Dear Colleagues,
- with apologies for cross-posting
Call for papers
Cultures of Disasters
An international conference on humanistic disaster studies at the
University of Oslo, November 6 8, 2013.
Modern disaster research, dating back to the early 1920s, started up as
a branch of sociology but has widened its circles to neighboring
academic disciplines. In recent years, disasters have become a rapidly
growing field of research in the humanities. The reason for this growth
is obvious: disasters are incessantly foretold and retold in news
broadcast, movies, novels, operas, computer games and amusement parks.
Due to global media networks and communication technology audiences all
over the world are able to follow the stories of floods, earthquakes and
volcanic eruptions in real time and at long distances.
However, the myriad of stories about disasters are structured around a
limited number of narrative forms and motifs the theodicy, the
apocalypse, the state of exception, the trauma, etc. This repertoire of
cultural patterns not only structure how we imagine disasters, they also
structure how we handle disasters. For instance, the dramatic media
images from New Orleans had significant impact on the authoritys
miserable disaster management after hurricane Katrina. Thus, stories of
disasters may work as both models for and models of social practices.
The overall goal of "Cultures of Disasters" is to explore how the
humanities can contribute to modern disaster research. How are disaster
narratives structured? How do disaster survivors tell about their
experiences? What are the aesthetics of disaster representations? How
are representations and narratives of disasters intertwined with
disaster management? How does the flow of disaster reports frame our
understandings of risk? How do past and future disasters affect present
societies? What do disaster representations tell about understandings of
the relationship between the past, the present and the future? How do
disasters bring up to date questions about the relationship between
natural evils and moral evils?
The conference is dealing with both historical and contemporary
perspectives on a broad range of topics. These include but are not
limited to:
History and disasters
Disasters and media
Disasters in popular culture
Time and temporalities of disasters
Representations and narration of disaster
Disasters and personal experience narratives
Apocalyptic imaginaries
Spectacular aesthetics
Past and present cultures of risk and uncertainty
Disaster metaphors, concepts and symbolic forms
Disasters and notions of nature
The ethics of disasters
Natural disasters in climate rhetorics
Disaster fiction
Titles and abstracts (max 200 words) are to be sent to Kyrre Kverndokk
[log in to unmask] by June 15, 2013. Please use one of the
following file formats: .doc(x), .odt or .rtf.
The conference is organized by the Nordic research network Cultures of
disasters in cooperation with KULTRANS. The conference is funded by The
Research Council of Norway.
Website:
http://www.uio.no/kultrans/aktuelt/konferanser/cultures-of-disasters/cfp/
--
Kyrre Kverndokk
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