CALL FOR PAPERS THE HUMAN CONDITION SERIES: 2nd Annual International Multidisciplinary Conference on: TERROR May 2-3, 2008, Laurentian University @ Georgian College, Ontario, Canada Confirmed Keynote Speakers We are pleased to announce the participation of three internationally renowned keynote speakers: Henry Jiroux (McMaster University) Sunera Thobani (University of British Columbia) Sut Jhally (University of Massachusetts) Special Plenary Talk Richard A. Koenigsberg (Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis) Description of the Series and Conference Theme "Terror becomes total when it becomes independent of all opposition: It rules supreme when nobody any longer stands in its way." -Hannah Arendt This conference is part of a larger series of ongoing, international, multidisciplinary conferences--run under the banner of The Human Condition Series--that brings together people from a variety of disciplines to assess a singular topic from artistic, cinematic, literary, ethical, social, political, philosophical, psychological and religious perspectives. We encourage you to share innovative ideas and new ways of thinking and acting. Proposals will be considered on any related theme and we especially welcome papers, reports, works-in-progress, workshops and sessions. This year's theme is Terror. The concept of Terror is often found safely hidden and un-thought in diverse cultural, philosophical, and religious traditions and ways of life. One can see these safe havens extending from the divine mythologies of religious experience to the seemingly opposed rationalized life of contemporary high-tech societies. With respect to religious experience, it is clear that we have to seriously reconsider the dynamics of organized religion in the face of rising religious fundamentalisms and terrorist activity. But terror in the highly rationalized world of technological societies can also impose its existing logic as a way of maintaining the order of things. We give it various positive names that conceal its potency and negative effects. At precise moments in history, terror's potency has appeared in benign terms such as "child welfare," "residential schools," the "founding nation," the "developed world," the "hysterical woman," the "mentally ill," the "social and sexual deviant," the "immigrant problem," the "disposable income," and the "democratic liberation of other peoples." It is the absurd rationalizations of these terms in the face of concrete realities that covers over terror's effects and keeps it intact. This conference will investigate what role Terror has in maintaining the contemporary condition of humanity--and what hope there is of envisioning a condition in which Terror is natural and organic rather than strategic and imposed. ____________________________________________________________________________ ___ Please send a 250-300 word abstract or proposal as an email attachment (MS Word Format) to TerrorProposal@ideologiesofwar.com DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACT: FEBRUARY 15, 2008. For more details about the conference go to: http://humanconditionseries.wordpress.com/speakers-08/ or http://humanconditionseries.wordpress.com/past-conference-07/ Contact Person: Marianne Vardalos, Ph.D., Dept. of Sociology, Laurentian University Director of the Human Condition Series Organizing Committee ____________________________________________________________________________ ____ Possible topics include but are not limited to: The Laws of State-Terror Communications of Terror Overt and Covert Representations of Terror The Centrality of Spin and Lobbying in Communicating Terror The Manufacture and Management of Terror The Marketing of Terror The Relationship of Terror to the Modern Malaise: Anxiety, Disorders, Disease Terror as Pleasure The Construction of the Transnational Terrorist Terror and the Transformation of States and Nations Gender, Sexuality and Terror Otherness as Terror Terror Pornography The Commodification of Fear Artistic Expressions of Terror Literature and Terror Discourses and Counter-Discourses of Terror The Terror of Morality The Terror of Fundamentalisms Military Logic as Terror The Terror of Reason Faith and Terror ____________________________________________________________________________ ________________ Please send a 250-300 word abstract or proposal as an email attachment (MS Word Format) to TerrorProposal@ideologiesofwar.com DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACT: FEBRUARY 15, 2008. For more details about the conference go to: http://humanconditionseries.wordpress.com/speakers-08/ or http://humanconditionseries.wordpress.com/past-conference-07/ All papers accepted and presented at the conference will be considered for inclusion in the The Human Condition Series e-journal. In addition, some papers will also be considered for publication in a themed volume on Terror. Contact Person: Marianne Vardalos, Ph.D., Dept. of Sociology, Laurentian University Director of the Human Condition Series Organizing Committee