Intersections and Assemblages: Genders and Sexualities Across Cultures

Conference in Greenville, SC in April 2014 on Intersections and Assemblages:  Genders and Sexualities Across Cultures.

http://blogs.furman.edu/bhati/call-for-papers/

Intersections and Assemblages:  Genders and Sexualities Across Cultures

 The 10^th Biennial Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) Women’s and Gender Studies Conference

April 4-5, 2014

Location:  Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina, U.S.A.

The Associated Colleges of the South and Furman University invite papers, panels, and/or proposals for roundtable sessions for the tenth biennial Gender Studies Conference to be held at Furman University, Greenville, SC on April 4^th and 5^th, 2014.

The theme of the conference recognizes and addresses the multiplicity and diversity of scholarly approaches and activism to the long-standing aspiration for the abolition of all forms of inequality based on gender and/or sexuality.  It especially welcomes transnational, cross-cultural, or comparative perspectives on gender and sexuality.

While the intersectionality of categories of race, class, gender, sexuality and other markers of location or positionality has long been established in scholarship, we would like to think that the metaphor of ‘assemblages’ can also be useful in looking back and thinking ahead of new, emergent, or utopian forms of solidarity in the many intersectional movements, past and ongoing, in different locations that may or may not be operating in tandem with one another.  Using Jasbir Puar’s notion of an assemblage of different theoretical and political interests, what do we see when we map what we do collectively as intellectuals?  Are we now at a juncture where we may begin to re-assess and revitalize the much-expanded field or related cluster of fields that constitute Gender Studies?  What can we learn about the exercise of, and resistance to new, or not-so-new forms of power based in dominant or emerging cultural practices that impact our understanding of gender and sexuality and produce as yet unknown forms of belonging and connectedness?

Faculty, staff, and students of ACS institutions and beyond are invited to submit 250-300 word abstracts of paper proposals or entire panels in MS Word format along with a short biographical statement to this address:  wgsconf2014@furman.edu.  The deadline for submissions is October 31^st, 2013.  Proposals may interpret the theme and the following list of suggested topics broadly:

• Diversities in/of Genders and Sexualities
• Gender-Queer-Global Intersections
• Sexual Inequalities in Neoliberal Times/University
• New Normativities of the Future
• Affect and Embodiment
• Rhetorics of Materiality
• Feminist, Queer, Trans Theories:  Convergences and Divergences
• Gender and Science/Neuroscience
• Is Feminism Over?  Is there a Fourth Wave?
• Gender Pedagogies for Today
• Gender and Sport
• Genders, Sexualities and Minority Ethnicities
• Feminisms and the Financial Crisis
• Feminisms and the Environmental Crisis
• Ecofeminism
• Queer Economics
• Gender and Trans(-)media
• Postcolonial Feminisms
• LGBTQ and the Postcolonial
• Margins within Margins
• Space and Gender
• Bodies Under Religion and/or Law
• Biopolitics and Gender/Sexuality
• Gender and Sexuality and Borders/Partitions

Keynote Speaker:  Prof. Michael Kimmel, Stony Brook University
Other invited speakers:  Prof. Sujata Moorti, Middlebury College; Prof. William Spurlin, Brunel University

Registration fee for faculty and staff:  $90; students:  $30

For further inquiries, please send an email to one of the following organizers:
Dr. Karni Bhati, Department of English:  kbhati@furman.edu
Dr. Sofia Kearns, Department of Modern Languages:  sofia.kearns@furman.edu
Twitter:  #GenderConf2014
Facebook Group:  Gender Intersections & Assemblages