13 January 2010

Conference: Veiled Constellations

The veil, critical theory, politics, and contemporary society.

A conference designed to problematize the prevailing discourses surrounding the veil while exploring its subversive potential.



Sponsored by the University of Toronto on June 3-5, 2010


"This conference offers a forum to problematize the prevailing discourses surrounding the veil while exploring the veil's subversive potential. The extent to which the veil can erode, or even invert power and oppression is, with the exception of various Islam-inspired positions, an overlooked and under-explored area of academic theorizing. We ask what new insights may be unearthed in moving beyond the impetus to repudiate, fear, or adore the veil. This conference is a unique opportunity to discuss those contested voices situated within the interstices of the liberal, conservative and Islamic constellations, and, in the process, to re-evaluate the veil in an entirely new light by intersecting multiple disciplinary perspectives...This event will highlight highly innovative and thought-provoking approaches to not only the Islamic veil, but the veil as such...Essentially, we seek a different kind of conversation and a different set of lexical and philosophical devices to navigate the many paradoxes that the veil represents"

http://www.veiledconstellations.com/index.html