[csaa-forum] CSAA Conference 2004 -- CFP -- Please circulate widely

[Mark Gibson]

Everyday Transformations

The Twenty-First Century Quotidian



Annual conference of the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia,
Perth / Fremantle, 9-11 December 2004

Call for Papers



New technologies, increasing work pressures, changing gender roles 
and family structures, increasing flows of refugees and asylum 
seekers, concerns about security, environmental risks, the escalating 
speed and complexity of social transactions - everyday life is today 
a terrain of rapid and unsettling change. Yet it retains associations 
also with pattern, order, routine - the familiarity of a favourite 
soap opera or talk show, the ordinary pleasures and irritations of 
shopping, cooking, negotiating traffic, managing domestic life.

How should cultural studies address questions of everyday life in the 
twenty-first century? The field can claim a rich tradition of work in 
the area, from ethnographies of street subcultures and shopping 
centres to writing on television and popular magazines. But everyday 
life has been transformed in significant ways since the time of many 
of the founding contributions. What remains relevant today in the 
study of everyday life? To what extent do we need new concepts and 
categories?

Transformations have also occurred in cultural studies' motivations 
for engaging with everyday life. The everyday is a major point of 
intersection for many of its intellectual tributaries, including 
British cultural studies, feminism, semiotics, European surrealism, 
situationism, psychoanalysis and ethnomethodology. Yet the context 
for all of these has been affected by major shifts in the location of 
cultural studies, the nature and priorities of higher education, by 
the increasing market orientation of mainstream institutions and by 
conservative attempts to lay claim to the 'ordinary' and 
'mainstream'. What do we seek now in engaging with the everyday? What 
understanding of this engagement is most appropriate for the times?

Possible sessions/themes:


 New technologies			
 Speed and time

 Suburbia			
 Everyday sexualities

 Television			
 Collections and archives

 Food				
 Popular media

 Magazine journalism		
 Cultural geographies

 Everyday spirituality		
 Sport

 Ordinariness			
 Music

 Shopping			
 Tourism

 Civility and manners		
 Documentary

 Creativity			
 Sustainability

 Homes and gardens		
 The apocalyptic and the everyday

 Risk and stress			
 Dance

 Globalisation			
 Political activism in everyday life

Abstracts of no more than 250 words for single papers, or suggestions 
for panel sessions, should be sent to:

Mark Gibson - mgibson at central.murdoch.edu.au

or :	School of Media, Communication and Culture
	Murdoch University
	South St, Murdoch
	WA 6150

Panel proposals are particularly welcome.

Refereed Publication Option: As an innovation on past CSAA 
conferences, 'Everyday Transformations' will also be offering the 
option of refereed publication in electronic conference proceedings. 
To be considered for this stream, full papers must be received by 27 
August 2004.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 30 July 2004
-- 

Dr Mark Gibson
Lecturer, Cultural Studies
School of Media Communication and Culture
Murdoch University
Western Australia 6150

Editor, Continuum - Journal of Media and Cultural Studies
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/carfax/10304312.html
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