Final call for papers
Please also note that the Space, Sexualities and Queer Working Group can
nominate research group guests for those outside of Geography
departments within the UK and for geographers/non-geographers outside
the UK.
CFP: Geographies of sex itself
Apologies for cross posting- please distribute widely.
RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2007
'Sustainability and Quality of Life'
28th - 31st August 2007, at the Royal Geographical Society with IBG,
London.
Convenors: Gavin Brown and Kath Browne
Sponsored by: the Space, Sexualities and Queer Working Group
It is more than two decades since McNee (1984) first identified
Geography's 'squeamishness' around sex and sexuality, and over ten years
since Bell (1995) and Binnie (1997) noted that, despite the
proliferation of studies of sexual identity and sexualised spaces,
meaningful considerations of sex itself had not yet emerged within
geographic scholarship. The situation has not changed significantly in
the intervening period.
The influence of queer theory within Geography has challenged the easy
alignment of biological sex, gender, sexual identity and sexual
practises, and yet, work from within this theoretical perspective
continues largely to focus on the spatial construction of gender and
sexual identity, rather than engaging with the spaces of sexual
activity. Similarly, the embodied practices of sex have so far not been
examined by researchers working within a more-than-representational
framework, despite the obvious potential for this mode of theory to
engage with such practices and performances.
There would seem to be much potential for relational, hybrid geographies
of sex that engage with the non-human objects and environments that are
enrolled in and co-constitute the act of sex - whether those be beds and
bed sheets, items of clothing, condoms, sex toys, the material fabric of
a darkened alley or a wooded glade. This session will both interrogate
this continuing silence in Geography and consider geographies of sex
itself.
Papers might consider (but should not be limited by) the following
topics:
* The spatial relationship between sexual difference, gender and
sexual practice
* Culturally and situationally specific definitions of sex
* Non-representational geographies of sexual encounters
* Sex and sexual citizenship
* Spaces of celibacy
* The spatial practices of monogamy or polyamory
* Hybrid geographies of the sites where sex takes place
* The enrolment of non-human objects in sexual acts
* Sex, feminism and the persistence of masculinist approaches to
geographic research
* The ethics of researching sex
* Embarrassment, fear and shame in sex research and writing about
sex
Abstracts of not more than 200 words should be submitted to
[log in to unmask]@brighton.ac.uk by 15th January 2007.
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