Call for Papers: The History of the Girl, Jinan, China

call-for-papersAnnouncement and call for papers: Congress of the International
Committee of Historical Sciences, special theme: The History of
the Girl, Jinan, China, August 23-29, 2015

The Congress of the International Committee of Historical Sciences will be
held in Jinan, China from 23-29 August 2015. One of the Specialised Themes
focusses on the History of the Girl. The aim of this session is to bring
together scholars working in the field and to identify common themes and
differences in the history of the girl across the world. In order to
establish some cohesion for the discussion the focus will be on girls aged
from early adolescence to the early 20s. Paper proposals are welcome on all
periods of time as well as from as wide a geographical span as possible.
Topics to be discussed include:

Public discourses on girls
Girls and the family
The culture of adolescent girls
Coming of age
Sex education
Debates on the education of girls
Dress and fashion
Girls work
Consumerism and girls
The modern girl
Representations of girls
Literature and writing for girls

Professor Mary O’Dowd
School of History and Anthropology
Queen’s University Belfast
Belfast BT7 1NN
Email: m.odowd@qub.ac.uk
Visit the website at http://www.cish.org/congres/**
ST29-Towards-global-history-**girl.pdf

Call For Papers: Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, Issue 4

call-for-papersAda: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, Issue 4, Queer, feminist digital media praxis

Editors: Aristea Fotopoulou (University of Sussex), Alex Juhasz (Pitzer College), Kate O’Riordan (University of Sussex/ University of California, Santa Cruz)

We invite contributions to a peer-reviewed special issue that brings together artistic, theoretical, critical and empirical responses to a range of questions around mediation, technology and gender equality. In particular we are interested in exploring what the concept of praxis could offer in our thinking about the intersections of gender, digital media, and technology.

Praxis in both Marxist and in Arendtian political thought brings together theory, philosophy and political action into the realm of the everyday. Inspired from this premise, and continuing the conversations that started during the workshop Queer, feminist social media praxis at the University of Sussex in May 2013 (queerfemdigiact.wordpress.com), we focus here on the conditions for a feminist digital media praxis. Media praxis, in other words the ?making and theorising of media towards stated projects of world and self-changing? (mediapraxis.org), could be a vital component of feminist and/or queer political action. We are interested in the different modes of political action for social justice, enabled by digital technologies and social media, including theory, art, activism or pedagogy. What kinds of possibilities or impossibilities do these technologies and platforms offer for interpreting and intervening in the world?

The fourth issue of Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology seeks submissions that explore the concept of feminist, queer, digital media praxis. We welcome unpublished work from scholars of any discipline and background, including collaborative, non-traditional, or multimodal approaches that can especially benefit from the journal’s open access online status.

Topics and approaches might include, but are not limited to:

–       Affect, desire and disgust
–       Diffractive readings
–       Digital storytelling
–       Herstories, archiving and remembering
–       Feminist pedagogy
–       LGBTQ Youth
–       New media bodies
–       Imaginaries, futures and technological utopias
–       Radical art practices
–       Science, technology and social justice

We invite submissions for individual papers on any of the above themes or related themes. Contributions in formats other than the traditional essay are encouraged; please contact the editor to discuss specifications and/or multimodal contributions.

All submissions should be sent by 15th August, to A.Fotopoulou@sussec.ac.uk. They should be accompanied by the following information in the email message with your submission attachment:

–       Name(s), affiliation(s), email address(es) of the person(s) submitting.
–       Title of the text
–       Abstract of 400-600 words

Please note that Ada uses a two-level review process that is open to members of the Fembot Collective. For more information about our review policy, see these guidelines: http://adanewmedia.org/beta-reader-and-review-policy/.

Important dates:

– Deadline for abstracts: 15th August 2013
– Notification of accepted papers: 1st September 2013
– Deadline for full essays: 5th December 2013
– Expected publication date: May 2014

About Ada:

Ada is an online, open access, open source, peer-reviewed journal run on a nonprofit basis by feminist media scholars from Canada, the UK, and the US. The journal?s first issue was published online in November 2012 and has so far received more than 75,000 page views. Ada operates a review process that combines the feminist mentorship of fan communities with the rigor of peer review. Read more at http://adanewmedia.org/beta-reader-and-review-policy/. We do not ? and will never ? charge fees for publishing your materials, and we will share those materials using a Creative Commons License.

Information about the editors:

Aristea Fotopoulou is postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Sussex, working at the intersections of media & cultural studies with science & technologies studies. She is interested in critical aspects of digital culture, emerging technologies and social change, and in feminist/queer theory. She has written about digital networks and feminism, and recently, on information politics and knowledge production, and on social imaginaries of digital engagement. She currently explores practices of sharing in relation to biosensors and other smart technologies, and also works with Kate to produce SusNet, a co-created platform of feminist cultural production, art and activism.
>
> Alexandra Juhasz is Professor of Media Studies, Pitzer College. She has written multiple articles on feminist, fake, and AIDS documentary. Her current work is on and about YouTube, and other more radical uses of digital media. She has produced the feature films, The Owls, and The Watermelon Woman, as well as nearly fifteen educational documentaries on feminist issues like teenage sexuality, AIDS, and sex education. Her first book, AIDS TV: Identity, Community and Alternative Video (Duke University Press, 1996) is about the contributions of low-end video production to political organizing and individual and community growth.

Kate O?Riordan is Reader in Digital Media and Associate Professor of Art at the University of Sussex and the University of California Santa Cruz respectively. She is the author and editor of three books, most recently The Genome Incorporated: Constructing Biodigital Identity. Her interests and expertise range from gender, sexuality and digital culture to human cloning, genomics and other biodigital symptoms. She is currently engaged in work at the intersections of art, science and media about in-vitro meat, biosensors and smart grids and questions about sustaining knowledge in feminist art and activism.

Call For Papers: Machines and Mechanization in the History of Education

Jahrbuch für Historische Bildungsforschung, Vol. 20 (2014) (Yearbook for History of Education)

(1) Topic: Machines and Mechanization in the History of Education: Devices, Myths, and Processes

Edited by Christian Kassung and Marcelo Caruso

Courtesy Co.Design, http://www.fastcodesign.com/

Machines have a life of their own: They have power units, and they are
programmed to perform certain tasks. The more autonomously they act, the more radically they question the line between nature and culture.
This is why they are so ambivalent: both fascinating and disturbing.
The fascination of machines is closely connected to their growing
sophistication and the extension and transformation of their
applications. At the same time, however,  this also poses a threat to
human autonomy,  for the existence  of machines  always defines man in
technical terms as well.

When Wolfgang Hochheimer, a Professor at the now dissolved Berlin
teachers college, argued for the extensive use of teaching machines in
the 1960s, he referred to a colleague who contended that those
machines helped to achieve democracy,  which was one of the central
ends of education at that time, much better than in the past.
Moreover,  Hochheimer  argued  that  teaching  machines  were
“consistently  patient”  and  “consistently open”  towards   everybody
–  from  “highly   educated”   to  “underdeveloped”   individuals
(W.  Hochheimer, “Erziehung durch Maschinen?”, in: Der Spiegel
30/1963, 24 July 1963). In the context of unconditional
democratization during the post-­-WW II era, the promise and the
threat of machines culminated in the fallibility of the  teacher:
“Every  teacher  who  can  be replaced  by a machine  deserves  to be
replaced,”  Ken  Komoski argued (“Lehrautomaten.  Der Tod des
Paukers”, in: Der Spiegel 29/1961, 12 July 1961). Back then, Komoski
was a  machine  programmer  from  the  circle  around  Burrhus
Frederic  Skinner.  He  later  became  a  professor  at Columbia
University and a UNESCO consultant. Since 1967, he has been running
the Educational Products Information  Exchange,  substantially
supported  by private foundations.  In the heat of these post-­-war
debates one often forgot or ignored the fact that machines  of various
kinds had been used for conveying  knowledge already since antiquity
and that, more broadly, they had already always been used as
“extensions of man.”

As machines have increasingly been permeating modern societies, it is
hardly possible anymore to draw a clear line between  technology  and
nature.  At the same  time,  in the course  of the
institutionalization  of modern education,  a  growing  aversion
against  the  world  of  machines  and  mechanization   has  been
taking  roots. Machines are soulless, the argument goes, when it comes
to pedagogic relationships, for real education begins
where  unpedagogical  drill  always  ends:  with  man.  However,  in
the  21st  century,  “man”  as  such  possibly  does
not  exist  anymore:  Current  communicative  environments  and  the
proliferation  of  “artificial  life”  –  cf.  the socializing
effects  of  tamagotchis  or  Japanese  nursing  homes  replacing
human  beings  with  robots  –  have intensified the question of the
place of machines in education and socialization.

The Jahrbuch für Historische Bildungsforschung dedicates its 20th
volume to machines and mechanization in the
history of education. This concerns, on the one hand, “interfaces” of
human beings and increasingly complex networks  of machines,  objects
and media. On the other hand, it also concerns  education  towards
machine-­- adapted  values  and  representations  or socialization
“for  a life  in the  context  of technical  constructing  and
organizing”  (von  Hermann  &  Velminski,  Maschinentheorien  /
Theoriemaschinen.  Frankfurt  am  Main,  2012,  p.
12). Against this backdrop, articles may tackle not only questions of
how to teach the artes mechanicae as well as the evolution of these
teaching modes. Rather, drawing on analyses of machines and
machine-­-inspired ways of thinking,  they may also problematize  the
implicit  knowledge  of things, concepts  of social transformation,
pedagogic semantics, agency in educational processes as well as the
historical materiality of individual devices.

Deadline for proposals: 31 August 2013
Notification of acceptance / rejection of proposals by 30 September
2013 Deadline for articles: 15 March 2014

Please e-­-mail  your proposal to Prof. Dr. Marcelo Caruso,
Humboldt-­-Universität  zu Berlin: marcelo.caruso@hu-­-
berlin.de.

(2) General contributions: For this section, colleagues are encouraged
to submit articles on any historical topic related to education.
Articles dealing with the time prior to the 18th century are
particularly welcome.

Please  e-­-mail  your proposal  for the section  General
Contributions  to Prof. Dr. Ulrich  Wiegmann,  Deutsches
Institut für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung, Berlin: u.wiegmann@imail.de.

________________________________________
H-EDUCATION
History of Education Discussion Network
E-Mail: h-education@h-net.msu.edu
WWW:  http://www.h-net.org/~educ
________________________________________

New Acquisition: The Woman Citizen

For those of you who followed our four part series on the Woman’s Column and checked out the digital exhibit we published about the Column, the Woman’s Journal, and the remarkable family who published it–we have just acquired another exciting and related item: a mammoth volume of the Woman Citizen.

The Woman Citizen

The Woman Citizen in the Special Collections Reading Room at Bryn Mawr College

After the Column folded in 1904, the Journal stuck around for another decade and more, but survival was becoming increasingly difficult for niche papers that specifically focused on suffrage. Ironically, this was a symptom of positive changes: the papers were struggling to attract subscribers because suffrage was receiving more favorable attention and consistent cover in the mainstream media. As the topic took on personal import to an increasing number of citizens in the twentieth century, suffrage was no longer a “niche” issue and the papers dedicated solely to its advancement began to dwindle. In 1917, the Journal moved to New York and consolidated with two other papers to form the Woman Citizen, which was published until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 and subsequently folded.

"SEEKING EDUCATION--THE TROUBLESOME NEW VOTER"

“SEEKING EDUCATION–THE TROUBLESOME NEW VOTER”

The Citizen, subtitled “A Weekly Chronicle of Progress,” features much of the content that made publications like the Column and the Journal popular: it aimed to sum up the state of suffrage across the nation by profiling its progress in various ethnic and geographical demographics, and also provided anecdotes, opinion articles, and information on other movements that would appeal to the suffragette. Like its predecessors, it also catered to a largely white, well-educated and upper- to upper-middle class demographic. This can be inferred not only from the content of the articles, but also from the advertisements, which reveal the affluence of the paper’s audience. The Citizen often featured attention-grabbing cover art with an upbeat tone, especially as political victory was within grasp. The full volume is available to our readers in the Special Collections Reading Room in Canaday Library at Bryn Mawr College. Stop in to have a look!

mexupdown.jpg

mexupdown.jpg

 

Call For Papers: “Fighting Women” during and after the Second World War in Asia and Europe

“Fighting Women” during and after the Second World War in Asia and Europe

library imageThis is a call for papers for the above conference, to be held on June 12-13, 2014, at the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in close cooperation with Kwansei Gakuin University (KGU), Japan. This conference seeks to go beyond the static “passive/pacifist” portrayal of women in the Second World War. We are interested in recovering the history of women who transgressed normative, peacetime gender boundaries by choosing to be masters of their own fate in abetting and perpetrating violence, in collaborating with or resisting aggression, or in actively furthering or frustrating the war goals of their own side. We aim to examine the actions and image of “strong,” “active,” and/or “violent” women in the various theaters of the Second World War, contrasting European, East Asian, and Southeast Asian cases for greater insights into the relations between gender, culture, and the Second World War. Please submit a 300-word abstract and a 100-word biographical note to the conference coordinators (NIOD: Eveline Buchheim, Ralf Futselaar; KGU: Timothy Tsu,) at info@niod.knaw.nl and indicating ‘Fighting Women’ as subject matter by September 1, 2013. Authors will be notified by November 1, 2013. Please direct your inquiries to the coordinators at the same e-mail address.

NIOD: Eveline Buchheim, Ralf Futselaar
KGU: Timothy Tsu

Email: info@niod.knaw.nl

http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=203786

Call For Papers: Comically Queer: NeMLA 2014

book-stackCall for Papers:

45th Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
April 3-6, 2014
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Host: Susquehanna University

Two decades ago, Judith Butler’s “Critically Queer” asked what it might mean to make “queer” an object of critical inquiry and, equally, what it might mean for the queer to become critical of her identification as queer. “Comically Queer” echoes Butler’s formulation in order to ask how the comic might be deployed to do queer work and how the queer can be located in relation to the comic. This panel welcomes papers that draw from queer theory as well as disability, post-colonial, and critical race studies in order to query normative regimes that determine what it means to be (and which bodies are) taken seriously. In particular, this panel aims to ask how laughter and the comic might work to disrupt or (re)configure the category of, to borrow another phrase from Butler, the “recognizably human.” Please send 250-word abstracts to James Mulder at jamie.mulder@tufts.edu by September 30, 2013.

Deadline: September 30, 2013
Please include with your abstract:
Name and affiliation
Email address
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee with registration)

The 2014 NeMLA convention continues the Association’s tradition of sharing innovative scholarship in an engaging and generative location. This capitol city set on the Susquehanna River is known for its vibrant restaurant scene, historical sites, the National Civil War museum, and nearby Amish Country, antique shops and Hershey Park. NeMLA has arranged low hotel rates of $104-$124.

The 2014 event will include guest speakers, literary readings, professional events, and workshops. A reading by George Saunders will open the Convention. His 2013 collection of short fiction, The Tenth of December, has been acclaimed by the New York Times as “the best book you’ll read this year.” The Keynote speaker will be David Staller of Project Shaw.

Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however, panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable. http://www.nemla.org/convention/2014/cfp.html

James Mulder
English Department
Tufts University
Email: jamie.mulder@tufts.edu

http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=204719

Call For Papers: Religion, Spirituality, and Inequality in Communities of Color

call-for-papersCALL FOR PAPERS

Religion, Spirituality, and Inequality in Communities of Color

A Special issue of Women, Gender, and Families of Color

Guest Editors
Assata Zerai, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Sandra Weissinger, Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville

Recent public discourse on women’s reproductive rights and abortion, full-time homemakers and working mothers, and LGBTQ partnership and marriage, has highlighted the pervasive role and power of organized religion and spirituality in daily life, as well as related issues of oppression and resistance. For this special issue of Women, Gender, and Families of Color (WGFC), we seek historical, and social science manuscripts that explore the intersectionalities of race, class, gender, sexuality, and other socioeconomic categories in U.S. religious and spiritual settings. Topics may address, but are not limited to, the following:

Spheres of social inequality, such as race, class, gender, and sexuality and their reproduction and/or practice in U.S. religious/spiritual organizations or spaces;

The use of resources (e.g. human and financial) to impede or promote the reproduction of inequalities;

The meaning of relationships, and the practice of religion/spirituality, in these organizations and spaces for women, men, and LGBTQ communities;

The practice of social and/or economic privilege among groups in U.S. religious/spiritual organizations and spaces;

U.S. religious/spiritual structures as intransigent sites from which to challenge persisting inequalities;

U.S. transnational comparisons on any of the above.

Please send queries and electronic versions of manuscripts (Microsoft Word) to:

Assata Zerai
Department of Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign E-Mail: azerai@illinois.edu

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: AUGUST 16, 2013

Manuscripts should be a maximum of 30 pages, inclusive of title page, abstract (150 words or less), main body of text, figures, tables, and Chicago Style, 16th edition references. Only title pages should contain authors’ names, affiliation, phone & FAX numbers, in addition to the email address of the corresponding author.

WGFC is a multidisciplinary journal that centers the study of Black, Latina/o, Indigenous, and Asian American women, gender, and families. In addition to special issues, WGFC welcomes general submissions on a rolling submission policy.

Please visit www.womengenderandfamilies.ku.edu for more information.

WGBH Media Library and Archives Opportunity for Digital Humanities Scholars

WGBH has received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to bring the hidden treasures in WGBH’s Media Library and Archives to light. We hope to increase public awareness of the vast collections that digital repositories like WGBH hold by publishing our entire archival catalog online, for open access and use, by late Summer 2013. To see some of the content already curated by WGBH’s Media Library and Archives staff, please visit our website: http://openvault.wgbh.org

Placing the catalog online is only the first step, as records may be incomplete or misleading. To help enhance the quality of our records, we are inviting scholars, teachers and students to research our catalog and contribute their own discoveries and findings back to us. Participants may contribute a lot or a little- it’s up to you! We will have three ways that you can participate.

Fill out a Survey
If you have used the online catalog, let us know about your experience by filling out a quick survey and describing the items you utilized.

Share your expertise
If you have accessed the online catalog and viewed items in our physical collection, then please share your expertise! Contribute full descriptions of the items you examined and receive credit for your contributions in the catalog record.

**Curate a collection**
For those doing in depth research with the online catalog and our physical assets, there are limited opportunities to catalog and curate an online collection specific to your field of research as part of Open Vault. Final products could include essays on your topic, streaming public access to one selection of media in your collection, supplying metadata for the items in your collection and/or presenting your findings at a conference.

We hope you will join us on this exciting project!

**Limited funding may be available to those who choose to participate**

Allison Pekel
Project Coordinator
WGBH Media Library and Archive
One Guest St.
Boston, MA 02135
Phone: (617)300-2678

Email: allison_pekel@wgbh.org
Visit the website at http://openvault.wgbh.org/

http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=203269

Call for Papers: Irish Women, Religion, and the Diaspora

Saturday 18th January 2014, Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool

call-for-papersThe Women on Ireland Research Network invite paper proposals for a symposium on Irish Women, Religion and the Diaspora. This Symposium seeks to understand not only the shifting role that religion has played in the lives of Irish women but the role that Irish women themselves have undertaken in religious institutions and organisations and how this role has changed over time. Although the idea of diaspora assumes a shared experience, Irish migrants were of different social, economic, political and even religious backgrounds. Their experiences were coloured by their end destinations which included the United Kingdom, North America, Australia and New Zealand, Argentina, Mexico, South Africa, Brazil, Chile, Jamaica, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, India and continental Europe. This symposium aims to tease out the significance of religion to Irish women at home and abroad.

Within this framework of Irish women, Religion and Diaspora, topics could include, but are not limited to:

· Religious and social networks and the significance of place · Religion and cultural transfer
· Material culture and Irishness
· Experiences of religion expressed through literature
· Irish women’s religious institutes and diaspora
· Irish lay women and faith-based organisations
· Irish women and global religious dynamics
· Diaspora, place and missions
· National and transnational religious networks

Each paper should be no longer than 20 minutes and 300 word proposals should be send to both Dr Maria Power (m.c.power@liv.ac.uk) and Dr Carmen Mangion (c.mangion@bbk.ac.uk) by 30th June 2013.

Call For Chapter Proposals: Women in Asia: Images and Challenges

call-for-papersThe emergences of independent states in Asia in the Post-World War II era not only underlined the existence of a cultural infrastructure prior to the advent of multiculturalism, but also highlight the caste system in India and the declining importance of women in this region.

As a region, Asia has undergone enormous economic and social changes in the last few decades. Women as a collective have seen their lives transformed as a result of rapid development and economic growth. The book provides rich and provocative comparative studies of Asian Women. The collaborative work of Social Scientists conceptually and methodologically challenges the regional divides and proposes new dimensions within a wider context of intersecting groups. Violence against women is a violation of women’s human rights and a priority public health issue. It is endemic worldwide. While much has been written about it in industrialized societies, there has been relatively little attention given to such violence in Asian societies. This book addresses the structural and interpersonal violence’s to which women are subject, both under conditions of conflict and disruption, and where civil society is relatively ordered. It explores women activisms in Asia, and accounts for the so-called cultural’ practices in favor of nuanced challenges of equilibrium society of disparity’s as experienced in Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and India.

Collectively, the authors propose new themes, new comparative frameworks, and new methodologies for considering vastly different degrees of social support and political activism, and the varied meanings of “Gender equality “in different societies in Asia. In exploring the progress made by Asian men and women, this book seeks to answer the following questions: (a) in what areas have women been able to achieve parity with men? (b) In what areas do women encounter specific disadvantages based on their gender? And (c) How have women’s concerns and problems been addressed by the governments in this region with the aim of encouraging gender equality? As the title of this book suggests, the chapters would provide an analysis of the broad trends – including changes and continuities – in the experiences, interests and concerns of Asian women. The chapters would examine the trends related to women in the following arenas: patriarchal society, political and economic participation, the gender gap, and religion. In some arenas, the trends reflect the disadvantages women face, which in turn have led to gender gaps; in other areas, women’s progress has been found to eclipse that of the men, although this tends to be the exception. This is an innovative work that provides coverage of a complex topic that has often been neglected. It gives more than just an analysis of Asian women, demonstrating the central importance of gender in the modernizing and globalizing of Asia.

In the treatment of a region like Asia, with its diverse ethnic groups and units, and the historical development of gender issues over the decades, there are bound to be gaps in information. What is attempted here is a broad survey of trends in the historical and contemporary panorama of the region, combining thematic and chronological approaches.
This Call for Chapters looks for scholarship that focuses on women’s roles in Asian Society, government and other aspects related to “Gender Equality and Development”. Questions for consideration may include, but are not limited to:

1. How do women in Asian countries perceive equality conflicts? What approaches do they use to handle equality in the context of varying economic, political, cultural and social/family situations?

2. How religion has been taken, changed and altered to suit the patriarchal ideology in Asian countries in regards to “Women’s role” in such an ideology?

3. The questions the relationship between women and economic development in this region. It challenges the prevailing role of Asian women as passive and uninterested in political and economic participation, and has there been an increase in women movements around this region affecting all facets of development?

Women in Asia: Images and Challenges: is under contract with University of Indianapolis Press. I am now accepting abstracts of chapters. A 500 word proposal should be sent to the editor, Dr. Himanshi Raizada: hraizada27@gmail.com. Please include a CV or brief biography with your proposal. The deadline for proposals is July 31, 2013. Contributors will be notified by August 31, 2013. Final drafts (5,000-7,000 words) will be due to the book editor by November 15, 2013.

Dr. Himanshi Raizada
Professor
Lamar University, TX
(409) 880-8110
Email: himanshi2@hotmail.com