Embodiment and Identity

SWIPUK conference hosted by the Centre for Research into Embodied Subjectivity, Philosophy, and the Centre for Gender Studies, University of Hull, May 22–23 2008.

Sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Social Science University of Hull
The Royal Institute of Philosophy
The Ferens’ Educational Trust

Keynote Speaker: Linda Alcoff

This conference aims to explore the role the body plays in constituting aspects of our individual and social identity. The claim that biology fixes identity has been hotly contested in recent decades, but its apparent abandonment has led to intense theoretical debate over the role of the body in constituting both individual subjectivity and categories of social identity. We will be focusing particularly on gendered, cultural and racial identity, disability and identity, and identities reached by degrees of bodily modification. In each case attention will be paid to the role of social others in constituting the meaning and recognition bestowed on bodily physiognomies. The common assumption that such categories of identity are required for social participation, political agency and constructions of subjectivity, will be subjected to critical scrutiny.

The booking form can be found here (PDF format).

Plenary Speakers

Linda Alcoff
Professor of Philosophy, Political Science, and Women’s Studies , Syracuse University (website)

Dr. Lois McNay
Somerville College, Oxford (website)

Dr Jackie Leach Scully
Newcastle University (website)

Dr. Margrit Shildrick
Queens University, Belfast (website)

Organising Committee

Speakers

Rosemary Betterton, Lancaster University “Maternal Identity and Subject Matter: Susan Hiller’s Ten Months beside de Beauvoir and Butler”

Stella Sandford, Middlesex University, “Diotima-Plato: The bi sexual Imaginary”

Gillian Howie, University of Liverpool, “The Phenomenology of Non Identity”

Joanna Oksala, University of Dundee, “Gender Identity and Violence: Foucauldian Interventions”

Luna Dolezal, University College Dublin, “The (In)visible Body: Feminism, Phenomenology and the Case of Cosmetic Surgery”

Noor Al-Qasimi, New York University , “Boyah identity in the Arab Gulf States”

Mari Hughes Edwards, University of Edge Hill, “Salt in the Wound: Violation and the Female Body in the Work of Carol Ann Duffy”

Maddy Coy, London Metropolitan University, “This body which is not mine: Women’s account of prostitution and (dis) embodiment”

Soran Reader, Durham University, “An Ordinary Real Woman’s view Of ‘Male-to Female Transsexuality’ ”

Aimei Purser, University of Nottingham , “The Dancing Body –Subject: Merleau Ponty and Contemporary Dance in Conversation ”

Burcu Gurkan, Halic University, Istanbul, “The Mirror Has Eyes: The Self, the Other and Identity”

Nora Koller, University of Hull, “Stopping in Queer Street: Unlearning Some Tales of Travelling”

Brett Smith and Andrew Sparkes, University of Exeter, “Spinal Cord Injury, Disability and Story telling Bodies”

Fiona Ennis, Waterford Institute of Technology, “The Right to Bodily Integrity”

Taine Duncan, Duquesne University, “The Future of Human Nature, A Critical Analysis of Habermas and the Ethics of Expanding Human Nature”

Anna Kerchy, University of Szeged, Hungary, “Freaks Born and Made: Anatomical Alterity as a Technology of the Self. Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love”

Michael Drake, University of Hull, “Bringing Home the Dead: bodies politic in the new global (dis)order”

Jamey D Fisher and Harri Weeks, “Gender queer embodiment, time and space ”

Alexa T Schriempt, Penn State University, “Material Witness, Material Testimony”

Sushmita Chatterjee, Penn State University, “Spectacular Democracy”

Stephanie Jenkins, Penn State University, “Speaking Muteness”