Queer, Feminist, and Transgender Studies Research Cluster
2014 Conference
TransAmericas
University of California Davis
May 15 and 16, 2014

Call for Submissions
Deadline:  Friday, March 31

Keynote Speakers
Ana Minan Raquel
Rigoberto Gonzalez
Julio Salgado

2014 marks the twentieth anniversary of the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement, a neoliberal program with intentions to bring modernity to Latin America. 2014 also marks 20 years since the Zapatista indigenous rebellion surfaced to resist draconian neoliberal structural policies that plague the Americas. Coming out of social movement struggles against neoliberal currents, it became clear that the role of gender and sexuality formed an equally essential part in the shaping of both grassroots and state institutions.

This conference will examine sexuality, gender, and feminism in the shifts taking place within the Americas as they affect the circuits of queer migration, the transnationalism of feminist discourses, and the reconceptualization of forms of gendered subjectivity in relation to transcultural exchange within the hemisphere.

Reflecting on the past 20 years, it appears that Latin America is leading the continent when it comes to recognizing gender and sexuality-based rights.  While the US still struggles with federal marriage equality and workplace protections for LGBT people, Brazil has recognized same-sex civil unions for a decade; Argentina granted its citizens, including those underage, access to free coverage for gender reassignment surgery and the right to legally change their gender. Uruguay, Colombia, and Mexico have followed suit.

Discussions about gender and sexuality are at the forefront of hemispheric scholarship.For instance, how does gender and sexuality disrupt monolithic notions of the Americas? Given the advancements of gender and sexual rights based movements throughout the Americas, what are the negotiations of constructing new social policies within an economic and social neoliberal hegemony?

By rethinking “trans” in its relation to the hemisphere, this conference seeks to move away from strictly comparative analyses by examining transmigrations across borders, cultural straddling, as well as problematizing and queering the concept of the Americas itself. How do migrations across the Americas queer national belonging? How does gender, sexuality, and desire shape circuits of labor and pleasure?

Attending to gender and sexuality in the Americas in this way opens new possibilities for inquiry into relations of heteronormativity, homonationalism and imperialism; peculiar socialities in local, national and transnational contexts; disruptions to conventional narratives of a panethnic Latino culture; transgressions and gender negotiations.In particular, we are interested in breaking down borders between U.S. American and Latin American studies, as well as exploring how sexuality and gender work to police borders and citizenship.

Possible topics include:

Trans Politics
Gendered Configurations of Cultural Memory
Encounters and “Des-encuentros”
Rights Discourse and the Pinkwashing of the Americas
Transnational Feminisms
Reproduction and Nationalism
Regulation and Policing of non-normativity
Social Histories of queer sexualities in the Americas
Territories of resistance and eco-feminism
Embodiment of borders
Xenopobia and criminality of immigrants
Politics of Translation
Colonial religion and sexuality
Sexuality and racial formation
Medicine and Sexual difference
Public health policies/ regulation of sex work
Heritage and performance of identity
Rethinking gender in diaspora studies

We welcome submissions in English, Spanish and Portuguese.  If you are interested in presenting, sharing or discussing, please send an email to: icporras@ucdavis.edu (subject line: Trans Americas CFP) by Friday, March 31  and indicate whether you would like to:

1.  Present a paper (if so, please provide a title and brief abstract in the email body (250 words max))

2.  Organize a panel (if so, please provide the panel title and a panel abstract with paper titles in the email body (400 words max))

2.  Share work-in-progress as part of a roundtable workshop (if so, please summarize your line of inquiry or research interests in the email body  (250 words max))

3.  Present a performance (if so, please include a title, brief description of performance, and website if applicable in the email body)

Managing the Scene: Women in the Film Industry
An area of multiple panels for the 2014 Film & History Conference:
Golden Ages: Styles and Personalities, Genres and Histories
October 29-November 2, 2014
The Madison Concourse Hotel and Governor’s Club
Madison, WI (USA)
DEADLINE for abstracts: June 1, 2014

Area: Managing the Scene: Women in the Film Industry

Has there been a “golden age” for women working behind the camera—as writers or directors, for example, or as producers, editors, choreographers, costume designers, or set decorators? Women represented only 18% of the primary film management of the top 250 domestic grossing films of 2012, and directed only 4% of the fiction films slated for release in 2014. Just four women have been nominated for an Academy Award as Best Director of a fiction film, and only one (Kathryn Bigelow in 2009) took home the trophy. Is the golden age of women as principal film managers gone, in a flicker? Or it is upon us? What traits characterize a film “managed”—directed, produced, edited, written, choreographed, or even critiqued—by a woman? And why might those traits be golden?

This area invites abstracts that trace—or perhaps anticipate—the histories of women operating behind the cameras, as directors, producers, assistants, scholars, and critics. Proposals might address topics such as

•         career paths and strategies adopted by women in the film industry
•         critical histories and controversies explored by feminist film scholarship
•         the participation of women in national cinemas
•         women filmmakers’ roles in shaping the “women’s film” and other genres aimed at female audiences (family melodrama, romantic comedy)
•         women’s involvement in traditionally male-oriented film genres, from the action film to science fiction
•         creative innovation in feminist documentary, animation, and new media
•         gendered venues such as Women Make Movies and Lifetime Network
•         women as active audience members, fans, and remixers

Proposals for complete panels (three related presentations) are also welcome, but they must include an abstract and contact information, including an e-mail address, for each presenter. For updates and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website (www.filmandhistory.org).

Please e-mail your 200-word proposal by 1 June 2014 to the area co-chairs:

Debra White-Stanley
Keene State College
dwhitestanley@keene.edu

Karen A. Ritzenhoff
Central Connecticut State University
Ritzenhoffk@CCSU.edu

In most societies the heroic is in many ways gendered. When considering the heroic, attributes of masculinity might first come to mind. Yet, from a historical perspective it becomes apparent that heroizations often also have feminine connotations. The social and cultural production of the heroic cannot be analyzed exclusively in terms of masculinity (and masculinity-studies), nor can we regard women or femininity simply as exceptions in this field. Rather, the relational character of the category gender needs to be taken seriously.

The fundamental relationality, the ‘constructedness’, and the historicity of gender are among the core assumptions in gender studies today. Based on this and by interdisciplinary cooperation the conference will examine forms, mediums and processes of heroization as well as discourses of heroic transgression, exceptionality or veneration for certain periods in time.

In order to give adequate consideration to the complexities of the historical entanglement between gender and heroization, we would like to use gender as an analytical tool in a new way. Speaking metaphorically, one might understand gender as a ‘tracer’ that ‘leads’ us, which way we may uncover new aspects of heroic ideas and concepts. In today’s natural sciences, a tracer is a substance that helps with the exploration of certain organisms or environments. In experiments, the tracer passes through these environments and reacts to each of them in a different way. Hence, the tracer itself is not the object of study; rather a third element distinguishable from the tracer is explored. Therefore we propose to use gender systematically to ‘trace’ various historical ‘environments’ of the heroic. We are interested in gender relations, men and women as heroes or heroines and their (intersectionally differentiated) construction. Primarily, however, we are interested in

(a) the heroic itself,
(b) the  historical contexts which shape the heroic,
(c) its medial and performative manifestations and
(d) its spatiotemporal trends and transformations.

We welcome scholars from all fields of the humanities and social sciences. The conference focusses on areas of European culture at three different points in time –1650, 1750 and 1850 – which are to be discussed from the viewpoints of different disciplines. Proposals including an abstract of max. 2000 characters and a one-page CV should be submitted by March 28, 2014 to gender@sfb948.uni-freiburg.de. The conference will be held in English. A collection of essays based on selected presentations from the conference is to be published.

An extended version of the call for papers with further conceptual research questions can be found at: www.sfb948.uni-freiburg.de/gender_en

WISC is seeking applicants for residential fellowships at Acequia madre House. These fellowships are intended as professional development opportunities for women and men who wish to pursue work in the four areas of WISC focus: women in the arts, sciences, cultural preservation and business. Fellows will live on-site alongside one another and may find their interactions contribute to their understandings of these linked fields. There is a $1000 stipend to off set the cost of living while in residence.

Applications are welcome from individuals needing a place to work on a publication or creative work, scholars with research interests in a local archive or collection, project developers seeking a space to develop a program or proposal, or others whose work relates to advancing scholarship and awareness of the achievements of women in one of the four areas of central concern to WISC.

Email: residency@wisc-amh.org
Visit the website at http://wisc-amh.org/programs/residency-program/

The Iowa Women’s Archives (University of Iowa Libraries) announces a grant
of $1000 to fund travel to Iowa City, Iowa, to conduct research in the Iowa
Women’s Archives.  The collections of the Iowa Women’s Archives are global
in scope and include rich sources on the history of the women’s movement,
political activism, African Americans, rural women, and Latinas, especially
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  Proposals must be
postmarked by April 15, 2014.

Additional information can be found on the Iowa Women’s Archives
webpage:  http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/iwa/kerber/

Anna Flaming (PhD, History, University of Iowa, 2013) for the Iowa Women’s
Archives
annaleighflaming@gmail.com

We would like to invite proposals for the conference ‘Gender, History and Society’ to be held at the University of Winchester on 4-5 September 2014. This conference aims to draw together scholars and postgraduate students from different disciplines who share a common interest in the study of gender to explore the impact and interaction of gender with both history and society. This includes, but is not limited to, history, religious studies, theology, psychology, sociology, literature studies, archaeology and the Arts. We are also willing to accommodate both paper and poster formats for presenting your research and would also consider alternative forms of presentation. We would also be keen to hear from students and academics who were willing to participate in a roundtable session on pedagogy-please contact us if you are interested in taking part.

Please send a proposal of approximately 250 words for a paper or poster and approximately 500 words for a complete 3-paper panel to CGSevents@winchester.ac.uk by 1 May 2014.

More at H-NET: http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=212014

Finding Women in the Archives: Experiences and Stories
from Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe

Deadline September 15, 2014

In the early decades of women’s and gender history as an academic
discipline, feminist historians devoted a lot of time and effort to
finding historical sources by and about women and making those sources
available to a wider audience. It turned out that women’s absence in the
historiography was not primarily due to a lack of sources but was
rather a consequence of (mostly male) historians’ conceptual frameworks
and assumptions about what counted as “history.” There is currently a
strong interest in rethinking archives, both as official institutions
and repositories of documents and in the broader sense of collections
holding “traces of the past,” sometimes put together with the help of
new technologies.[1] Recent publications challenge the older assumption
that archives are neutral and fixed repositories of
information and instead reconceptualize them as “artifacts of history”
(in Antoinette Burton’s words), shaped by material circumstances, state
interests, war and politics, the decisions of those who deposit
materials and of archivists, and much more. In addition to historians
rethinking archives, the on-going digital revolution has a huge impact
in the archival world. More and more archival descriptions and primary
sources are becoming available on-line.

We invite historians of women and gender in the region of Central,
Eastern and Southeastern Europe to reflect on their archival experiences
and the issues mentioned above. Questions we are interested in include,
but are not limited to:

–          What is the state of the archives in the country you are
working on and how has this influenced the questions historians ask, the
kind of narratives they can tell and, in general, what counts as proper
history? How has the archival landscape shaped research on women’s and
gender history?
–          How and to what extent has the specific nineteenth- and
twentieth-century history of the region influenced the state and
availability of archives, both more generally and specifically with
respect to the history of women?
–          Have efforts been made to make women’s records visible and
available?
–          Have you developed specific research strategies to find
traces of women or to work around the limited sources available?
–          Did you make exciting discoveries when looking for women in
the archives? Sometimes a single document is enough to change our
historical understanding of women’s presence and agency; are there
examples of such findings in CESEE and their impact on our
interpretations?
–          What is the role of oral history research and the creation
of oral history archives in developing women’s and gender history in the
region?
–          What counts as an archive, what do historians regard as
“reliable sources,” and how do they deal with different forms of
“evidence”?
–          Are efforts being made to create and maintain archives of
other previously marginalized groups?
–          Does the digital revolution lead to a greater availability
and visibility of women’s archives/sources relevant for women’s and
gender history?

In addition to the specific theme of Finding Women in the Archives, we
welcome submissions on all topics related to women’s and gender history
in CESEE on an on-going basis.

Submissions of up to 8,000 words (including notes) can be sent to
Francisca de Haan (Aspasia Editor-in-Chief) at dehaanf@ceu.hu or to
Melissa Feinberg at mfeinberg@history.rutgers.edu

For more information, please write to one of the editors or visit
http://journals.berghahnbooks.com/asp/, where you can also download the
Aspasia Guidelines for Authors.

[1]See for example A. Burton, ed.,Archive
Stories (2005); N. Chaudhuri et al, eds., Contesting Archives (2010);
and T. Zanish-Belcher and A. Voss, eds., Perspectives on Women’s
Archives (2013).

Francisca de Haan
Central European University
dehaanf@ceu.hu