From Steven Howe, Associate Director for Institute for Interdisciplinary Disciplinary Legal Studies, Lucernaiuris.
Call for Applications: Critical Times 2026 – Bodies
“Why
all the fuss about the body?” Caroline Bynum first posed this provocation in
the mid-1990s, prompted by a “proliferation” of new writings and theorizations,
including then-recent and now-classic works by Judith Butler, bell hooks and
Susan Bordo. Looking back some three decades on, we see that the ‘fuss’ was no
temporary flare-up or mere passing fad. Rather, it was symptomatic of an
emergent ‘bodily turn’ that has, in the years since, moved the terminology of
bodies – real, imagined and metaphorical – to the foreground of critical
thinking across law and the humanities.
The
fruits of this turn need no special elaboration. Interventions in critical
theory, performance studies, affect theory, Black studies, feminist and queer
theory, posthumanism and new materialist studies have given us an array of new
vocabularies and insights to bring to bear on our thinking about bodies, their
meanings, entanglements and limits. The body, in Rizvana Bradley’s phrase, has
become a “discursive meeting ground” for an “unwieldy multitude of concepts and
debates, affects and afflictions, conflicts and contestations”, the distinctive
expressions of which span multiple fields, disciplines and cultures. While not
always clear whether these numerous articulations work in tandem or at
cross-purposes, they have, in their very plurality, fostered a deeper
engagement with, and problematization of, the “matter of bodies”
(Butler). Our present moment – marked by demographic convulsions, war, enhanced
practices of surveillance, ubiquitous mobile media, posthuman subjectivities,
and new forms of political protest and social movements – urges us, meanwhile,
to ‘fuss’ further: to give continued and renewed care to re/thinking the
significance of bodies in various contexts, situations and relations. Or to ask
more pointedly: do bodies still matter? And if so, why, when and how?
In
this spirit, the 2026 Critical Times summer school invites emerging scholars in
law and the humanities to gather anew around the theme of ‘Bodies’. Together,
we will think about bodies that assemble and disassemble, that appear and
disappear, that are protected, punished, cared for, and ignored. From the
vulnerable to the resistant, the human to the more-than-human, we ask how legal
and cultural frameworks make some bodies visible and others invisible – and how
embodiment, performance and affect shape and unsettle our legal
imaginaries.
Open
to postdocs, PhDs and advanced graduate students from different disciplinary
and interdisciplinary backgrounds, the aim is to create a live and lively space
of inquiry and creativity – a temporary assembly of thinking, feeling, and
embodied scholarship.
Deadline:
20 March 2026. Further details here.
Contact: steven.howe@unilu.ch
Call
for Applications: Critical Times 2026 – Bodies
“Why
all the fuss about the body?” Caroline Bynum first posed this provocation in
the mid-1990s, prompted by a “proliferation” of new writings and theorizations,
including then-recent and now-classic works by Judith Butler, bell hooks and
Susan Bordo. Looking back some three decades on, we see that the ‘fuss’ was no
temporary flare-up or mere passing fad. Rather, it was symptomatic of an
emergent ‘bodily turn’ that has, in the years since, moved the terminology of
bodies – real, imagined and metaphorical – to the foreground of critical
thinking across law and the humanities.
The
fruits of this turn need no special elaboration. Interventions in critical
theory, performance studies, affect theory, Black studies, feminist and queer
theory, posthumanism and new materialist studies have given us an array of new
vocabularies and insights to bring to bear on our thinking about bodies, their
meanings, entanglements and limits. The body, in Rizvana Bradley’s phrase, has
become a “discursive meeting ground” for an “unwieldy multitude of concepts and
debates, affects and afflictions, conflicts and contestations”, the distinctive
expressions of which span multiple fields, disciplines and cultures. While not
always clear whether these numerous articulations work in tandem or at
cross-purposes, they have, in their very plurality, fostered a deeper
engagement with, and problematization of, the “matter of bodies”
(Butler). Our present moment – marked by demographic convulsions, war, enhanced
practices of surveillance, ubiquitous mobile media, posthuman subjectivities,
and new forms of political protest and social movements – urges us, meanwhile,
to ‘fuss’ further: to give continued and renewed care to re/thinking the
significance of bodies in various contexts, situations and relations. Or to ask
more pointedly: do bodies still matter? And if so, why, when and how?
In
this spirit, the 2026 Critical Times summer school invites emerging scholars in
law and the humanities to gather anew around the theme of ‘Bodies’. Together,
we will think about bodies that assemble and disassemble, that appear and
disappear, that are protected, punished, cared for, and ignored. From the
vulnerable to the resistant, the human to the more-than-human, we ask how legal
and cultural frameworks make some bodies visible and others invisible – and how
embodiment, performance and affect shape and unsettle our legal
imaginaries.
Open
to postdocs, PhDs and advanced graduate students from different disciplinary
and interdisciplinary backgrounds, the aim is to create a live and lively space
of inquiry and creativity – a temporary assembly of thinking, feeling, and
embodied scholarship.
Deadline:
20 March 2026. Further details here.
Contact: steven.howe@unilu.ch
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