The Fanatic: 14 November 2011, İstanbul Şehir University, Dept of Political Science and IR, Monday // 15.00-18:00‏

Fanaticism’ and ‘the Fanatic’ are powerful mobilising tropes of national and international politics today. In his recent book On Fanaticism (2010), Alberto Toscano observes that there are few terms in our political vocabulary as damning as that of ‘the fanatic’: it ‘stands outside the frame of political rationality, possessed by a violent conviction that brooks no argument and will only rest, if ever, once every rival view or way of life is eradicated’. Dominique Colas notes in her clasic study that “civil society and fanaticism have mutually defined each other since the 16th century,” (Civil Society and Fanaticism, 1997).



Radically polysemous terms, inteligible only as weapons in specific historical circumstances, and in terms of their reciprocal influence, we seem only to know the one in terms of the other. And yet they also shift and change places: there are civil society fanatics as much as there have been fanatical enemies of civil society. Whereas many dismiss the fanatic as obscuring or inflaming political disagreement, the discourse of the fanatic may instead also illuminate the theory as well as the practcies of politics and power in penetrating ways.



During the last 20 years, a new wave of thinkers have mobilised the figure of the fanatic as a means of re-visiting such core political problems as the relationship between religion and politics, faith and knowledge, theory and practice, reason and revolution, civil society and the state. This symposium explores the figure of the fanatic in political, historical and cultural discourse. What are the promise and the threat of the fanatic today? How can we trace its emergence or repression through the history of modernity? Who or what takes the place of the fanatic both historically and today – the Jew, the Muslim, the Christian, the communist, the terrorist, the liberal, the capitalist, or even the philosopher and the theologian?



Abir Hamdar (Lancaster University, UK)

Bülent Diken (Lancaster University, UK)

Julian Reid (University Of Lapland, Finland)

Kemal Sayar (Marmara University, Istanbul)

Michael Dillon (İstanbul Şehir University, Istanbul)







Symposium will be conducted in English



Time: November 14, 2011 - Monday // 15.00-18:00

Venue: Istanbul Şehir University Altunizade Campus Conference Hall

İstanbul Şehir University

Department of Political Science and International Relations http://www.sehir.edu.tr/en/Pages/Homepage.aspx

Discourse / Conversation / Communication Conference, Loughborough, UK‏

"Discourse / Conversation / Communication", International conference, Loughborough University, UK, 21-23 March 2012

Confirmed plenary speakers: Michael Billig, David Buckingham, David Deacon, Paul Drew, Derek Edwards, Peter Golding, Jim McGuigan, Angela McRobbie, Graham Murdock, Michael Pickering, Jonathan Potter, Teun A. Van Dijk, Liesbet Van Zoonen.

CALL FOR PAPERS
We invite submissions for individual papers that engage with empirical and theoretical topics in communication studies, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, media studies, social interaction, or cultural studies. Preference will be given to papers that address in original ways the promises and challenges or research in these areas.

Possible topics include:
* cultural economies and media industries
* popular culture and cultural history
* identity, difference and communication
* political communication
* communication and social exclusion
* media and religion
* memory and media
* comparative media research
* political and nationalist discourse
* discursive psychology
* membership categorization analysis
* conversation analysis

Abstracts should be up to 350 words in length and written in English. Only one abstract as single / first author will be accepted from any one individual.

Please submit your Abstract via Loughborough University's Conference Administration page: http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~ssca1/DCconf2012/DC2012home.html.

Deadline for Abstracts: 1st December, 2011.

Looking forward to meeting you in Loughborough!
***
Dr. Sabina Mihelj
Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies
BSc Communication and Media Studies Programme Director
Department of Social Sciences
Brockington Building
Loughborough University
LE11 3TU Loughborough
UK

Url: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ss/staff/mihelj.html

The Institute for Advanced Study, Paris (IAS), long-term fellowships‏

The Institute for Advanced Study – Paris (IAS-Paris) invites you to
submit applications for the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 academic years for
five- or nine-month residencies. Longer stays (i.e. nine months) are
given priority for 2013-2014. IAS-Paris is planning to host about
fifteen guest researchers for 2012-2013 and about twenty-five guest
researchers for 2013-2014 to work on research projects of their choice.

*Deadline for applications: 20 January 2012.*

Eligible applicants:

- High-level international researchers in the humanities and social
sciences (HSS)
- Postdoctoral researchers that hold a position in a university or
research centre (having held a doctorate for at least three years, plus
a minimum three years of full-time research experience)

Applicants may request residencies for the following periods:

• 1 September 2012 to 31 January 2013 or
• 1 October 2012 to 30 June 2013 or
• 1 February to 30 June 2013

• 1 September 2013 to 31 January 2014 or
• 1 October 2013 to 30 June 2014 (requests for nine-month residencies
are given priority for the 2013-2014 academic year) or
• 1 February to 30 June 2014

The application, in English or French, is submitted via an online
application system. Paper applications are not accepted.

The online application is comprised of the following:

– Completed application form
– Curriculum vitae and list of publications (20 pages maximum)
– Information on your research project (between 5 and 10 pages / 1,000
to 2,000 words), including:
. A selected bibliography on the topic
. A statement on current or potential partnerships with institutions or
researchers based in France
– Two separate project summaries, one in English and one in French, of
1,500 characters / 200 words maximum, including the project’s title

Further information: Please see the section "Becoming a fellow".

Discipline(s): Humanities and social sciences
http://www.paris-iea.fr/en/evenement/appel-candidature-iea-paris-pour-les-annees-universitaires-2012-2013-et-2013-2014

Rethinking the Self: Transnational and Transdisciplinary Bioethical and Biopolitical Concerns, Helsinki, 10–12 April 2012‏

Rethinking the Self: Transnational and Transdisciplinary Bioethical and
Biopolitical Concerns
International symposium at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies,
University of Helsinki, Finland, 10–12 April 2012.

Keynote speakers include Prof. Beverley Skeggs, Goldsmiths, University
of London, UK, and Dr. Jenny Slatman, Maastricht University, the
Netherlands.

This international and interdisciplinary symposium addresses how
cultural, medical and political understandings of the self are shifting
and changing in contemporary societies. It explores how humanness is
imagined and conceived in various symbolic systems of knowledge, and how
gender, disability, class and ethnicity articulate these understandings.
With a particular focus on how ideas of the flesh and national identity
reconfigure experiences of the embodied self, the symposium aims to
bring together scholars whose work engages with issues that range from
medical and cultural technologies, globalisation, migration and
neoliberalism to phenomenology and ethics, political ideologies and
subjectivities, and theories of social transformation.

This symposium aims to create a transdisciplinary dialogue regarding the
local and global changing understandings of and practices related to the
self by bringing together speakers from a broad range of cultural,
methodological, national, disciplinary and transnational foci. It seeks
to further conversations and research on topical and vexing questions of
the self, especially in relation to recent medical, cultural,
technological, political, social and neo-colonial developments. With an
emphasis on the biopolitics of bodies, machines and institutional
structures, the symposium also addresses the ethics of human selfhood,
specifically how we define the human and what is at stake in our
definitions of this now global being.

We welcome submissions for papers, poster-presentations and artwork from
a broad range of disciplines and fields of research. Topics can include,
but are not limited to:

* Theories and technologies of the self
* Community belonging and violence
* Contemporary medical therapies, technologies and ethics (organ
donation and transplantation, gene therapy, HIV therapies, etc.)
* Class dimensions of the self
* The self, disability and monstrosity
* Self harm and narratives of the self
* Medicalised race theories
* Gender, sexuality and queering the self
* Phenomenology, the senses and an embodied sense of self
* Ethics and the ethics of the human

If you would like to participate, please submit an abstract of no more
than 300 words and a brief biography (max. 100 words) to Suvi
Salmenniemi (suvi.salmenniemi[at]helsinki.fi) and Donna McCormack
(donna.mccormack[at]helsinki.fi) by *1st December 2011*. For more
information, see
http://www.helsinki.fi/collegium/events/rethinking-the-self.htm

Conference: Identity in the era of Globalization and Europeanization, Skopje, 3-4 November 2011‏

International conference Identity in the era of globalization and europeanization to be held in Skopje, 3-4 November 2011, organized by the Institute for sociological, political and juridical research and Institute of sociology, Faculty of Philosophy of the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, R. Macedonia.

http://isppi.ukim.edu.mk/FTP/Pokana%20A4-2.pdf

Conference: Debating the End of Yugoslavia, University of Graz, 4-6 November 2011‏

South East European Dialogues (SEED): Debating the End of Yugoslavia
Centre for Southeast European Studies, Karl-Franzens-University Graz
4-6 November 2011


The Centre for Southeast European Studies is organizing the international conference “Debating the End of Yugoslavia” from 4-6 November 2011.

2011 is the 20th anniversary of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, providing for an opportunity to reflect on this event which not only shaped the region, but also Europe at large.

The conference constitutes the most important academic event on this occasion this year. Instead of discussing the dissolution again, the conference is taking an innovative approach. On the first and second day, (4 & 5.11.) eye witnesses remember and reflect on the dissolution of Yugoslavia. This includes politicians, journalists, diplomats and other personalities from public life. The recollections of eye witnesses are commented by scholars, who provide a background and open a discussion. On the second and third day (5 & 6.11.), some 35 leading historians, sociologists, lawyers, anthropologists, political scientists and economists from former Yugoslavia, the rest of Europe and North America discuss the state of scholarly debate.

The conference is thus not just a conference on the dissolution of Yugoslavia, but also aims at identifying new directions for research. In addition to the interdisciplinary perspectives, the conference also brings together senior scholars with younger researchers and provides for a dialogue on these issues between scholars from former Yugoslavia.

During the conference, the university museum will host an exhibition of the Design Studio Trio (Sarajevo), which has designed iconic posters, magazine covers and ads over the past 20 years.

Programme available at: http://www.uni-graz.at/en/opv1www/events-2.opv1www-newpage?=

ECMI MMTE Research Internship

Minority Map and Timeline of Europe (MMTE) Research Internship Announcement
http://bit.ly/sbPzLn

MMTE Staff

Out-of-house Research Intern

1. Role/Tasks:

1.1. Research and write upon one country-minority entry
1.2 Update information on country-minority entries
1.3 Update information on other websites and add links to the MMTE

2. Position:
2.1 Three full-time positions/one four-month internship period

3. Remittance
3.1 Research will be contracted on a paid basis

Responsibilities

The European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI) is currently seeking three out-of-house interns for a four-month paid internship period from January to April 2012 to undertake research for the newly redesigned Minority Map and Timeline of Europe (MMTE). In collaboration with the General Coordinator and Project Leader/Editor, interns will research and write upon one country-minority entry with the use of the Minority Map and Timeline of Europe (MMTE) Template. Interns will have the opportunity to choose which country they would like to research upon, this being dependent upon if the country-minority entry has not already been completed. While interns may research upon a country they are not residing in, it is highly sought after that interns have very good knowledge of their chosen country-minority entry. Through both primary and secondary data use, will write upon the general environment/relations of the country and government concerning its minority population as well as further examining major communities living throughout the country. Responsibilities will also include locating statistical data concerning population numbers for the interactive map as well as writing events for the interactive timeline. During the internship, interns will update other information when necessary as well as add information from the MMTE and links to relevant websites.

Skills/Knowledge

Out-of-house interns will generally be based in the country that is being researched upon for the country-minority entry. Internships are intended for junior scholars who have recently finished a second degree (i.e master's degree) in a pertinent discipline, and who have researched upon and have exposure to one of the regions, countries, and/or minorities of the Minority Map and Timeline of Europe. As research will be performed out-of-house, it is important that the applicant is able to work independently and meet deadlines. For these reasons, interns must have regular access to a computer, a reliable broadband Internet access, be able to commit to a full-time workload, and be willing to use Skype and e-mail during the internship period. The intern must be organized and have excellent communcations skills. Excellent English skills are required for this internship, while other language skills, particularly in the country of study, are extremely valuable.

Application by e-mail only, no phone calls please

Please provide a letter of motivation titled "MMTE Research Internship", curriculum vitae, three reference details (including contact details/e-mail addresses), and short writing sample (5-7 pages), which may be an excerpt of an academic paper (not edited by someone else) that demonstrates knowledge of the regions, countries and/or minorities (in general or upon the intern's specific choice) or other relevant disciplines, as well as English language competence. Applicants should also provide a list of three country-minority entries they are interested in researching upon. Applicants that are not selected for the internship period will be entered in a roster for future internship possibilities.

Dates/Contact

Due date for submissions: 25 November 2011

Short-listed applicants will be contacted by: 9 December 2011

Please forward all application materials to: William McKinney, mckinney@ecmi.de