Open Graves, Open Minds

Another conference that followers of OGOM may be interested in: Gendering the Urban Imaginary: Fantasy, Affect, Transgression at the University of Debrecen, Hungary.

The Gender, Translocality and the City Research Group based at the University of Debrecen is pleased to announce its second annual conference, which is going to explore the role of gender, fantasy, and emotion in the production of urban space. Papers focusing on urban fantasy in twentieth- and twenty-first-century anglophone literary, visual and cultural studies are invited for presentation, and we also encourage submissions relying on psychogeographical approaches to explore the (post)modern imaginary of city life. Papers investigating the modern(ist) city, postmodern labyrinths, art and the aestheticization of urban space, the playable city, uncanny metropolises, paranormal urban worlds, suburban and subterranean space, spectral cities and fantasy scapes, for instance, are welcome. Presentations addressing “the mutually defining relation between bodies and cities” (Elizabeth Grosz) will be considered as well, especially if focusing on the “atmosphere” (Teresa Brennan) or “sense of place” (Jon Anderson) as the articulation of affective traces which define subjectivities in relation to specific environments. We also encourage submissions on topics such as transgressions, fear, and the city; metamorphoses, enjoyment, and urban space; emapthy and the city; and so on.Theoretical contributions investigating the intersections between affect theory and city studies, including, but not limited to, the works of Sarah Ahmed, Elspeth Probyn, Carolyn Pedwell, for instance, and Michel De Certeau, Elizabeth Wilson, Elizabeth Grosz, etc., are also within our scope of interest.