Conference dates: February 27-28, 2015

Expected presentation length will be 12 minutes. Presentations in English or German welcome.

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At the undergraduate panel of our 2015 Germanic Graduate student Association conference, we will examine cultural practices and traditions that shape our conceptions of human bodies. These conceptions have been the subject of discussions in the arts, literature, sciences, and the public sphere.

Notions of crises and imbalances, such as the primacy of the intellect over the physical body, have held a prominent place among recent theories concerning the human body. This reconsideration of the human body is not merely a concern for the arts and humanities, however.

Theories concerning the understanding and signi ficance of bodies are central to studies of disability, race, gender, and medicine. At our conference, we seek to consolidate perspectives from various fields of study to investigate the consequences, possibilities, and limitations that arise from different conceptions of human bodies.

We therefore welcome presentations concerning – but not limited to – the following ideas:
· bodies, power, and necropolitics
· body politics
· "Other" bodies: exoticism and bodies as spectacle
· cult of the body: perfecting and modifying bodies
· disability, mutation, and normativity
· restraint, taboos, and the body
· measurements and scienti fic perspectives on the body
· practices regarding aging and death
· corpses and bodies in states of decomposition
· aesthetics and aisthetics: artistic practices and bodily perception
· bodies and normativity
· religion, ethics and the body