Why This Is Hell

I'm not sure how to recover from a three day conference in insufferable heat,* but last week was not the way to do it. I so need to get back to reading and watching seventies stuff, but this week I had to read and comment on a PhD thesis, and ponder whether the c and related p words are appropriate discourse for a thesis which is, after all, about people who display their [thank yous] for a living. Why so coy? If you can talk about it, you can use the word. I just have a vision of startled horses.

And editing prose, that of others', I seem to have had a fetish for eliminating the repetition of any word bar "of", "an", "a" or "the" in a sentence. And ideally between consecutive sentences. But then that collides with rhetorical flourishes. On the other hand, there should be a limit to how many time the word "which" can be used in a sentence (even allowing for the fact that there are mysterious, Atlantic-differentiated, rules for when it ought to be "that").

Then there was the summer school, which was advertised as being on comedy and gender, but the organiser had been confused by my consistent use of the phrase "comedy and race". The kids were actually quite smart, although apparently the solution for racism is for the butts of it to get over it. Chiz. Interestingly, whilst the black man's cock joke of The Office (see here) was not felt to be racist, the unknowable intention of Black People Love Us was.

Oh, and note to self, if you feel a sympathique with someone, at least think to get their name. It makes stalking them so much easier.

Meanwhile, I appear to be acquiring conferences - although I'll think twice about the big vampire one. Part of the operating strategy might be to push forward the comedy research (and I had a word with the supplier to my dealer, last night). Having thought through what to do with a conference on memory and quite liking the suggestion of Life on Mars, I have mysteriously acquired a copy of The Nature of Nicholas (thanks to tilo) without giving credit cards details to a firm specialising in adult and naturist films; in the mean time someone whispered another title in my ear in a different context, and that also does the seventies thing for me. Result.

Now to find a night where I get to bed earlier than 2am.



* One solution involves a bar, and a monologue punctuated by "and another thing...". Catharsis is us.

Submit proposal - check
Join conference - check
Renew passport - check
Buy air tickets - check
Book hotel - check
Provide Advanced Passenger Information - check
Fill in ESTA - check
Order currency - check
Write paper - oh look, cute little bunnies!

There's something I can't put my finger on here... I have no idea why completed papers are necessary two months before the conference.



CALL FOR PAPERS
1st International CCCU Queer Studies Conference

Queering Paradigms
Canterbury Christ Church University
27-28 February 2009

Key note speaker:
Robert Mills (King’s College, London): Adventures in the Queer Museum

Conference Aim
The aim of this conference is to look at the status quo and the challenges in the future of Queer Studies from a broad multi-, trans-disciplinary and polythetic angle.
Participants will represent the whole spectrum of academia and will present papers and panels from the angle of Education, Health & Social Studies, Business, Sciences, Arts, and Humanities.
This conference aims to combine and showcase the great range of expertise held at the CCCU in area’s relating to Queer Studies; additionally, a wider range of national and international external specialists will be invited to contribute.

Queer Studies
The definition for 'queer' adopted for this purpose is not restricted to LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender), but holistic along the lines of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's definition in her essay “Queer and Now”:
That's one of the things that 'queer' can refer to: the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when constituent elements of anyone's gender, of anyone's sexuality aren't made (or can't be made) to signify monolithically.
In contemporary Western society, we can approach 'queerness' as querying, contrasting, challenging and transforming hetero-normativity.

Call For Papers
Papers and Panel proposals are invited on any area and aspect of Queer Studies.
The proposals will undergo a peer-review process; the Proceedings of this conference will be prepared for a (RAE-able) publication with a major Academic Press (Cambridge University Press has already signalled strong interest).

Proposal abstract deadline: 1 September 2008
Deadline for completed papers: 2 January 2009

Proposals for individual papers should take the form of abstracts of not more than 400 words; panel proposals should include both a panel rationale and paper abstracts.

All proposals should be sent by email before September, 1st 2008 to
Dr Burkhard Scherer (Theology & RS, CCCU); burkhard.scherer@canterbury.ac.uk