I am delighted and astonished to be in such extraordinary company giving one of the four keynotes for the The First International Queer Death Studies Conference:
“Death Matters, Queer(ing) Mourning, Attuning to Transitionings”
4-5 November 2019,
Karlstad University, Sweden
Organised by the Queer Death Studies Network, Centre for Gender Studies, Karlstad University, Tema Genus, Linköping University.
More information here:
https://www.kau.se/en/centre-gender-studies/date/first-international-queer-death-studies-conference-death-matters
CALL FOR PAPERS is open until 30th June
The First International Queer Death Studies Conference: "Death Matters, Queer(ing) Mourning, Attuning to Transitionings" aims to create an arena for critical discussion of death, dying and mourning that goes beyond the dual approach to death – human death in particular – that is common within Western cultural frameworks of Christian tradition or secular biomedical perspectives. As such, the conference invites scholars who work with death, dying, mourning and afterlife in relation to: diverse cultural, socio-political, historical, and economic conditions; entangled relations between human and the environment in the context of the Anthropocene; differential experiences of marginalised communities and individuals excluded from the hegemonic discourses on death, loss, grief and mourning, associated for example with the heteronormative model of family bonds; and, contemporary forms of necropolitics: mechanisms of power that force certain bodies into liminal spaces between life and death (for instance, refugees whose lives in detention camps turn into the state of “social death” (Mirzoeff 2019)). Interventions that focus on practices that resist hegemonic norms, as well as queer and decolonialise mourning and remembering are also welcome.
In order to search for broad inspirations for alternative articulations and stories which queer, that is, unpack and question the normativities (Chen 2012; Sandilands & Erickson 2012) that often frame contemporary discourses on death, dying, mourning and afterlife, the conference is based on a transdisciplinary engagement involving not only academics, but also activists, artists and other practitioners. In the context of the conference, to queer issues of death, dying, mourning and afterlife means to unhinge certainties, “undo normative entanglements and fashion alternative imaginaries” beyond the exclusive concern with gender and sexuality, often associated with the term “queer” (Giffney & Hird 2008, 6). In particular, the conference will call for papers within the following three overall themes: (1) death matters and materialities, (2) queering mourning, and (3) attuning to transitionings run through both days and all the keynote lectures.
The conference invites individual papers (length: 20 min) that engage with – but are not necessarily limited to – the following themes:
- Queer methodologies of researching death, dying, mourning and afterlife
- Queering and decolonialising practices of mourning, bereavement and remembrance
- Materiality of death and corpses
- Queering philosophies of death
- Death/life ecologies
- Necropolitics and borders
- Queer and trans necropolitics
- Un/grievable lives and deaths
- Death and biotechnology/biomedicine
- Queering cancer and other life-threatening diseases
- Suicide
- Technologies of life/death
- Queer widowhood
- Decolonialising death
- Illness narratives and death
- Ethico-politics and practices of killability
- Nonhuman death and dying
- Extinction and annihilation
- Death and acts of resistance
- ‘Slow death’
- Queering temporalities of death
- Queer spiritualities
- Death, ghosts and hauntology
Please, send a 300-word long abstract, accompanied by a 100-long bio to: qdsconference@gmail.com .