Copenhagen Master Class in Gender and Body Dynamics

Professor Aihwa Ong
May  5th-7th, 2014, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Copenhagen

The first Copenhagen Master Class in Gender and Body Dynamics will take place 5-7 May 2014 with professor Aihwa Ong, UC Berkeley, US, as the keynote speaker and main discussant. The course is composed of two lectures and two dialogue sessions over three days.

Participation in the dialogue sessions will be limited to a selected group of senior researchers, PhD fellows and MA students (max 20 participants). Visit the website of The Co-ordination for Gender Research to apply (deadline: 25 April)

The two lectures are open to the public.

May 5^th, 13.15-15.00, CSS 35.01.44
Reassembling the Body: The Contrary Affects of Cancer

In this lecture professor Ong explores how Asian scientists assemble disparate objects to configure a field of Asian oncology that is invested with the affects and ownership of the problem of specific kinds of cancer menacing Asian bodies. The genomic suturing of dread and optimism is a kind of attempt to recuperate vulnerabilities, which already registers the possibility of death, rather than erases it.   Such affects fuel a kind of bio-geographic exceptionalism. In this experiment, new configurations such as Chinese genetic maps and female Asian biomarkers are powerful vehicles for transmitting affects of knowledge about "our bodies, ourselves."

May 6^th, 14.15-16.00, Studiestræde 6, Anneks B
Global Baby, Donor Baby: Reassembling the Body, Unsettling Citizenship

The passport baby, the globally-assembled baby, and the baby donor of stem cells, are fuzzy objects that have appeared in the new biopolitics of enhancing life possibilities.  In the confluence of flexible citizenship and biomedical technologies, babies have become novel subject-objects that cross borders dividing nations as well as lines between nature and culture, blood and kinship.  Parents are using babies to realize a series of life choices: to expand their citizenship options, to extend family lines, and to sustain bloodlines in the case of catastrophic illnesses.  New modalities of the body, citizenship, and the family are created out of these hybrid babies.

Detailed information about how to apply, venue and programme can be found on the website of The Co-ordination for Gender Research.