THE NON-STATE OF QUEER THEORY
Graduate Symposium

Location: Brown University, Providence, RI
Date: Thursday, April 11, 2013

**CALL FOR PROPOSALS**

Keynote Speaker:
José E Muñoz
Professor of Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.

In his 1995 conference address, “Queer Theory: Unstating Desire,” Lee Edelman proposed that “To inquire into the state of queer studies–as if it had a state and all of us happened to live in that state together–is to presuppose a fantasy…that the very fact of a conference like this should serve, instead, to disrupt.”

This Brown Graduate Student Symposium, “The Non-State of Queer Theory,” seeks to keep in tension both the generative and nonproductive aspects of imagining a “non-state” of queer theory.

What is the “non-state” of queer theory now? Over a decade after Edelman’s call for rupture, queer of color critique, diasporic and trans-national perspectives and affect and performance studies have upended the seemingly static relationships between race and sexuality, feeling and being, queerness and space. We would like to invite projects that participate in these disruptions.

Proposals can include paper presentations and/or media projects.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, explorations of the following:

• Queer of Color Critique
• Queer Feminisms and Sexualities
• Queer Performance
• Queer Sexual Historiography
• Queer Genealogies
• Queer Sexuality and Eroticism in film, art, literature, music, television, gaming, or digital/online technologies
• Queerness in Popular Culture
• Queer Icons
• Queer Bodies and Aesthetics
• Queer Labors and Sex Work
• Queer Sexual Undergrounds
• Pornography, Erotica, or Obscenity
• Neoliberalism and Queer Sexuality
• Queer Cartographies and Space
• Queerness and Class
• Queer(ing) Social Movements

Submission Guidelines:

Proposal Deadline: January 15, 2013.

For individual 15-minute presentations, please submit an abstract of 250 words to browngradsymposium@gmail.com by January 15, 2013. Include a 2-3 sentence biographical statement that includes your institutional affiliation and research interests. For complete panels, please submit a 100-word proposal along with three (3) paper abstracts with biographical statements for each panelist. Please note any technology/multimedia services needs.

Successful candidates will be notified by Friday, February 8, 2013.

This event is sponsored by the Department of American Studies, the Department of English, the LGBTQ Center, the Department of Modern Culture and Media, the Pembroke Center, and the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies.

Join us for the Women’s Breakfast at the American Historical Association
Annual Meeting

For nearly 40 years, the AHA’s Committee on Women Historians (CWH) has
sponsored an annual networking breakfast for women historians and anyone
with an interest in gender history. Tickets are still available for the
2013 breakfast on Saturday, January 5 from 7:30–9:00 a.m. The cost is $35
for AHA members, $45 for nonmembers, $15 for student members, and $30 for
student nonmembers. Add a ticket when you preregister for the AHA meeting
(deadline December 17) or add a ticket to an existing registration by
calling 508-743-0510.

In 2013, Atina Grossman (Cooper Union) will deliver an address entitled
“Too Emotional? Or Queering the Genres? Mixing Family and Straight
History.” The breakfast is cosponsored by the Coordinating Council for
Women in History.
Immediately following the breakfast, the AHA Committee on Women Historians
cordially invites all interested AHA members to a brainstorming session to
help think through the mission of the CWH as we go forward.

Debbie Ann Doyle
Coordinator, Committees and Meetings
American Historical Association
400 A Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
202-544-2422 x 104
Monday through Thursday 9 to 6, Friday  9 to noon

Call for Papers for an upcoming conference at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul Turkey June 7-9, 2013.

The conference is entitled:  “Changing Feminist Paradigms and Cultural Encounters: Women’s Experiences in Eastern Mediterranean History in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.”

“Changing feminist paradigms” refers to a shift from a Turkish-oriented
historiography of women’s experiences to an emphasis on diversity in both
the late Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East.  Scholarship has come a
long way in producing “women’s histories,” but feminist critiques of
national historiography and challenges to the conventional periodization of
Ottoman-Turkish historical narrative are tasks yet to be undertaken.
Tackling this challenging project requires that we reconsider and
reformulate key terms and concepts introduced by feminist scholars in North
America.  In addition, this conference aims to rethink the interaction
between feminist activism and scholarship with the purpose of bringing new
perspectives to women’s and gender history in the Middle East and around
the world.

We welcome papers on such topics as:
–      efforts to canonize the field
–      challenges to existing chronologies of nationalist historiographies
–      links between and legacies of the Ottoman and post-Ottoman worlds
–      sources for researching women’s and gender history
–      the impact of emergent nation-states on diverse women’s
experiences in the region
–   binaries between public and private, state and society, tradition and
modern, etc., and the ways these binaries are reproduced or challenged by
“emancipatory projects”
–      the interaction between women’s activism and scholarship on
women’s history
–      historical patterns of women’s activism in the region
–      the potential of activism to  bring new perspectives to women’s
studies and vice versa
–      different forms of feminism in the history of the modern Middle East
–      rethinking women’s “agency” in the realms of crime, health,
sexuality, and urban life

Because we are planning for discussions on the relationship between
scholarship and activism, we also look forward to submissions from feminist
activists in the wider region of the Middle East.

If you would like to present at this conference, we ask that you submit a
short summary of your proposed paper, or contribution, of around 1,000
words, along with an updated curriculum vitae by January 15, 2013.
Submissions should be sent to the conference coordinator, Professor Gulhan
Balsoy, via email at gerkaya@gmail.com.

We will be able to defray some travel and hotel expenses for conference
participants but ask that each person chosen to participate seeks other
funding, from his or her host institution for example.

We hope to publish select papers in a Special Issue of the *Journal of
Women’s History*.

The conference and Special Issue represent a unique and pioneering
collaboration between an American-based journal (one devoted to publishing
the best work in the international field of women’s history) and women’s
historians in Istanbul, Turkey.

We look forward to reading your proposals!

Gulhan Balsoy, Independent Scholar

Elisa Camiscioli, Binghamton University, New York, Book Review Editor, *JWH*

Arzu Ozturkmen, Boğaziçi University

Jean Quataert, Binghamton University, New York, co-editor, *JWH*

Benita Roth, Binghamton University, New York, Associate Editor, *JWH*

Basak Tug, Istanbul Bilgi University

Leigh Ann Wheeler, Binghamton University, New York, co-editor, *JWH*

The International Feminist Journal of Politics announces
2nd Annual IFjP Conference
May 17-19, 2013
University of Sussex, Brighton, England

(Im)possibly Queer International Feminisms

General Keynote
Lisa Duggan, American Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, NYU

Conference Theme Keynotes
Jon Binnie, Geography, Manchester Metropolitan University
Vivienne Jabri, War Studies, Kings College London
V Spike Peterson, Government/Gender Studies, University of Arizona
Rahul Rao, Politics and International Studies, SOAS

Other confirmed speakers
Rosalind Galt, Film Studies, University of Sussex
Akshay Khanna, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex
Laura Sjoberg, Political Science, University of Florida

The aim of this conference is to serve as a forum for developing and discussing papers that IFjP hopes to publish. These can be on the conference theme or on any other feminist IR-related questions.

Call For Papers

Feminists taught us that the personal is political. International Relations feminists taught us that the personal is international. And contemporary Queer Scholars are teaching us that the international is queer. While sometimes considered in isolation, these insights are connected in complex and sometimes contradictory ways. This conference seeks to bring together scholars and practitioners to critically consider the limits and possibilities of thinking, doing, and being in relation to various assemblages composed of queer(s), international(s), and feminism(s).

Questions we hope to consider include: Who or what is/are (im)possibly queer, (im)possibly international, (im)possibly feminist, separately and in combination? What makes assemblages of queer(s), international(s) and feminism(s) possible or impossible? Are such assemblages desirable – for whom and for what reasons? What might these assemblages make possible or impossible, especially for the theory and practice of global politics?

We are interested in papers and panels that explore these questions through theoretical and/or practical perspectives, be they interdisciplinary or located within the discipline of International Relations.

Sub-themes include (Im)Possibly Queer/International/Feminist:

— Heteronormativities/Homonormativities/Homonationalisms
— Embodiments/Occupations/Economies/Circulations
— Temporalities/‘Successes’/‘Failures’
— Emotions/Desires/Psycho-socialities
— Technologies/Methodologies/Knowledges/Epistemologies
— Spaces/Places/Borders/(Trans)positionings
— States/Sovereignties/Subjectivities
— Crossings/Migrations/Trans(gressions)
— (In)Securities

We invite submissions for individual papers or pre-constituted panels on any topic pertaining to the conference theme and sub-themes. We also welcome papers and panels that consider any other feminist IR-related questions.

Any inquiries should be addressed to Joanna Wood at cait@sussex.ac.uk
Abstracts should be no more than 250 words.
Deadline for submissions: January 31, 2013
We will, however, confirm acceptance of submissions before the deadline if we receive abstracts early. Early submission is therefore recommended.

Please submit your abstract here: Submissions

The conference website is http://ifjp2013.wordpress.com

Convened by: Heidi Hudson, Laura Sjoberg, Cynthia Weber, Co-Editors IFjP

Emerging Perspectives on Race and Gender in the Nineteenth-Century United States: A Workshop for Junior Faculty, Post-Doctoral Fellows, and Advanced Graduate Students Sponsored by the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center

Keynote Address by Dr. Daina Ramey Berry, University of Texas

March 15-16, 2013: The Pennsylvania State University (University Park Campus)

The past two decades have seen an explosion of exciting new perspectives on the subjects of race and gender in nineteenth-century US history. Scholars have demonstrated the integral role of these categories in many of the century’s major developments: from the emergence of a global capitalist economy and the origins of American empire to the making of new regimes of health, medicine, and body care. Along the way, scholars have reinvigorated old conversations and engendered new ones. Historians and other scholars have enriched and enlivened a venerable literature on free and enslaved African-Americans while bringing histories of Latino/a and indigenous Americans into the mainstream. They’ve uncovered previously unknown aspects of women’s lives while exploring the stories of trans- and ambiguously-gendered persons. And they’ve subjected the ‘unmarked,’ taken-for-granted categories of manhood and whiteness to extensive critical scrutiny.

In the process, this community of thinkers has shattered the binaries – black/white, woman/man – that have traditionally structured work on race and gender, and provided ample evidence of the benefits to be gained by interdisciplinary and theoretical engagements. Many have embraced the ‘spatial turn’ or employed the human body as a site of scholarly investigation. Others have incorporated theories of performativity or intersectionality into their work, emphasizing the ‘constructed-ness’ of race and gender and the way in which the meanings of these categories inform one another. Taken together, the result of these developments has been a simultaneous expansion and redefinition of what scholarship on race and gender entails.

Some of the best work on these topics is being done by advanced graduate students and scholars in the early stages of their careers. To highlight and encourage this work, the Richards Civil War Era Center at the Pennsylvania State University, in conjunction with the Africana Research Center and the Department of Women’s Studies, invites proposals from early career scholars within three years of having received their PhD and advanced graduate students who are writing their dissertations for the first annual emerging scholars workshop. Taking place March 15-16, 2013 at the University Park campus of the Pennsylvania State University, the workshop will provide a forum for innovative young scholars to discuss new projects involving race and gender with faculty and graduate students from the departments of history, Women’s Studies, and African and African-American Studies.

Dr. Daina Ramey Berry of the University of Texas will deliver a keynote address on professionalization and new directions in scholarship. Workshop papers should be no more than ten pages in length and pertain to works-in-progress rather than dissertation projects or book manuscripts nearing completion. Submissions will be pre-circulated to registered attendees and Penn State faculty, including select scholars chosen to provide detailed commentary on papers. Presenters will therefore have the benefit, not only of expert faculty feedback, but informed audience commentary and questions – extending from the immediate context of their papers to broader conversations around race and gender. Presenters can and should assume that commenters and audience members will have a basic familiarity and comfort with feminist and critical race theory and historical literature on race and gender.

Potential Paper Topics Include:

• Africa, empire, and the Atlantic World: imagining unconventional Atlantic (and hemispheric) narratives for the nineteenth century.
• Black politics and white allies: the long African-American freedom struggle and its complex links to white political and social organizations.
• Masculinity, femininity, and gender performativity: incorporating performative perspectives on gender (and race) into nineteenth-century historical scholarship.
• Sex, slavery, and intimate relations: enslaved women, desire, and sexual labor beyond the ‘production/reproduction’ binary.
• Youth, children, and elders: the role of age difference and life-cycle position in shaping the meaning and experience of race and gender.
• Labor, bodies, and objects: scholarship on race and gender and its links to the ‘producerist turn’ and the ‘new materialism.’
• Medicine, science, and technology: the construction of ‘raced’ and ‘gendered’ bodies of knowledge and practice and their relation to configurations of power.

Interested parties should submit a complete CV and a proposal of no more than 500 words to Kelly Knight (kmk404@psu.edu) or Sean Trainor (sxt261@psu.edu) by December 15, 2012. Travel funding is available, courtesy of the Richards Civil War Era Center. Questions or inquiries should be directed to Matthew Isham, Richards Center managing director at mri113@psu.edu.

The Southern Association for Women Historians seeks an institution as the host for the Tenth Southern Conference on Women’s History to be held in June 2015.

The triennial SAWH conferences typically draw 200 to 300 women and men from across the U.S. for two days of scholarship and fellowship.

One person at the institution will serve as conference coordinator, and she will in turn appoint a program chair who, with her committee, is responsible for the intellectual content of the conference.  The conference coordinator oversees the conference web site, registration (advance and on-site), the printed program, coordination of advertising and exhibits, and local logistics.

The SAWH has historically met on college campuses.  The space that is needed includes:

• seven or eight classrooms for concurrent sessions, typically held on Friday and Saturday;
• sites for three plenary sessions, typically held Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings;
• sites for two seated dinners and a central place to pick up box lunches;
• dormitory lodging for up to 100 people and a hotel not far away for those who choose not to stay on campus;
• a location for 25 6-foot tables for exhibits and coffee service;
• an area for registration;
• a site for a graduate student mixer, usually held late Thursday night.

While cash contributions from the host institution are most welcome, they are not essential.

Representatives of interested institutions should submit any queries and a letter of interest to Rebecca Sharpless (R.Sharpless@tcu.edu<mailto:R.Sharpless@tcu.edu>) by December 10, 2012.

Southern Conferences on Women’s History:

1988: Converse College, Spartanburg, South Carolina

1991: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

1994: Rice University, Houston, Texas

1997: College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina

2000: University of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia

2003: University of Georgia, Athens

2006: University of Maryland, Baltimore

2009: University of South Carolina, Columbia

2012: Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas

SAVE the DATE and CFP:

Mediating Public Spheres:
Genealogies of Feminist Knowledge in the Digital Age

April 4-6, 2013

Locations include Amherst College, Hamsphire College, and Mount Holyoke College
Confirmed keynote speakers include Lisa Nakamura, Susan Squier, Alex Juhasz, Anna
Balsamo, and Jackie Stacey, among others.

Who constitutes public spheres in the digital age? How does academic research in the (re)emerging fields intersect with debates about access and applicability in public spaces? Who participates in the transmission of knowledge and cultural production?
To what end? What are the implications of delivering knowledge from one generation of the digital divide to the other? What are the effects of virtual means of transmission on the materiality of lives? What are the pivotal means to incorporate digital media in feminist scholarship and practice?

We welcome submissions that address these and related questions pertaining
to the focus of the symposium. We seek one-page abstracts describing your 20-minute presentation for participation on one of four panels. We can accommodate 12 presentations in total for the panels, but will also include networking
and work in progress sessions for all projects submitted.  Joint submissions are welcome.

Please submit your proposal no later than Dec. 15, 2012 to kremmler@mtholyoke.edu. We will provide a small honorarium to those presenting on the panels.

Ethnographies of higher education: researching and reflecting “at home”
CALL FOR PAPERS
22-24 May 2013, Prague, Czech Republic

Keynote speakers:

Wesley Shumar (Drexel University); Paul Trowler (Lancaster University);
Susan Wright (Aarhus University)

In recent years there has been a surge of interest in ethnographic studies
of higher education. Not only are anthropologists turning their attention
to the study of higher education but also higher education researchers
from various theoretical and methodological backgrounds are employing
ethnography as a valuable approach to studying multiple facets, sites, and
themes of higher education, be it the formation and enactment of
governance and policies, knowledge practices, learning and teaching,
identities, or academics’ and students’ lives. At the same time, the
conference recognizes significant changes in the field of higher education
today that are globally transforming not only the social, material and
technological conditions and institutional frameworks of knowledge
production, transmission and translation, but also affecting the very
modes of knowing. We believe ethnographic approaches are a key research
strategy for understanding these changes.
The conference aims to bring together researchers interested and actively
involved in qualitative, primarily ethnographic, research on higher
education institutions, policies and practices, and to provide space for
critical discussion and debate. We also aim to prepare a publication or
series of publications to bring these insights to the broader academic
public.
We propose three major foci – and welcome more.

1. Politics, positionality and engagement
“Reforms” of, and changes in, higher education may be discussed,
questioned, fought for and against, or they may take place in a more
invisible manner. What are the possible roles of higher education research
in that dynamic? How is ethnographic participation linked with policy and
politics, activism and engagement? How are the roles of researchers,
experts, and activists played out in different times and different
settings? And from the other end, how do the multiple positions higher
education researchers simultaneously occupy in the field (such as
students, teachers, administrators, parents etc.) influence the framing of
education research?

2. Diversity of the field and comparative practices
The field of higher education is diverse – in terms of disciplines,
qualities, institutional forms. As such it is subject to various types of
comparisons and rankings, made by agencies, ministries, media, students,
academics, higher education institutions, and ultimately by us, higher
education researchers. Since we are often critical of such comparisons and
rankings, we need to examine explicitly our own epistemic practices of
comparing in theoretical framing or field study designs. What role does
(Western) social theory play in studying higher education in different
parts of world? How do we deal with heterogeneity of the field during the
course of a study and in textual representations?

3. Ethnographic effects
In a special strand we propose to reflect on and debate ethnography as an
epistemic approach to the study of higher education: its possibilities
(and possible limits), politics and practices. This will have a format of
a special methodological workshop within the conference. We welcome short
contributions (2 to 10 minutes) on various topics related to fieldwork
(reflexivity, ethics, access, being/going native etc.). The aim of the
workshop is to share and discuss field experiences and explore potential
intersecting topics emerging in the course of the discussions.

Conference fees
Conference fees include registration, welcome reception on Wednesday
evening, and lunch and snacks on Thursday and Friday.
Standard: EUR 100
Students and doctoral candidates: EUR 50
It is possible to waive the fee for participants from lower-income
countries and/or for participants in lower-paid positions without access
to other sources of funding. To request a waiver, please send a letter
(300-500 words) to the organizers explaining why you are not in a position
to cover the fee.

The conference programme board
Jana Baćević (Central European University)
Manja Klemenčič (Harvard University / University of Ljubljana)
Jan Nespor (Ohio State University)
Petr Pabian (University of Pardubice)
Tereza Stöckelová (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic)

Practical information
Travel and accommodation: Prague airport serves direct flights from all
European capitals and many other European cities. Within Central Europe,
Prague is also easily reachable by train. As a popular tourist
destination, Prague offers a wealth of accommodation opportunities from
budget hostels starting below 20 € per night up to luxury hotels. More
information will be available on the conference website.

Conference venue: The conference will take place at the Academy of
Sciences of the Czech Republic and Charles University.
Programme framework: The conference will start with an evening public
lecture on Wednesday, May 22. Thursday and Friday programme will start
with a plenary keynote, followed by paper presentations. The Friday
afternoon will be dedicated to the methodological workshop.

See conference website http://www.ethe.cz for further information.
The conference is supported by the Czech Science Foundation within the
research project “Ethnography of University Departments: Mass Higher
Education in Institutional Settings” (http://www.csvs.cz/ETUDE).