Following recent conferences in Linköping (2013), Otago (2014) and Tucson (2015), the tenth International Somatechnics Conference will be held in Byron Bay. The conference is co-hosted by the University of Queensland and Southern Cross University, with the support of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.

The term “somatechnics” was coined in 2003, as a means by which to rethink the relationship between technologies and embodiment. As Nikki Sullivan argues: ”techné is not something we add or apply to the already constituted body (as object), nor is it a tool that the embodied self employs to its own ends. Rather, technés are the dynamic means in and through which corporealities are crafted” (TSQ 1.1-2 2014).

This conference is intended to extend this focus on bodily techniques and embodied technologies to engage with recent theories of time and temporalities, as well as feminist, queer and trans historiography. Philosophies of time and critical investigations of past, present and future technologies have long been important concerns in studies of embodiment. Studies of the historical construction of gender and embodied memory, as well as various durational approaches to materiality, have revealed the important role played by technicity and temporality in the construction of corporealities. Points of intersection and divergence between such critical conceptions of time and technology, and recent science studies open up a further set of directions.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

Vicki Kirby (University of New South Wales)

Suvendrini Perera (Curtin University)

Susan Stryker (University of Arizona)

Valerie Traub (University of Michigan)

Organised by Elizabeth Stephens (Southern Cross University) and Karin Sellberg (University of Queensland)

The deadline for abstracts is Friday April 15, 2016. See the call for papers here.

For further details and continual updates, visit our conference website.