Authenticity
Centre for Modern Studies Postgraduate Forum Second Annual Symposium
Bowland Auditorium, Humanities Research Centre
Thursday 31st May 2012
Call for Papers
The signs of authenticity pervade our everyday interactions with the world,
from the authentic takeaway to the historical television re-enactment and
the claimed impartiality of the commercial press. In response to the
British riots in the summer of 2011, Tudor historian David Starkey made the
distinction between the authentic and inauthentic citizenry. Those who
partook in looting and affray were figured as outside authentic structures
of legal and moral behaviour, 'feral' even. The insidious and barely
concealed attribution of inauthenticity to what in London was a
predominantly black community set off racial tension that for many years
now has been thought of as behind us. Authenticity, then, had become the
buzzword in the reenlivened discourses of politics, race, class and
culture.
Through this interdisciplinary conference, the Centre for Modern Studies
Post-Graduate Forum seeks to explore and question the associations and
assumptions that have come to coalesce around the concept of the
'authentic'. From the art historian Hal Foster's charting of the 'Return of
the Real', through its philosophical instantiations in Marx, Sartre,
Heidegger, Keirkegaard and Adorno, by way of the pop/mass culture debate in
Cultural Studies, to the notion of performative 'masquerade' in theories of
gender and sexuality - issues of authenticity thread through much recent
work in the humanities and the social sciences. For example, the Victoria
and Albert Museum's recent exhibition on postmodernism aims to historicise
a discourse famous for its slippery employment of replication, reproduction
and rearrangement into a compartment of the authentic academic canon.
We therefore invite abstracts for papers from post-graduates working in the
humanities and social sciences disciplines in the modern period
(1850-present). We would welcome interdisciplinary papers, and submissions
from panels. Possible topics for papers include but are not limited to:
- The authenticity debate in twentieth century philosophy
- Critical Counterfactualism
- Hoaxes, deceptions and counterfeiting
- Documentary film and television
- Photography
- Journalism
- Cuisine
- Digital authentication and access
- Intellectual property and copyright
- Identity: race, class, gender, sexuality
- Mimesis and verisimilitude
- Materiality / immateriality - replication, the virtual / digital
(gaming) - Fantasy / utopia / visionaries / spiritualities / sci-fi
- Costume, cross-dressing / beauty industry and cosmetics
- Geographies of authenticity - i.e. 'native' and 'indigenous' vs.
'foreigner' 'alien' - Immigration / migration
Abstracts for papers should be 300 words in length, and the deadline for
submissions is Monday 26th March 2012 at 5.00pm. Please send abstracts to
cmods-pgforum@york.ac.uk. If you would like more information about the
symposium or the CMODS Postgraduate Forum, don't hesitate to contact us at
this address, or visit our website
http://www.york.ac.uk/modernstudies/postgraduate-forum/