end of each panel.

Please send your abstract as an attachment (.pdf or .doc) to: masculinemetropolis@gmail.com

The subject of the email should contain the words: “Masculinity and the Metropolis submission”

The body of the email should include author(s) name, affiliation, abstract title and the email address you would like us to use to communicate with you.

Deadline for submissions: 20 December 2015.

Notification of acceptance/non-acceptance: 26 January 2016.

CfP: "Architecture, Democracy and Emotions", Berlin

From Brasilia to post-unification Berlin, from polyclinics in post-war France to the social housing projects in post-Apartheid South Africa, ideas about community and participation on the one hand, and architecture, space and emotions on the other are intimately linked. Picking up where history's spatial turn and architecture's emotional turn have left off, this conference seeks to unravel the close connections between politics, spaces and feelings.

Built environments enabled, (un)intentionally provoked, or methodically educated a variety of feelings towards different forms of democratic governance-here understood as a political claim as well as a practice. They did so through their conception, materiality and use. Architecture rendered ideas about emotions and their value for democratic governance concrete. Ideas about morality and conduct were inscribed into it. This, to some extent, is true for all government and official architecture. Yet particularly after the Second World War and during decolonization, almost all countries, regardless of actual practices of governance, claimed to be democracies or at the very least republics. This conference asks what effect these claims had on the organization of architecture and space, on the feelings that circulated within them and how this contributed to the challenged history of democracy.

The conference on "Architecture, Democracy and Emotions" aims to interrogate three interlinked ways of politicizing and emotionalizing spaces: 1) The way in which democratic governments in the 20th century thought about the sensatory relationship between state and citizens as experienced through architecture; 2) the way citizens experienced their governmental institutions through built space; and 3) how citizens (and among them architects and urban planners) wanted to fashion democratic relations among themselves and with the state by way of built space.

To this end, the organizers invite applications for papers on democratic architecture and emotions since 1945. These can range from the architecture of parliament buildings to the interaction of state and citizens within the physical manifestations of expanding social welfare institutions or attempts at fashioning radically new living arrangements through squatting or communes. Within this context democracy itself should be historicized and grand narratives of democratization and liberalization be challenged. 

Accordingly, the organizers welcome applications dealing with the people's democracies of the Eastern Bloc and with democracies in newly decolonized states to engage in a discussion about the specific global conditions of different 20th century democratic built spaces and the emotions associated with them.

The conference will be held in English.

The Max Planck Institute for Human Development will contribute towards travel and accomodation expenses. If you are interested in participating in this conference, please send us a proposal of no more than 500 words and a short CV by 15 December 2015 to cfp-emotions@mpib-berlin.mpg.de.

Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes.

Master’s programme in Urbanism Studies - Royal Institute of Technology.

This one-year Master’s programme is aimed at graduates from the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and city planning who are specifically concerned with design issues of the public realm and the effects these have on social life and human behaviour. Our focus is to deepen theoretical and design knowledge, changing the mindset of professionals regarding the importance and value of the public realm in the design of our cities.

More Info: https://www.kth.se/en/studies/master/kth/urbanism-studies/description-1.501405    

Call for Membership - GSZ Berlin

In order to focus the increasing research interest into the theme-complex of New Urban Tourism / Touristification / New Mobilities, the Georg-Simmel-Center at HU Berlin is setting up a group for PhD students and Post-Docs.

In the process and in accordance with GSZ`s philosophy which explicitly strives to bring together diverse disciplinary and theoretical-conceptual perspectives. It is planned that publication proposals will be developed and implemented. It is also envisaged that a resulting expert conference should take place.

The meetings are planned to take place at regular intervals, 2-3 times a year. The kick-off meeting will be on 27th. November 2015 at the Georg-Simmel-Center and will be in the form of a workshop, in which the common agenda – depending on the specialist focus of the members – will be more precisely agreed.

Doctorial candidates and post-docs with interest in joining a qualified, professional network are cordially invited to apply by latest 9/11/2015 with a brief description of their research focus (max. 1 page) and tabular resume/ CV (please E-Mail to bueroleitung-gsz@hu-berlin.de). Currently the working group consists of 6 members (Berlin, Hamburg, Potsdam, Trier).

Should you have any further queries please contact Natalie Stors (stors@uni-trier.de) and Christoph Sommer (christoph.sommer@gsz.hu-berlin.de).