Thursday 23rd September - Sunday 26th September 2010
Oriel College, Oxford

Call for Papers
Fashion is a statement, a stylised form of expression which displays and begins to define a person, a place, a class, a time, a religion, a culture, and even a nation. This interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary conference seeks to explore the historical, social, cultural, psychological and artistic phenomenon of fashion. Fashion lies at the very heart of persons, their sense of identity and the communities in which they live. Individuals emerge as icons of beauty and style; cities are identified as centres of fashion. The project will assess the history and meanings of fashion; evaluate its expressions in politics, music, film, media and consumer culture; determine its effect on gender, sexuality, class, race, age and identity; examine the practice, tools, and business of fashion; consider the methodologies of studying fashion; and explore future directions and trends.

Papers, presentations, workshops and pre-formed are invited on issues related to any of the following themes:

1. Understanding Fashion
~ Fashion, Style, Taste-Making, and Chic
~ Fashion and Fashionability
~ Fashion and Zeitgeist
~ History of Fashion
~ Fashion Theory
~ Fashion, Politics, and Ideology: e.g., `message´ fashion; fashion as a political platform, fashion as defiance; graffiti as a fashion statement

2. Studying Fashion
~ Tools and Methodology; disciplines and perspectives; professions and trades
~ Documentation
~ Identifying, defining and refining concepts: e.g., `style,´ `fashion,´ `look,´ `fad,´ `trend,´ `in & out´
~ `Chasing´ Fashion: Studying fashion collections, archives, and museums
~ Fashion collections; fashion archives
~ Designers and Muses

3. Cultures of Fashion
~ Fashion in the City
~ Men and Fashion; Children and Fashion
~ Fashion Subcultures: e.g., pets and fashion, sports and fashion, supermodels, The Red Carpet, celebrity, vintage, glamour, gothic, etc.
~ Fashion and Nostalgia
~ Fashion and Professional Dress: e.g., Fashion and the Law
~ Ethical Issues in Fashion: e.g., cruelty free fashion; PETA anti-fur movement; slave labour, sweatshops, child labour; the growing `fakes´ market

4. Fashion and Identity
~ Fashion, Culture, and the Human body (e.g., beauty standards, body art, weight, plastic surgery
~ Self-fashioning: e.g., fashion as performance; body modifications, including make-up, hair design, piercings, tattoos, body sculpting, plastic surgery
~ Fashion and Social Status: Gender, Sexuality, Class, Race, Age and Fashion
~ Fashion and National Identities
~ Fashion and Transnational Identities
~ Fashion and Religion

5. Fashion, Representation, and Evolving Patterns of Communication &
Criticism
~ Fashion Photography, Magazines, Blogs, and Twitter
~ Fashion Icons
~ Fashion, Film and the Performing Arts
~ Fashion and Music
~ Fashion and Fantasy
~ Fashion and Television

6. Fashion Practice
~ Fashion and Curatorial Practice: e.g., possibilities and problems of creating fashion Archives; creating and accessing private and public fashion collections
~ Fashion Design
~ Fashion Specialists: e.g., pattern makers, fitters, embroiderers, tailors, textile experts
~ Fashion Economies and the business of fashion, e.g., traditional markets, the luxury industry, the design industry, producing and displaying fashion (building showrooms, production sites, runway)
~ Beyond Dress: e.g., architecture, food, furniture, kitchens, perfume
~ Style Guides and Makeover Shows

7. The Future of Fashion
~ Trends and Cycles; predicting fashion
~ The Materials of Fashion: e.g., eco-fashion, intelligent textiles, nano-technology, etc.
~ The rise of the Accessory as the Driving Force of Fashion: e.g., handbags and shoes
~ Branding, the Mass Market, and Consumerism: e.g., designer collections at H & M, Top Shop, M & S, Target, Wal-Mart
~ Celebrities as Fashion Designers: e.g. J. Lo, Jessica Simpson, Kate Moss, Victoria Beckham, P.Diddy.
~ Anti-Fashion

Papers will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes.

The 2010 meeting of Fashion - Exploring Critical Issues will run alongside our project on Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging and we anticipate holding sessions in common between the two projects. We welcome any papers considering the problems or addressing issues of Fashion and Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging.

Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 26th March 2010. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 13th August 2010.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs;
abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract
E-mails should be entitled: Fashion Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). 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.

Organising Chairs
Jacque Lynn Foltyn
Chair, Dept of Social Sciences, College of Letters and Sciences,
National University, CA, USA
E-mail: jfoltyn@nu.edu

Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net, Freeland,
Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
E-mail: fashion2@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the Critical Issues series of research projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.

For further details about the project please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/fashion/

For further details about the conference please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/fashion/call-for-papers/

Sunday 19th September – Wednesday 22nd September 2010
Oriel College, Oxford

Call for Papers
This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary project seeks to investigate and explore the enduring influence and imagery of monsters and the monstrous on human culture throughout history. In particular, the project will have a dual focus with the intention of examining specific ‘monsters’ as well as assessing the role, function and consequences of persons, actions or events identified as ‘monstrous’. The history and contemporary cultural influences of monsters and monstrous metaphors will also be examined.

Papers, reports, work-in-progress, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on issues related to any of the following themes:

* The “monster” through history
* Civilization, monsters and the monstrous
* Children, childhood, stories and monsters
* Comedy: funny monsters and/or making fun of monsters (e.g. Monsters Inc, the Addams Family)
* Making monsters; monstrous births, childhood
* Mutants and mutations and freaks
* Technologies of the monstrous (including RPG)
* Horror, fear and scare
* Do monsters kill because they are monstrous or are they monstrous because they kill?
* How critical to the definition of “monster” is death or the threat of death?
* Human ‘monsters’ and ‘monstrous’ acts? e.g, perverts, paedophiles and serial killers
* Revolution and monsters
* Enemies (political/social/military) and monsters
* Iconography of the monstrous
* The popularity of the modern monsters; the Mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein, Vampires, Cannibals
* The monster in literature
* The monster in media (television, cinema, radio, internet)
* Religious depictions of the monstrous
* Metaphors and the monstrous
* The problematic attraction and admiration of monsters
* Gothic Monsters
* Critical Theories on the Monstrous

Papers will be accepted which deal solely with specific monsters. This project will run concurrently with our project on Strangers, Aliens and Foreigners – we welcome any papers considering the problems or addressing issues on Monsters and Strangers, Aliens and Foreigners for a cross-over panel.

300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 26th March 2010. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 13th August 2010.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract
E-mails should be entitled: Monsters Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). 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.

Organising Chairs

* Sorcha Ni Fhlainn
Hub Leader, Evil Hub, Inter-Disciplinary.Net
School of English, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
E-mail: snf@inter-disciplinary.net
.
* Rob Fisher
Network Founder & Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Freeland, Oxfordshire
United Kingdom
E-mail: m8@inter-disciplinary.net
.
* Stephen Morris
Hub Leader
Independent Scholar
New York, USA
USA
E-mail: smmorris58@yahoo.com

The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume. Some papers may also be invited for inclusion in the soon to be launched Journal of Monsters and the Monstrous.

For further details about the project please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/evil/monsters-and-the-monstrous/

For further details about the conference please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/evil/monsters-and-the-monstrous/call-for-papers/

Tuesday 14th September – Thursday 16th September 2010
Oriel College, Oxford

Call for Papers
This inter-disciplinary research conference seeks to explore issues of madness across historical periods and within cultural, political and social contexts. We are also interested in exploring the place of madness in persons and interpersonal relationships and across a range of critical perspectives. Seeking to encourage innovative inter, multi and post disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from all disciplines, professions and vocations which struggle to understand the place of madness in the constitution of persons, relationships and the complex interlacing of self and other.

In particular papers, workshops, presentations and pre-formed panel proposals are invited on any of the following themes:

1. The Value of Madness or Why is it that We Need Madness?
~ Critical explorations: beyond madness/sanity/insanity
~ Continuity and difference: always with us yet never quite the same
~ Repetition and novelty: the incessant emergence and re-emergence of madness
~ Profound attraction and desire; fear of the abyss and the radical unknown
~ Naming, defining and understanding the elusive

2. The Passion of Madness or Madness and the Emotions
~ Love as madness; uncontrollable passion; unrestrainable love
~ Passion and love as a remaking of life and self
~ Gender and madness; the feminine and the masculine
~ Anger, resentment, revenge, hate, evil
~ I would rather vomit, thank you; revulsion, badness and refusing to comply

3. The Boundaries of Madness or Resisting Normality
~ Madness, sanity and the insane
~ Being out of your mind, crazy, deranged … yet, perfectly sane
~ Deviating from the normal; defining the self against the normal
~ Control, self-control and the pull of the abyss
~ When the insane becomes normal; when evil reins social life

4. Lunatics and the Asylum or Power and the Politics of Madness
~ The social allure and fear of madness; the institutions of confining mad people
~ Servicing normality by castigating the insane and marginalizing lunatics
~ Medicine, psychiatry, psychology, law and the constructions of madness; madness as illness
~ Contributions of the social sciences to the making and the critique of the making of madness
~ Representations, explanations and the critique of madness from the humanities and the arts

5. Creativity, Critique and Cutting Edge
~ Madness as genius, outstanding, out of the ordinary, spectacularly brilliant
~ The art of madness; the science of madness
~ Music, painting, dance, theatre: it is crazy to think of art without madness
~ The language and communication of madness: who can translate?
~ Creation as an unfolding of madness

6. Unrestrained and Boundless or The Liberating Promise of Madness
~ Metaphors of feeling free, unrestrained, capable, lifted from reality
~ Madness as clear-sightedness, as opening up possibilities, as re-visioning of the world
~ The future, the prophetic, the unknown; the epic, the heroic and the tragic
~ The unreachable and untouchable knowledge of madness
~ The insanity of not loving madness

7. Lessons for Self and Other or Lessons for Life about and from Madness
~ Cultural and social constructions of madness; images of the mad, crazy, insane, lunatic, abnormal
~ What is real? Who defines reality? Learning from madness how to cope with reality
~ Recognising madness in oneself; relativising madness in others
~ Love, intimacy, care and the small spaces of madness
~ Critical and ethical implosions of normality and normalness; sane in insane places and insane in sane places

Papers will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes.

The 2010 meeting of Madness will run alongside our project on Villains and Villainy and we anticipate holding sessions in common between the two projects. We welcome any papers considering the problems or addressing issues of Mad Villains, Madness and Villainy and related themes.

Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 26th March 2010. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 13th August 2010.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract
E-mails should be entitled: Madness Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). 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.

Organising Chairs

* Gonzalo Araoz
University of Cumbria, Cumbria, United Kingdom
E-mail: Gonzalo.Araoz@cumbria.ac.uk
.
* Maria Vaccarella
Hub Leader, Making Sense Of: and Marie Curie Research Fellow, King’s College, London
E-mail: maria.vaccarella@inter-disciplinary.net
.
* Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net, Freeland, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
E-mail: mad3@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the ‘Making Sense Of:’ series of research projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.

For further details about the project please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/making-sense-of/madness/

For further details about the conference please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/making-sense-of/madness/call-for-papers/

Saturday 11th September – Monday 13th September 2010
Oriel College, Oxford

Call for Papers
This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary project aims to explore the processes by which we attempt to create meaning in health, illness and disease. In previous years, this interdisciplinary conference has attracted delegates from around the world, including practising clinicians, academics from a variety of disciplines, and persons involved in community-based organizations.

At the beginning of the 21st Century, the world is facing a plethora of health problems, some of which could not have easily been predicted as recently as the last two decades of the last century. Globally, there are critical conditions brought about by war, persecution, mass migration, famine and gross social inequalities. In the ‘developed societies’, a combination of demographic and life-style factors is putting increasing pressures on health-care facilities that are in danger of fragmentation and under-funding. For its part, the general public is presenting practitioners with a challenging contradiction: on the one hand, people live longer than ever before and are, in some respects, healthier – but, on the other, the burden of chronic disease and ‘un-wellness’ is increasing, and so is the concern with health-related matters on the part of the ‘man and woman in the street’. The wellness/illness profile of to-day’s communities renders prevention as important as therapy – which, in turn, implies that prevailing social attitudes have a key role in the dynamics of health, illness and health care as an inter-related system.

The 2010 conference is extending a call for papers on any aspect of this complex set of circumstances. Because this is a very broad brief, we particularly welcome papers that address the following themes:

I. Health, Illness and Disease in a Globalised World
* Health, human rights and social justice
* Health, disease and citizenship
* Health and place
* Diasporas and disease
* Health, disease and international medicine

II. Systemic Problems in Health Care
* Managerial vs clinical imperatives
* Professional hierarchies and internal conflicts
* The speed of innovation
* The contested nature of evidence-based medicine
* Patients or clients?

III. Beliefs about Health
* Positive thinking, tranquillity and mindfulness
* Faith in diets (including water), eg vegan, low-carb, natural/organic
* Exercise, breathing
* Belief vs practice
* Fears: allergies, sensitivities, negative thinking, stress, contamination
* Puritanism and health beliefs
* ‘Healthism’ as the new religion

IV. Attitudes to Medicine/Healing
* Medicine as science
* Alternative/non-western approaches: evidence or ideology?
* Mistrust in ‘the system’ (‘medicine/science cannot explain everything’)
* Mistrust in the practitioners (lack of knowledge/competence/professionalism)
* Risk and trust in the medical encounter (including hospital stays)
* Litigation in the context of health care; the underlying complexities

V. Purveyors of information
* The media and the popularity of medical programs
* Personal networks
* Dr C. O. M. Puter – the role of the Internet
* Reflexivity in the system – how does public information feed back into health care?

300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 26th March 2010. If your paper is accepted for presentation at the conference, an 8 page draft paper should be submitted by Friday 13th August 2010.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to both Organising Chairs with the subject line “HID9 Abstract Submission”; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

author(s), affiliation, email address, title of abstract, body of abstract

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). We acknowledge receipt and answer 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
Maria Vaccarella
Marie Curie Research Fellow
King’s College, London
United Kingdom
E-mail: maria.vaccarella@inter-disciplinary.net

Dr Rob Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House, Wroslyn Road, Freeland
Oxfordshire, OX29 8HR
United Kingdom
E-mail: hid9@inter-disciplinary.net

Perspectives are sought from those engaged in;
* art and art therapy, creative writing, English literature, history of medicine, media studies, the performing arts (dance, music, theatre), philosophy and ethics, psychology and social psychology, social sciences, sociology and socio-biology, theology and religious studies
* anatomy, child care nursing, clinical psychology, counselling, gerontology, health education, health services, hospital administration, immunology, medical and surgical nursing, medicine and the medical sciences, pharmaceutical sciences, public health care
* practitioners in health care fields – doctors, GP’s, surgeons, health care workers, care givers, hospice workers

All papers accepted for and presented at this conference will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers maybe invited for development for publication in a themed hard copy dialogic volume(s) The conference is sponsored by Inter-Disciplinary.Net as part of the ‘Probing the Boundaries’ programme of research projects. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting.

For further details about the project please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/making-sense-of/health-illness-and-disease/

For further details about the conference please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/making-sense-of/health-illness-and-disease/call-for-papers/

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