[URBANTH-L] CFP: New Frontiers of Race: Criminalities, Cultures, and Policing in the Global Era

[Angela Jancius]

Call for Conference Paper Proposals 
New Frontiers of Race: Criminalities, Cultures, and Policing in the Global Era 
May 29, 2009 
Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture 
University of Chicago 

The Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago and the academic journal Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power solicit paper proposals for a day long conference to be held on the campus on May 29, 2009. "New Frontiers of Race: Criminalities, Cultures, and Policing in the Global Era," seeks to intervene in the discursive, material, and ideological debates involving criminalities, cultures, policing, and race in a global era. Associations among race, criminality, deviancy, and delinquency continue to suffuse popular representations in the media and in the social sciences. Research on marginalized, racialized, and impoverished populations have long been fodder for an academic cottage industry throughout the history of the social sciences. Indeed, the insurgent intellectual formation of Ethnic Studies has been distinguished by a critical intellectual demand for the visibility, recognition, and self-representation of the subjugated, exploring their repressed histories and the social conditions of communities of color. As such, Ethnic Studies was largely premised upon an explicit critique of the complicity of conventional academic disciplines with hegemonic representations that silenced and pathologized these same communities. 

This conference will explore new genealogies and approaches to deviancy, pathology and criminality that grapple with these longstanding issues. Do migrations, diasporas, borders, and other transnationalisms disrupt ideologies and discourses of pathology? Do the stakes in the debates surrounding pathology and related problematic representations of people of color shift as they ascend to the highest echelons of power? 

Conference paper proposals are welcome on the following themes but are not limited to these: identity politics and the politics of multiculturalisms; post-racial discourses and ideologies; "cultures" of poverty and/or "poverties" of culture; pathologies and gendered or sexual normativities; new studies and/or genealogies of criminalities, delinquencies, deviances, and pathologies; the politics of transgressions or non-normative politics; "cultures" of policings, deportations, and carcerality. 

Jasbir Puar of Rutgers University and Nicholas De Genova of Columbia University have confirmed their participation as our keynote speakers. Papers presented at the conference will be considered for publication by Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. All expenses -- transport and housing -- will be provided for persons chosen to present. 

Paper proposals should not be more that two single-spaced pages and must be accompanied by a short two-page resume. A copy of these materials should be sent electronically by April 30 to each of the following: 

Ramon A. Gutierrez 
Director, Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture 
University of Chicago 
rgutierrez at uchicago.edu 

Gilberto Rosas 
Postdoctoral Fellow/Visiting Assistant Professor 
Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture and Department of Anthropology 
University of Chicago 
grosas at uchicago.edu 

Jonathan Hill 
Editor, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 
Professor, Department of Anthropology 
Southern Illinois University 
jhill at siu.edu 

For additional information on the conference, please contact Prof. Ramon A. Gutierrez, Director, Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, University of Chicago at 773-702-8063 or rgutierrez at uchicago.edu.