Call for Papers

Following the great success of the first Body Modification conference in April 2003, and the requests we have received to host another conference, we are pleased to announce: Body Modification Mark II.

Abstracts are invited for this international conference to be held at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, 21st - 23rd of April, 2005. Abstracts should be 300-500 words and should be forwarded to Dr Nikki Sullivan at the address listed below. Proposals for panels and for performance pieces are welcomed. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer any financial assistance to conference participants.

Once again, the aim of this conference is explore the many and varied ways in which bodies are modified, selves are formed and transformed, and culturally specific knowledges and practices are mediated and transfigured. We hope to include a wide range of interdisciplinary approaches to the question of what constitutes body modification, as well as performative and visual presentations.

Possible topics

• 'non-mainstream' body modification (tattooing, piercing, scarification, branding, etc)
• body sculpting (corsetry, dieting, body-building, binding, constriction, negation, elongation, etc)
• performance art
• body politics
• transformative rituals
• body modification in non-Western cultures and/or in other historical epochs
• transgender and/or transsexualism; intersex
• cosmetic surgery
• fatness; anorexia; eating
• technology and the body (enhancement technologies, cyborgs, nanotechnology, reproductive technologies, transplants, implants, cloning, ethics, etc)
• virtual bodies
• 'self-mutilation'
• fashion
• illness; pain
• sadomasochism; fetishes; bodies and pleasures
• pregnant embodiment
• the racialization of the body; hybrid bodies
• monstrosity; the normalization of 'deformed' bodies
• ageing
• addiction
• reading/writing the body
• intercorporeality
• war; violence; torture; terrorism; imprisonment

Deadline for abstracts: 1st November, 2004

Further information

Body Modification Conference Committee
Department of Critical and Cultural Studies
Macquarie University
North Ryde
New South Wales 2109
Australia

Email: bodmod@scmp.mq.edu.au
Phone: + 61 (0)2 9850 8760

FINAL PROGRAM

Download final program
(PDF format)

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Bodmod I Site

visit Bodmod I site

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