Call for Papers


Space, Race, Bodies: Geocorpographies of the City, Nation and Empire is a forthcoming conference hosted by the Department of Media, Film and Communication (MFCO), the Postcolonial Studies Research Network (PSRN) and the Somatechnics Research Network (University of Arizona) at the University of Otago between the 8-10th December, 2014. The title of the conference is taken from Joseph Pugliese’s ground-breaking work on technologies of surveillance, law and terrorism. The conceptual merging of the corporeal body with geography—geocorpographies—draws attention to the institutional, cultural and legal forces that influence the global movement of people, capital and technology across cities and national borders.


Space, Race, Bodies is an interdisciplinary conference that invites papers to address the following questions:

· how are racial and ethnic identities contested and/or reaffirmed through local, national and global spaces?

· what kinds of spatial practices produce migrant and diasporic identities?

· how do geopolitical spaces create the conditions of hospitality, violence and containment for asylum seekers and refugees?

· what forms of ethical responsibilities do local, national and global citizens have towards ‘visiting bodies’?

· how do media, law and politics frame space and geography in racialised ways?

· what are the tensions between Indigenous and colonial notions of national space?

· what are the social and cultural consequences of racialised and ethnic bodies moving across particular places?

· how do racialised bodies intersect with public discourse around ‘right to space’ in a national context?

· how is mobility geopolitical? how do notions of spatial mobility presuppose normative conceptions of the human?

· how do children, animals or the elderly figure in geopolitical conceptions of space and race?

· how do spaces of violence, war and ‘terrorism’ reconfigure citizenship in local, national and global contexts?



The conference will also accept papers under the general theme of Somatechnics research on the intersections between bodies, media and technologies.

The conference committee will accept 200w abstracts on a rolling basis until September 1st. Please send abstracts, 50w bios and inquiries to the conference committee at: Space.Race.Bodies@otago.ac.nz