---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Cathy Hannabach <channabach@gmail.com> Date: Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 7:01 AM Subject: CFP: Visual Culture Division, Cultural Studies Association 2013 To: Cathy Hannabach <channabach@gmail.com> Please forward widely... *Call for Papers* * * *Visual Culture Division, Cultural Studies Association (USA)* Visual Studies investigates the production, dissemination and remediation of images and imaging systems in all forms—artistic, popular, scientific, commercial, etc. It is inclusive and broad-ranging both in its methods and approaches as well as in its objects of inquiry, which include a wide variety of media forms: digital technologies, the internet, photography, film, traditional arts, television, performance, gaming, video, the built environment, popular culture, etc. Visual Studies also addresses work produced across a broad spectrum of the humanities and natural sciences, engineering, medicine, cartography, circuit design, mathematics, information science, military applications, logic, and the many zones of graphic production in commercial and public sectors. Yet, its work is not about representation alone, but includes considerations of knowledge production, theory, and methods within Visual Studies itself. As a thematic division of the Cultural Studies Association (USA) the Visual Culture Division is dedicated to visual culture broadly conceived. Please find below the cfp for *our annual conference, which will take place in Chicago, 23-26 May 2013*. If you have questions please feel free to contact the Chair of the Visual Culture Division, Randal Rogers ( randal.rogers@uregina.ca), or the respective session contact. Submissions: please forward paper proposals to session contacts and the division chair by *24 September*. Proposals of 300 words (max.) must include: title; short description; contact information; institutional affiliation. ____ *Session: Viralities Virtual and Visual* It has become commonplace to describe the circulation of epidemics, protests, war, capital, and media through the cliche "going viral." Indexing something about speed, medium, and audience participation, "viral" has come to signify a method of movement that both references but exceeds the biological. In media as diverse as cell phone videos of the Occupy Movements and revolutions across North Africa and the Middle East to CSI shows, bioterror video games, and Twitter feeds tracking TSA airport screening practices, visual culture seems inextricably linked to the viral both in terms of representation and media production. Viral has become both metaphor and materiality, linking digital technologies and social media practices to medical cultures, disease patterns, and military networks. This panel seeks papers that explore the specifically visual dimensions of "viral"--what role do visuality and visual media practices play in producing, circulating, and consuming ideas about the viral, viruses, and virality? How does the viral necessitate a redefinition of what visual culture and visual studies is, and how we engage it? Topics may include: - Surveillance: ID cards, biometrics, monitoring, law - War and militarisms: friend/enemy distinctions, tracking movements, military networks, drones - Medicine: biological viruses, pandemics/outbreaks, STIs/STDs, pharmaceutical practices, surgery/medical films, genetics - Power networks and resistance/revolution: Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, Wisconsin - Life beyond the living: metaphors, materialisms, vitalisms - Social media and networking: viral videos, memes, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Academia.edu - Circulation: bodies, capital, ideas, resources, objects, affects - Species: animals, biopower, life and death - Viral economics: capitalism, socialism, risk, speculation, credit, the commons - Replication: reproduction, monstrosity, mutation - Digital lives: hacking, crowdsourcing Contact: Cathy Hannabach Women’s Studies and American Studies Temple University channabach@gmail.com and randal.rogers@uregina.ca ____ *Session: Visual Studies and Sport* This panel investigates the relationship between sport and visual culture. Sports have traditionally had a curious relationship with the academy and particularly within the arts, where they are often treated as ‘low-brow’, anti-intellectual and popular pursuits. Of the academic work that has addressed sport, very little has focused on its highly visual nature. Rather, the dominant approach, found in the history and sociology of sport, situates sport as a social phenomenon and highlights the social and economic structures of sporting events, sports organizations and professions, as well as the mediation of sport, most specifically through television. By contrast, this panel examines the specific intersection of sport and visual representation. Sports are inextricably bound to visual technologies and, as such, are a rich site of analysis for visual studies scholars. Importantly, the panel emphasizes the myriad ways in which sports and images intersect: images are used as pedagogical tools in sport as they are produced, circulated and read by coaches, athletes, trainers and sports medicine professionals; they are used as juridical tools that either replace or augment the human eye in sporting events; they serve commercial purposes as in television and print advertising; they are used as entertainment in television, film and new media; and they form an essential part of visual culture as manifest in visual art, pop culture and other forms of visual culture production. The panel calls for a rethinking of sport and its relationship to visual studies. Whether pedagogical, juridical, commercial, aesthetic or otherwise, images of sport are fundamental components of contemporary visual culture: they are bound to cultural conceptions of class, race, nation and gender and are enmeshed in the fundamental economic and institutional infrastructures of society. The panel seeks to explore this topic in hopes of bringing new perspectives, theories and approaches to analyzing sport and visual culture. Contact: Jonathan Finn Department of Communication Studies Wilfrid Laurier University jfinn@wlu.ca and randal.rogers@uregina.ca -- Cathy Hannabach Women's Studies & American Studies Temple University 837 Anderson Hall channabach@gmail.com