CFP: Occult Geographies: (im)material agents and the geographical imagination.

CFP: RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2013, London, 28th-30th August 2013.
Occult Geographies: (im)material agents and the geographical imagination.
Sponsored by the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG).

Organisers
Julian Holloway (Manchester Metropolitan University)
James Thurgill (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Over the last decade geography has turned its attention to engaging with
those elements of place that remain unseen and to exploring the
relationality between materiality, agency and the invisible as affect or
spectrality.

The session invites papers that deal with occult and esoteric geographical
imaginations and spatial practices. Furthermore, we seek papers that
highlight new occult directions for the geographic imagination and explore
how the occult can potentially be used to redefine the world around us.
Therefore, we seek papers that both analyse occult movements and their
geographies, and papers that aim to deal with the occult as an exploratory
method in the study and development of geographic thinking that have the
potential to reconfigure our understanding of place, materiality and agency.

Topics might include but are not limited to:

* Geomancy and arcane cartographics
* Magick and the esoteric manipulation of space and place
* Ambiguous materialities and their spaces
* UnNatural agents
* Occult movements and their geographies (Rosicrucian, Speculative
Freemasonry, The Golden Dawn, The Illuminati, Hermeticism, Chaos Magick,
etc.)
* Haunted and ghostly landscapes.
* Placing the occult
* Geopolitics and the occult
* Occult prophecies and apocalypticism
* Conspiracy culture and the ‘hidden control’ of geography.
* Popular culture and commodifying the occult imaginary (from Dan Brown to
ghost tourism)

Please send abstracts (c.300 words) to both session organisers James
Thurgill (James.Thurgill.2009@live.rhul.ac.uk)
and Julian Holloway (J.J.Holloway@mmu.ac.uk) by Monday 4th February 2013.