This international interdisciplinary event will examine how political, poetic and ethical practice and thought engage with questions of sexuality and sexual difference on a global stage.  At a time when women’s and minority group rights are still frequently under-represented and marginalized in mainstream global discussions of citizenship and democracy, culture, health and community life, Sexuate Subjects responds to French thinker, Luce Irigaray’s theory of ‘sexuate difference’ for enabling critically ­aware global formations of self identity and community, art, architectural and spatial practices, ecology, environmental care and sustainability, health and bio­medically assisted life.

In particular, Sexuate Subjects will focus on these different relationships as they are expressed in political, poetic and ethical practice and thought in disciplines including:  architecture, art, literature, modern languages, philosophy, the political and social sciences.  By examining these complex expressions of our physical and psychic lives through artefact, body, dialogue, image, installation and word, this event will provide a platform of diverse approaches which can help us build sexuate futures.  Such approaches will contribute towards developing more nuanced understandings of the diversity of global cultures and their academic and public intersections.  International experts from higher education, professional and public realms, as well as young researchers and practitioners, are invited to respond.

Key questions being discussed include:
Where are ‘global’ women in contemporary approaches to health matters?
How are political, poetic and ethical issues addressed in feminist/feminine architectural and spatial practice?
How can sexuate ecologies and environmental practices inform global sustainability?
How can art inform conflict resolution?
Why poetry matters in thought, ethical and political life.  
How can sexuate difference inform the ethics of global education?
How can feminist bio­ethics inform approaches to women’s and body­rights, fertility and population health?

The Conference is being developed in conjunction with UCL’s Intercultural Interactions Grand Research Challenge, the US­ based Luce Irigaray Circle, and Fatale (Feminist Architectural Theory Analysis, Laboratory and Education) at KTH, Stockholm.
 
Keynote speakers:
Professor Elizabeth Grosz (Rutgers University, New Jersey)
Dr. Doina Petrescu (Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée and the University of Sheffield)
The Karen Burke Memorial Lecture (sponsored by the Luce Irigaray Circle)

For general enquiries about the event please email Peg Rawes at m.rawes@ucl.ac.uk.

Please register, using the form link at the left, if you plan to attend the 2010 conference, or any of the talks. Full registration details will be confirmed by July 2010.  We are making every effort to keep registration fees to an absolute minimum for all, however, if necessary we may need to ask attendees (excluding students) whose conference attendance is financially supported by their institution for a registration fee (under £100).

The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL) is located at Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT. Hotel information when available for the 5th Annual Conference will be listed under the Hotel information link to the left. Full registration details will be confirmed by July 2010.

Call for Paper requirements:
Please find specific details of submissions and convenor contact details in each panel description link listed below.

Panel: Whirlwinds

Panel: Understanding Difference: why poetry matters

Panel: Lot's Wife: The imperatives of disobedience and the spectacle of violence

Panel: Sexuate sustainable practices and ecologies

The Luce Irigaray Circle open call for panels/papers

The Karen Burke Memorial Prize Lecture call for papers

The Irigaray Circle

The conference and other activities of the Irigaray Circle are made possible by support from

Stony Brook University and Hofstra University.