Cases and their Publics: Interdisciplinary and Transnational Perspectives on the Case Study Genre

University of Melbourne,
Melbourne. Australia.

26th-28th, September 2011

The interdisciplinary and transnational character of the case study genre has proved of enduring interest to all Western societies, particularly in relation to questions of the sexed self, sexual subjectivity and sexual pathologies.

This workshop will investigate the case study genre and its relationship to different publics and audiences, from patients to social reformers, from moral crusaders to literary audiences.

We are interested not only in how case studies were used to communicate the findings of individual researchers to other members of their academic disciplines - and beyond that, to broader publics - but also in how in turn case studies were used by a range of publics and audiences to refute and dispute academic knowledge.

In particular, we seek papers that engage with the case study as a site of interdisciplinary negotiations and transnational influences and transferences, including the ways in which larger historical and geopolitical forces such as war, migration, translation, and internationalization shaped the case study genre.

Keynote speakers:

Professor Warwick Anderson, History, The University of Sydney
Professor Laura Doan, Cultural History and Sexuality Studies, University of Manchester, UK
Professor Nico Pethes, Modern German Literature, University of Bochum, Germany

Please submit abstracts to Jana Verhoeven janav@unimelb.edu.au by the 13th of December 2010.