New Directions: The Future of Canadian (in)Security Studies
Canadian security and defence in theory and practice has undergone
significant changes since Canada?s increased participation in
Afghanistan in 2006 and with the election of the Harper Conservatives.
Against this backdrop, the concept and study of security/insecurity
has been challenged, re-defined and
re-imagined in a changing political and theoretical global environment.
These shifts require a dialogue on recent turns in the field and
innovative and
multidisciplinary approaches that call into question traditional
understandings. These challenges have been taken up by growing numbers of
scholars within as well as outside of Canada. We may have reached the
point at which a distinctive Canadian voice in security study may be emerging.
This conference seeks to bring scholars together to engage questions of
security, both Canadian and global, from a variety of perspectives and
approaches that emphasize both new developments as well as critiques of
existing approaches. Recognizing that Canadian security studies can only
be thought about in a global context, we seek both papers that look
empirically at Canada as well as those that theorize security studies
within a global theoretical context.
Engagements with security from outside the traditional fields are offering
unique perspectives on the problematique of security and challenging our
understandings in important ways. From interrogating traditional
theorizing and security practices to recognising how recent shifts in
areas such as new and interactive media and technology are impacting
security, this conference will critically engage with the past in
order to contribute to new and creative ways of thinking about the
future. Additionally, we want to challenge the misconception that
security is the purview of select disciplinary fields and thus we hope
to open what has tended to be an intellectually (and
physically!) securitised space of security studies to alternative
engagements through film, pictorial, digital, and multimedia art,
spoken word, and movement.
We seek individual papers, organised panels, and print/video/motion art
from any and all disciplines that may engage but are not limited to
the following topics:
Revisiting Security (theoretical re-framings)
Security from outside the discipline (cultural studies; environmental
studies;
geopolitics; communication studies; political economy; gender studies;
etc)
Canadian Critical Security Studies
Impacts of technology on Security concerns
How the media is impacting popular engagement with Security (news media,
popular
culture, new media; aesthetics)
Beyond the Ivory tower/engagements with security beyond academe
Gender, Race, Deviance, Bodies and Security
Violence and Security (Militarization; Intervention; Torture)
Food/Health/Economic (in)Security
Security in the policy realm today (DND; CF)
Security in the academy (Pedagogy; Methodology; Discourse, etc)
We strongly encourage both new graduate students who may be first time
presenters as well as more practised speakers/scholars. There will be an
opportunity for publication in the YCISS Conference Proceedings.
Please submit an abstract of your proposed presentation of no more than
250
words by November 15, 2009 to Lori Crowe at crowela@yorku.ca AND to Karen
Walker at k1walker@yorku.ca .
Out of province students please note: There are a number of small travel
grants
available for students attending from outside of the province. We will
contact
you if your abstract is chosen to receive a travel grant for the
conference.
