The last few decades have witnessed rapid developments and innovations in visualization techniques. This is the case for a wide variety of visualization genres, whether in scientific fields, in the fashion industry or in the arts. There are, however, overlaps of style as well as techniques between different genres. As Lisa Cartwright notes, there is a symbiotic relationship between scientific and popular imaging technologies. In a similar vein, we find an interaction between art and science in the genre known as bio-art.

In this PhD course/Research workshop we will explore images of relevance to the study of gendered bodies. This is an interdisciplinary course, and the concept of “body images” is to be understood in a broad sense, as transcending the categories of art and science, including art history. The course lecturers cover a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, including media studies, science and technology studies and gender research. All lectures and discussions will be held in English.

The course aims at promoting intercultural exchange. There is no course fee. Norwegian students must cover their own travel and accommodation costs. Students from France and other countries may apply for reimbursement of costs. The conference organizers will make the hotel bookings for all participants.

Application Process
Applicants are asked to send a brief outline of their PhD project in English (1-3 pages).

Credit points
The course gives 7.5 ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System) credits. In order to obtain the credits, students must cover the reading list (around 1000 pages) and produce an essay, which is to be submitted after the course. It is the students’ responsibility to apply to their universities or related educational bodies to get the credits recognized as part of their PhD studies. The course organizers will provide certification that the course has been completed and that the essay requirement has been fulfilled.

Essay
For the essay, the student is required to apply the themes and literature covered in the course to his or her PhD topic. The essay should be submitted by 15 June 2011, and be 15 pages in length.

Course organizers are Professor Merete Lie, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture (merete.lie@ntnu.no) and Associate Professor Aud Sissel Hoel, Department of Art and Media Studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) (aud.sissel.hoel@ntnu.no)

Please send your application before February 20, 2011 to
anja.johansen@ntnu.no

Programme

Monday 11 April
1000 – 1030 Opening and welcome: Bjarne Rogan, Directeur
Centre franco-norvégien en sciences sociales et humaines, FMSH, Paris
1030 – 1115 Merete Lie, NTNU:
An introduction to the course. Body images – gender inside/outside.
1115 – 1145 Coffee
1145 – 1230 Dr. André Gunthert, l’Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris: Smiling at war: How to make information enjoyable. The role of the smile in the magazine press in the 1930-1950s
1230 -1400 Lunch
1400 – 1445 Aud Sissel Hoel, NTNU:
Picturing the Brain: Perspectives on Neuroimaging
1500 – 1700 Group work. Student presentations.

Tuesday 12 April
0930 -1200 Lisa Cartwright, UCSD, workshop:
Imaging Technologies and the Body: Feminist Approaches
1030 – 1100 Coffee
1100 – 1200 Workshop continues
1200 – 1330 Lunch
1330 – 1700 Group work. Student presentations.

Wednesday 13 April
0930 -1200 Adele Clarke, UCSF:
Workshop on Images as matter of Situational Analysis
1030 – 1100 Coffee
1100 – 1200 Workshop continues
1200 – 1330 Lunch
1330 – 1500 Group work. Student presentations.
1500 – 1600 Summing up. Plans for follow-up and cooperation.

Speakers
Lisa Cartwright is Professor of Communication and Science Studies at the University of California San Diego. Her research areas are film and media studies, feminist and sexuality studies; disability studies; visual culture in science, health and medicine.

Adele Clarke is Professor of Sociology and Adjunct Professor of History of Health Sciences at the University of California San Francisco. Primary research and creative areas are historical and contemporary sociology of biomedical sciences and technologies, the development of qualitative research methodologies, and women’s health.

André Gunthert is a researcher in visual history at l’Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. He is director of le Laboratoire d’histoire visuelle contemporaine (Lhivic), which is a leading French research team in the field of visual studies.

Aud Sissel Hoel is associate professor of visual communication in the Department of Art and Media Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She is coordinator of the interdisciplinary research project Picturing the Brain: Perspectives on Neuroimaging and appointed leader of the research priority area PerFormativity at the Faculty of Humanities at NTNU.

Merete Lie is a Professor in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, NTNU. Her fields of research are gender, technology and globalization.

It contains interviews with Mieke Bal, Giuliana Bruno, Mark Cheetham, Michael Ann Holly and Keith Moxey, Susan Buck-Morss, Lisa Cartwright, Lennard J. Davis, Hal Foster, Paul Gilroy, Martin Jay, Nicholas Mirzoeff, W.J.T. Mitchell, Peggy Phelan, and Vivian Sobchack.

Enjoy, and feel free to circulate.

Registration 9:30 am; Conference begins at 10:00 am.

This conference sets out to consider the emergence of interdisciplinary research within the Arts and Humanities during the last 40 years. Emerging out of the political, social and cultural ambitions of a changing western world from the 1960s onwards, as well as the academic corollaries of these endeavours, interdisciplinarity within the academy became a means of developing a new and complex understanding of what it means to situate oneself: to act, teach, and undertake research in a world that no longer broke down according to existing disciplinary boundaries.
The shifting terrain for these scholarly, institutional, and personal politics became manifest in, for instance, the emergence of cultural studies, media studies or, more recently, visual culture studies; the importation of ‘theory’ within the academy; the political investment captured in the institutionalization of postcolonial theory, queer theory, and feminism within the University; as well as the emergence of new trans-disciplinary problematics such as globalization. Some of this genealogy has been written. And yet, more work needs to be done. Our interest in this genealogy is to consider it in light of the histories of interdisciplinarity within an expanded field: to think of the social, political and academic field of interdisciplinarity, and its relation to publishing, governmental policy and funding bodies.

Within this expanded context, it is possible to propose that as a result of these necessary incursions within the social and academic field, a forum was required for the public interrogation and dissemination of our past and present cultures. Thus, the interdisciplinary journal, in particular, emerged in both the UK and US as a ready and willing space within which to debate the complexity and intertwined nature of these cultures. Having very specific political and epistemological agendas, these journals created an arena for dialogue, provided us with new, interdisciplinary knowledge, while shaping our understanding of the world. This genealogy has not been written, and is one of the main streams/points of interrogation of our conference.

Interdisciplinary journals are, in many respects, the primary means of (print and electronic) dissemination, and continue to be the contemporary ‘gold star’ of research achievement. Yet journal publishing is rarely discussed on its own terms. Equally, with the catchword – ‘interdisciplinarity’ – in the air, government funding bodies and policy makers have caught on to it, and today it has become an overarching term for a type of research evacuated of its earlier political, social and cultural commitments. Or did it? The third stream of this conference will consider the history and political ramifications for interdisciplinary research as a result of institutional and governmental seizure. As such, this conference is the first to bring together the relationship between journal publishing, policy-making and research itself, so as to discuss the future of interdisciplinary work in the Arts and Humanities of the twenty first century.

Contributors

Professor GEORGINA BORN, Sociology, Anthropology, and Music, University of Cambridge / Dr DAVID CUNNINGHAM, Literature and Aesthetics, University of Westminster, Editor of ‘Radical Philosophy’ / Professor THOMAS DOCHERTY, English and Comparative Literature, Warwick University / Dr JEREMY GILBERT, Cultural Studies, UEL, Editor of ‘New Formations’ / Professor SUSAN MELROSE, Performance Arts, Middlesex University / Dr JOANNE MORRA, Art History and Theory, University of the Arts London, Principal Editor of ‘Journal of Visual Culture’ / Professor PETER OSBORNE, Director, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University, Editor of ‘Radical Philosophy’ / Professor ADRIAN RIFKIN, Art Writing, Goldsmiths College, former Editor of ‘Art History’ / Dr MARQUARD SMITH, Visual Culture Studies, University of Westminster, Editor-in-Chief of ‘Journal of Visual Culture’ / Professor SHEARER WEST, Director of Research, AHRC / Dr JOANNA ZYLINSKA, Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College, Editor of ‘Culture Machine’

This conference is organized by: Dr DAVID CUNNINGHAM (University of Westminster and Editor of ‘Radical Philosophy’), Dr JOANNE MORRA (Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Principal Editor of ‘Journal of Visual Culture), Dr MARQUARD SMITH (University of Westminster and Editor-in-Chief of ‘Journal of Visual Culture’), and Dr JOANNA ZYLINSKA (Goldsmiths College and Editor of ‘Culture Machine’)

This conference is the first in a series of projects and events organized by the Network for Editors of Interdisciplinary Journals (NEIJ).