THE THIRD ANNUAL CULTURAL STUDIES ASSOCIATION (U.S.) MEETING Tucson, Arizona April 21-24, 2005 www.csaus.pitt.edu CALL FOR SEMINAR PARTICIPANTS New at this year's CSA conference are seminars. Seminars are small-group (maximum 12 individuals) discussion sessions for which participants write brief "position papers" that are circulated to the other seminar participants prior to the conference. The seminars are designed to foster more exchange than traditional paper-reading sessions, and they may allow the formation of networks of scholars who continue to collaborate. Participation in a seminar will allow conferees to seek financial support from their institutions. Paper length and deadlines will be established by individual seminar leaders. A preliminary list of seminars for the 2005 appears below (see our website for possible new additions). In order to participate in a seminar, send an email message to [log in to unmask] with the words <seminar request> in the subject line. Your message should list up to three seminars, ranked in order of preference, in which you would like to participate. (You will be allowed to participate in only one seminar, but you may participate in a seminar regardless of what other role you may have on the program.) Your message should also include your name, contact information, and institutional affiliation. Seminar requests should be sent by January 21, 2005. You will be notified of your seminar assignment by January 31, 2005. 1. Public Cultural Studies Charlie Bertsch Assistant Professor of English, University of Arizona This seminar will consider the pros and cons of researching and writing for a broad audience instead of scholars with similar points of reference. At what point, if any, does striving for accessibility compromise professional or political goals? Participants will discuss the relationship between style and content, choice of publishing venue, and the advantages and disadvantages of being polemical. Participants will be asked to pre-circulate position papers of no more than pages to other members by March 1, 2005. 2. What's Love Got To Do With It? Thinking the Estrangement Between Studies of Reproductive Politics and Sexuality Studies Laura Briggs Associate Professor of Women's Studies, University of Arizona; former staff writer for Gay Community News; and member of the Reproductive Rights National Network Dr. Barbara Herbert Assistant Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine Studies of reproduction continue to be crucial to numerous kinds of feminist scholarship, from historical studies of welfare rights to an anthropology of reproductive technology, while sexuality studies is a vibrant interdiscipline particularly focused in, but by no means limited to, queer studies. Why are these intellectual and political discourses so often resolutely separate? Is it a given, for example, that Queer Studies has nothing to say about deviant heterosexualities, or that scholarship on the abortion wars cannot think through closely allied issue of the right-wing's obsessive homophobia? This seminar will address the ways that these political practices/ academic fields (for they are both these kinds of hyphenated entities) have been mutually imbricated, models for thinking them together, and the forces and histories that cause us to conceptualize them separately. Partipants will be asked to write a 5 page position paper addressing the questions posed, by March 1st, to be precirculated to the other seminar members. 3. Bush Won. What Next? Eric Hayot Assistant Professor of English, University of Arizona Assuming that practical considerations keep most of us from moving to Canada, what kinds of (intellectual, pedagogical, practical) acts are possible within the institutional frameworks in which we find ourselves? But also: what possible personal relationships can those of us in the United States adopt to the fact of our geographic location or our citizenship? What kinds of resisting subject can emerge from that kind of complicity? Participants will be asked to write short (3-5 page) answers to these questions and distribute/read them in advance of the conference. Up to 30 participants will be accepted. 4. Sex, Race, and "Globalization" in the Early Modern Period Kari Boyd McBride Associate Professor of Women's Studies, University of Arizona Through the Sex, Race and Globalization stream, the conference organizers "seek to explore the imbrication of sexuality, gender and race with economic, political and informational processes across local, regional, national and transnational scales." This seminar asks how such processes functioned in the early modern era. How were bodies and information trafficked in that period? How did markers of social difference like race, gender, and sexuality inflect such exchange? How were those categories constructed in the transactions themselves? How did geography, place, and space both catalyze and distort individual and national identities? Participants will be asked to pre-circulate papers of no more than 10 pages to other members by March 1, 2005. 5. Family and Governmentality: The Question of Culture Chandan Reddy Assistant Professor of English, University of Washington Gillian Harkins Assistant Professor of English, University of Washington Seminar Description: This seminar will address the current animation of family as a key figure for contemporary cultural studies. Recent interest in the family has spawned claims about its centrality to a remarkable range of intellectual and political domains, including political economy, historiography, liberal rights, and social and psychic formations. These heterogeneous claims remark both radical changes, as well as continuities, between residual and emergent systems of power. This seminar invites scholars working in different historical and social contexts who seek to engage Foucault's conception of governmentality to investigate the seeming vibrancy of "family" as a site of social and intellectual struggle. Participants are asked to read Michel Foucault's essay "Governmentality" and provide a brief written response to the essay and/or the seminar topic (2-5 pages). This written response should stage and respond to key questions raised in relation to the participants' own research. Questions could focus on methodology, archive, domains of culture, domains of kinship, changes in state practice, etc. These response papers will be distributed to all seminar participants by March 1st. Seminar leaders will pre-circulate a synthesis of key questions and topics of interest based on these response papers. 6. Genders, Sexualities, and Muslim Worlds Elif Shafak Assistant Professor of Turkish and Women's Studies, University of Arizona Rudolf P. Gaudio Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Purchase College, State University of New York This seminar deviates from and challenges the prevailing Western-academic obsession with "Woman and Islam" by exploring gender and sexuality in Islamic societies within a complexity of relations that are both positive and negative, confining and liberating. Questions to be considered include: How are categories of 'feminine' and 'masculine', 'Muslim' and 'Islam' defined, negotiated and contested in different social and geographical settings? How have diverse gender and sexual identities been imaginatively fashioned in Muslim societies in the past, how are they being articulated today? How and to what extent are Muslims' gender and sexual identities facilitated and/or constrained by different approaches to Islamic governance and scriptural interpretation? Each participant will be required to write and distribute to other seminar participants a 5-page essay in advance of the conference. 7. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice David Shumway, Professor of English and Literary and Cultural Studies, Carnegie Mellon University This seminar will address the intersection of theory and practice in Cultural Studies, both as it has occurred up until now and how it might be better implemented in the future. How has cultural studies practice responded to theory? How should we as scholars bring "theory" and "practice" together? Brief papers should address one or both of these questions. Participants will be asked to write short (5 page) answers to these questions and distribute/read them in advance of the conference. 8. Cultural Studies: Curriculum and Methodology Paul Smith, Professor, Cultural Studies PhD Program, George Mason University As Cultural Studies comes to be institutionalised in more ways and in more places, the demand for rigorous curricula and lucid methodologies becomes paramount. The seminar will focus, then, on curricula and methodology equally, and on the two as as necessarily inter-related. The view will be toward forming some consensus on the pragmatic and theoretical issues facing Cultural Studies in the university. Participants are asked to send and distibute to other participants beforehand a short (2-3 pp) position paper on curricular or methodological issues, or on the relation between curricula and methodology. 9. Next Directions in Media Reception Studies Janet Staiger, Department of Radio-Television-Film, University of Texas at Austin Cultural and reception research in media studies has possibly hit a plateau. Multiple theories and methods guide broad and specific studies of interpretations and effects of film, television, and the internet. What gaps exist in our field? What new directions need to be explored? Where do we go from here? Seminar participants will prepare a 1000- to 2000-word position paper by March 15, 2005, to be circulated in advance. ---- To sign off Screen-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF Screen-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]