Deadline: November 14, 2019
Paper session:
The Geopolitics of Objects/Heritage/Memory/Aesthetics
Organizers and co-chairs: Jacob C Miller (Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Northumbria University, UK) and Sharon Wilson (Northumbria Business School, Northumbria University, UK)
Discussant: Keith Woodward, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Everyday objects are not innocent. They often contain within them secret powers to invoke, remind, affect, act, impress and otherwise disturb in ways that are often linked to their broader contexts. The geopolitics of objects are often richly networked in spaces of heritage, tourism, ruins, memorial or other explicitly curated aesthetic spaces. In other words, objects can be conceptualized as part of broader material and embodied geographies that are shaped by geopolitical processes. How are geopolitical subjectivities emergent with these material and embodied worlds? Where/how do these overlap, and where/how do they come apart?
We are hoping to attract work from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives, as long as they relate to these themes somehow. Some topical areas might include:
Everyday militarization
Popular and feminist geopolitics
Geopolitics of tourism and leisure
Post-conflict studies
Aesthetics of power and resistance
Artistic and creative geographies
Public space
Consumption, trash and waste
Infrastructure, architecture and design
Mobility
Migration
Historical geographies and ruins
Hauntology and spectral geographies
We especially encourage contributions that engage with queer, feminist and black geographies, and other critical approaches to race, ethnicity, nation, sex, gender, sexuality, class, capitalism and imperialism, and we welcome submissions that engage with theories of emotion and affect, (post-) phenomenology, new materialism, assemblage theories and psychoanalysis.
We also encourage graduate students and early career academics especially. We will chair the session to ensure it is a safe space for all; aggressive and belligerent behaviour will not be tolerated and offenders will be asked to leave and their behaviour will be reported to the AAG.
Please send your abstracts by November 14 to jacob.miller@northumbria.ac.uk and Sharon3wilson@northumbria.ac.uk