Trans-scriptions: Cultural Codings and the Poetics of the Body – CfP
Trans-scriptions: Cultural Codings and the Poetics of the Body
International Conference organized by University of Szczecin & University of Wrocław
11-13 February 2026
Institute of English Studies, University of Wrocław, Poland Hybrid On-site Conference
In an age where bodies are relentlessly mediated, politicized, and technologized, the question of embodiment remains urgent and multifaceted. Trans-scriptions: Cultural Codings and the Poetics of the Body invites scholars and artists to explore how the body is written, rewritten, regulated, aestheticized, fragmented, enhanced, and reclaimed across cultural narratives, media forms, and global frameworks. We propose the term trans-scription as a lens through which to examine not only the literal and metaphorical inscriptions on the body, but also the transformational processes through which bodies—queer, trans, racialized, aging, posthuman—emerge as texts marked by power, resistance, and poetics.
This interdisciplinary conference aims to interrogate the manifold ways bodies are produced, performed, and perceived through cultural, technological, medical, and political lenses. We understand trans- not merely in relation to transgender or transsexual identities, but more broadly as a metaphor for crossing: between states, categories, species, media, geographies, and epistemologies. As such, we welcome contributions from a wide range of disciplines, including literary studies, cultural studies, performance, visual and media arts, gender and sexuality studies, philosophy, anthropology, disability studies, posthumanism, and critical race theory.
We particularly invite papers that engage with bodies as both subjects and objects of cultural inscription—through language, ritual, law, media, performance, and visuality—while also exploring how bodies can resist, rewrite, and transgress these inscriptions.
We welcome proposals addressing (but not limited to) the following themes:
● Queer and trans embodiments: representations in literature, media, and performance; politics of visibility and erasure
● Gender and the poetics of transition: aesthetics of fluidity, the “trans-” as metaphor, and narrative crossing
● Feminist and queer poetics: the body as resistance, the gaze, and embodied aesthetics
● Performing the body: drag, performance art, protest, and the politics of gesture
● Intersectionality and the inscribed body: race, class, disability, and gender in cultural codings
● Aging bodies: visibility, intersectionality, and narrative rewritings of aging
● Medical narratives and body politics: medicalization, autonomy, and the biopolitics of classification
● Polity and the politicization of bodies: protest, governance, surveillance, and biopower
● The body in digital spaces: avatars, AI-generated bodies, self-fashioning and social media aesthetics
● Cyborgs and posthumanism: hybrid identities, bodily enhancement, and techno-aesthetics
● Shusterman’s Somaesthetics: embodied philosophy, perception, and aesthetic self-fashioning
● Disembodiment and fragmentation: bodily abjection, grotesque forms, and acts of resistance
● The body as text: tattoos, scars, prosthetics, and the graphic body in literature and art
● The body in global contexts: transnational embodiment, local resistance, and global flows
● Trans-corporeality: bodies enmeshed with bodies, environments, landscapes, and ecological embodiments
● Trans-race: fictional, speculative, and controversial narratives of race crossing
● Shapeshifters and mythic bodies: transformations across cultures and cosmologies
● Myths, archetypes, and posthuman embodiments: from ancient figures to speculative futures
We welcome proposals for individual 20-minute papers, pre-constituted panels (3 or 6 speakers), or alternative formats (e.g., roundtables, performances, creative-critical interventions). Abstracts should be approximately 250 words, accompanied by a brief biographical note (up to 100 words). For panels, please include a short description of the panel theme and bios of each participant.
Send submissions to transcriptions.body@uwr.edu.pl by August 10 th 2025
Notification of acceptance: 20th August 2025
The conference will be held in a hybrid format. However, priority will be given to on-site participants in the selection process.
The conference will be held in English.
Conference fee:
for onsite participants:
600PLN/140€
400PLN/100€ – reduced fee for graduate students and early career scholars
for online participants:
300PLN/80€
Late registration:
700PLN/165€
450PLN/110€ – reduced fee for graduate students and early career scholars
for online participants:
350PLN/90€
Selected papers may be considered for inclusion in a peer-reviewed publication. The organizers aim to secure a place of publication that will grant research credits from MEiN (Ministry of Education and Science, Poland).
For updates, please follow the conference websites:
https://www.facebook.com/people/TCCPB-Conference/61577087941585/
https://wordpre150.wordpress.com
We look forward to your trans-scriptions—textual, bodily, theoretical—and to the possibility of creating a shared space where bodies, in all their difference and defiance, are not only read but heard, seen, and felt.
Organizing Committee:
dr Barbara Braid (University of Szczecin)
mgr Magdalena Dziurzyńska (University of Szczecin)
dr hab. Dominika Ferens, prof. UWr (University of Wrocław)
dr Krystian Grądz (University of Szczecin)
dr hab. Zofia Kolbuszewska, prof. UWr (University of Wrocław)
mgr Anna Ronewicz (University of Szczecin)
mgr Radosław Siewierski (University of Wrocław)
dr hab. Beata Zawadka, prof. US (University of Szczecin)