CFS: Body, Breast Cancer (Social Semiotics)

Call For Papers: For a Special Issue of Social Semiotics THE BODY IN BREAST CANCER Edited by Nadine Ehlers and Shiloh Krupar

Social Semiotics invites submissions to a special issue “The Body in Breast Cancer” in order to mobilize new critical interventions into the materiality of breast cancer.

The body, at the level of the breast, is the terrain on and through which breast cancer registers. This body, as understood through poststructuralist theory, is always already constructed and negotiated in relation to technology. This body, then, is a technologized body. The experience of breast cancer at once compels particular interfaces of body and machine in detection, treatment, and “recovery,” and the necessity for corporeal reworking in relation to the machine. Stressing the material breast as a technologized terrain necessitates grappling with the myriad of troubled relations of/to the breast, such as the prosthetic breast, the absent breast, fear of the lost breast, refusal of the breast, the scrutinized fleshy breast. In order to enable such exploration, we solicit papers in the fields of science and technology studies, queer studies, cultural studies, performance studies, and disability studies that enter into dialogue with scholarship on (bio)technologies and/or the posthuman. Foregrounding the technologized materiality in breast cancer will yield new ways of understanding subjectivity and somatic resistance, crafting corporeality, and practicing critique/politics in order to extend “livable lives.”

We are especially interested in accounts of queer, non-white, crip, male, classed bodies, and other particularities of subjecthood, that explore the practices of the technologized body in breast cancer at the level of machine and science, and imagined through biotech, the cyborg, cybernetics, prostheses, biometrics, and so forth.

We welcome articles that investigate:

• Excavations of the breast that foreground the policing, containment, mutilation, resignification, and crafting of the breast
• Bodies in breast cancer surveillance
• Bodies and breast reconstruction
• Bodies in treatment (radiation, the chemotherapy ward, detection, ultrasound, MRI, biopsy, mammogram, the breast clinic)
• Bodies and traces of military technologies; marks of cancer treatment
• Body-erotics/sexuality and breast cancer
• Visual economies of the breast and legalities of breastlessness
• The body and prognosis in breast cancer
• Altered notions of bodily capacity in relation to breast cancer
• Breasted aesthetics as self-crafting/disciplining
• Renegotiations of subjectivity at the interface with machines
• Unstable assemblages between flesh and machine in detection, risk assessment, prognosis
• Cancer and matter
• Regeneration and illness

We invite traditional essays as well as a variety of alternative forms: short performative pieces, short critical etymologies, visual essays, case studies. We are hoping to put together a range of different submissions for this issue in order to encourage unorthodox approaches to breast cancer.

If submitting a traditional paper, the word count should be no more than 8000, including notes and bibliography. Alternative formats should be between 1 and 15 pages (maximum). For all submissions, please note that one image is equivalent to 250 words (half page).

The journal citation style is Chicago Author-Date. For style guidelines and further information about figures and formatting, please see the journal website instructions for authors: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/csosauth.asp

Articles should be prepared for anonymous review. Please provide a separate short author biography and an abstract of no more than 150 words.

The deadline for submissions is 1 October 2010, with a final publication date scheduled for January 2012. Papers should be submitted by electronic attachment as a Word document (.doc or .txt) or pdf. The subject line of your email should state the special issue title “The Body in Breast Cancer” and be addressed to: specialissuebreast@gmail.com

Bergen Summer Research School 2010: Global Health

Bergen Summer Research School 2010: Global Health in Bio-Medical, Social and Cultural Perspectives

The third edition of the Bergen Summer Research School is dedicated to the theme of Global Health and will be held 21 June – 2 July 2010. The 2010 theme  aims to promote collaboration, interaction and joint learning across disciplines on research topics and challenges related to global health and development. These challenges affect all countries in all income categories. The concept of Global Health is defined as an area for study, research and practice that places a priority on improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide.

• BSRS 2010 will accept a maximum of 140 candidates

• Deadline for applications is 1 March 2010

Read more on: www.bsrs.no and http://www.bsrs.no/program/2010/

CSHE: The Future of Scholarly Communication

UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education has issued the report Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines.

This project. . .  focused on fine-grained analyses of faculty values and behaviors throughout the scholarly communication lifecycle, including career advancement, sharing, collaborating, publishing, resource generation, and engaging with the public. The goals of this project, conducted between 2007 and 2009, were to map and assess systematically:

• The current and evolving scholarly communication needs of researchers in seven selected academic fields: archaeology, astrophysics, biology, economics, history, music, and political science. Our focus is on assessing scholars’ attitudes and needs as both authors and users of research results;
• The capabilities of various traditional and emerging models of scholarly communication and publication for meeting those needs; and
• The likely future scenarios for scholarly communication (by field), and how those scenarios might be best supported by institutional organizations and units (e.g., departments, libraries, commercial publishers, societies, etc.).

The research is based on the responses of 160 interviewees across 45, mostly elite, institutions in the seven fields. The report includes an overview of our results and conclusions and seven thickly described case studies corresponding to the seven disciplines. Each of the case studies is further divided into six broad and overlapping sections: tenure and promotion, publishing practices, sharing, collaboration, generation and use of resources, and public engagement. . . . This project is under the direction of co-principal investigators Diane Harley and Jud King.

Chronicle: Attention!

Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Amy Benson Brown, who directs the author-development program at Emory University’s Center for Faculty Development and Excellence, observes of scholarly writing habits:

As a writer and editor who coaches academic writers, I’ve witnessed how tricky that juggling act can be, especially in recent years. Besides teaching, doing research, and carrying out administrative responsibilities, many professors maintain relationships with foundations, work with community groups, and make themselves available as experts to the media. In the whirlwind of professional life today, successful writing clearly depends on the skillful management of attention as much as the quality of insight or research. I wonder if it is harder than ever now to be a good steward of the finite resource that is our attention.

Winifred Gallagher’s recent exploration of psychological research on this topic, Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life (Penguin Press, 2009), relays information with interesting implications for academics. Multitasking doesn’t work, particularly for cognitively demanding activities like research and writing. Uninterrupted focus for substantial periods remains vital to accomplishing anything requiring synthesis, insight, and articulation.

The good news is that most of us actually are not suffering from the attention-deficit disorder that we fear may soon render us unable to find our way home from the library. If we disconnect from our electronic devices and stubbornly set aside regular times to focus, our shriveled capacity for concentration will once again unfurl and flourish. Even better news is that our attention functions most productively in relatively small windows of time, like an hour and a half. After 90 minutes, we need a change of focus to keep the quality of our attention high.

The article “Attention, Please! Your Book Is Calling” is available on line to subscribers. Emory University’s Author Development Program in the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence is worth visiting.

CFS: Mixed methods in Psychology and Law and in Criminological Research

Mixed methods in Psychology and Law and in Criminological Research (A special issue of the International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches, Editor: Eugenio De Gregorio and Professor Colin Holmes)

Deadline for Papers: April 1, 2010

Contributions are invited to a special issue of the International Journal of Multiple Research: Approaches (IJMRA) dedicated to Mixed methods in Psychology and Law and in Criminological Research. The issue will include papers on epistemology in psychological legal and criminological domains, theoretical and empirical research experiences and commentaries on mixed approach in legal, criminological and psychological literature; examples of studies which have run qualitative and quantitative, as well multiple approaches are welcome; and challenges and emerging issues in combining innovative approaches and evaluation programs are invited too.

Work may be submitted – in the format of a case study, literature review, research note or research article – for the following parts:

Section 1: Epistemological background for research in Psychology and law and in Criminology

• Historical and philosophical perspectives
• Mainly quantitative content analysis and related approaches
• Mainly qualitative content analysis and related approaches

Section 2: Theoretical issues and planning stages for multiple approach. Examples of studies using multiple approaches which have attempted diverse -

•  Sampling strategies
•  Data formats
•  Sequencing of data sets
•  Integration of data sets
•  From qualitative to quantitative designs
•  From quantitative to qualitative designs
•  ”Born to be mixed”

Section 3: Challenges and emerging issues

•  Ethical issues (Role of participants, researcher and team based approaches, clients and users)
•  Analytical issues
•  Reporting information

Section 4: Mixed methods and evaluation for intervention, prevention and crime reduction research

•  Restorative justice and victimology
•  Community-based programmes

Commentaries: Review of initiatives, policing, social work, psychological and social literature

Each section will include an invited Editorial of about 1000 words and 3-4 articles of 6000-8000 words.

Manuscripts should be submitted to MRAeditorial@e-contentmanagement.com  according to the journal’s Author Guidelines to be found at http://mra.e-contentmanagement.com/author-guidelines/

Please indicate in the covering email that it is for the special issue on Mixed methods in Psychology and Law and in Criminological Research and the preferred section.

Any queries regarding the special issue may be addressed to Guest Editor Eugenio De Gregorio at eugenio.degregorio@uniroma1.it  or Professor Colin Holmes colin.holmes1@jcu.edu.au

CFP: Disability and Ethics through the Life Cycle

Disability and Ethics through the Life Cycle: Cases, Controversies, & Finding Common Ground, May 21-22, 2010, Union College, Schenectady, NY

Despite a common interest in facilitating good medical care, bioethicists and members of the disability rights community sometimes differ in their approach to issues arising in the bio-medical settings, especially on such polarizing issues as abortion and physician-assisted suicide. Focusing on these polarizing issues, however, distracts attention from other ethical issues that affect people with disabilities in biomedical contexts. This conference will offer a forum for bioethicists, disability-rights advocates, and other stakeholders with a different focus for discussing these issues by viewing disability from a life -cycle perspective. People confront disability through the life cycle: infancy, childhood, reproductive years, middle age, and old age. At each age they confront situations with ethical dimensions that present them, their families, and their caregivers and biomedical researchers with ethical challenges. This conference is designed to promote interdisciplinary conversations about these less frequently discussed ethical issues.

We are soliciting contributed papers or panels for highly interactive sessions. Those interested should submit a 250-word abstract describing original work that does not substantially overlap with papers already published. Topics of interest include but are not limited to specific cases where disability generates ethical issues during infancy, childhood, the reproductive years, middle age, and old age, or research on people with disabilities. Because of the conference’s life-cycle focus, no papers on prenatal issues or assisted suicide will be considered.

The authors of accepted submissions will be invited to present their work at the conference. Presentations on these papers should not exceed 20 minutes in length. Accepted papers will be considered for publication in a printed volume to be edited by conference organizers.

General & Format Guidelines for Abstract Submission

1. Abstracts must not exceed 250 words.
2. Abstracts should contain the names, degrees and institutions of all authors.
3. Abstracts should contain the contact information of at least one author (the submitting author), including an email address.
4. Abstracts should be submitted to blooma@union.edu with a subject line of “Disability and Bioethics”.
5. Deadline for abstract submission is 15 March 2010.
6. Email notification of accepted abstracts will be sent by 5 April 2010.
7. The presenting author(s) of a contributed paper must register for the conference and pay the registration fee $150 in order to have the paper included in the conference.

Sponsors: Albany Law School, Rapaport Ethics Across the Curriculum Program of Union College, & the Union Graduate College-Mount Sinai School of Medicine Bioethics Program

For additional information, contact blooma@union.edu  or noltea@uniongraduatecollege.edu

Writing Tip: Audience

In a continuing career advice series in Inside Higher Ed, Mary W. Walters reminds us:

In writing, it is easy to overlook the principles we are able to put to use so effectively in our daily lives. When we are developing a funding application — or working on a journal article or a textbook chapter for that matter — our audiences can seem invisible to us. We may become so involved in explaining what detailed convolutions brought us to our current research crossroads that we fail to take our prospective readers into consideration. What do they already know about this subject? What is it possible that they do not know? How can we make the information we are trying to convey more useful — and relevant, and interesting — to them?

As most of us know (from reading other people’s writing), scholars who ignore their readers are at risk of using language that no one outside their research niche can understand.

Walters is the author of Write an Effective Funding Application: A Guide for Researchers and Scholars (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).

The article, “Know Your Audience,” is available on line in this open access publication.

Nursing Schools and Congressional Health-care Debate

Katherine Mangan, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, offers the following assessment of the implications for nursing schools in the health-care bills passed by the US House and Senate:

Faculty shortages. One of the biggest challenges in staving off a predicted shortage of nurses is finding enough nurses with advanced degrees willing to accept a pay cut to teach in the nation’s nursing schools. Faculty shortages have forced many nursing schools to turn away thousands of student applicants a year. Provisions in both bills would expand existing loan-repayment programs to include nurses who agree to teach in accredited nursing programs.

A separate provision in the Senate bill would forgive up to a total of $40,000 in graduate-school loans for nurses who receive master’s degrees and go into teaching, and $80,000 for those who receive doctorates to pursue teaching careers. To be eligible, nurses must teach for at least four years during a six-year period after they graduate.

The article, “The Health-Care Debate in Congress: What’s at Stake for Higher Education,” is available on line to subscribers

CFP: Am Soc Bioethics & Humanities Annual Meeting

The American Society for Bioethics and Humanities’ 12th Annual Meeting is scheduled for October 21-24, 2010, in San Diego, CA at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel.

Guidelines. Submissions in any area of bioethics and humanities are accepted. Proposals that address provocative ideas and challenges from interdisciplinary perspectives will be given preference.

Proposals should be submitted in Empirical Research when the focus of your presentation will be the empirical study. If your proposal has an empirical component but the focus of your presentation is not the empirical component, please select another category.

Proposals should be submitted in the Interdisciplinary category when the work involves scholarship that crosses several academic areas. If your proposal has an interdisciplinary element but the focus of the presentation will not be the interdisciplinary nature of the work, please select another category.

Proposals should be submitted in the Visual Arts and Poetry category when the focus of the abstract is for an exhibit of art work or a session such as a poetry reading. If you wish to display your visual arts or hold a poetry session, please select this submission category.

Program Theme: Health and Community. Bioethics has been particularly concerned with the rights and welfare of individual patients and has often been criticized for not attending sufficiently to problems related to the health of populations. But there is little doubt that bioethics and the humanities have much to contribute to concerns connected to groups as well as individuals. We thus invite scholars to address health, disability, and disease as it affects local, national, and global groups. Healthcare professionals, researchers, humanists, and lawyers, can bring experiences, expertise, and interests that shape our understanding of the health of communities as it informs and is informed by ethics, law, politics, medicine, and the humanities. Proposals that critically examine issues related to social groups–such as the appropriate distribution of societal resources, the ways in which literature, film, and the arts inform concerns about the health of populations and our understanding of communities, healthcare professionals’ duty to warn in cases of communicable disease (e.g., HIV/AIDS), the fair distribution of health resources (e.g., medical supplies, water, etc.) during a natural disaster, the various contributions of the arts and the humanities to the health of communities, the social determinants of health and disease, healthcare disparities, the ways historical perspectives can bear on present day policy issues, and conflicts of values between different populations–are welcomed.

Submission Instructions (for all submission types). All proposals will be accepted through 4:00 PM Central Time March 3, 2010.

Submission Types

• 90-minute Workshop Sessions
• 60-minute Panel Sessions
• 15-minute Individual Presentations (Paper Sessions)
• Posters

Detailed call for proposals and full instructions: http://www.asbh.org/meetings/annual/callguidelines.html

Duke U: Life Lines: Poetry for Our Patients, Our Communities, Our Selves

Duke University announces the upcoming conference Life Lines: Poetry for Our Patients, Our Communities, Our Selves, May 21-23, 2010. The conference will bring together nationally-known poets and healthcare providers for panel presentations, group discussions and workshops examining the place of poetry in caregiving. Highlights of the conference include Friday and Saturday evening talks by David Whyte and Jane Hirshfield.

For information about the conference and to register, visit the conference website: http://www.duke.edu/web/lifelines.