Welcome to the September edition of the bimonthly Progressive Connexions Interdisciplinary Life newsletter.
Upcoming…
We are excited to report that in-person conferences are on the horizon again! Progressive Connexions will be reconvening in Lisbon next March, for the conferences that were postponed from summer 2020. We are hoping that 2021 will be a vibrant enough conference season to make up for this past year, but we need your help! If you have an idea for a new conference topic, or would like to be considered as an Event Leader, then write to teresa@progressiveconnexions.net to suggest an event for Autumn 2021.
In the meantime, watch our space for reading and listening material to fill your interdisciplinary needs. A new book, Identifying Spaces and Places, from the Spaces & Places project is upcoming from Emerald Publishing. Identifying Spaces and Places is the second book under contract with Emerald on the topic of spaces and places – way back in May, we announced Moving Spaces and Places, which originated at the same conference! The next Spaces and Places conference will be taking place in March in beautiful Lisbon, Portugal.
If listening is more what you’re after, our Director of Communications Lorraine will be hosting a new podcast, Interconnexions, which will feature conversations with interdisciplinary scholars and workers. If you’re interested in being featured on the podcast, write to lorraine@progressiveconnexions.net with a brief description of your work, and why you think it would be valuable to the ProCon community.
Previously…
We recently closed the CFPs for our March 2021 events in Lisbon, Portugal. Just as a little reminder, on March 12-13 there will be conferences on:
- Care
- Storytelling and Trauma
- Nostalgia
- Supernatural Connections
- Spirituality and Culture
- The End-of-Life Experience
- Storytelling and the Body
- Fashion and Photography
And on March 14-15, there will be:
- Whistleblowing
- Global Horror/Local Perspectives
- Violence
- Spaces and Places
- Experiencing Prison
- Activism, Protest, and Dissent
- Political Evils: The Iron Curtain and its Legacies
- Bad Mothers
All of these were events that were displaced by the COVID-19 pandemic, and we’re excited to be able to still offer them – if a little delayed. We hope we’ll be seeing you there! If you’re planning on coming, write to us on social media with the hashtag #Lisbon2021 – we can’t wait to hear from you!
Currently…
Currently, calls for papers are open for the conferences that will be taking place next April. We have ten upcoming events, on the 16th-17th and 18th-19th of April in beautiful Vienna! Proposals for these conferences are due on Friday, 25 September, 2020.
On the 16th and 17th, we’ve got:
- Evil Women/Women and Evil
- Monsters
- Music and… Nationalism
- Evil: Traditions and Transformations
- The Art of Being Inhuman in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic
On the 18th and 19th, the topics will be:
But, we know travelling isn’t in the cards for a ot of people these days. If you’re looking for a lockdown-friendly project – and possibly even looking to vent your spleen about COVID-19 – you might want to get in touch with susanne@progressiveconnexions.net with ideas for COVID-related publications. As with all of Progressive Connexions’ work, we’re looking for inquisitive and creative interdisciplinary explorations of the impact of COVID-19 on lives, cultures, economies, and the world. If you are interested in editing or being involved with a COVID-19 publication, reach out to Susanne with your thoughts!
In Our Network…
The Progressive Connexions team welcomes a new member: Elif Çakmak is joining us as Director of E-Publications! She is going to be taking charge of all manner of electronic publications: e-journals, e-books and more! You can get to know a little more about Elif on the Progressive Connexions “Who We Are” page, and if you’re interested in working on e-publications projects, or have a genius idea for one, email her at elif@progressiveconnexions.net.
We’re also happy to be welcoming a new Event Leader to our “Music &…” hub – Jasmine Hazel Shadrack is a composer, musician, and scholar whose background as an extreme metal guitarist for the last twenty years and a black metal vocalist for the last five meets her research. She works with trauma studies, disability studies, feminism, performance, extreme metal, autoethnography and psychoanalysis.
Our Director of Publications Susanne, who is a kink researcher by trade, has taken on a position as a mentor with CARAS, the Center for Academic Research on Alternative Sexualities. Susanne is also on the development team for our “Gender and Sexualities” hub, so watch that space for more exciting insights and developments!
Finally, if the real world and its horrors are just not doing it for you these days, you might be interested to know that our Director of Programmes, Teresa, is working on two chapters for popular culture anthologies: one on the two versions of the film Cat People, and the other on twins, doppelgangers and evil in Kubrick’s The Shining. We all need a good dose of evil on film to get us through lockdown!
We want YOU!
Have you done something exciting with a project you brought to a Progressive Connexions conference? Brought it to another conference? Expanded it into a publication, lecture, or new project? Want to have it featured in the newsletter? Email lorraine@progressiveconnexions.net so she can share it with our network!
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