Celebrating the Achievements and Legacies of Ada Lovelace
18 October 2013
Stevens Institute of Technology, College of Arts and Letters

An interdisciplinary conference celebrating the achievements and legacies of the poet Lord Byron’s only known legitimate child, Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852), will take place at Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, New Jersey) on 18 October 2013. This conference will coincide with the week celebrating Ada Lovelace Day, a  global event for women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and  Mathematics (STEM). All aspects of the achievements and legacies of Ada Lovelace will be considered, including but not limited to:

-Lovelace as Translator and/or Collaborator
-Technology in the Long Nineteenth Century
-Women in Computing: Past/Present/Future
-Women in STEM
-Ada Lovelace and her Circle

-Please submit proposals or abstracts of 250-500 words by 14 May 2013
to: Robin Hammerman (rhammerm@stevens.edu).
-Visit the conference website: http://www.stevens.edu/calconference

CFP: The Women of James Bond – Critical Perspectives on Feminism and Femininity in the Bond Franchise

Editor: Lisa Funnell, Ph.D., University of Oklahoma, lfunnell@ou.edu

The release of Skyfall in 2012 marked the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film franchise. The 23rd film in the series, Skyfall earned over one billion dollars (USD) in the worldwide box-office and won two Academy Awards (Best Sound Editing and Best Song). Amidst such popular and critical acclaim, many have questioned the representation of women in the film, viewing Skyfall in relation to the Bond film franchise at large. From the representation of an aging and disempowered M, to the limited role of the Bond Girl, to the characterization of Miss Moneypenny as a defunct field agent, Skyfall arguably develops the legacy of James Bond at the expense of women in the film. While the character of James Bond has historically been defined by his relationship with women (and particularly through heterosexual romantic conquest) and the franchise has long been accused of being sexist (among other things), the treatment of women in Skyfall recalls the media-driven backlash against feminist gains in the 1970s, which impacted the representation of women in the series—with the disempowering of female villains and the domestication of the Bond Girl. Since the prequel Casino Royale (2006) and its sequels Quantum of Solace (2008) and Skyfall (2012) constitute a rebooting of the franchise, it leads many scholars, like myself, to question if there is a place for women in the new world of James Bond and, if so, what role will these women play in the future of series?

This book seeks to answer these questions by examining the role that women have historically played in the Bond franchise, which greatly contributed to the international success of its films. This collection constitutes the first book-length academic study of the women of James Bond that moves beyond the discussion of a single character type (such as the Bond Girl) or group of films (such as the Connery era). This anthology will redress this critical oversight by providing a comprehensive examination of feminism and femininity in the Bond franchise. It not only focuses on the representation of women on screen (via casting, characterization, and aspects of stardom), but also includes a consideration of the role women have played in producing and marketing the franchise, female fandom and spectatorship, female scholarship on the franchise, and the widespread influence of the Bond series on the representation of female characters in other (non-Bond) films. This collection will offer a timely and retrospective look at the franchise, in light of the 50 year anniversary of the series, and provide new scholarly perspectives on the subject.

Proposals are welcomed on the following topics:

i) Female Representation
• key characters/character types (Bond Girl, Bad Girl, M, Moneypenny)
• close readings of specific films
• trends in casting and characterization (between eras/phases of Bond)
• response of the films to different waves of feminism
• other women (e.g. opening credit sequence, secondary characters, movie posters)

ii) Women Producing/Marketing Bond
• the influence of Barbara Broccoli and other creative personnel
• musicians lending their voices and star power to the films (i.e. the musical “Bond Girls

iii) Female Fandom and Spectatorship
• reception studies of female spectatorship
• examination of the female pleasures in watching Bond

iv) Female Scholarship on Bond
• the ease/struggle in studying Bond
• the perception of female scholars in this field of study
• teaching and writing on Bond from a female perspective

v) Influence of the Bond Films on Women in Other Films
• the Bond Girl character type (e.g. True Lies)
• James Bond (e.g. Lady Bond films in Hong Kong)
• parodies/plays of the Bond films (e.g. Austin Powers, Agent Cody Banks)

Please send a 500-word abstract (with bibliography and filmography) and an author bio as email attachments by May 15, 2013 to Lisa Funnell lfunnell@ou.edu

A one-day study day organised by the Centre for History and Theory at Roehampton University and History Lab.

This study day is directed towards postgraduate (Masters and doctoral) students who wish to look at current historical theory and digital practices, and the ways in which they can be used.

It is made up of a series of interactive workshops in which invited academics, and Roehampton staff, introduce theoretical ideas which have influenced their own historical work and explore the ways in which these ideas can be deployed in research and writing.

The focus of the day will very much be on the practical value of theory and digital practice, and there will be ample opportunities for students to reflect on and discuss the role of theory in their own work.

PLACES ARE LIMITED, SO REGISTRATION IS ESSENTIAL

tinyurl.com/cy9bgoe

www.history.ac.uk/historylab

Feral Feminisms, a new independent, inter-media, peer reviewed, open access online journal, is seeking peer reviewers to join the Editorial Team. No previous experience is required and graduate students at various
stages of their careers are encouraged to apply.

Feral Feminisms takes the feral as a provocative call to focus on untaming, undomesticating, queering, and radicalizing feminist thought and practice today. It is a space for students and scholars, artists and activists, to engage with the many sites and problematics of feminist studies –as understood broadly and across disciplines, genres, methods, politics, times, and contexts. Each issue of Feral Feminisms builds around a particular thematic, compiling diverse creative, queer, and always feral responses to the calls for papers.

Feral Feminisms publishes full-length academic essays (about 5000 – 7000 words), shorter creative pieces or cultural commentaries (about 500 – 2500 words), poetry, photo-essays, short films, visual and sound art, or a combination of these. We welcome submissions from students, artists, activists, and established academics. We especially encourage graduate students to submit. Both the textual and visual work in each issue should respond to and engage with the thematic cluster, as described in the call
for papers.

If you are interested in being a peer reviewer please contact the Managing Editors under the subject “Peer Review” with a 100-word bio indicating your areas of specialization and interest to: feralfeminisms@gmail.com

Newberry Seminar on Women and Gender Call for Proposals
Deadline for Submission: April 25, 2013

The Newberry Seminar on Women and Gender brings together scholars from a variety of historical fields to share their work in progress. Our focus is on the United States and North America across all time periods; however, we welcome papers on non-American aspects of the history of women and gender. The seminar is open to graduate students, independent scholars, and faculty. To maximize time for discussion, papers are circulated electronically in advance. The seminar will meet on selected Fridays during the academic year, 3:00-5:00pm, at the Newberry Library in Chicago. To propose a paper, please send a one-page proposal, a statement explaining the relationship of the paper to your other work, and a brief c.v. to Carmen Jaramillo, Program Assistant, Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture, The Newberry Library. Please send all materials as a single PDF attachment via email to scholl@newberry.org.
Please go to www.newberry.org/newberry-seminar-women-and-gender for more information.

http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=202820

Freedom, Rights and Power:
Recasting Women’s Struggles Across the Americas Since 1900.

Conference to be held at St. Mary’s University College, Twickenham on 26 – 27 April 2013. A full programme and registration details can be found on the Freedom, Rights and Power webpage.

This two-day multidisciplinary conference seeks to explore the intersection between gender, revolt and power across the Americas. Women have been central in stretching the definitions of legal rights, challenging old concepts of power, and establishing new parameters of freedom across the Americas throughout the twentieth century. Our conference seeks to create links between historical, regional and current movements for change, and to capitalize on a new momentum that has emerged in relation to discourses of gender and power. We encourage scholars and delegates to think anew about the ways that women have challenged prevailing systems, to examine women’s efforts to renegotiate power paradigms and to consider how the past informs the future as we extend our concepts of freedom within the context of the whole continent.

Dr Sinead McEneaney,St Mary’s University College.

Dr Dawn-Marie Gibson, Royal Holloway, University of London.
Email: sinead.mceneaney@smuc.ac.uk, dawn-marie.gibson@rhul.ac.uk
Visit the website at http://extranet.smuc.ac.uk/events-conferences/freedom-rights-power/Pages/default.aspx

http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=202526

This is a call for papers for a conference to be held at Lancaster University on 12 and 13 September 2013. The forthcoming seventieth anniversary of the conclusion of the Second World War offers an invitation to gender historians to consider how their approaches to the history of the War have introduced, contributed to, and reshaped understandings of the significance of the War and its impact across space and time, on men and women.

We are pleased to announce that the key note lecture on ‘Gender, Grief and Mourning in Wartime’ will be offered by Dr Lucy Noakes (University of Brighton)
We invite papers on all aspects of wartime gender history, with a particular interest in ensuring wide global and thematic coverage, including such as issues as political representation, employment practices, combat, propaganda, popular culture, sexual activity, legislation, disability and commemoration. A selection of papers will be included in an edited collection to appear in Palgrave Macmillan’s ‘Gender and History’ series. If you unable to attend the conference but would like to be considered for the edited volume, please contact the conference organisers. Proposals from postgraduate, postdoctoral and early career researchers are very welcome.

Abstracts or panel proposals should be sent to both Dr Corinna Peniston-Bird (Lancaster University) (c.peniston-bird@lancaster.ac.uk) and Dr Emma Vickers (Liverpool John Moores University) (E.L.Vickers@ljmu.ac.uk) by Friday 3 May 2013.

ISSUE OF WSQ , SPRING 2014 – DEBT
Guest Editors – Meena Alexander and Rosalind Petchesky

CALL FOR PAPERS

How do we make sense of debt? What does it mean to live in a world of debt – whether you are a college student in the United States, a struggling farmer in India, a homeowner, a country? What does it mean to forgive a debt? How have these meanings shifted over time? Do ancestral debt, ritual sacrifices to the gods, tribal and national vendettas, debts to parents and children, colonial debt, slavery and indenture hover as foreshadowings of the late capitalist turn, when debt becomes a way of life? Whether seeking justice or imposing injustice, debt has its own temporality, compressing and bringing forward pasts, reconfiguring and elongating futures.

As student loans in the US surpass $1 trillion, is student debt becoming a form of training and disciplining bodies, an apprenticeship in “debt enfranchisement”? Has debt become the newly normal way of performing citizenship? Under conditions of neoliberal globalization, green card holders and naturalized citizens find themselves beholden to the nation state; indeed this becomes an unwritten part of assimilation into America. Those without debt (mortgages, loans, credit cards) by definition have no credit—are discredited, literally disenfranchised and placed in a kind of moral and political state of exception at the extreme end of which reside undocumented migrants and refugees. What are the racialized, gendered, sexual, and generational effects, and affects, of these contemporary realities?

Yet debt also makes powerful ethical and historical claims on us that contain seeds of feminist, anti-racist, and progressive transformation. Demands for reparations or redress for the descendants of slavery and victims of apartheid or occupation are based on an assumption that, as Stephen Best and Saidiya Hartman write, “assessing debt and calculating injury [may] itself [be] a formula for justice.” But is the language of debt (“You owe me!”) sufficient to encompass ethical bonds and social justice? And what happens when debt overwhelms moral obligations, de-moralizing both debtor and creditor?

We invite contributions to an issue of WSQ on “Debt” that will probe these contradictions and their reverberations in economics, politics, poetry, visual arts, popular culture, and everyday life. Submissions may address, but need not be limited to, any of the following themes, keeping in mind how they involve relations of gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality:
· Student debt, universities in debt
· Debt as a moral and/or political language
· Mythic, ancestral, psychic dimensions of debt
· Debt across generations (within countries, families)
· Colonial debt
· National and transnational debt and deficits (US, Eurozone, elsewhere)
· Managing debt through micro-credit, micro-lending, structural adjustments
· Household debt and homelessness
· Medical debt
· Securitization of debt; banks as vampires
· Occupy initiatives around debt (StrikeDebt, Rolling Jubilee)
· Reparations and redress (for slavery, occupation, torture)
· Debt as injustice or justice
· Aesthetic dimensions of debt
· Sexual debt
· Trauma and debt
· Gift vs. Debt
· The female or transgender body and debt

If submitting academic work, please send articles by April 15, 2013 to the guest editors, Meena Alexander and Rosalind Petchesky, at WSQDebtIssue@gmail.com. Please send complete articles, not abstracts. Submission should not exceed 20 double spaced, 12-point font pages and should comply with the formatting guidelines at http://www.feministpress.org/wsq/submission-guidelines.

Poetry submissions should be sent to WSQ’s poetry editor, Kathleen Ossip, at WSQpoetry@gmail.com by April 15, 2013. Fiction, essay, and memoir submissions should be sent to WSQ’s fiction/nonfiction editor, Nicole Cooley, at WSQCreativeProse@gmail.com by April 15, 2013. Please review previous issues of WSQ to see what type of submissions we prefer before submitting poems or prose. Note that poetry and prose submissions may be held for six months or longer. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable if the poetry/prose editor is notified immediately of acceptance elsewhere. We do not accept work that has been previously published. Please provide all contact information in the body of the e-mail. If submitting poetry, paste submission into the body of the e-mail along with all contact information.

Art submissions should be sent to Margot Bouman at WSQArt@gmail.com by April 15, 2013. Art that has been reviewed and accepted must of 300 DPI or greater, saved as 4.25 inches wide or larger. These files should be saved as individual JPEGS or TIFFS.