CFP 32nd EXETER GULF CONFERENCE
Liberalism and Its Paradoxes in the Arabian Peninsula, 27-28 June 2022
Work on the Arabian Peninsula remains largely insulated from pressing global debates around the resurgence of Keynesian economics, the global climate emergency, conservative ideology and popular protests. This year’s Conference takes the confluence of liberalism’s global critique, and its selective embrace in the Arabian Peninsula, as the starting point to ask new questions about the region and how such a conjuncture can reconfigure cultural, political, and historical research:
- What does the selective embrace of liberalism by regimes mean for how we theorise them?
- How might these changes represent more than mere strategies of public image management?
- To what extent have liberal teleologies of progress and development underwritten the dominant academic questions asked in relation to the Arabian Peninsula?
- How can we make sense of the ideological decline of Islamism in the Arabian Peninsula?
- Does the Anthropocene have a place in research on the Arabian Peninsula?
- How can new global histories of liberalism, revolution or empire help re-frame the Arabian Peninsula’s history in the 20th century?
- Does the contemporary critique of liberalism (in both politics and economics) offer an opportunity to re-evaluate what a progressive politics might look like in the Arabian Peninsula?
- How has the Covid-19 pandemic reinstated the importance of biopower as useful lens with which to think of social and political relations in the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula?
We welcome contributions from the following disciplines:
- Political economy
- Political philosophy/theory
- History (20th and 21st centuries)
- Gender studies
- Anthropology and sociology
- Political science and international relations
- Migration and diaspora studies
- Environmental and urban studies
How to apply
Interested parties are asked to submit paper proposals (abstracts of 250-300 words), and a full CV including affiliation and contact details, before 22 April 2022 to gulfconference@exeter.ac.uk.
Candidates whose abstracts are accepted will be notified by 3 May 2022.
Practical Information
All presenters whose papers are accepted for the Conference will have their accommodation arranged and paid for by the organisers, as well as all lunches and the Conference dinner. Unfortunately, we are unable to cover travel expenses to and from Exeter.
We want to make this Conference as accessible as possible for new parents, so please let us know if you require help with child-care arrangements during the Conference.