Call for Papers

War and the Body

Interdisciplinary one day conference
Centre for European & International Studies Research, University of Portsmouth and the 
War and Media Network

Friday June 11th 2010 
Imperial War Museum, London UK.


War is fundamentally embodied, “the most radically embodying event in which human 
beings ever collectively participate” (Scarry, 1985: 71). War is enacted and experienced 
through the surveillance, classification, wounding, rape, mutilation, torture, death and 
display of human bodies. Diverse bodies are mobilized, disciplined, drilled, augmented, 
sacrificed, decorated, produced in war.  The history of war is one of corporeal destruction 
and reconstruction, from the conversion of civilian bodies for military service to the battle 
for hearts and minds.  The reality of war is not just politics by any other means, but 
politics incarnate.

War and the Body invites proposals that seek to explore the embodied history of war as 
well as recent transformations in warfare. Through what practices, techniques and 
metaphors has war historically occupied various bodies?  From advanced warfighters to 
private military contractors, child soldiering to ethnic cleansing, is war assuming 
predatory new embodied formations?  To what extent is war deterritorialized and brought 
home through bodily practices such as militarized leisure and fashion, security and 
surveillant assemblages?  How do bodies bear witness to the histories and transformative 
power of war through representations of bodily violence and corporeal memorializations?

Recognizing the growing interest in the embodiment of human life and social action 
across the humanities and social sciences, War and the Body aims to bring together 
international scholars and researchers from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and 
perspectives who share a common thematic concern with the intertwining of war and the 
body.  As such, it acknowledges the importance of the body as an increasingly productive 
site for rethinking and retooling the historical and sociological imaginations.  

Empirical analyses and theoretical contributions are welcome.  Anticipated questions and 
topics may include, but are not limited to:

•	How are military principles and values inculcated, and resisted, in civilian bodies?      
•	How are war and political violence lived and experienced through the body? 
•	What bodies does war traverse, inscribe, produce?
•	Bodies and weaponry
•	War and human vulnerability 
•	Corporeal aftermaths, memorializations and mourning
•	Representing war and the body: cinema, literature, documentary, photography, new 
media
•	Cultural histories of war and embodiment
•	The body politic: wounded nations, national traumas
•	The militarization of human sensation

Please send abstracts of proposed papers (max 500 words), together with brief 
biographical details by 31st December 2009 to: [log in to unmask]  All proposals 
are subject to a review process.  Selected papers from the conference will be published 
as a themed issue of a relevant journal or edited collection.

For more information please visit:
http://www.warandmedia.org/warandbody/

Organizing Committee
Kevin McSorley, University of Portsmouth ([log in to unmask])
Sarah Maltby, City University, London ([log in to unmask])
Gavin Schaffer, University of Portsmouth ([log in to unmask])

This conference is supported by the Centre for European & International Studies Research, 
University of Portsmouth (http://www.port.ac.uk/research/ceisr) and the War and Media 
Network (http://www.warandmedia.org/)