The deadline for submitting proposals for the 2015 Rural Women’s Studies
Association Triennial Conference in San Marcos, Texas, is May 15, 2014.

Call for Presentations and Papers
“The Local is Global”: Gender and Rural Connections across Time and Place

Rural Women’s Studies Association Triennial Conference
Hosted by Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas
February 12-14, 2015

The theme of the 2015 conference “The Local is Global”: Gender and Rural
Connections across Time and Place emphasizes the importance of rural
women’s local activities and experiences – both historical and
contemporary – to global affairs. At the same time, it highlights the
gendered impacts of and reactions to global processes – including
globalization, international and transnational trends, policies and
programs, and climate change -at the local level. It especially aspires to
explore how these different scales are connected across time and space.

RWSA is an international association for the advancement and promotion of
research on rural women and gender in a historical perspective. Worldwide,
the Association aims to encourage research, to promote existing and
forthcoming scholarship, and to establish and maintain links with
contemporary organizations around the interests of rural women, rural
communities and the rural environment, including farming and the
agricultural sector, from a gender perspective. RWSA welcomes academic
scholars, public historians and archivists, graduate students, and
representatives of rural organizations and communities to be association
members and conference participants.

Along with paper presentations and panels, proposals for workshops,
interactive sessions, posters, open discussions, performances, readings,
audiovisual presentations are very much encouraged. Especially welcome are
those with inter-, trans- or multi-disciplinary approaches, and/or that
connect rural women’s / gender history and present-day political,
ecological or social and economic concerns, worldwide. We are also looking
for submissions that integrate creative work with the conference themes.
We plan to have at least one evening dedicated to creative work, but are
interested in integrating artists from visual, film, performative and
literary genres into the fabric of the conference as well.

RWSA aims to discuss and further develop the thematic areas relevant to
rural contexts, such as gender and labor, food, health, education, the
professions, cultural heritage, leadership, migration, technology,
communication, iconography and creative expression in rural contexts.
Proposals for this conference are especially encouraged to also include:

* Rural women’s voices as forms of power and arbiters of change;

* Differences and changes in rural femininities and masculinities;

* The intersection of rural women and/or gender with other
socio-cultural dimensions such as wealth / class, ethnicity / race, age /
generation, religion, sexuality, health status;

* Gender and/or women in social and other reform movements, social
and welfare policy initiatives, rural grassroots organizations, especially
with respect to rural communities, agriculture, the rural environment and
natural resource management;

* International, transnational, governmental and/or non-governmental
organizations and their gendered rural policies or gender-specific
policies on rural women and men;

* Gender and/ or women in intersections between non-indigenous rural
populations and indigenous peoples – commonalities in struggles,
collaborative experiences, similarities, differences, breakthroughs, etc;

* Knowledge and scholarship in rural gender/women’s history and
women’s integration in rural history.

Please submit the following information by 15 May 2014.

1. Title of paper/session/workshop/performance (working title is acceptable).

2. 400 word description/abstract of paper or proposed session/workshop, etc.

3. Brief vita/bio of presenter or session participants and complete contact
information.

Please indicate if your proposal does not fit in the regular session time
of 1.5 hour with three presentations and discussion. We will get in touch
if the proposal has been accepted.

Submissions should be sent electronically to: RWSA2015@gmail.com.

If it is not possible to send your proposal electronically, please send by
regular mail to the following address if you are submitting from the
Americas:
Cynthia Prescott
History Department, University of North Dakota
221 Centennial Dr., Stop 8096
Grand Forks, ND 58202-8096
USA

Submissions by post from elsewhere in the world should be sent to:
Margreet van der Burg
Rural History, Social Sciences, Wageningen University
Hollandseweg 1, NL-6706 KN Wageningen
The Netherlands

For information on travel grants and letters of invitation, contact Rebecca
Montgomery, rm53@txstate.edu<mailto:rm53@txstate.edu>. For additional
information on the RWSA, please go to the organization website,
http://www.ohio.edu/history/rwsa/

This conference follows on from those held at Kingston (2012) and Cornell
(2013), themed around women and magazines, and will be held at Oxford
Brookes University on 5 and 6 June 2015.  We have selected a theme that
will allow for a wide range of papers and we encourage submissions
from scholars at all stages of their careers. We especially welcome
proposals that incorporate the following themes: food, advertising, digital
platforms/presentations, celebrities, sport, marketing, memoirs, fashion,
internationalisation, and all forms of identity/representational politics.

The organisers encourage collaborative efforts, in both individual paper
and panel submissions.

Submit abstracts of no more than 250 words to
consuming.culture.conference@gmail.com by 1 October 2014

This conference will also incorporate a poster session that will allow
participants to feature visual aspects of magazines.  Queries about this
mode of presentation and abstract of 150-250 words can be directed to
consuming.culture.conference@gmail.com by 1 October 2014.

The conference is jointly sponsored by Oxford Brookes University (UK),
Arcadia University (US), and the University of East Anglia (UK).  For
additional information and updates, please go to
http://openbrookes.net/consumingculture/.

WAGADU: Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies

Special Issue: Women, Gender and Government Outsourcing in Comparative Perspectives

Guest editors:

S.N. Nyeck, PhD., Clarkson University, New York  sngonyec@clarkson.edu
Orly Benjamin, PhD., Bar IIan University, Israel Orly.Benjamin@biu.ac.il

CALL FOR PAPERS

Since 1980s, consensus on the prominent role of the state and its bureaucracy in the production and delivery of public services has been shifting. Searches for alternatives to organizing and managing the public sector have fundamentally redefined the role of government in economic wellness and development. Today, the New Public Management (NPM) approach that seeks cost reduction in the public sector through de-unionization has become dominant around the world. NPM emphasizes market-based solutions to public and social services delivery. The theoretical and pragmatic rationales for complete outsourcing, privatization, or a combination of both have implications for women in the supply chain for public services. For instance, a shift in the role of the state as an employer of women in the service and caring occupations around the world deserves attention.

The role and impact of new public-private partnerships –compared to other forms of privatization- for the delivery of public services for women and by women, however, remain under researched. This special issue seeks to bring together work that specifically addresses the intersection of gender or women and government outsourcing. We encourage work that engages with gender or women within the whole spectrum of government outsourcing: women or gender in the private and public sectors as employees, regulators, producers, and consumers of public services. We’re also interested in understanding how government outsourcing re-shapes gendered ethno-national-racial-class divides. Work that addresses alternative and/or comparable models to outsourcing is solicited.

Government outsourcing affects and empowers women in various ways. We welcome theoretical and empirical submissions from all disciplines, ideologies, and regions of the world. Below is a non-exhaustive list of potential areas of interest that could be explored through women’s or gender lenses.

Topics under consideration:

– Women or gender preferential public procurement (policy, regulation, implementation)
– Labor laws / rights / policy / labor procurement contracts – are employment conditions stipulated in the contract? Are labor contracts violated? Are contracts controled / monitored by a service purchasing body?
– Development aid / tied aid / the role of international financial institutions and agreements (World Bank, WTO, UNCITRAL, EU-EPA, ACP countries, AGOA…etc.,).
– Contract negotiation (national versus international standard…)
– Feminist theory and government outsourcing
– Women or gender in the supply chain (small business, global corporatism)
– Health and medicine procurement (HIV medicine, malaria…)
– Women or gender and the profession (public procurement analyst and practitioner)
– Women or gender and outsourcing the war on drugs/ terror
– Women/gender and prison outsourcing/immigration
– Women or gender and outsourcing social welfare
– Is there a history of women/ gender in government outsourcing?
– Outsourcing or reverse outsourcing? What works best for women?
– Gendered discourse of market-competition and efficiency in the public sector
-The economics of gender/women in government outsourcing
– Women’s employment, de-unionization, and new unionism
– Women’s employment, procurement contracts, and inequalities

Potential contributors should email an abstract (300 words) or a proposed paper to the guest editors S.N. Nyeck, PhD., sngonyec@clarkson.edu and Orly Benjamin, PhD., Orly.Benjamin@biu.ac.il by June 1, 2014 with the title “Wagadu_abstract” in the subject line of the email.  Authors of accepted abstracts are expected to submit a full paper by November 1, 2014. This special issue is scheduled for publication in 2015.

The Tenth Southern Conference on Women’s History

Re-membering/Gendering: Women, Historical Tourism, and Public History

June 11-14, 2015

College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina

Call for Papers

The Southern Association for Women Historians (SAWH) invites proposals for its tenth triennial conference, to be held June 11-14, 2015 at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina.  Co-sponsored by the College of Charleston, The Citadel, and Clemson University, the conference provides a stimulating and congenial forum for discussing all aspects of women’s history.  Its program seeks to reflect the best in recent scholarship and the diversity of our profession, including university professors, graduate students, museum curators, public historians, and independent scholars.

We invite sessions on any dimension of women’s and gender history and particularly welcome presentations that explore the conference themes: public history, tourism, memory, historic commemoration, and marketing history.

The program committee seeks proposals for the following:

1) Panels (We prefer to receive proposals for complete, 3-paper sessions but will consider individual papers as well).
2) Roundtables (Informal discussions of a historical or professional issue)
3) Working Group Discussions (Informal discussions of pre-circulated papers)
4) Scholarly Shorts (Five-minute presentations of a research project)

Scholars interested in chairing or commenting on a session are invited to submit a 500-word vita.

For more information on these presentation formats, submission guidelines, and the submission email address, please visit http://thesawh.org/

The submissions deadline is August 1, 2014.  Inquiries (but not submissions) may be directed to Blain Roberts, program committee chair, at broberts@csufresno.edu.

Women in Technological History: A Society for the History of Technology
(SHOT) Special Interest Group (SIG)
http://www.historyoftechnology.org/interest_groups/index.html

WITH TRAVEL AWARD – A Call for “New Voices” in Technological History

The SHOT Special Interest Group Women in Technological History [WITH]
announces its travel award for 2014. The purpose of the award is to
encourage participation of “new voices” at the annual meeting of the
Society for the History of Technology [SHOT]. WITH invites applications
from scholars presenting topics or perspectives underrepresented in SHOT
as well as from individuals who can contribute to the annual meeting’s
geographic and cultural diversity.

The SHOT 2014 meeting will be held in Dearborn, Michigan, from November
6th to 9th. For meeting details, see:
http://www.historyoftechnology.org/annual_meeting.html.

Eligibility for the WITH Travel Award is open to individuals who are
giving a paper at the SHOT annual meeting. Priorities for the WITH award
include supporting scholars or graduate students who are non-US,
non-Western or who are new to SHOT, belong to a group underrepresented in
SHOT, and or whose paper addresses issues of gender, race, ethnicity,
and/or difference in the history of technology.

The Travel Award is designed to help defray some of the costs associated
with attending the SHOT annual meeting.  Up to three awards may be
offered.  Awardees will receive a check for $250, with the possibility of
additional funds depending on stated need and WITH’s resources.  The
winner(s) will also be honoured as our guest(s) at the annual WITH
breakfast or lunch.

To apply, please send a cover letter and brief budget outlining
anticipated expenses associated with your trip to Dearborn (including any
grants or funding you have already received), an abstract of your proposed
paper with evidence that it has been accepted by the SHOT program
committee, and a one page curriculum vitae.  All application materials
should be forwarded to the chair of the award committee at
pedwards@shepherd.edu.  The application deadline for the WITH Travel Award
is July 5, 2014.

Pamela C. Edwards, PhD
History Department
Shepherd University
Shepherdstown, WV

The editors of Women and Genocide: An Anthology to be published by Canadian Scholar’s Press Inc./Women’s Press in 2015, invite chapter submissions of original research from interdisciplinary scholars on narratives, memoirs, and testimonies of women survivors of the following genocides: North American indigenous, Armenian, Holocaust/Jewish, Holocaust/Roma-Sinti, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Guatemala, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Sudan.  This edited book examines the unique experiences of women in comparative genocidal contexts.  In our view, gender matters. We are interested in examining how women processed their identity as women in both a physical and emotional context. In a physical context we are interested in exploring how women addressed their gendered identity, for example, if they lost their hair, experienced amenorrhea, were forced to dress uniformly, or suffered sexual exploitation.  Emotionally, we are interested in understanding how women processed what was happening to them as individuals and their gendered roles as mothers, daughters, sisters, etc. in the larger genocidal context.

Our approach is a four point comparative framework derived from earlier Holocaust studies (Ofer and Weitzman 1998) that examines (1) the impact of culturally defined roles of women; (2) women’s “anticipatory reactions,” not just in the sense of what perpetrators would do to men, but to women as well. In examining anticipatory reactions, we explore women’s political and social awareness as the genocidal process unfolds; (3) the extent that women were treated differently than men; and (4) their reactions and processes as women to the physical and emotional circumstances of experiencing genocide. Each chapter should also contain a short historical summary of the genocide.

If you are interested in contributing a chapter, please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words and a short bio-sketch by June 1^st 2014 to Dr. JoAnn DiGeorgio-Lutz at digeorgj@tamug.edu or Donna Gosbee at gosbeed@msn.com.  If your abstract is accepted, you will be expected to submit a completed chapter (maximum 8000 words) by August 31, 2014.

Editors: Dr. JoAnn DiGeorgio-Lutz, Texas A&M University Galveston and Donna Gosbee, Texas A&M University-Commerce.

http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=213086