OUR CALL FOR PAPERS HAS NOW CLOSED!
We invite individual and group proposals for 20 minute papers and full sessions from architectural historians, theorists, designers and practitioners, as well as those working on relevant themes across the design disciplines, in the humanities and social sciences.
We invite responses to our six thematic areas:
EcologiesEconomies Technologies HistoriesPedagogiesStyles
We assume that each thematic area inherently organises diverse ecologies of practice, and that the question of precarious mental, social, environmental ecologies pertains to all. We likewise assume that across these categories there can be discovered many explorative and even performative approaches to architectural research and we encourage a sensitivity to intersections of gender, race, sexuality, class, age, ability, ethnicity, and so forth. Each thematic area will be curated by a team of convenors who have a history or association with Critical Studies in Architecture, KTH Stockholm.
Ecologies: Looks to our fragile and tenacious relational ecologies, including ecologies of practice across disciplines and practices. Here Peg Rawes’s anthology Relational Ecologies has been a great inspiration, as well as Félix Guattari’s essay, The Three Ecologies.
Economies: Searches for alternative economies that persist amidst the hegemonic forces of neoliberal advanced Capitalism and is much inspired by the work of economic geographers J.K. Gibson Graham.
Technologies: Acknowledges the relationship between craft and advanced technologies, and draws on thinking in Science and Technology Studies, including feminist technologies. The legacy of philosopher of science Donna Haraway can be acknowledged here.
We add to these key themes, identified in the subtitle of our conference event, three further themes:
Histories: Is concerned with the historical archive as an active force in the present and engages in critical histories of feminist theories and practices in architecture, including the theories and practices of overlooked minorities and communities.
Pedagogies: Directly addresses the crucial issue of the formation of architects and the potential of radical and critical pedagogies. This theme acknowledges the seminal work of bell hooks, Sara Ahmed, and also Gavin Butt regarding intersectional, queer, race, and post-colonial concerns contextualised in architectural education specifically, and in the practice and discipline of architecture more generally.
Styles: This theme explicitly invites a variety of presentation formats, such as papers, installations, pinups, exhibitions, dialogues, demonstrations, performances and places a central emphasis on queer spatiality and aesthetics, in order to take up the unfinished revolutions of such thinkers as Gloria Anzaldúa, Hélène Cixous, Audre Lorde, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.
Please indicate clearly if submitting a full session panel proposal.
We welcome proposals that explore alternative means of academic dissemination through film, small exhibition, performance.
Please send a 300 word abstract, including a title, and a 50 word biographical note to: archifems@gmail.com
Deadline for abstracts of papers: 15 April 2016
Received abstracts will be blind peer reviewed and we will announce decisions by the 17th June 2016.
Please note that full papers will be required prior to the conference for panel chairs and to begin the editorial process for publication in a collection of essays for the Routledge Critiques series, and for a special conference issue of Architecture and Culture, the AHRA journal. Please refer to the Publications link.