Intersectional Materialisms.
Diversity in Creative Industries, Methods and Practices
AUG 26TH-28TH 2024
Maynooth, National University of Ireland
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We are delighted to announce the forthcoming 12th New Materialisms Conference on "Intersectional Materialisms: Diversity in Creative Industries, Methods and Practices," an interdisciplinary platform to explore the convergences and synergies between intersectionality, new materialisms and creative practice. This conference aims to bring together scholars, activists, and practitioners to critically engage with the complexities of subjectivities, power, and material realities through an intersectional and materialist lens with a focus on how the materiality of difference matters in creative practice. Follow us on Instagram for updates!
About
The conference seeks to foster an inclusive and dynamic space for discussions that transcend conventional disciplinary boundaries with a view to open, yet historically informed, conversations. Intersectionality and Feminist New Materialisms intersect to enrich our understanding of the interconnectedness of human and non-human life, challenging binary conceptualisations, and addressing social, technological, environmental, and political issues with renewed perspectives. The conference is the next in an annual tradition that started in 2010 and was briefly interrupted during the global COVID-19 pandemic. So far, the network has met in Cambridge, UK; Utrecht, NL; Linköping, SE; Turku, FI; Barcelona, SP; Maribor, SI; Melbourne, AU; Warsaw, PL; Paris, FR; Cape Town, ZA; Kassel, GE.
We invite researchers, artists, professionals, teachers and activists to submit original papers and presentations that engage with the theme of intersectionality within the creative industries, or through creative research methods and practices. We are interested in oral histories, folk practices, digital folk media, inclusive dance, disability powered art, feminist cinema and music, drag, queer and trans creative spaces, productive connections and points of tension; synergy and debate. We follow a range of interdisciplinary conversations, and specifically invite papers that look to decenter colonial histories, knowledges and value systems, which also develop an awareness of the global and racialized politics of emotion. In recent years, the creative industries have witnessed a growing awareness of the complex interplay between various forms of identity and their impact on creativity, representation, and cultural production. Intersectionality, a framework that acknowledges the interconnectedness of multiple social identities and systems of oppression, has become a crucial lens through which to understand and critique the dynamics within the creative sectors. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to foster a deeper exploration of intersectionality's role in shaping the creative industries, facilitating an inclusive and critical dialogue among scholars, practitioners, and stakeholders.
Intersectionality (Nash, 2018; Banet-Weiser, 2018; Villesche et al., 2018; Hill Collins, 2019; Kanai, 2020) has brought race, class, age, sexuality and disability into everyday feminist discussions which challenge the whiteness of western feminist material culture (Hamad and Taylor, 2015). However, there are also scholars (Puar, 2011; Hinton, et al., 2015) who note some of the ongoing whiteness embedded within new materialism and suggest that ‘race and the very processes through which racialized bodies come to matter (in both senses of the word) are considered to be areas that are underrepresented in many new materialist approaches’ (Hinton, et al., 2015, p. 2). Taking this as a call to action, we also invite papers which investigate and respond to what Geerts and van der Tuin (2013) might call ‘a pattern of interference’, after Barad (2007) and Verloo (2009), where ‘by allowing for relations to be made and made differently, we no longer assume that a social category or a set of social categories has a decisive and uniform effect (essentialism)’ (p.176). Papers, panels, performances and other submissions which take up intersectionality as a critical and creative feminist new materialist turning point, or everyday practice are especially welcomed.
Intersectional New Materialism encourages a holistic understanding of the interconnectedness between humans, non-human entities, and the environment. It challenges traditional dualistic perspectives that separate humans from nature, fostering a more inclusive and integrative approach. With the escalating environmental crisis, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, there is an urgent need to reevaluate our relationship with the natural world. Environmental Humanities provide a platform for exploring the ethical, cultural, and socio-political dimensions of environmental issues. Both New Materialism and Environmental Humanities draw on insights from various disciplines, such as philosophy, cultural studies,literature, science, and sociology. This interdisciplinary approach allows for a more comprehensive understanding of environmental challenges, encouraging creative collaboration between scholars, scientists, and policymakers.By acknowledging the agency of materials, it prompts a reevaluation of how we interact with and impact the environment, leading to more sustainable and responsible practices.
We invite contributions that explore, but are not limited to, the following
Themes:
1. Representation and Identity in Creative Content:
Analysing how intersectionality influences the representation of diverse identities in art, media, literature, film, and other creative forms.
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2. Production and Creative Processes:
Examining how intersecting identities impact creative processes, collaboration, innovation, and decision-making within various creative domains.
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3. Cultural Production and Social Change:
Exploring how intersectional perspectives contribute to challenging stereotypes, promoting social justice, and fostering inclusive cultural production.
4. Economic and Structural Inequities:
Investigating how intersectional factors affect access to resources, opportunities, and career advancement within the creative industries.
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5. Audience Reception and Consumption:
Studying how audiences from different intersecting backgrounds engage with and interpret creative content, and how intersectional narratives resonate with diverse audiences.
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6. Intersectional Activism and Advocacy:
Examining the role of intersectional approaches in advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion within creative sectors and their broader societal impact.
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7. Arts Based Methods:
Exploring how arts based methods create spaces for intersectional activism in research.
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8. Posthumanist queer studies and intersectional approaches to sexuality:
Research in and outside institutions
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9. Intersectional perspectives on technoscience, AI, and digital cultures:
Can AI be creative?
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10. Creative production and minoritarian cultures.
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11. New Materialism and Environmental Humanities.
With the escalating environmental crisis, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and
pollution, this theme contributes to the much-needed reevaluation of our relationship with the
natural world exploring the ethical, cultural, and socio-political dimensions of environmental
issues.
Our
Speakers
Jeneen Naji
Maynooth University, Ireland
Dr. Jeneen Naji is Associate Professor of Digital Media in the Department of Media Studies in Maynooth University, Ireland where she lectures on the BA Media Studies, MA in Critical Creative Media and the BSc Multimedia, Mobile & Web Development in Computer Science. Dr. Naji’s research is in the area of intersectional digital arts and culture specifically exploring the impact of the digital apparatus on poetic expression. She is the Irish PI on the AHRC/IRC funded research project Full Stack Feminism in Digital Humanities http://ifte.network/full-stack-feminism/ and is also a convener and founding member of the Maynooth University Digital Arts & Humanities Research Cluster, a member of the editorial collective of the innovative Instazine “Filter” and a Fulbright TechImpact Scholar.
Susan Luckman
University of South Australia, Australia
Susan Luckman is Professor of Culture and Creative Industries, Director of the Creative People, Products and Places Research Centre (CP3), and the Cultural and Creative Industries Research Platform Leader of the Hawke EU Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence at the University of South Australia.
Susan is an interdisciplinary cultural studies scholar whose research is concerned with creative work, especially as it intersects with digital technologies and craft practices. She has been a Chief Investigator on 6 ARC and 3 EU awarded projects. Current projects include the ARC Discovery grants ‘The Value of Craft Skills to the Future of Manufacturing in Australia’ (DP190100349, 2019-2023) which is identifying how the craft skills required to sustain and grow skilled Australian production can be maintained and extended, as well as 'Artisanal Making and the Future of Small-Scale Local Production' (DP220100110, 2022-2024, with Dr Michelle Phillipov, University of Adelaide) which aims to identify the consumer identities, decision-making and sustainable artisanal production models underpinning contemporary demand for locally made goods. Previously, she was Chief Investigator on the 4 year Australian Research Council Discovery Project 'Promoting the Making Self in the Creative Micro-economy’ (2015-2018) which explored how online distribution is changing the environment for operating a creative micro-enterprise and, with it, the opportunities for mobile working lives and the impacts upon the larger relationship between public and private spheres this entails. Susan is currently a member of the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts (2022-2024) and is an expert reviewer for the Research Executive Agency of the European Commission (REA).
Susan is the author of Craftspeople and Designer Makers in the Contemporary Creative Economy (Open Access - Palgrave 2020), Craft and the Creative Economy (Palgrave Macmillan 2015), Locating Cultural Work: The Politics and Poetics of Rural, Regional and Remote Creativity (Palgrave Macmillan 2012), co-editor of Craft Communities (Bloomsbury 2023 forthcoming), Pathways into Creative Working Lives (Palgrave 2020), The ‘New Normal’ of Working Lives: Critical Studies in Contemporary Work and Employment (Palgrave 2018), Craft Economies (Bloomsbury 2018), and Sonic Synergies: Music, Identity, Technology and Community (Ashgate 2008), and author of book chapters, peer-reviewed journal articles and reports on cultural work, creative industries and creative micro-entrepreneurialism.
Milla Tiainen & Katve-Kaisa Kontturi
University of Turku, Finland
Dr. Milla Tiainen is Senior Lecturer in Musicology at the University of Turku and Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Helsinki. She has previously worked, for example, as Senior Lecturer in Musicology at the University of Helsinki and Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication Studies at Anglia Ruskin University (UK). Milla’s research inhabits the fields of musical performance studies, cultural and gender studies of voice, sound and music, ecocriticism, and new materialist and posthumanist study of the arts. She has published extensively in these areas in the form of peer-revied articles and chapters, edited volumes, and articles for professional communities. Recently, she co-edited Mattering Voices: Studying Voice through New Materialisms (forthcoming with Routledge).
Dr. Katve-Kaisa Kontturi is Senior Lecturer in Art History and Associate Professor
of Contemporary Art Studies at the University of Turku. She also regularly teaches at the University of the Arts, Helsinki. She specialises in relational processes of making and encountering art, new materialist research methodologies and art-based research, with an emphasis on feminist art including craft activism, and more-than-human artistic collectivities. Her publications on these topics include a broad range of peer-reviewed research articles, edited volumes, the monograph Ways of Following: Art, Materiality, Collaboration (2018) and a variety of art essays. With artist Kim Donaldson, she practices Feminist Colour-IN (2016–).
Together, Kontturi and Tiainen are principal investigators of the cross-disciplinary project New Economies of Artistic Labour (funded by the Kone Foundation, 2020-2024). With Taru Leppänen and Tara Mehrabi, they are editors of New Materialism and Intersectionality: Making Middles Matter, which will be published by Routledge in 2024. They have also co-edited several journal special issues on new materialisms and the study of art (e.g. Cultural Studies Review 2015; Ruukku: Studies in Artistic Research 2018; Polish Journal of Aesthetics 2020). In 2014–2018, they led a working group focused on creative arts as part of the EU-COST Action ’New Materialism’.
Chiara Bonfiglioli
Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy
Chiara is currently Associate Professor in Contemporary History in the Department of Humanities at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy.
She is the Principal Investigator of the ERC Consolidator project titled WO-NAM: Women and Non-Alignment in the Cold War era: biographical and intersectional perspectives.
Previously (2017-2023), she lectured in Gender & Women’s Studies at University College Cork, where she coordinated the one-year interdisciplinary Masters in Women’s Studies.
Aislinn O’Donnell
Maynooth University, Ireland
Aislinn O’Donnell is Professor of Education in the Department of Education at Maynooth University. She is also a member of the Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy. Aislinn’s research and writing interests are in contemporary continental philosophy, particularly Bergson and Deleuze, feminist philosophy, philosophy of education, and Spinoza and the Spinozist heritage. Some of the themes she has explored in her writing include failure, the question of existential competence, life as experimentation, social imaginaries, touch, exchange, and political shame.
As part of extending and disrupting her practices of thinking, she is also currently undertaking studies in Fine Art. She has also undertaken training in micro-phenomenological methods and maintains a practice of meditation, all of which inflect her understanding of what it means to open attention and contact experience.
Her work in philosophy of education examines the following areas: educational experience, educational imaginaries, ethics in education, extremism and education, and democracy and education. She has a collaborative project Art and Philosophy in the Classroom, working with children and young people https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1437152963036622. She has developed creative pedagogical projects including the Erasmus+ funded The Enquiring Classroom https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/18608/1/The%20Enquiring%20Classroom%20Handbook.pdf Another recent area of research involved developing pedagogical approaches to engage educationally with complex and difficult political questions such as polarisation, intolerant extremism and hate speech. This resulted in a resource called Sharing the World: Educational Responses to Extremism https://edurad.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Sharing-the-World-MU-EDURAD-Public.pdf
Schedule
January 31, 2024
Abstract submission deadline
August 26th to 28th, 2024
Conference dates
March 15, 2024
Notification of acceptance
Conference Format
Hybrid: both in-person and virtual
Registration
Registration to the conference is NOW CLOSED
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Registration closing dates:
9th June 2024 - if you have been confirmed to present at the conference
30th July 2024 (or earlier if sold out) - for all other attendees
Conference fees (in euros):
Faculty Members 170
Early Career Researchers 125
Unwaged Participants 90
Artists : Full time artists are encouraged to contact us at intersectionalhumanities@gmail.com to register their interest to attend. Limited sponsored places are available with priority for artists with accepted abstracts.
For inquiries and further information, please contact our conference organizing team at intersectionalhumanities@gmail.com
Publication Opportunity
Selected papers presented at the conference will be considered for publication in a special issue of Matter: Journal of the New Materialisms or an edited volume dedicated to the encounters between intersectionality and feminist new materialisms.
Conference Practicalities
Conference venue and travelling
The conference will be held at Maynooth University Campus. Learn more about the location and travelling from https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/location
Accommodation options
Campus accommodation:
Conference delegates will have the option to take advantage of campus accommodation on the North Campus of Maynooth University.The accommodation is single ensuite bedrooms within 5 bedroom apartments with a shared kitchen and living area. A conference rate is available and the code to this will be released once registration is complete. The voucher is valid for bookings from the 25th August (check in) to the 29th August (check out).
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Other Accommodation:
We warmly encourage staying in Maynooth for networking and other opportunites. But other options include Glenroyal Hotel, Carton House, Hamlet Court Hotel, Johnstown Estate.
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