Where: Dubrovnik
When: Saturday 2nd May – Monday 4th May 2015
Deadline: 30th January 2015
More information: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/gender-and-sexuality/femininity-and-masculinity/call-for-papers/
We live in times in which what it means to be human is in a flux. Our identities, including our gender identities, are in the state of becoming and performing themselves. As illustrated in Spike Jonze’s film Her (2013), technology has created a situation in which our lived, offline realities and increasingly mediated, shaped and in some cases supplanted by relationships and identities fashioned online. Body enhancements and medical innovations enable us to shape our bodies to the extent unknown before, which is exemplified, for insance, by Nicki Minaj’s alleged buttocks augmentation for enhanced femininity. Yet, there is also a trend to look for our inherent nature — our human essence — in the growingly posthuman world. Consequently, the concept of the posthuman is inextricably tied to conceptions of femininity, masculinity and gendered subjects as a whole. At the same time, because this interplay between technologies and bodies takes place against a backdrop of commercial and biotechnological innovation that constantly changes the playing field, fundamental questions about what it means to be posthuman remain open to ongoing debate.