2010
New Directions: The Future of Canadian (in)Security Studies
Canadian security and defense 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 recognizing 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!)securitized space of security studies to alternative
engagements
through film, pictorial, digital, and multimedia art, spoken word, and
movement. We seek individual papers, organized 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)
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 .
We strongly encourage both new graduate students who may be first time
presenters as well as more practiced speakers/scholars. There will be an
opportunity for publication in the YCISS Conference Proceedings.
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.
Conference information is also available on the YCISS website:
http://www.yorku.ca/yciss
