An international, interdisciplinary conference
Call:
Organizers: Sociology of Gender section, Department of Sociology, University of Graz; FH JOANNEUM– University of Applied Sciences Graz; and Graz University of Technology
In 2008 the then Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, proposed funding cuts in the arts sector, reasoning that the arts were a “niche interest” that did not concern “ordinary people”. The writer Margaret Atwood wrote a powerful polemic in The Globe and Mail in response. She argued that not only was the arts sector beneficial to the Canadian economy, but also that “ordinary” Canadians were creative. She went on to compile a list of everyday creative activities from making music or films for the Net, through knitting and quilting, to gardening, cooking and home woodworking shop to demonstrate that creativity is a part of being human, rather than a niche interest [1].
Atwood echoed Raymond Williams’ proposition of “ordinary” culture, a culture created not by the arts, but in the process of everyday activities of ordinary people [2]. Building on his work, a group of researchers led by Paul Willis lamented in 1990 that there was “decreasing room for creativity in the necessary symbolic work of most paid work”. As a consequence, creativity outside of the professional milieu was crowded out into leisure space, which in turn became the home turf of “common culture”: “vulgar sometimes”, but also “’common’ in being shared” [3]. They clearly set “the arts” and “culture” in opposition, the former elitist and exclusive, the latter ordinary and inclusive. Scholarly work on creativity has fed into this dichotomy by focusing on the lone genius. Only in recent years has its social dimension come under more intense scrutiny, fuelled by technological advances and the networking potential of new media audiences across the globe. David Gauntlett emphasizes the community aspect of this new, democratic creative culture: “making is connecting” [4], while Andreas Reckwitz concludes that creativity has become a universal model for culture and an imperative in many parts of society [5].
Gender scholars have participated in this current wave of inquiries into creativity from the everyday to creative industries. They have also raised critical voices, pointing out the gendered definition of creativity to the exclusion of activities in which women typically engaged. The beginnings of this argument can be traced at least as far back as the end of the 19th century and to the change of perspective introduced by the Arts and Crafts Movement. In 2007 Riane Eisler and Alfonso Montuori proposed a de-gendered definition of creativity, one that opens the concept to include a greater variety of activities, beyond mere invention. According to them, creativity is that “which supports, nurtures, and actualizes life by increasing the number of choices open to individuals and communities” [6].
Scholarly interest in creativity as a social and gendered phenomenon coincides with renewed interest in the body, embodiment and the material, championed by, among others, feminist new materialism, the sociology of emotions, cultural sociology, and sensory methodologies in qualitative research. The CREATIVE BODIES—CREATIVE MINDS conference aims to bring these strands of inquiry together with a special emphasis on the interrogation of gender. The areas of interest for conference presentations include, but are certainly not limited to:
- Gender in everyday, artisan, artistic and professional creative activities;
- Embodied creativity; the intersections of the sensory, the affective and the verbal;
- Material, processual and relational aspects of creative practices;
- Gendering of non-traditional sites of creativity;
- DIY, Maker Movement: from knitting, through home-making to Open Source;
- Gender in the new media and the creative industries;
- Creative embodiment of gender and challenging gender boundaries;
- Gendering the economy and politics of creativity;
- The place of creative methodologies in teaching and scholarly research, art-based research;
- The gender of creativity in social and cultural theory.
Confirmed keynote speakers:
- Emma Rees, Professor of Literature and Gender Studies, University of Chester; creator of the biennial Talking Bodies conference.
- Marta Hawkins, Director of the Futures Entrepreneurship Centre, University of Plymouth.
We are inviting proposals for presentations from scholars, practitioners and postgraduate students from a wide range of disciplines including, but not limited to: sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, art, performance, history, literary studies, social studies of science and technology and environmental studies.
Please send a 250-word abstract and a 150-word bio note before 20th October 2017 to Creative.Bodies(at)uni-graz(dot)at
Information on registration, accommodation, and updates on the programme will be available on the conference website: creative-bodies.uni-graz.at"
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