{"id":3105,"date":"2025-04-30T13:13:30","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T17:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/cams\/?p=3105"},"modified":"2025-04-30T13:37:42","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T17:37:42","slug":"body-modification-and-gender-anarchy-in-media-theory-and-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/cams\/2025\/04\/30\/body-modification-and-gender-anarchy-in-media-theory-and-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"Body Modification and Gender Anarchy in Media Theory and Practice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Call for Papers for MAST Special Issue with deadline on May 31st.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guest Editors:
Bernadette Wegenstein (Johns Hopkins University)
Cla Calabresi (Johns Hopkins University)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This special issue of MAST Journal explores practices of the body and embodiment in relation to media theory from both diachronical and synchronical perspectives. We welcome submissions concerning the body in media theories from the 21st century and from the digital turn onward. In particular, we are interested in analyses of a \u201cpost-body\u201d informed by theories of post-genderism, gender anarchy and posthumanism in the context of digital media technologies, not only transporting the values of a \u201cpost-body,\u201d but also enabling and creating such a body and embodiments. We invite cultural case studies and close readings of forms and expressions of embodiments and notions of the body from a historical, comparative, and non-Eurocentric viewpoints. We also welcome interpretations that move beyond the traditional canon of Western humanistic body theories\u2014such as phenomenology, ethnography, structuralism, and post-structuralism\u2014or challenge the concept of historical linearity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We invite theorizations and explorations of the following questions through media practice: How is the queer body shaped or affected by the post-gender era? Do body modifications, such as sex changes, contribute to the creation of an anarchic or post-gendered body? How do contemporary technologies redefine the concept of a cyborg body? In what ways might the post-body resonate with non-Western, post-colonial understandings of embodiment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We theorize the body as a technical image presenting a world and understanding its meaning and orientation within it (in the spirit of Vil\u00e9m Flusser), or as a bio-political phenomenon questioning political views and rupturing norms and hierarchies (in the spirit of Paul Preciado). We conceptualize the body as both human and non-human, as trans- and inter-sexual, as symbolic, real, and representational, and as an atemporal living environment encompassing a contemporaneous fusion of future, past, and present\u2014such as in indigenous understandings of non-time-based corporeal practices. We are particularly interested in essays addressing feminist and queer embodiments, the racialized body, trans bodies, and memoirs of the transitioning body (in the vein of Paul Preciado\u2019s or McKenzie Wark\u2019s body-essays). Topics may include body modifications that incorporate cyborgism from the digital turn onward, queer, intersectional, and feminist post-body practices of empowerment, and other flamboyant body performances and transformations over the past 30 years. We also welcome submissions from Disability Studies, Film Studies, Performance Studies, Technology Studies, Brain Studies, and AI Studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Topics of interest may include, but are not limited to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gender anarchy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The non-human body<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Non-time-based corporeality<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The body\u2019s face and interface<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Celebrations of the flamboyant body<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing and performing the trans body<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI generated body modifications<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analogue and Digital bodies<\/p>\n\n\n\n

20th and 21st century medical technologies and body modifications<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The body and the memoir<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biofabrication<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gender and bio-hacking<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technologies of the human corpse<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technologies of disembodiment<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We invite full submissions in the below categories:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long Essays (5000-6000 words)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Practice-based Studies: Short essays (1,000-2,000 words) that are composed around at least one historical or original media art project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n