[csaa-forum] REMINDER - 'Fat Studies: A Critical Dialogue' Conference

[Samantha Murray]

** PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY. APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTINGS **

"Fat Studies: A Critical Dialogue" conference
10 - 11 September, 2010
Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

REMINDER: Pre-Registration for the upcoming Fat Studies: A Critical
Dialogue conference is open until Friday 3 September. The registration
form can be downloaded from http://www.somatechnics.mq.edu.au/events -
just scroll down to the information about the Fat Studies conference -
and emailed to Vanessa Fredericks at somatechnicsadmin at gmail.com

While pre-registration is preferable, a registration table will be set
up on each morning of the two day conference, and will accept cash and
credit card payments. The conference registration fee includes
attendance; a conference pack including abstracts, pad, pen; catered
lunch, morning and afternoon tea on each day of the conference. If you
would like to attend the conference, but would prefer to register on
the day, we would be grateful if you could let us know via email so we
ensure we have adequate catering for delegates.

We have an exciting two day conference planned, with a diverse range
of speakers and topics. You can also download the updated conference
program from http://www.somatechnics.mq.edu.au.

I am also very excited to confirm the 'Bodies Abound' reading evening
and art exhibition, to be held on the evening of Friday 10 September.
Dr Jenny Lee, Amy McMurtrie, Scarlett Burrows and other members of the
Sydney Fat Femme Front have worked hard to organise this event - final
details of the event will be available shortly.

The 'Bodies Abound' reading evening/art exhibition will commence at
8pm, and will be held at the Aurora Gallery in Newtown (Lvl 1, 43
Bedford Street Newtown, 2042), and a map of the venue can be accessed
at http://www.timeoutsydney.com.au/venue/gallery/aurora-gallery.aspx

To assist conference delegates staying close to the conference venue,
I am organising a shuttle bus service (in one direction only) from the
Dunmore Lang conference centre venue to the Aurora Gallery in Newtown.

Conference Information:

While cultural anxieties about fatness and stigmatisation of fat
bodies in Western cultures have been central to dominant discourses
about bodily 'propriety' since the early twentieth century, the rise
of the 'disease' category of obesity and the moral panic over an
alleged global 'obesity epidemic' has lent a medical authority and
legitimacy to what can be described as 'fat-phobia'. Against the
backdrop of the ever-growing medicalisation and pathologisation of
fatness, the field of Fat Studies has emerged in recent years to offer
an interdisciplinary critical interrogation of the dominant medical
models of health, to give voice to the lived experience of fat bodies,
and to offer critical insights into, and investigations of, the
ethico-political implications of the cultural meanings that have come
to be attached to fat bodies.

This two-day event will put Australasian Fat Studies into conversation
with critical fat scholarship from around the globe by gathering
together scholars from across a spectrum of disciplinary backgrounds,
as well as activists, health care professionals, performers and
artists. This conference seeks to open a dialogue between scholars,
health care professionals and activists about the productive and
enabling critical possibilities Fat Studies offers for rethinking
dominant notions about health and pathology, gender and bodily
aesthetics, political interventions, and beyond.

Confirmed keynote speakers:
* Charlotte Cooper
(Department of Sociology, University of Limerick)
* Karen Throsby
(Department of Sociology, University of Warwick)

Venue Information

The conference will be held at Dunmore Lang College Conference Centre,
which is situated on the main campus of Macquarie University. More
information about getting to Macquarie University and various
accommodation options can be found at
http://www.somatechnics.mq.edu.au/events

Please contact me if you have any queries or would like further
information about the conference. I hope to see you there!


--
Dr Samantha Murray

Lecturer in Critical & Cultural Studies
Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies
Faculty of Arts
MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY NSW 2109

Email: samantha.murray at mq.edu.au
Phone: +61 (0)2 9850 2149
Fax: +61 (0)2 9850 2101
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.cdu.edu.au/pipermail/csaa-forum/attachments/20100824/226fbbb5/attachment.html