Materialities: Economies, Empiricism, & Things

Cultural studies has a long history of investigating material practices  indeed it was a founding tenet of British cultural studies  but recently a new turn or return to materialism seems to be emerging in the field.  What this materiality now means is still open, but we suggest that it flags a renewed interest in questions of how to study cultural objects, institutions and practices (methods), what constitutes matter and materiality (empiricism), and how things (humans and non-humans) are being reworked at a time of global economic, environmental and cultural flux.

Our keynotes have all directed critical attention to these questions  to the more-than-human, to new philosophies of matter, to the gendered material and economic circuits of media, and to the heavy materiality of language. We have invited them to help us in reinvigorating what cultural studies can do today.

Keynote speakers:

Jennifer Biddle (UNSW), Ross Chambers (Michigan), Brenda Croft (UniSA), Katherine Gibson (UWS), Ros Gill (University of London), Gay Hawkins (UQ), Lesley Head (Wollongong), Bev Skeggs (Goldsmiths, London). Other plenary speakers will include: Ien Ang (UWS), Tony Bennett (UWS), Stuart Cunningham (QUT), John Frow (Melbourne), John Hartley (Curtin), Meaghan Morris (Sydney), Stephen Muecke (UNSW), Tom ORegan (UQ), and Graeme Turner (UQ).

There will also be a separate event, Pre-Fix, geared to the needs of postgraduates and early career researchers, on December 3rd. Details of this and the main conference are on the website.

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