Call for Papers Archives - Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA)

Call for Papers | Posthuman Futures in Art and Literature: Constellations & Cartographies

June 4, 2021/in Call for Papers /by Pepita

Call for Papers | Soapbox Journal for Cultural Analysis, Special Issue
Posthuman Futures in Art and Literature: Constellations & Cartographies
Deadline: July 19th, 2021

Sponsored by OSL & NICA
In collaboration with Amalia Calderón & J. Bernardo Couto Soares

Call for Contributions:
Posthuman Futures in Art and Literature: Constellations & Cartographies

Critical posthumanism (Braidotti, 2016) works as an analytical tool that exposes restrictive structures of dominant subject-formations as well as expressing alternative representations of subjectivity. At the intersection with New Materialism (van der Tuin, 2012), knowledge production/transmission becomes a discursive and material production of reality: understood as situated and embodied visions (Haraway, 1988).

With the speculative turn (van der Tuin, et al. 2015), epistemic inquiry shifts beyond the limits of human perception, refusing to make a separation from (non)human subjecthood. The emergence of divergent epistemic processes have opened the spectrum of scrutiny to other disciplines, such as spiritual (Griffin, 1978), embodied (Alaimo, 2016) and artistic research (Cotter, 2017). Artistic methodologies are challenging the normative structures of present ontologies, instead formulated as a planetary necessity and method for survival (Haraway, 2016) that can reclaim spaces of contested heritage (Skawennati, 2016) and re-map our materiality.

Art is enacted as a disruptive force beyond hierarchical epistemology that also exposes the violence attached to any methodology. Posthuman art practices have the potentiality to envision a future wherein humanity reformulates its hegemonic ontology in relation to the living, breathing world it coexists with (see the feminist world-building archive Potential Wor(l)ds); and whose power is gathered through alternative knowledge methods in the pursuance of a radical relational planetary existence.

In collaboration with Amalia Calderón & Bernardo Couto Soares, Soapbox Journal will publish a special issue on ‘Cartographies and Constellations of Posthuman Futures’ based on the ‘Posthuman Futures: Art & Literature’ symposium. This publication aims to carry on and disseminate the work brought forth during the symposium, but also invites new contributions from scholars, artists and artist-scholars, both established and emerging. The publication intends to provide an interdisciplinary framework that enhances hybridity in knowledge transmission, spaces for affirmative ethics (Braidotti, 2017) and “thinking with” (de la Bellacasa, 2012) alternative onto-epistemologies: in short, a constellation of divergent voices.

This issue is kindly supported by NICA, Netherland School for Cultural Analysis, and OSL, Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies.

The editorial board welcomes proposals on topics including, but not limited to:

Ecofeminist pedagogies
Speculative fiction & ecopoetics
The science and art: fluctuating borders
Posthuman rights & legislation
Multispecies entanglement
Indigenous studies & reclaiming territories
Queer (in)humanities
Ecological exile & spatial justice
Gaia & systems beyond the Anthropocene
Power/violence in art methods
Care and forms of Caring as earthly resistance
Non-linear hxstory & memory
Storytelling as de-colonial practice
Artistic methods of the non-human
Oppressive art & propaganda narratives
Planetary bodies
Interspecies communication
Neurodiversity as emancipation
Posthuman consciousness & psychedelics
Irrational epistemes of madness, spirituality, nature
Posthuman methodologies

Please make sure to follow the guidelines below when submitting:

Text

We accept academic articles, essays, position papers (max. 3000 words),
We also welcome creative nonfiction, experimental writing, poetry, and other forms of speculative text (max. 1000 words)
Please include a short abstract/introduction to the work (max. 250 words)

Visual Artwork

Email the original file (avoid sending links).
Include a short introduction for context (max. 250 words).

General Guidelines

Include a short bio (e.g., artistic and research background, interest and practice, affiliations, links to own site or previous work, etc.) of max. 200 words.
Add up to six keywords for context.
(e.g., affect, AI, Butler, postmodernism, etc).
Contributions may have a hybrid nature (academic/creative text, visual art), as interdisciplinary methods of knowledge production are encouraged.
Follow MLA referencing and formatting styles where necessary.
Secure permissions from copyright holders for any content that is not your own
(e.g., illustrations, audio, etc).
Mention whether this work has been, or will be, published elsewhere
(e.g., blog, social media, other publishers).
We accept submissions in English, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and German.

Please submit your contributions to submissions@soapboxjournal.net with “Posthuman Futures” in the subject line by 5 July 2021.

About Soapbox

Soapbox is an independent and open-access publishing platform. We aim to elevate different voices and promote fresh perspectives on the cultural objects, phenomena, and concepts shaping our world and experiences. We encourage the exploration of how to practice cultural analysis across a wide variety of media—textual, visual and/or auditive. Our focus is mainly academic research papers, however, as a cultural analysis platform we also encourage the publication of creative work (e.g., creative nonfiction, poetry, visual, graphic or photography series, etc.).

When submitting, you agree to our copyright and publishing terms and conditions.

Image credit: Miles Peacock (https://unsplash.com/@milesypea)

Call for Papers | Professor J.M van Winter Stipend

May 26, 2021/in Call for Papers /by Pepita

Call for Papers | Professor J.M van Winter Stipend
Stichting Gastronomische Bibliotheek
Deadline: 15 August 2021
More information here

The board of the Stichting Gastronomische Bibliotheek invites students and researchers to submit requests for the Professor J.M. van Winter Stipend 2022.
With this stipend, the Stichting Gastronomische Bibliotheek aims to:

commemorate the major contributions of Professor J.M. van Winter, emeritus professor of Medieval History at Utrecht University, to the study of the history of eating and drinking in the Middle Ages;
encourage the use of the History of Food collection of the Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam.

The Stichting Gastronomische Bibliotheek was established in 1993 by Johannes van Dam, Joop Witteveen and Bart Cuperus with the aim of preserving for future generations their private collections on the history of food. In 2005, the Stichting decided to bring their collection under the umbrella of the Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam.

The Professor J.M. van Winter Stipend

Each year, the Stichting Gastronomische Bibliotheek makes a stipend of €1000 available for research that makes particular use of the History of Food collection of the Allard Pierson, the heritage collections held at the University of Amsterdam. This research is intended to throw further light on a particular aspect of the history of food and drink. The stipend is to be used as compensation for travel, accommodation and research costs and must be fully spent within one year of allocation.

The results of the research should be presented in writing in the form of a brief report. The researcher will be invited to give a short presentation of their research during the next Amsterdam Symposium on the History of Food.

Candidates

Students or researchers studying or working at a university in the Netherlands or abroad are eligible to apply.

Applications

Applications should comprise:

a research proposal of no more than 500 words;
a brief CV;
a fully completed application form.

Applications must be submitted by 15 August 2021 to:
Allard Pierson, attn. Ms Charlotte Kleyn, Oude Turfmarkt 129, 1012 GC Amsterdam (e-mail: c.l.kleijn@uva.nl).
Applications will be assessed by Professor J.M. van Winter and the jury of the Joop Witteveen Prize: Ma, Prof. K.J. Cwiertka, S. van der Veen Ma, dr. N. Teughels, M. Hondelink and Dr M. van Roon.

Announcement

The announcement of the recipient of the Professor J.M. van Winter Stipend will take place during the Amsterdam Symposium on the History of Food 2022 on Friday 11 February 2022. All applicants will be contacted before 1 January 2022

Please find the application form here.

Call for Papers | Slavery in the Cultural Imagination: Voices of Dissent in the Neerlandophone Space, 17th-21st Century

April 23, 2021/in Call for Papers /by Pepita

Symposium Slavery in the Cultural Imagination: Voices of Dissent in the Neerlandophone Space, 17th-21st century

Call for Papers: Slavery in the Cultural Imagination: Voices of Dissent in the Neerlandophone Space, 17^th-21^st Century
Deadline: 15 June 2021
Event: University of Amsterdam, Utrecht University | 28-29 October 2021
Conference website here

Confirmed keynotes

Prof Hasana Sharp, McGill University
Prof Marlene Daut, University of Virginia

About the conference

The Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), Amsterdam School of Historical Studies (ASH), and Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON) are co-convening a two-day conference on the cultural imagination of slavery. The conference will be held on Thursday 28 and Friday 29 October 2021 at the universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht. The aims and motivations for the conference can be found below. We warmly invite contributions to this conference. If you are interested in participating, please send a title, an abstract of 250-300 words, and a short bio (under 100 words) to m.g.paijmans@uva.nl by 15 June 2021. We are currently approaching a publisher for the publication of an edited volume based on conference proceedings. If you would be interested to participate in this volume, please, indicate this in your response.

The members of the organising committee are Dr Saskia Pieterse (Utrecht University), Dr Marrigje Paijmans (University of Amsterdam), and Dr Karwan Fatah Black (Leiden University).

The conference offers an educational programme of 2 ECTs for rMA and PhD students (priority will be given to members of OSL, NICA and Huizinga Institute). The registration for this programme opens in September.

Slavery in the Cultural Imagination

Four hundred years of colonial history and involvement in slavery and indenture have left palpable traces in the emotions and imagination of the Dutch (Wekker 2016, Hoving 2012). Yet ‘Dutch exceptionalism’ and the ubiquitous myth of the Netherlands being a ‘colour blind’ country, has heavily glossed over these traces (Mathijsen 2019). The lack of awareness about the role of the Netherlands in slave trade and the anti-black and orientalist cultural production that accompanied it, stems from a complex merger of political, economic and cultural interests that prohibit the prospering of a critical understanding of Dutch racism and its history. This conference acts on the urgent need for knowledge of the Dutch colonial past and its current impact by bridging the compartmentalisation of the study of the Dutch colonial past (Stoler 1995; Snelders 2018). In doing so, it strives to move beyond ‘Dutch exceptionalism’, without ignoring the specific Dutch context.

We wish to facilitate an international, interdisciplinary exchange ofboth visual and textual narratives of the lives and afterlives of slavery and indenture. The scope of the conference encompasses the long historical period from the early modernity to the present-day. Therefore, we warmly invite both scholars working on the early-modern colonial period, scholars working in the domains of postcolonial and decolonial criticism, and all the intersections between these disciplines.

The conference involves Dutch colonialism and its world-wide heritage. This includes all research conducted in the entire ‘Neerlandophone’ space – i.e. the complex linguistic space spanning across former Dutch colonies (De Mull and Boehmer 2012). We warmly welcome research that focuses on written and oral sources in vernacular languages (such as, but not limited to, Sranantongo, Papiamento, Malay etc.), and we encourage proposals from a transnational, comparative perspective.

We especially wish to bring voices of dissent in (post)colonial discourse to the fore: marginalised voices, slavery narratives, (post)colonial interpretations of canonical literary texts touching on colonial history, and decolonial revolutionary poetry. We want to focus on narrativity, as we believe that attention to the layered and polyphonic qualities of narratives can reveal silent and disruptive voices in colonial discourse, as well as collective emotions and imaginations that have not been recorded in most historical sources. We are moreover interested in aesthetic, poetical and storytelling practices, including art, film, performance, philosophy, and other forms of knowledge production that were formed both in the metropolis and by enslaved and indentured peoples.

Indicative topics

How can literary, artistic, philosophical, etc. sources inform us about slavery? How do economic and cultural production intertwine in the context of slavery? Are representations and imaginations of slavery expressed in specific styles or genres? What are the differences and crossovers between slavery narratives in the entire Neerlandophone space?
What have been the effects of language politics by colonial institutions? What is the meaning of silence in the representations and imaginations of slavery?
Whose imagination is involved in the ‘cultural imagination of slavery’? How is whiteness involved in the imagination of slavery?
How do race and gender intersect in representations and imaginations of slavery? How is sexual slavery represented and imagined? What was the role of women in abolitionism?
What characterises neo- or post-slavery narratives in the Neerlandophone space? Which practices and ideas contribute to a decolonisation of the history of slavery in the Neerlandophone space?
Which international theories and methodologies are helpful in studying the representations and imaginations of slavery in the Neerlandophone space? How should theories be adjusted to suit this specific context?

Call for Papers | Food and the Environment: The Dynamic Relationship Between Food Practices and Nature

April 8, 2021/in Call for Papers /by Pepita

Call for Papers | Amsterdam Symposium on the History of Food
Application deadline: 15 September 2021
Symposium dates: 11-12 February 2022
Contact: Foodhistory-ub@uva.nl
More information here

Ever since hunters and gatherers made the switch to sedentary forms of farming some 13,000 years ago, the way people produce and consume food has profoundly shaped the world in which we live. Although the idea of the ‘environment’ – which we now use to describe the scale and scope of this human impact on the planet – is a relatively modern concept, historians, archaeologists and ecologists have carefully traced the continual interconnectedness of food and the environment. Indeed, changes in dietary patterns have been intrinsically linked to climate change and demographics throughout history, and the question of how to feed a growing population has been at the centre of major developments in food production innovations from the Neolithic Revolution onwards.

The concern about the limits of food production and consumption has similar long historical roots. Agricultural innovations and colonial explorations, which allowed humans to grow and eat more and more diverse foodstuffs, also prompted worries about the adverse consequences of rapid population growth and environmental degradation. From Thomas Malthus’ 1798 An Essay on the Principle of Population to the warnings of post-WWII scholars such as William Vogt and Paul Ehrlich – the concern that food production could and can never keep pace with population increase has been central to many heated scholarly debates.

Although the 1960-1980s Green Revolution has thus far managed to avert a ‘Malthusian disaster’, worries about the intensive use of nature’s resources coupled with booming population growth continue to persist. At the same time, more people have become aware of the dynamic, two-way relationship between humans and their environment, and of the fact that natural conditions have always shaped and endangered human life. This year’s Amsterdam Symposium on the History of Food traces this far-reaching transformative impact of food production and consumption practices on the environment – and vice versa – both in history and today.

Topics

The Symposium encourages scholars from all relevant fields of research to explore the continuing relevance of the interconnectedness of food history and environmental history. We invite abstracts for papers covering any topic related to the study of this theme including, but not limited to, the following:

The history of environmental beliefs and movements
The relationship between climate change and food production and consumption practices
The impact of exploitation colonialism on the environment
Adverse consequences of intensive food production (e.g. resource exhaustion, loss of biodiversity, soil degradation, pollution)
Sustainable food systems in history
The interdependence of landscapes and cuisines
Technological innovations that have increased agricultural growth and contributed to achieving food security
The historiography of environmental history, and the history of the idea of the ‘environment’

Guidelines Paper Proposals

The symposium program consists of a keynote lecture, paper presentations and panel discussions. You can join us in Amsterdam or participate online. If you are interested in presenting a paper at the symposium, please submit an abstract before 2 June 2021. Please expect to be presenting to an audience of up to 200 people, including academic as well as professional participants. An online presentation is also possible. The symposium language is English. Presenters of accepted papers are asked to speak 20 minutes as lively and engaging as possible, followed by a discussion with the panel and the audience under the supervision of a session chair.

Applications should include

Title of proposed paper
Abstract (maximum 500 words)
Biographical information (short CV)
Contact information (e-mail, telephone and postal address)

Applications should be sent by the deadline of 15 September 2021 to: Foodhistory-ub@uva.nl

Notification of acceptance

As it may not be possible to include everyone’s submission, the organizing committee and advisory board will make a selection. You will be notified if the paper is accepted by 2 July 2021.

Call for Papers | The Cultural Politics of Hope

April 1, 2021/in Call for Papers /by Pepita

Call for Papers | The Cultural Politics of Hope

2, 3, 4th December 2021
Universidade Católica Portuguesa – Lisbon
Contact: hopeconference2021@gmail.com
Application deadline: 17 May 2021

The 11th Graduate Conference in Culture Studies will focus on the concept of hope, its politics, poetics, and temporalities, and how it emerges, impinges and circulates. The conference will take place in Lisbon on the 2nd, 3rd of December and the morning of the 4th of December, 2021. The conference is organized by PhD students and researchers of the Research Centre for Communication and Culture (CECC) at the Lisbon Consortium, Universidade Católica Portuguesa – Lisbon.

The concept of hope has recently been re-emerging in philosophical and political discussions, as well as in literary criticism. However, how does hope relate to the present moment, when we are faced with worldwide climate and health emergencies, economic crises, increasing poverty, failed leaderships, and the rise of both old and new forms of authoritarianism? The future of democracies and equal rights are at stake, as is our own survival as individuals and as a species, prompting fear and hopelessness. Does critical thought forfeit the possibility of hope or can it produce a hope that is able to bring about change?

Often pitted as the opposite of each other, fear and hope share the assumption that the future is neither knowable nor based on knowledge and probabilities (Rorty, 1999). Unlike the certainty of a positive or negative outcome that underpins confidence and despair, fear and hope are expectant emotions grounded in doubt and therefore always part of each other (Spinoza, 2000 [1677]). Bloch’s ‘political hope’ is what, at any given moment, we are able to consciously wish for beyond a disappointing present and the pragmatic determinism of predictions. Hope can therefore rise from desperation, grief, indignation, or anger and then “result on a specific type of mutuality based on a trust for life” (Bloch, 1996 [1959]; Anderson, 2006). Is the act of hoping positive, or is it an uncomfortable assemblage of emotions that can overlap and interact with optimism and resilience, but also with fear, suspicion, and a permanent sense of precariousness? Is hope always only projected towards the future, or can hopeful memories be a form of counterhistorical practice (Rigney, 2018) that questions its linear futurity? And does not hope always-already imply eternal postponement and unattainability (Berlant, 2011), despite its ability to fuel cultural work as well as activism and resistance?

During the conference, we want to discuss how culture interacts with the concept and the taking place of hope. How can cultural works claiming or responding to political and societal change be hopeful? To what extent can the recent positive turn in the humanities contribute to the emergence of hope, as well as to different concepts of hope? How does hope emerge during crises and times of socio-political disenchantment and to what extent does it challenge power and hegemony? What can happen when hope not only points towards a better future but changes and improves the now or the ways we remember and celebrate the past? How does hope affect groups and movements, and how does it circulate in times of fear, depression, revolt, and pandemic?

Practicalities

We invite abstracts for individual or joint presentations using hope as a lens for the analysis of cultural objects or conceptualizing/problematizing hope.

We also welcome abstracts for presentations and interventions that disrupt the formal academic ways of thinking and doing including but not limited to artistic interventions, co-creative workshops, reading groups and more.

Abstracts should be approximately 250 words long and be sent by email to hopeconference2021@gmail.com not later than 17th of May 2021. Notification of acceptance will be sent until the 31st of July at the latest. After having been accepted, you will be asked to register at the conference and provide some personal details to that purpose. You will be able to do so on our
website www.culturalpoliticsofhope.wordpress.com, which is under construction.

The conference will take place on site on the 2nd, 3rd and the morning of the 4th of December 2021 at Universidade Católica Portuguesa. Online hosting of the conference will be considered as a supplement or alternative, should any sanitary restrictions be enforced at the time of the conference.

Costs

Registration fee: 70€ – includes coffee breaks on all days and conference materials.
The Organizing Committee considers reducing or waiving a limited number of registration fees in cases of documented financial difficulties. Students of the Lisbon Consortium and FCH-PhD and CECC researchers are exempted from the registration fee.

Organizing Committee

Vera Herold (Universidade Católica Portuguesa)
Sarah Nagaty (Universidade Católica Portuguesa)
Victoria Page (Universidade Católica Portuguesa)

Contact

For more information please email: hopeconference2021@gmail.com

Call for Papers | Historical Traces of European Radio Archives, 1930-1960

March 29, 2021/in Call for Papers /by Pepita

Call for Papers | Historical Traces of European Radio Archives, 1930-1960

Dates: 28-29 October 2021
Location: University of Amsterdam and/or online
Organisers: Carolyn Birdsall, Corinna R. Kaiser and Erica Harrison
Contact: trace@uva.nl
Abstracts: 15 April 2021, no more than 300 words plus a short biography
Acceptance: 01 May 2021
Papers: 01 September 2021, position papers (2000-4500 words)

This two-day interdisciplinary workshop brings together scholars and practitioners invested in theoretically-informed, connective histories about radio archives. It focuses on radio archival collections in Europe that were affected by war and political transformations between 1930 and 1960, including the entanglements of Axis countries, as well as Allied, with European radio archives during World War II. When studying European radio archives today, scholars are often required to “re-collect” dispersed materials as a result of changed institutional circumstances (Badenoch 2018) or the aftermath of conflict, war or regime change (Birdsall 2018).

One strategy for scrutinising European radio collections is to elucidate archivist practices in describing and cataloguing radio collections, and reveal “tacit narratives” indicative of past ideologies or political investments in the archive (Ketelaar 2002). Another productive approach may evaluate archival tools or technologies in order to record, copy, store, or preserve radio recordings. The workshop thereby builds on the growing attention to the significance of archival processes for scholarly understandings of radio history. Against a long-held tendency to decry the ‘absence’ of sound recordings in the archive, there is a burgeoning interest in the rich potential of the radio archive as an object of study (Dolan 2003, Street 2014).

Topics of interest may include, but are not limited to:

Media history approaches to the radio archive (e.g. transnational/entangled media history)
Impact of war, conflict or political change on radio archival collections
Provenance research and the looting of radio archives
Professional practices of radio archiving (e.g. catalogue description, metadata enrichment, selection and deaccessioning), and archivists as data/information specialists
Technologies of the archive (e.g. index cards, finding aids)
Materiality of archival records (e.g. recorded sound, paper/photographic documentation)
Archival uses of particular sound media and recording technologies (e.g. disc/tape recording)
The effects of decay, neglect or technological obsolescence on radio archival collections
Various collection types (e.g. off-air radio recordings, sound libraries, commercial music collections)
Computational humanities and the radio archive, including data visualisation

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words and a short biography to trace@uva.nl by 15 April 2021.

The authors of accepted proposals will be notified by 1 May 2021, and the ‘position papers’ (2000-4500 words) will be expected by 1 September 2021. Further information will follow on the workshop format, but it is certain that online participation will be possible. The workshop sessions will revolve around panels with short presentations/discussions of ‘position papers’ (pre-circulated prior to the workshop). A special issue publication is currently planned, with selected papers.

The workshop is hosted by the research project TRACE (Tracking Radio Archival Collections in Europe, 1930-1960), which is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and supported by the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM) and Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. For further information, please see www.trace.humanities.uva.nl.

Call for Papers | The Wordliness of Oil

March 24, 2021/in Call for Papers /by Pepita

The Wordliness of Oil: Recognitions and Relations, 42.3/4
Find the full call for papers here
Deadline for proposals: April 18, 2021

The extraction and use of crude oil and natural gas has fundamentally transformed our societies and the ways we have lived over the past 150 years. As a both visible and invisible agent, oil continues to shape individual experiences and national identities, propelling conflict and creating disparate economic opportunities.

We are looking for socio-spatial interconnectedness, where experiences of narratives, architecture, visual art, literature, social expressions, bodily and other archives, economy, ecology are translated and interpreted to investigate heroism, infrastructures, practices, responses, and traumas related to extraction, politics of experiences, the effects of colonisation, neo-colonisation, and settler colonisation. The editors of this issue invite you to investigate comparative or displaced relations and experiences of oil nations through cultural expressions pertaining to the landscapes, personal and national, that oil has forged.We invite contributions rooted in art, art history, visual culture, and architecture, and encourage queer, feminist, activist, and speculative approaches. We also welcome proposals for image or text based artistic contributions.

Call for Papers | The Political Economy of Care: Global and Local Chains

March 18, 2021/in Call for Papers /by Pepita

Interesting for some of our members I hope,

Yours kindly!
Pepita

Call for Papers: The Political Economy of Care: Global and Local Chains
Krisis | Journal for Contemporary Philosophy
Deadline: 1 April 2021

A longstanding criticism of mainstream political philosophy centres on the denial of care work and the assertion of an autarkic, self-sufficient subject. However, in addition to this (rather academic) criticism by care ethics, an extensive body of literature has emerged from lived experiences of political and social struggles, primarily from feminists (of colour) that put friendship, love, and coalition-building center stage (Ahmed, Anzaldúa, Black Lives Matter, Care Collective, Combahee River Collective, Dalla Costa, Federici, hooks, Lorde, Precarias a la deriva, Puig Della Casa, Sandoval, etc.). This crisis of care reveals and acknowledges multiple dimensions of structural, relational, and interpersonal violence and oppression at the intersections of class, gender, and race.

The Covid-19 pandemic highlights once again that care work in most countries is rendered almost exclusively by women who are poorly paid and insufficiently valued for their labour. While some attempt to juggle job and family responsibilities at the expense of their own mental and physical health, others risk criminalization and destitution due to insecure residency status or lack of permission to work. Indeed, the chains of care have increasingly acquired a transnational character and exploit the indentured labour of those who cross borders to care for others. Take, for example, women from the Philippines and other south-east Asian countries who provide cleaning services and take care of children elsewhere in the world in order to afford the nourishment and schooling of their own; or, care work for the elderly and sick in western Europe that is done by eastern European women who rarely get to see their own relatives. Whether paid or unpaid, care work is disproportionately carried out by racialized and gendered groups in precarious positions. Finally, in an attempt to protect their own populations and to compensate for the austerity of public healthcare provision, so-called developed countries actively recruit medical professionals from former or current colonies, who then staff hospitals and risk their lives during the pandemic while separated from those care networks that sustain their work. The acquisition and accumulation of PPE and vaccines further exacerbate global inequities in public healthcare.

Furthermore, the concept of care extends beyond human beings, to non-human entities such as the environment (Barad, de la Bellacasa, Haraway, Stengers) and ways of conducting research (Dombrowski). In light of all these discussions, we deem it necessary and timely to ask:

Should care be more central to philosophy and contemporary philosophizing?
What are the political, economic, and social premises and impact of the global-local nexus of care?
How does the systematic withholding of care from some groups of society follow from neoliberal variants of capitalism that have exploited racialized and feminised care workers since its inception?
What is the logic of the non-caring or care-less rationality that underpins such exploitation, and does it also motivate the exploitation of our environment and the cosmos?
What is fair or just access to healthcare?
Will decent care be undermined by the growing power of algorithms in healthcare?
What kind of philosophical toolbox do we need to adequately answer these questions?
Can philosophy, or a philosophical approach, ask better questions to situate care at the centre of theoretical and practical inquiry?

Krisis invites you to contribute to this special issue about care by interrogating our existing social and political structures of care and by reconceiving and building on radical alternatives. Please send your abstract for a paper to Krisis by 1 April 2021. We will let you know if the abstract has been accepted not long thereafter. Then the usual peer review phase follows.

We understand that many researchers face unexpected delays due to the Covid-19 contingencies, including home-schooling, care duties and increased teaching load. If you would like to submit an abstract but are unable to do so in time, please do contact us to discuss an alternative timeline.

Timeline

Submission abstract: April 1st 2021
Full paper: September 1st 2021
Publication: Issue 1 of 2022

For more information, see Call for Papers.

Call for Papers | Hinterlands

March 11, 2021/in Call for Papers /by Pepita

Call for Papers Hinterlands: A Project in the Rural, Literary and Environmental Humanities
Hosted by ASCA Amsterdam and WISER Johannesburg, 3-4 June 2021, online

The Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) and WISER are co-convening an interdisciplinary online symposium on Hinterlands. The symposium is being organized as part of the ERC-Funded Rural Imaginations project at ASCA. The intellectual rationale for the focus on Hinterlands can be found here.

We warmly invite contributions to this interdisciplinary project. If you are interested in participating, please send a title, an abstract of 250-300 words, and a short bio (under 100 words) to Hanneke Stuit at h.h.stuit@uva.nl by 10 April 2021. If your abstract is selected, we will ask you to present your ideas in a 7-minute video or audio recording, to be submitted before the online symposium. At the symposium, the recordings will be discussed in preparation for the journal and book publications. The full contributions should be approximately 6,000 words and are due on November 1, 2021. We invite contributions from all disciplines and across all places, with a strong interest in multidisciplinary approaches.

The conveners of this event are Professor Esther Peeren and dr. Hanneke Stuit from ASCA Amsterdam and Professors Pamila Gupta and Sarah Nuttall at WISER Johannesburg. In addition to the detailed rationale/Call for Papers attached you can find attached a series of 5-min podcasts by the conveners exploring some initial ideas about contemporary debates on hinterlands.

For more information, see here.

Call for Papers | Capitalising Experience: Museums and Entrepreneurship

March 1, 2021/in Call for Papers /by Pepita

Capitalising Experience: Museums and Entrepreneurship
Deadline: 31 May 2021
Keywords: museum studies, entrepreneurship, exhibition design, museum education, spatial narratives, decolonisation, politics of display, contemporary art

Museums are directly affected by neo-liberal policies and market economy. Cutbacks in government spending and privatisation press for the redefinition of museums as financially competitive enterprises; and marketing, visitor satisfaction and donor-driven experience take centre stage. Often described as a “no alternative” condition, entrepreneurship has become a soft power device that reshapes museum identities, as well as an adversary. It poses aesthetic, ontological and ethical questions regarding the production, marketing and offer of art and culture; as well a regarding the status and validity of history, identity and knowledge. Affected by this “entrepreneurial turn”, museums shift their discourse on accessibility, diversity and inclusivity. What is more, this discourse has to adapt to the critical questions that arise regarding the future of museums in a post-COVID world.

Museums are called to decentralise interpretation in favour of an experience akin to browsing. Theme-based exhibition designs and learning become branded and a new form of spectatorship rises: the followers. Such shifts towards entertainment and social-media friendly activities can affect the cognitive value, and importance, of the museum visit.

We thus need to scrutinise the benefits and limitations of different types of exhibition layouts; how well different experts coordinate their input in a well-rounded museum visit; and the extent to which important discussions on the development of ideas are sidelined in favour of marketability. While audiences should be encouraged to engage with museum collections through experience, it doesn’t follow that museums should relinquish their function as sites of
learning—nor their responsibility. Likewise, we need to evaluate the extent to which institutional preference for oversimplified information, open-ended questions and do-it-yourself interpretations responds constructively to demands for accessibility, diversity and inclusion, as well as the type of knowledge production this leads to. False “democratisation” of participation might result in an elitist holding back of knowledge and mask institutional practices
of selection, framing and exclusion that continue to create spatial narratives and shape viewer experience and understanding.

Understanding the role and impact of entrepreneurship on institutional practices and priorities is a fundamental challenge for the future of museums. Casting a critical eye on contemporary museum trends, challenges and problematics, especially as developed in our post-pandemic condition, this edited collection asks: How do entrepreneurial practices and marketing discourse affect the ways in which museums are conceptualised, organised and experienced? We are particularly interested in theoretical evaluations, critical perspectives and case study comparison and analysis that explore entrepreneurship in relation to exhibition design and architecture; knowledge and narratives; and public engagement and education. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

entrepreneurship, curatorial intent and dramaturgy
exhibition design, architectural discourses and the staging of cultural heritage
entrepreneurship, (contemporary) art and culture: production, access, mediation
market strategies, politics of display and the exhibition of knowledge
institutional framing, narrative models and interpretation, especially in relation to historicity, tradition, identity and processes of decolonisation
(false) democratisation, visitor engagement, satisfaction and the impact on learning
responses and challenges for museum education: from knowledge distribution to knowledge economy and networking
museum policies, entrepreneurship and post-pandemic challenges

We invite contributions of 7000-9000 words, including footnotes. If you would like to be considered, please send a chapter proposal, no longer than 300 words, and a short bio note by 31 May 2021 to the editors Dr Eve Kalyva (e.m.kalyva@uva.nl), Dr Pamela Bianchi (pamelabianchi1@gmail.com) and Dr Iro Katsaridou (akatsaridou@culture.gr). Proposals will be selected by 30 June 2021 and draft chapters expected by December 2021.

Call for Papers | Posthuman Futures in Art and Literature: Constellations & Cartographies

Call for Contributions:
Posthuman Futures in Art and Literature: Constellations & Cartographies