CFP for conference "Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction"

7th Global Conference
Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction
Sunday 15th July 2012 – Tuesday 17th July 2012
Mansfield College, Oxford
Call for Papers:
This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary project aims to
explore what it is to be human and the nature of human community in
cyberculture, cyberspace and science fiction. In particular, the
project will explore the possibilities offered by these contexts for
creative thinking about persons and the challenges posed to the nature
and future of national, international, and global communities.
Papers, short papers, and workshops are invited on issues related to
any of the following themes;
 * the relationship between cyberculture, cyberspace, science fiction
 * cyberculture, cyberpunk and the near future: utopias vs. dystopias
 * science fiction and cyberpunk as a medium for exploring the nature
of persons
 * humans and cyborgs; the synergy of humans and technology; changing
views of the body
 * human and post-human concepts in digital arts and cinema
 * digital artistic practices and aesthetics
 * mobile media, place and the telematic body
 * bodies in cyberculture; body modifications; from apes to androids
– electronic evolution; biotechnical advances and the impact of
life, death, and social existence
 * artificial intelligence, robotics and biomedia: self-organization
as a cultural logic
 * gender and cyberspace: new gender, new feminisms, new
masculinities
 * cyberpunk and steampunk: exploring the differences and
similarities
 * online cultures of virtual worlds and videogames and its impact on
science fiction
 * interactive storytelling, emergent narratives, transmedia
storytelling
 * nature, enhancing nature, and artificial intelligence; artificial
life, life and information systems
 * networked living in future city, new urban lifestyles
 * human and post-human politics; cyborg citizenship and rights;
influence of political technologies
 * boundaries, frontiers and taboos in cyberculture
The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed
panel proposals. Papers will also be considered on any related theme.
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 13th January 2012. If
an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should
be submitted by Friday 11th May 2012. Abstracts should be submitted
simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word,
WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this
order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract,
e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 key words
E-mails should be entitled: VISIONS7 Abstract Submission.
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using
footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as
bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is
planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be
included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all
paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a
week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be
lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative
electronic route or resend.
Joint Organising Chairs:
Daniel Riha
Charles University
Prague,
Czech Republic
Email: rihad@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Freeland, Oxfordshire,
United Kingdom
Email: cyber7@inter-disciplinary.net
The conference is part of the ‘Critical Issues’ series of
research projects run by Inter-Disciplinary.Net. It aims to bring
together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and
explore various discussions which are innovative and challenging. All
papers accepted for and presented at the conference are eligible for
publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go
forward for development into 20-25 page chapters for publication in a
themed dialogic ISBN hard copy volume.
For further details of the project, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/cyber/visions-of-humanity/
For further details of the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/cyber/visions-of-humanity/call-for-papers/
Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and
we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel
or subsistence.

New CPF a symposium Ben-Gurion University; Horizon of Reception Studies

The Horizon of Reception Studies: Literature and Beyond

Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Research Symposium

Tuesday, 12 June 2012

Ben Gurion University

The Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics

This forum invites presentations by doctoral students and recent PhDs examining literature as part of a continuous range of other communicative and artistic media, focusing on the ‘receiving end’ of the communicative act: the reader, the viewer, or the listener. We will be particularly interested in exploring and debating how methodologies of reception study can be used to shed light on the myriad ways in which audiences make meaning out of diverse genres of mass communication, whether film, TV-series, talk-shows, news, songs, blogs, or fan fiction, as well as literature. Are there definable differences between how we should approach reception of textual, visual, or audio media (not to speak of the various combinations between them)? And can we achieve a new synthesis between theoretical insights in each field?
The symposium aims at bringing together scholars interested in audience and/or individual reception from all disciplines within the humanities and social sciences (literary scholars, historians and book historians, media and communication researchers, as well as psychologists and anthropologists - and this list is by no means closed) to share not only specific case studies, but also the methodological and theoretical challenges they encounter in their work. We hope that the interdisciplinary exchange will address some of these difficulties in innovative ways and allow researchers to move inquiry beyond disciplinary divides to find mutually beneficial concepts, ideas, and perhaps even collaborations.


Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• psychological and social aspects of reception
• the shifting place of literature among other media
• the history and the future of the alliance between literature and mass print
• social hierarchies, cultural and symbolic capital issues in reception
• “high-brow” and “low-brow” media orientations
• viewer-oriented vs. reader-oriented criticism and theories of reception
• reception and audiences of singer-songwriters vs. poets
• theorizing fan fiction and fan art as reception
• the usefulness and limitations of approaching reception of media as “consumption of media”

Please submit an abstract of 250-300 words as an attachment along with contact information, institutional affiliation, academic degree, email and phone number, by December 20, 2011 to shlomi.deloia@gmail.com and olga.kuminova@gmail.com

The academic Holy Grail

We're back, trying to steer the floundering ship of the humanities through the turbulent waters of the global crisis...In other words, we're back and the coffee in Webb is still terrible.

Let's open the new year with congratulating two graduate students who have reached the Holy Grail of the academy: publications!

Shawn Edrei has two essays accepted for inclusion in two prestigious anthologies:
The first is The Devil that We Know: Evil in American Pop Culture, to be published by Praeger/ABC-Clio, 2013. His paper is on evil video games, the subject that seems to me a little tautological since as my kids were growing up, I believed ALL video games were evil.

The second is Issues of Control: Reading and Playing Video Games, probably from McFarland. Shawn's essay, not surprisinly, deals with the narratological aspects of the player's control.

Tom Shapira's book The Cure for Postmodern Blues is slated to be published by Sequart Research and Publication Group. Tom also gave a very interesting talk at the Future of Humanity conference at Van Leer Institute.

I invite both Shawn and Tom to share details of their work with our community. But I just wanted to say that we are very proud of you. Way to go, guys!  

Scientism, Evaluation, Persecution

Tel Aviv University Faculty of Humanities Department of English and American Literature Department of French

Universite Populaire Jacques Lacan Founded by Jacques-Alain Miller Workshop "Shoah, Zionism and the 'Extreme Lacanian Left'"

Invite you to an encounter with

Agnes Aflalo, Psychoanalyst
Member of the ECF and AMP
Author of L'Assassinat manqué de la psychanalyse

and

Gil Caroz, Psychoanalyst
Member of the NLS, ECF, and AMP
President, Euro-Federation of Psychoanalysis

On the topic
"Scientism, Evaluation, Persecution"

Sunday, November 13, 2011
10:00 - 14:00
Tel Aviv University
Gilman Building Room 496

Will look forward to greeting you

Professor Shirley Sharon-Zisser Chair, Department of English and American Studies Tel Aviv University	Marco Mauas Coordinator, UPJL Workshop on "Shoah, Zionism and the 'Extreme Lacanian Left'"
Professor Hava Bat Zeev Shyldkrot Chair, Department of French Tel Aviv University