Call for Papers: Piracy (Due June 1)

Piracy
Friday, 15 October 2010
Brandeis University
Department of English
Eighth Annual Graduate Conference
Plenary Speakers: Professor Caren Irr, Department of English, Brandeis University; one additional plenary, TBA

From buccaneers, corsairs, and plunderers to the IP police, from compelling literary figures to recent fierce debates over digital piracy and intellectual property, the figure of the pirate and definitions of piracy are nothing if not flexible and well-traveled, particularly in recent years, in terms of relevance in different cultural contexts.

What do we mean when we use these words to label an activity or an individual? How do these words act as framing devices and function as explanatory schemata? What ideological baggage do they carry, and why have they proven to be so flexibly applicable across such a variety of contexts? What are the moral and ethical underpinnings to their usage? How is piracy viewed differently across cultures and disciplines?

Open to interdisciplinary approaches and scholarship, ranging from English and comparative literature to the history of ideas and the social sciences, this conference endeavors to explore different constructions of and responses to ideas and representations of “the piratical” in contemporary and past cultures.

Possible topics might include:

* Piracy, copyright, and intellectual property
* Piracy and pirates in literature and history
* IP police
* Genealogies of the pirate and the piratical
* Pirates and queerness
* Piracy and moral didacticism
* The cultural politics of race and piracy
• Digital reproduction, p2p file-sharing technologies
, bittorrent technologies, open-access software
* Literary and musical texts associated with piracy and pirates, irrespective of theme
* Gendered and sexualized representations of the pirate and piracy
* Outlaws, pirates and poachers and the geopolitics of the culture industry

* Piracy and sacrifice
* Piracy as the expression/outside of global capitalism

* Fair Use/Abuse and issues of plagiarism
* Piracy and inter/transnational law, property rights and human rights

* Piracy and the War on Terror

* Piracy, parody, and appropriation
• Creative piracy in the form of mashups, mix-tapes, montage/collage
* The pirate as celebrated/reviled figure of rebellion and neo/colonial resistance

* Freebooters, pirates and buccaneers, and their place in capitalist and neo/colonial relations of production

* Racialized representations and performativity of the pirate and piracy in film, animation, art and literature

* The pirate as a figure of trangressive dis/ability
* Mutiny

Please send a 300 word abstract and a brief biographical statement (no more than 75 words) for your 15 minute presentation to ddonatac@brandeis.edu by midnight EST Monday 1 June 2010. Proposals must also include the title of the paper, presenter's name, institutional affiliation (including department), email address, mailing address, and telephone number. Since this is a graduate conference, preference will be given to graduate students; we do, however, welcome proposals from graduating undergraduates, independent scholars, and others who do not fit in these categories.

For more information visit our conference website at http://sites.google.com/site/piracyahoy/. Email ddonatac@brandeis.edu with any questions.

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Daniel V. Donatacci, MA, MLIS, MFA
President, Graduate Conference Organizing Committee
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of English and American Literature
Department of Women's and Gender Studies
-Brandeis University