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Fine, this was no editorial omission although the thought is fun, right! Rather it was a carefully deliberated opening intended to capture the cull complexity of this month’s events list: this time, we are featuring the Wacky, the Bizarre – and of course, the Hairy. Like many things with Allegra, this list too was the outcome of some unplanned banter, a few wacky exchanges, and the rest you see in front of your eyes!
Why do we dwell on this background? To offer both ourselves and our scholarly community a reminder of the importance of such a creative space – a space that is becoming increasingly jeopardised via continually tightening insistence by funders to define, in advance, just what a scholar proposes to study, via what methods, data, and theoretical framework.
Often such insistence appears all too innocent, as merely ticking the right box in that funding proposal to get the needed resources to then do the wacky, bizarre – and perhaps also the hairy. However, it’s not as simple as this as concurring to these formalistic requirements inevitably impacts the what and the how of the eventual venture, so we argue.
So it is with these words in mind – and just for general fun – that we share this these events that recently caught our eye, curated by the fabulous Aude Ferrachat. For a few of them, the submission deadline has passed, but we wanted to share them anyway for general inspiration.
And remember: Do get in touch with Andrea at andreak@allegralaboratory.net or audef@allegralaboratory.net if you want your event to be featured in our next monthly list…and send us your reports on events you organised. All this information is then stored in our calendar and shared on social media platforms. We look forward to hearing from you!
Conference: The Comic Arts Conference
25-27 March 2016, WonderCon, Los Angeles, CA and Comic-Con, San Diego, CA
The Comics Arts Conference accepts 100-200 word abstracts for papers, presentations, and panels taking a critical perspective on comics (juxtaposed images in sequence). We seek proposals from a broad range of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives and welcome the participation of academic and independent scholars. We also encourage the involvement of professionals from all areas of the comics industry, including creators, editors, publishers, retailers, distributors, and journalists.
The CAC accepts individual presentations of 20 minutes and discussion, round-table, or book launch panels of 60 minutes. If you’d like to submit a 90 minute panel consisting of three individual but thematically linked presentations, please submit each presentation individually on the submission site and indicate the larger panel theme in box 4.
For San Diego only, we also accept poster presentations. Poster presentations will be displayed during one 90-minute period, and offer an opportunity for one-on-one discussions with attendees and fellow presenters. [more]
Deadline for proposals for WonderCon, Los Angeles, CA : 1 December 2015
Deadline for proposals for Comic-Con, San Diego, CA: 1 February 2016
Conference: Framing the Face: New Perspectives on the History of Facial Hair
28 November 2015, Friends Meeting House, Euston Road, London NW1
Over the past five centuries, facial hair has been central to debates about masculinity. Over time, changing views of masculinity, self-fashioning, the body, gender, sexuality and culture have all strongly influenced men’s decisions to wear, or not wear, facial hair. For British Tudor men, beards were a symbol of sexual maturity and prowess. Throughout the early modern period, debates also raged about the place of facial hair within a humoural medical framework. The eighteenth century, by contrast, saw beards as unrefined and uncouth; clean-shaven faces reflected enlightened values of neatness and elegance, and razors were linked to new technologies. Victorians conceived of facial hair in terms of the natural primacy of men, and new models of hirsute manliness. All manner of other factors from religion to celebrity culture have intervened to shape decisions about facial hair and shaving.
And yet, despite a recent growth in interest in the subject, we still know little about the significance, context and meanings of beards and moustaches through time, or of its relationship to important factors such as medicine and medical practice, technology and shifting models of masculinity. To promote research on this issue we will be hosting a one-day workshop in London. [more]
Registration open: 7 October 2015 here
Conference & Book Fair: The (After) Lives of Things: Deconstructing and reconstructing material culture
7-9 April 2016, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Material things have been used to fashion identities and form social relationships throughout history. This panel seeks to shed light on the intersecting histories of materiality and process in the production and consumption of material culture. It invites papers that examine how physical and intellectual practices such as collecting, repurposing and remaking conveyed materially embedded messages about the subjective experience of their owner-makers, as well as the period in which they were undertaken more broadly. Such practices performed not only physical but semantic changes upon these objects which, due to their revised contexts, reciprocally enacted changes upon their possessors. Examining how these processes allowed individuals to construct identities, spaces, and social bonds, this panel will address issues central to the ‘material turn’ that has characterised recent scholarship within the humanities and, in particular, that of art history. [more]
Graduate Student Workshops: APLA at AAA 2015 Meeting
18-22 November 2015, Denver, CO
Each year during the AAA meetings, the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology (APLA) sponsors a series of special workshops in which small groups of graduate students and faculty convene around thematic conceptual, theoretical, and methodological issues. These workshops offer an intimate mentorship context in which students can engage in intensive discussions regarding specific problems in their anthropological research and writing. This year’s workshop topics are the following (descriptions can be found below):
– Exploring Exclaves
– The Afterlife of Ethnographic Fieldwork: Prospects and Limits of Post-Fieldwork Collaborations
– Anthropology and the Repugnant Cultural Other
– Secrets, Silences, and Limits to Knowledge
– The Anthropology of Policing and Punishment
EXTENDED Deadline for proposals: 23 October 2015
International Symposium: “Have we become too ethical? Managing vulnerability in human subject research
9 November 2015, University of Sussex, England
Concern: When is ethics review too constrictive and when too permissive?
Aim: To formulate the basis for feasible, fair and effective ethical review at home and
in transnational collaborative research
Well-known experts in the field of social-science research ethics and research funders will debate:
- Contextual factors in ethical review
- Competence of reviewers of human subject research
- Informed consent
