Universidad San Francisco de Quito

convenes the symposium

ON BODIES

Practices, Perspectives, Materials

to be held on November 21, 22 and 23, 2013, on the university campus located in Cumbayá, just outside the city of Quito, Ecuador. We propose to initiate a conversation about the body and embodiment that includes voices from the arts, anthropology, art history, the visual and performing arts, film studies, literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, politics, science and technology, and sociology.  In addition, we will include spaces in which non-verbal, embodied contributions to this conversation from performance and contemporary arts can be made and discussed.

The proposed conversation for the symposium will be framed by, but not limited to, the following questions:

What is the body?

Is it Biology?  Taxonomy?  Identity?

Is it the starting point for any understanding of space?

Is it a product of culture? Of speech?

Is it a canvass? A tool? A medium?

Is it pain, sensation, violence, sickness, disability, torture, repression, hunger?

Is it race, ethnicity, migration?

Is it gender, desire, capability, pleasure, emotion, perception, orgasm?

Is technology an extension of the body?

How do prosthetics and the cyber-body redefine the notion of body?

How does virtual reality alter an understanding of the body?

Is it an object of consumption and/or transformation?

We are currently accepting proposals for panels, exhibitions, performances and individual papers.  Each panel will include at least three presenters from diverse institutions, countries or disciplines.  Individual papers must be of original work and their presentation should not last more than twenty minutes.  Individual paper proposals, once accepted, will be assigned to already existing panels. Please see for further details: http://www.usfq.edu.ec/eventos/cuerpos_corporalidades/Paginas/default.aspx

CONTACT

Monica Alarcon, Ph.D.

Professor of Philosophy, USFQ

Email: tanzphil.alar@yahoo.de

German Maldonado Cisneros

Area Coordinator of Philosophy, USFQ

Tel 593-2-297-1700 ext 1713

Email: gmaldonado@usfq.edu.ec