Southern Humanities Conference, Savannah, GA, Feb. 2-4, 2024
Savannah, GA
Organization: Southern Humanities Conference
The Southern Humanities Conference, 2024, Call for Papers
Conference Theme: (Em)Body/Environment
Savannah, GA, February 1-4, 2024
The Southern Humanities Conference offers an opportunity for scholars, artists, writers, musicians, performers, and humanists of all kinds to share their knowledge, research, work, and experiences in an interdisciplinary, welcoming, and engaging intellectual space.
The Southern Humanities Conference invites proposals for papers on any aspect of the theme “Em)Body/Environment,” broadly conceived. Our conference themes are meant to be inspiring and prompt reflection, not limiting. The topic is interdisciplinary and invites proposals from all areas of study, as well as creative pieces including but not limited to performance, music, art, and literature. Customary paper and full panel proposals are invited, as are ones for creative presentation formats like roundtables, workshops, and demonstrations. Moreover, the Southern Humanities Conference welcomes proposals from teachers and professionals outside the academy, as well as from scholars in the early stages of their academic careers including graduate students. Please note that the name of our organization simply reflects its having been founded in the U.S. South; no presenter is expected to present anything “southern” or be from the South, though southern topics are also welcomed. Conference attendees come from all over the United States, Canada, as well as overseas.
(Em)Body/Environment:
We live in a crucial moment when the health of our planet, and of our own bodies are endangered. Climate change is an increasingly dangerous and unsurmountable problem; erratic weather patterns, flooding, drought, failed agriculture, unstable wildlife habitat, hurricanes and snowstorms, heat surges, and wildfires destroy millions acres of land, devastate crops, kill, injure, and force millions of people from their homes each year, leading to record climate migration. Simultaneously, a global pandemic has reduced the life expectancy in the US and globally.
We also live in and embody various social, spatial, and physical environments within our shared global home. Our research can trace the contours and push the boundaries of these environments, and discuss the ways in which they shape, transform, and limit our bodies and our embodiment. And yet, advanced technology allows us—in fact encourages us—to work, shop, entertain ourselves, wage war, and interact with each other “remotely,” distancing ourselves from our own bodies, each other, and the environments we live in. Academia itself is often critiqued for its tendency to disembody those within it, for its disregard of the body over the mind, and for creating artificial or exclusive environments removed from the material world. How can we engage in critical thinking while remaining embodied? How can we best discuss issues of environmental sustainability and human interconnectivity? How do our disciplines and daily activities affect our bodies as well as the planet we live in? As humanities scholars, what can we offer to discussions of bodies, embodiment, and environment?
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Please submit proposals of 300-500 words through our website at www.southernhumanities.org (preferred), or by email sent to Brett Bebber at southernhumanities@gmail.com. Proposals are due by December 15, 2023, but are accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis.
We are currently planning to meet for an in-person conference in Savannah. However, SHC’s Executive Board is monitoring the pandemic and will always promote the safety and well-being of its members. Therefore, we will keep open the possibility of converting the conference to a digital format if circumstances demand the change.
Conference registration fees for the 2024 Conference will be $150 for students and $195 for academic faculty and other professionals.
CONFERENCE AWARDS:
Two awards of up to $300 are available to help mitigate the costs of travel to the conference. The Kathryn M. Reynolds award is for first- or second-time presenters, and Bennie D. Ussery award is for the best proposed paper from a graduate student. If you would like to be considered for one of these awards, please indicate which award in your proposal. Those interested in being considered for either award should submit their proposals by October 31, 2023.
POSSIBLE PANEL OR PAPER TOPICS:
Topics are not limited to but may address any of the following areas, and may integrate the theme in trans-disciplinary or interdisciplinary ways. That is, the paper or creative presentation may address the theme from particular perspectives OR may address the integration of two or more dimensions of the theme.
Possible topics may include but are not limited to any aspect or combination of Bodies, Embodiment, and Environment:
· Embodying one’s environment, from the local to the global
· Bodies, Positioning, and Environment
· One’s Body as an Environment
· The Earth as a body
· The Embodiment of Environmentalisms
· Self-Embodiment and Environment(s)
· Disability and environmental awareness
· Understandings of the Body and Embodiment
· Literature and Literary Analysis
· Poetry and Creative Writing
· Bodies and Environment in Art and Art History
· History and the Historical
· Gender and the Body, Embodiment
· Race/Ethnicity
· Social Class
· Sex and Sexuality
· Religion and Spirituality
· Geography and Geographies
· Philosophy and Social Ethics
· Psychology, Community, and the Sense of Self
· New Media and Digital Humanities
· The Visible/Invisible
· Dis/Ability
· Theatre/Drama (theory and live performance)
· Movement and Dance (theory and live performance)
· Music (theory and live performance)
· Education and the Environments
· Cinema and Culture
· Cultural Difference
· Humanities and the Human
· Architecture and human spaces
· Phenomenology and Ethics of living on the planet
https://www.southernhumanities.org/
Brett Bebber