Touching War publicity for April

TOUCHING WAR: APRIL Touching War, which I have been directing at Lancaster University this academic year with the Politics/IR department, under IAS and LU Film Society sponsorship, formally concludes this month with the theme BODIES OF WAR. http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/events/touchingwar/. Professor Christine Sylvester, Politics/IR (c.sylvester@lancaster.ac.uk) WORKSHOP: WHERE ARE THE BODIES OF WAR? Friday, April 3, 9:45-5:30, IAS room 2/3. Wine Reception follows. Sponsored by IAS. Open to all. TALKS BY BRIGITTE HOLZNER, Director of Gender and Development at the Austrian Development Agency. Author of numerous articles on overseas development, most recently of "Legal Pluralism in the Family Law: Implications for Development Policy," in Family, Law, Religion. Debates and Cases in the Muslim Worlds (2009), "Agrarian Restructuring and Gender - Designing Family Farms in Central and Eastern Europe," Gender, Place and Culture (2008), "The Theatre of War," Forced Migration Review (2007), "Gender Habitus und Entwicklungszusammenarbeit: Stärken und Grenzen Bourdieu'scher Konzepte," in Politik - Programme - Projekte. Menschenorientierte Entwicklungszusammenarbeit im Sinne von Bourdieu (2007), and "Youth, Sexuality and Sex Education Messages in Indonesia: Issues of Desire and Control," Reproductive Health Matters (2004). ATHINA KARATZOGIANNI(Media, Culture and Society, Hull) Author of The Politics of Cyberconflict (2006), co-author of Power, Conflict and Resistance: Social Movements, Networks and Hierarchies (2009), and editor of Cyber Conflict and Global Politics (2009). She has also written on cross-disciplinarity, the open source movement, and war coverage in global hotspots. ADI KUNTSMAN (Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures, Manchester) A Leverhulme Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures, Kuntsman is co-editor of Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/Raciality (2008), and author of Figurations of Violence and Belonging: Queerness, Migranthood and Nationalism in Cyberspace and Beyond (forthcoming). PAT NOXOLO (Geography, Loughborough) A lecturer in Human Geography, Noxolo has written "Negotiating Security: Governmentality and Asylum/Immigration NGOs in the UK," in Spaces of Security and Insecurity: New Geographies of the War on Terror, eds. K. Dodds and A. Ingram (forthcoming) and "Freedom, Fear and NGOs: Balancing Discourses of Violence and Humanity in Securitising Times," in Development and Colonialism: the Past in the Present, ed. M. Duffield and V. Hewitt (forthcoming) CAMI ROWE (Politics/IR Lancaster). An IR PhD student with a performance background, Rowe has presented papers at several International Studies Association (ISA) conferences in the USA, most recently on "Violent Women for Peace" and "That Whole Gender Paradigm: Antiwar Veterans Redefining Security." She also helped script and perform the Collaging IR2 innovative panel at the ISA (2009) organized by Professor Christine Sylvester. WORKSHOP SCHEDULE 9:45 Coffee 10:00-10:10 Introduction by Professor Christine Sylvester, Director of Touching War 10:15-11:00 Keynote Address: Dr. Brigitte Holzner (Gender and Development at the Austrian Development Agency), "Peace and Security Through Gender Policy? Development policy and practice are increasingly challenged by the consequences of war and armed conflict that not only destroy livelihoods but also are more and more fought on women's bodies. I shall present policy responses to the human rights violations of women in war and armed conflict as stipulated by resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and taken up in National Action Plans. The discussion will concentrate on notions of gender, gendered security, and gender justice in those policies, and weave in issues of war crimes at Srebrenica and the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Liberia. 11:00-11:30 Discussion led by Christine Sylvester 11:30-12:00 Pat Noxolo (Geography, Loughborough) "Securitisation, Migration and NGOS Since 9/11," Examines short-term and potential long-term changes in the spatial practices and spatial imaginary of UK-based NGOs concerned with asylum/immigration, in response to an asylum/security nexus arising around the terrorist attacks on September 11th (9/11) and July 7th (7/7). 12:00-12:30 Discussion led by Brigitte Holzner 12:30-1:45 Lunch 1:45-2:15 Adi Kuntsman (Cosmopolitan Cultures, Manchester) "The Cybertouch of War: Visuality, Circulation and Affect" Based on studying the Russian-speaking Internet as post-Soviet 'diaspora space,' Kuntsman explores the growing Islamophobia, Orientalism and racial hatred in Russian-language websites, blogs and discussion forums against the backdrop of a globalised 'war on terror,' post 9-11 US politics, and the Russian-Chechenian and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. Notes complex connections between nationalism and migration, violence and reconciliation, and the bloody materiality of wars and their reverberations in cyberspace 2:15-2:45 Discussion led by Pat Noxolo 2:45 Break for Coffee 3:00-3:30 Athina Karatzogianni (Media, Culture and Society, Hull), "The Body and Technology in the War Machine" Addresses several body-erasing aspects of contemporary warfare. Included are facets of the revolution in military affairs that emphasize unmanned vehicles and especially ICTs, as well as soldiers-mercenaries, private companies and contracts personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan who staff private detention centres and are implicated in prison torture. Also considers the body in resistance to such body-erasing strategies. 3:30-4:00 Discussion led by Swati Parashar 4:00-4:30 Cami Rowe (Politics/IR, Lancaster), "Re-embodying Unknown Soldiers" Highlights performative antiwar protest actions by American veterans of the "War on Terror" and demonstrates the ways that veterans are rescuing notions of soldierliness from pro-war rhetoric through dramatic references to embodied violence and victimhood. 4:30-5:00 Discussion led by Christine Sylvester 5:00-5:30 Ways forward led by Brigitte Holzner and Christine Sylvester 5:30 Wine Reception