Unexpected Agents: Considering agency and subjectivity beyond the
boundaries of the human (1800 ? the Present)
* One-day postgraduate symposium at the University of Birmingham
(English dept.), 24th June 2011
* Keynote Speaker: Sarah Kember (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Website: http://www.english.bham.ac.uk/unexpected/
?Anything that does modify a state of affairs by making a difference
is an actor - or, if it has no figuration yet, an actant?
(Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social, 2005)
Whilst questions of human subjectivity and/or identity remain a
persistent focus in literary and cultural studies, this one-day
postgraduate symposium aims to consider how we might explore and
account for agency from unexpected sources. Papers, plenaries and
discussions at this symposium will place the non-human, the object,
the supposedly ?lifeless? at the centre, with a view to casting new
light on and rethinking definitions of human agency and identity from
an unconventional, askance perspective.
This symposium aims to acknowledge and yet exceed Latour?s and others?
focus upon the agency of objects to envision how authors, theorists
and cultural producers have imagined and re-imagined the potential
agencies of a wide range of entities, to which and to whom access to
power is conventionally seen as foreclosed. It will explore how this
over-looked but fascinating trope persists across genres and
historical boundaries, from Romanticism to Science Fiction, and from
1800 to the present day.
Possible conference paper topics may include (but are not limited to)
a focus on the following kinds of ?unexpected agent?:
* Objects (art objects, artefacts, antiques)
* Spaces/ Landscapes
* Ghosts and the deceased
* Mediums and the hypnotised
* Babies/ Infants
* Animals
* Technology (radio, machines, scientific apparatus)
* Nature
* Words themselves
The organisers invite 200 word proposals for 20 minute papers, by
Friday 1 April 2011.
Please send your proposals to: Paul Horn ([log in to unmask]), Sarah
Parker ([log in to unmask]) and Holly Prescott ([log in to unmask]).
Information about our plenary speaker:
Dr Sarah Kember (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Sarah Kember?s research focuses on digital media, questions of
mediation and feminist science and technology studies. She is
currently investigating the possibilities of life after new media
(studies), and has engaged in debates on artificial life and other
aspects of the convergence between biology and computer science. She
also works on imaging technologies and the relationship between
photography and the digital and is developing an innovative approach
to the question of remediation and the ?fusion? of science and
literary fiction.
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