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Politics of beauty

International Conference
General
Information
Politicsof
This conference aims to engage with the politics of beauty and
their ramifications.

Since the 1970s social movements have been stimulating a wealth


of studies on beauty as a racist, classist, ableist, colorist, lookist,
Cambridge Map
Conference venue: Mill Lane Lecture Rooms (Room 4)
Main Accommodation Site: Downing College
See this and other suggestions at
www.politicsofbeautysite.wordpress.com
Beauty
Discourses
and Intersections in the
sizeist, ageist, and (cis and hetero)sexist regime of representation.
Recent research has focused on beauty as a practice or rather as in-
Global Sphere
cessant body work in neoliberal times working out, body-build-
ing, make-overs, cosmetic surgery, shopping, dieting, etc. , and
its oppressive, discriminatory effects.

Despite this invaluable work, some pertinent questions remain


opaque and understudied. How does beauty culture (re)produce
and/or stand in tension to discourses of gender, class, race, ethnic-
ity, skin colour, and colonialism? How is beauty productive? What
does it produce? What are peoples affective, social, economic, and
global investments in beauty? Why does the desire to prescribe
beauty standards persist? How to analytically grasp the pleasure
of doing body work? What different media strategies are used to
programmatically present, transmit and disperse beauty concepts?
Crucially, what is beauty doing in helping us understand lived
experience and temporalities, language and representation, media
images, and physicality? In other words, how to grasp the politics
of beauty as forming intersectional selves, corporations, nations
and global discourses?

Travel from the train station to the venue of the conference: Programme
Mill Lane Lecture Rooms is approximately 8 minutes by car, and International CONFERENCE
taxis are stationed immediately outside of the train station at all
times. Alternatively, delegates can walk from the train station to Mill
2 3 September 2016
Lane Lecture Rooms by following signs to the city centre and locat-
ing the venue from there. This takes approximately 2025 minutes.
Downing College is on Regent Street, 5 minutes by car from the train
station.
If you need to call a taxi we recommend Panther Taxis:
+44 (0)1223 715715

Registration and Conference Fees


Please register by 29th of August 2016 at
Sponsored by www.politicsofbeautysite.wordpress.com
Swiss Center for Social Research, University of Cambridge: All Participants 60, Students 20
Centre of Latin American Studies, Centre for Gender Studies,
Department of Sociology, Downing College Website
www.sociology.cam.ac.uk/about/events/beauty-summer-school
Cover Image www.politicsofbeautysite.wordpress.com
Still from Yellow Fever by Ngendo Mukii 2012
Ngendo Mukii is a Nairobi based artist and animator whose Contact
films won numerous awards. https://vimeo.com/ngendo politicsofbeauty2016@gmail.com
Programme Programme
Friday, 2 September Saturday, 3 September

3.003.30pm Arrival with Coffee and Registration 9.0010.00am Session 4 2.303.40pm Session 7
Chair: Mnica Moreno Figueroa, University of Cambridge, UK Chair: Manali Desai, Cambridge UK
3.303.45pm Welcome
Browning Dont Always Carry the Swing: The Browning
3.454.45pm Session 1 Or: What Are the Prospects for Joy Gregory
The Politics of Beauty a Black Anti-Racist Sark Aesthetics? London, UK
Mnica Moreno Figueroa Shirley Tate
University of Leeds, UK Film Taxidermy and Re-Animation
University of Cambridge, UK
Ngendo Mukii
Margrit Vogt 10.0011.20am Session 5 Nairobi, Kenya
University of Flensburg, Germany Chair: Denise Noble, Birmingham City University
Dominique Grisard Blackamoors, Noble Savages and
University of Basel, Switzerland Beauty Capitalism, Modern Citizenship Mungo Macaronis: the Black Male Body
and Neo-colonial Racial Formations in Fashion Media
4.456.10pm Session 2
Chair: Lauren Wilcox, University of Cambridge, UK
Meeta Rani Jha Christine Checinska
University of Winchester, UK University of Johannesburg VIAD,
Vulval Images: SA/Goldsmiths University of London, UK
Myth, Horror, Transformation The Promise of Beauty
Meredith Jones Mimi Thi Nguyen Q&A
Brunel University, UK University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, USA
3.404.20pm Network Meetings over Coffee Break
Cuteness, Womanliness and the Beautiful Futures?
Fat Bodies and Queer Failure
4.205.20pm Session 8
Meg Ryan Star Persona Chair: Margrit Vogt, University of Flensburg, Germany
Diane Negra Francis Ray White
University of Westminster, UK The Digital Cultures of Beauty Surveillance
University College Dublin, IR
Q&A Rosalind Gill
Unusual Faces City University London, UK
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson 11.2012.00pm Network Meetings over Coffee Break 5.205.40pm Session 9
Emory University, USA 12.001.20pm Session 6
General Q&A
Q&A Chair: Meeta Rani Jha, University of Winchester
and Concluding Remarks
6.107.10pm Session 3 Strong is the New Skinny:
Chair: Dominique Grisard, University of Basel, Switzerland Gender, Race, and the Politics of the Body
5.406.00pm End of Conference/Departure

Sacar el Cuerpo : Transformista and Sarah Banet-Weiser


Miss Embodiment University of Southern California, USA
Marcia Ochoa Plastic or Stuck?
UC-Santa Cruz, USA Standards of Beauty, Breast Augmentations
and Skin Lightening
7.30pm Dinner
Jackie Sanchez Taylor
University of Leicester, UK
Yes, You Can! On Arms, Muscles, and the
Performance of Sovereignty
Paula Irene Villa
Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich,
Germany
Q&A
1.202.30pm Lunch

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