Sex Machines: Politicizing Contemporary Sexual Pleasure

InterGender: Research School in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies

Announcement from the Newsletter NOG - Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies, June 2013:

The InterGender Research School is happy to announce the following courses taking place in fall 2013.

'Sex Machines: Politicizing Contemporary Sexual Pleasure' will be taught by Frida Beckman, Edyta Just and regg Lambert at Linkoping University, Sweden, from October 22-24, 2013. The other course is called 'Studying Feminist Thinkers and Texts', which will be taught by prof. Tuija Pilkkinen, prof. Clare Hemmings and prof. Moya Lloyd at the University of Helsinkin, Finland, from September 10-12, 2013.
Deadline for application for 'Sex Machines' is August 23, 2013 and for 'Studying Feminist Thinkers and Texts' is June 20, 2013.

Below more information about the course 'Sex Machines: Politicizing Contemporary Sexual Pleasure'.

Published on Tue, 11 June 2013 - 22:40 at http://www.intergender.net/?q=node/149

Location: Linköping University, Sweden

Course description:

How can the idea of the machine help thinking sexuality through but also beyond its many determinations via perceptions of the body, the subject, gender, health, normality, and the human? This course is relevant for scholars from a variety of fields who are interested in the intersections between the sexual body and its social, gendered, and political determinations, be it through discourses of health, psychoanalysis, or cinematic representation. Whether it is employed as a central tool of analysis or as a dimension of other investigations into the sexual body, the machinic constitutes an important aspect of theories of the body today. Introducing central conceptions of the machinic, then, the course will on the one hand consider how it is put to use in conceptualizations of sexuality that delimit it in accordance with cultural and religious gendered structures and in service of commercial and political gain. On the other hand, and against such cultural, familial, commercial, and political machines, we will investigate theories of the machinic that challenge these powerful mechanisms. Thinking the body in terms of the machine enables conceptions of sexuality that acknowledge a connectivity between bodies and body parts that expands on, if not explodes, determinations of what the body is and what it is capable of. Finding ways of asking the central question of the machine – not “what is it?” but “how does it work?” – we will begin to understand the usefulness of its theories and applications.

Deadline for applications: August 23, 2013

See for the application procedure: http://www.intergender.net/?q=node/149

Organized by: InterGender (Swedish-International Research School in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies), Linköping University, Sweden.

Course coordinators: Frida Beckman, Postdoc, Tema Genus, Linköping University, Sweden.

Dag Balkmar, Managing Director of InterGender and Professor Nina Lykke, Director of InterGender, Linköping University.

Teachers: Frida Beckman, Postdoc, Tema Genus, Linköping University, Sweden.

Edyta Just, Assistant Professor, Department of Transatlantic and Media Studies, University of Łódź, Poland.

Gregg Lambert, Dean’s Professor of the Humanities, Syracuse University, U.S.A.