The Center for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK), together with The Department of Philosophy (FOF) and The Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies (LLE) at the University of Bergen, Norway, will host the Irigaray Circle Conference in 2013, a three-day international conference dedicated to work on or inspired by the philosophy of Luce Irigaray. The overall theme for the conference will be “Thinking Life”.

Luce Irigaray’s work has influenced scholars in a broad range of disciplines, such as philosophy, literature, art, religion, architecture, the natural sciences and law. Recently, much interest has been devoted to her work on “life”, be it understood as an ontological or an existential problematic, or as an analysis of the living human body in its natural and cultural environments. This international conference will examine in various ways the implications of Irigaray’s thinking on sexual difference for re-thinking life today.

We welcome submissions for papers from a range of disciplines and fields of research - graduate students as well as faculty - each engaging with the overarching theme of “Thinking life” after the work of Luce Irigaray. The conference will feature the following keynote speakers:

Professor Claire Colebrook, Penn State University, USA
Senior Lecturer Peg Rawes, University College London, UK
Senior Lecturer Rebecca Hill, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
Associate Professor Kristin Sampson, University of Bergen, Norway
Professor Sara Heinämaa, University of Helsinki, Finland

In addition to the plenary sessions, the conference will organize parallel sessions. Abstracts (of max. ½ page) for papers proposed for the parallel sessions (max. 20 minutes) must be received by December 15th, 2012. Responses from the organizing committee as to whether or not the paper has been accepted will be given by February 1st, 2013.

In addition, the Irigaray Circle will sponsor the 4th annual Karen Burke Memorial Prize, awarded to the best paper submitted by a graduate student or recent PhD. The winner of the competition will give the Karen Burke Memorial Prize Lecture at a plenary session of the 2013 conference. Complete papers should be submitted to irigaray06@gmail.com by January 21, 2013. Authors will be notified of the committee’s decision by February 22, 2013. (For more information see www.irigaray.org).

Conference fee (includes all meals): NOK 500 (graduate students) / NOK 1250 (faculty and others). For more information about submission of abstracts and registration (with or without paper): www.uib.no/skok/en