Graduate students are invited to submit paper proposals for the annual graduate student conference in international and global history at the Columbia University Department of History, to take place in New York City on April 9th, 2010.
What happens when human life itself becomes an international problem? The questions of defining and regulating biological life have confronted every society — and with the rapid growth of biomedical technologies and techniques of ecological and environmental intervention, they are especially urgent today. What, then, have been the ideas and practices of transnational biopolitics, and how can we periodize them? How have the challenges of managing and optimizing human life contributed to international conflict and cooperation? How have challenges to transnational biopolitics registered at an individual and community level?
Possible paper topics include but are not limited to:
- colonial and anti-colonial biopolitics
- gender in biopolitics
- biopolitical constructions of race and racism
- eugenic doctrines and practices
- international health
- international scientific communities
- transnational population movement and management
- effects of biopolitical ideas on international relations
- human rights ideas and law
- biopolitics and the human environment
- impact of religious and moral thought on biopolitics
- human and non-human actors in transnational biopolitics
- contested concepts of the human
Specialists from Columbia University will provide commentary.
We welcome submissions from all time periods - ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern - and geographic regions. We encourage interdisciplinary research, and although proposals with a historical perspective are particularly welcome, we will also consider contributions from fields including anthropology, economics, literary studies, philosophy, political science and sociology.
Limited funding for travel and assistance in arranging accommodation may be available.
Graduate students interested in participating should submit a paper
abstract of no more than 300 words and a recent CV as email
attachments (word or PDF format preferred) by January 18, 2010 to Trey Straussberger, at the following address: jfs2129@columbia.edu.