“Why All the Fuss About  the Body?” Conference 

The “Why All the Fuss About the Body? An Interdisciplinary Conference on Local and Global/ized Bodies” will take place Monday–Saturday, April 11–16, at the University of the South. Highlights of the program include:

April 11— 4:30 p.m., keynote lecture, “The American Walk: Global Contact, Gesture, Rhythm and Poetry” by Haun Saussy (University of Chicago, Comparative Literature and South Asian Languages and Civilizations), followed by “Horror Old and New: Nakata Hideo’s Ringu (1998) between J-Horror and Hibakusha Cinema” by Olga V. Solovieva (University of Chicago, Comparative Literature), Gailor Auditorium;

April 14—4:30 p.m., keynote lecture, “The Mortal Body: Russian and American Ways of (Not) Knowing” by Jehanne Gheith (Duke University, Slavic and Eurasian Studies, Women’s Studies and International Comparative Studies), Gailor Auditorium; 

April 15–16—Sewanee faculty and student conference presentations; panel topics are: Disciplining Bodies; Body, Sex, Gender; Racialized Bodies; Reproducing Bodies; The Body in Illness and in Health; Performing Bodies; Bodies/Machines; and the Dead Body. All sessions will be in the EQB building.

As part of the program, there will be other events in advance of the conference including:

April 8–10—“Function and Fetish,” an exhibition of paintings by Pippa Browne about breastfeeding (Greenspace). Opening remarks by the artist and reception, 5:30 p.m., Friday, April 8; exhibition open for viewing, 5:30 to 9 p.m., Friday, April 8, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, April 9 and 10.

All events are free, open to the public, and have received generous support from the Dean of the College, Mellon Globalization Forum, University Lectures Committee, the departments and programs of art and art history, Asian studies, English, film, French, German, history, humanities, international and global studies, Italian, politics, religious studies, Russian, Spanish, women’s and gender studies, Sewanee Union Theater, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Tennessee Williams Center and Greenspace Studio.