the re/turn of the nonhuman in the study of culture
concepts – concerns – challenges

Confirmed keynote speakers:

- Ursula Heise, University of California Los Angeles (USA)
- Jussi Parikka, Southampton (UK) / Turku (FIN)
- Noortje Marres, Goldsmith College, London (UK)

Call for Papers

More often than not, academic research today tries to solve the issues
of the 21st century with concepts of the 20th in institutional
frameworks of the 19th. The humanities are a case in point: important
as they have been in the past and continue to be in the present, the
very term ‘humanities’ can be seen as somewhat problematic today, as
it implies an exclusive focus on humans and humanity. There is,
however, hardly an issue of cultural or social concern today, which
does not involve complex entanglements of human and nonhuman actors.

Contemporary scholars draw our attention to matter, networks, affect,
objects, and media in order to show how other entities act and shape
our world. They argue that making these nonhuman entities visible
helps us better engage with the contemporary moment and address 21st
century problems such as global climate change, the collapse of
financial markets, or nonhuman internet traffic. Approaches to the
nonhuman have included such diverse fields as actor-network theory,
affect theory, animal studies, assemblage theory, new media theory,
new materialism, speculative and object-oriented realism or systems
theory.
Turning towards the nonhuman in the study of culture, however, is not
just about “contemporary thought”—it’s about politics, knowledge, and
embodied experience both in the present and throughout history. Thus a
“nonhuman turn” in the study of culture might just as well be
described as a “re/turn of the nonhuman”, as research on the cultural
and social relations of human and nonhuman actors can be traced to a
variety of different intellectual and theoretical developments moving
back through the last decades of the 20th century and well before.

Following the successful Center for 21st Century Studies (C21) 2012
conference on “The Nonhuman Turn,”, we would like to invite
researchers from all fields of the humanities, social sciences and
other areas of the study of culture to intensify the discussion about
the implications of the nonhuman for the study of culture: Which
concepts have been developed or need to be developed further in order
to better observe, analyze or theorize the manifold relations of
nonhumans and humans in the 21st century as well as historically? What
are the most important cultural and social concerns regarding
questions of the nonhuman which need to be addressed by the academic
study of culture? Which challenges do researchers in the study of
culture face in light of the nonhuman?

While this conference also acknowledges the discourse on a “posthuman
turn” as an important inspiration, we see the “nonhuman” as a distinct
concept which differs from posthumanism in important ways. While the
nonhuman also aims to widen the perspective to include other natural,
cultural, and social actors than humans, it does not claim a historic
shift from humanism to posthumanism, but rather advocates research
which takes into account the various complex relations of humans and
nonhumans in contemporary as well as historical cultural and social
formations.

This is the first in a series of conferences at the International
Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) designed to identify
and discuss emerging topics for the study of culture. Together with
C21, this first event is meant to address the future of 21st century
studies by exploring how the re/turn of the nonhuman might provide a
way forward for the contemporary study of culture in light of the
difficult challenges of the 21st century.

Paper Submissions

Papers can be presented either in German or in English. Please send an
abstract of about 250 words and a short bionote to
Beatrice.Michaelisgcsc.uni-giessen.de.
Deadline for submissions is March 15th, 2013

For more info please check our conference website:
http://gcsc.uni-giessen.de/nonhuman

Center for 21st Century Studies (C21)
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
https://www4.uwm.edu/c21/