We are looking for one or two more papers to round out a second session, so have extended the deadline till Friday, October 16th…
CFP: Tracing Heroes and Villains in the negotiation of spatial relationships
Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers
San Francisco March 29–April 2, 2016
Organizers: Arielle Hesse and Jennifer Titanski-Hooper; Penn State University
Discussant: Ingrid Nelson; University of Vermont
Heroes and villains operate within societies as figures of mythical largess, made, reborn, and reimagined through story telling, symbolism, and relevance to particular historical moments (Marples, 2007; Todorova, 2004). Marked by their performance of gender, class, race, sexuality, and ethnicity, they may figure as individuals of exceptional stature (i.e. heads of state, religious leaders) but also emerge from the everyday (as soldiers, mothers, police officers, workers, farmers, etc.) (Bickell, 2000; Dowler 2002; Nelson, 2015). In either case, heroes are known for their extraordinary actions, commitments, and beliefs in the face of adversity or injustice, challenges that are often embodied by an opposing force, in many instances, a villain.
The meanings of good and evil and the motivations for making and naming heroes and villains involve complex spatial processes that are rooted in, and reproduce, violences. Heroes and villains are invoked to both justify and challenge economic, social, and political ideas (Wright, 2001; Rodriguez, 2002). They are often deployed in the process of nation-building (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983; Johnson, 1995; Sharp, 2007), and as a consequence, in the construction of gendered, racialized, and sexualized ‘others’ (Dawson 1994; Gibson, et. al., 2001; Puar, 2002). As symbols that are used to defend or justify particular societal ideals, heroes produce difference across time and space. As such, one person’s hero can be another’s villain, and a hero today can be recast as a villain tomorrow as boundaries and objectives of inclusions and exclusions change. Heroes and villains present opportunities to trace shifting idealized norms, and analyze emergent reconfigurations of economic, political, and power relations.
The construction of heroes and villains is particularly germane to recent social and political happenings. The refugee crisis in Europe, recent media coverage of professional sports scandals, debates over the policing and militarization of urban space, the #Blacklivesmatter movement, and the ongoing struggles over energy resources, have all deployed images of heroes, villains, and victims to reinforce and challenge existing norms and power relations. Geography is well positioned to both analyze these constructions and complicate the binaries of ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Thus, this session seeks papers that draw on diverse empirical examples to show the complicated ways that heroes and villains act as tools of statecraft and political economy, but also shape the negotiation of everyday spatial practices.
We welcome research examining the construction or deployment of heroes and villains in:
- The construction of national identities, gendered identities
- Shifting configurations of Public and Private
- The militarized state
- The making of spectacle
- Shifting political economies
- ‘Counter’ Terrorism
- Public Health
- Social and Environmental movements
Please send proposed titles and abstracts of up to 250 words by October 16th to: Arielle Hesse (alh359@psu.edu) or Jennifer Titanski-Hooper (jlt5409@psu.edu).