UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH STUDIES
SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDY
supported by the British Academy
SKIN: texture/textuality/word/image
This interdisciplinary and transhistorical 3-day conference invites a lively interrogation of the significance of SKIN.
Draft programme
(this is a provisional programme and may be changed)
2-2.30 registration
2.30-2.45 welcome
3.00-4.00 KEYNOTE: Claudia Benthien ( Berlin)
‘The Natural Mask. Imagology of the Skin in Kafka'
4.00-4.30 Tea
4.30-6.00 PARALLEL SESSIONS
Session 1
April Lindner (St. Joseph's University, USA ) ‘The Body Seduces the Mind: Poems from SKIN'
Catherine Byron (Nottingham Trent) ‘vellum, skin, paper'
Ian Davidson ( Bangor, Wales) ‘Taking My Breath Away'
Session 2
Christina Bradstreet ( Birkbeck, London) ‘ Seeping skin: Alma-Tadema's strigils and sponges.'
Marjorie Vanbaelinghem (University of Poitiers, France) ‘Painted Skins, Skin of Paint : the skin as diagram in Lucian Freud's work'
Anne-Laure Fortin-Tournés (University of Lille ) ‘Textual weave and organic skin: from analogical metaphor to poetics of the literary event'
Session 3
Ayelet Zohar (UCL, London ) ‘Strategies of Camouflage: the second skin-reading Seidou Keita's photographs
Anthony Downey (Goldsmiths College) ‘Differentiating Differences: skin in the work of Four Black British Artists'
Robert Summers ( UCLA ) ‘The Face, the Flesh, the Cut: queer performative self-portraiture and other perversions in contemporary photography'
Wednesday 14 April
9.30-10.00 registration
10.00-11.30 PARALLEL SESSIONS
Session 1
Sonja Neef (Bauhaus University, Germany ) ‘Tattoo: Pricking the Skin, Healing the Wound'
Rosella Simonari (Italy ) ‘Exposed Pages: possible skin-relations between dance and tattoos'
Betti Marenko (University of Urbino, Italy ) ‘Between Epidermic and Epidemic : Body Marking as Technology of Subjectification and Machine of Becoming'
Session 2
Maureen Melnyk (UWO, Canada ) ‘Surface Markings and the Depth of Embodiment: a phenomenological investigation into the tattooed skin'
Rose Ellen Lessy (Cornell University ) ‘Cutaneous Writing'
Julie Kim (Oakland Museum of California ) ‘Wielding the Scalpel: The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan and the Transgressive Act'
Session 3
Anneleen Masschelein (Leuven ) ‘Tracing the Surface: Flannery O'Connor's Parker's Back and psychoanalytic conceptual metaphors of skin and vision'
Martin Gliserman (Rutgers University ) ‘Skin in 100 novels, 1721-1997, Issues of Gender and Race.'
Jennifer Hoofard (University of California, Davis )‘Queen of Scars: Reading Skin in Toni Morrison's Paradise '
11.30-12.00 Coffee
12.00-1.00 PARALLEL SESSIONS
Session 1
Arne de Boever (Columbia, USA ) ‘The Use and Abuse of Theory: (Con-)Textualising “skin” in J.M.Coetzee's Foe'
Daniel Watt (Aberystwyth ) ‘ ² He'll learn it on his body”: skin as juridical boundary in Kafka and Coetzee'
Session 2
Sam Halliday (Queen Mary, University of London ) ‘Melville, Egyptology, and the Sciences of Skin in Moby Dick '
James Davis (Brooklyn College, City University of New York ) ‘Skin Conditions: The Mass Public in Epidermal Trouble in Nathanael West and George Schuyler'
Session 3
Garin Dowd (London College of Music and Media, Thames Valley University ) ‘Veil, Flesh, Screen: Le Fanu's Skin'
Paul Williams (University of Exeter )‘Indestructible Men” and “Skin-Diving Sapper Girls”: Representations of Race and Gender in Hollywood's Vietnam War Genre 1977-1987'
1.00-2.00 Lunch
2.00-3.00 KEYNOTE: Fred Botting (Keele ) 'Dataskin: horror and eroticism'
3.00-4.30 PARALLEL SESSIONS
Session 1
Pietra Pallazzolo (University of Essex ) ‘Textual Exposures: the figuration of skin in John Banville's Shroud '
Sinead McDermott (University of Limerick ) 'Scratching the Surface: Bodies, Memorials, and texts in Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country '
Nigel Wood (Loughborough University ) *
Session 2
Troels Degn Johansson (IT-University of Copenhagen ) ‘Digital Skin: A Serresian Approach'
Caroline Bate (University of Wales, Aberystwyth ) ‘No more than skin deep: epidermal networking and the smooth skin of the cyberpunk posthuman'
Kevin McCarron (University of Surrey, Roehampton ) ‘Skin, the decorated frontier: tattooing and heroin injection in the contemporary novel'
Session 3
Maureen Curtin ‘A Chronotopia of Skin: American Displacement and Immigration'
Hao-Li (University of Toronto ) ‘Matthew Phipps Shiel, the Yellow Skin, and the Genealogy of a Racial Discourse'
Kylie Thomas and Anya Subotzky (University of Cape Town, South Africa ) ‘Speaking Skin: HIV/AIDS and in/visibility in post-apartheid South Africa'
4.30-5.00 Tea
5.00-6.00 KEYNOTE: Steven Connor (Birkbeck ) 'Windbags and Skinsongs: The Sounding Skin'
6.00-7.00 Reception sponsored by Reaktion Books
Thursday 15 April
9.15-9.30 registration
9.30-11.00 PARALLEL SESSIONS
Session 1
Christina Lammer (University of Vienna ) ‘Displaying Epidermal Schemas'
M. Lafrance (Oxford University )‘Superficial Transitions: Skin, Subjectivity and Sex Change'
Kim Sawchuk (Concordia University, Quebec ) ‘The biomatrix: medicine and the media arts in Canada'
Session 2
Delphine Cingal (University of Paris II ) ‘Skin in British Detective Fiction'
Devon Campbell Hall (King Alfred's, Winchester ) ‘Othered skins in recent multicultural British fiction'
Katerina Kitsi-Mitakou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki ) 'Of Navels and Novels, Dissections and Abject Skin'
Session 3
Steve Barfield (University of Westminster, London) ‘Rupture/Rapture: Sarah Kane's Skin , Contemporary Discourses of Race and the “Skin-Ego”'
Iain Morland (Royal Holloway, London ) ‘Authoring Genitals, Authorising Sex'
Alexandra Winter (University of Queensland ) ‘Goosebumps: The Uncanny Encounter with Skin'
11.00-11.30 Coffee
11.30-12.30 PARALLEL SESSIONS
Session 1
Nathalie Rivière de Carles (University of Paul-Valéry, Montpellier ) ‘Bloody bodies and suffering veils in Elizabethan Drama'
Anthony Bale (Birkbeck, London ) ‘Fals tyranye': medieval fantasies of the foreskin'
Session 2
Matt Jarvis (University of Wales, Aberystwyth ) ‘Landscape: Skin of the Earth/Skin of the Land'
Zoe Skoulding (Bangor, Wales ) ‘A Body Shot Through: Skin and the Subject in the Poetry of Denise Riley'
Session 3
Eleni Pilla (Royal Holloway ) ‘Skin as a Site of Counter-Cultural Inscription in textual, theatrical and visual interpretations of Shakespeare's Othello '
Legier Beiderman (UCLA ) ‘Skin Flicks: flesh of the world/flesh of interpretation'
12.30-1.30 KEYNOTE: Jonathan Sawday (Strathclyde ) `"At the Louvre...I contract into my skin": Montaigne, Machines, and the Renaissance Body'.
Conference Ends ( 48 papers)
Conference Organiser:
Dr Liz Oakley-Brown and Dr Tiffany Atkinson
SKIN
The Department of English
The University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Penglais Campus, Aberystwyth
SY23 3DY
Email: ejo@aber.ac.uk
Conference Venue and Enquiries: Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, Senate House (3rd Floor), Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU (No smoking building)
Conference Registration Fee : £50 Standard ; £25 Concessions and Members of IES
Tel: 020 7862 8675, Fax: 020 7862 8720, email: ies@sas.ac.uk, web: www.sas.ac.uk/ies