This could be interesting. Sensualising Deformity: Communication and Construction of Monstrous Embodiment, at the University of Edinburgh, June 15-16 2012. The link takes you to the call for papers, and they have a linked blog.

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen is one of the keynotes, which would also be very good. Thanks to In the Middle for the link.

I need to write a piece on monstrosity for the planned Foucault book, and while I’ve written on Foucault’s work on monsters before – “The Constitution of the Normal: Monsters and Masturbation at the Collège de France“, boundary 2, Vol 28 No 1, Spring 2001, pp. 91-105 – this might be a good opportunity to revisit those themes in the light of newly available material. In particular I think Foucault’s comments about monstrosity and political leadership are worth exploring, and of course his work on monstrosity was related to the planned fifth volume of his History of Sexuality project, Les pervers. I recently read Andrew Sharpe’s Foucault’s Monsters and the Challenge of Law which was quite interesting but would be rather different from my take. Steven Maynard is also doing some important work on this aspect of Foucault. For some reason Foucault’s 1973-75 lectures (Psychiatric Power and Abnormals) have received much less attention than the governmentality or government of the self courses.

I also intend to write some material on horror and the concept of the ‘wound’ in my planned The Space of the World book, so the other papers would likely be useful for that.