Boston Seminar on the History of Women and Gender

Thursday, February 13, 2014, at 5:30 p.m.
Location: Schlesinger Library, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Gloria Whiting, Harvard University
“How can the wife submit?” African Families Negotiate Gender and Slavery in New England
Comment: Barbara Krauthamer, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

This paper discusses various ways in which the everyday realities of slavery shaped gender relations in Afro-New England families. While the structure of slave families in the region was unusually matrifocal, these families nonetheless exhibited a number of patriarchal tendencies. Enslaved African families in New England therefore complicate the assumption of much scholarship that the structure of slave families defined their normative values.

Please RSVP if you plan to attend. To respond, email seminars@masshist.org or phone 617-646-0568. As usual, there will be four programs in this series, two each at the Schlesinger Library and the Massachusetts Historical Society. The complete schedule is available at http://www.masshist.org/2012/calendar/seminars/women-and-gender.

Each seminar consists of a discussion of a pre-circulated paper provided to subscribers. (Papers will be available at the event for those who choose not to subscribe.) Afterwards the host institution will provide a light buffet supper. As in the past, the essays will be madeavailable to subscribers as .pdfs through the seminar’s webpage, http://www.masshist.org/2012/calendar/seminars/women-and-gender. Subscribe to the 2013-2014 series via this page to receive the full series of papers.

Re-posted from the H-WOMEN listserv.

Our first anthology of stories about women in STEM, A Passion for Science: Stories of Discovery and Invention, has been a fantastic success and it’s time to start thinking about the next one! To that end, we would like to invite you to submit an idea for articles about individual women or, especially, groups of women in:

• Science
• Medicine
• Technology
• Engineering
• Maths
• Pioneering users of technology

In the latter category, we’re after fascinating stories of women, individually or as part of a group, who played important roles as the users of technology, such as the women who ran the Doodson-Légé Tide Predicting Machine,or the women pilots of WWII.

We would like to get a fairly even distribution across the categories outlined above, but are also open to ideas that don’t fit in quite so neatly, so if you have an oddball idea, we want to hear it! Please also note that A Passion for Science featured quite a lot of astronomers, so we’re looking for a wider variety of sciences, and more women from the tech, eng, and maths categories, for this second book.

Initially, we would like you to send us 250 words on the woman or women that you want to write about, explaining why they are notable or interesting, along with a link to a sample of your writing. To submit your idea, please complete our form by 28 February 2014 and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can after that. The deadline for final submission is 30 April.

Ultimately, we’re looking for 20 articles of between 2,000 and 6,000 words. At this point, we don’t have a budget, but we’re hoping to raise some money to pay for editing, cover design and an honorarium for writers. Profits go towards supporting Ada Lovelace Day, which remains essentially a budgetless organisation run by a very small group of dedicated volunteers.

If you need a bit of inspiration, do take a look at some of the sample chapters from last year’s book. And if you want to know exactly what you’ll be getting yourself into, please take a look at our draft author notes and style guide.

Submit your abstract or find more information at http://findingada.com/book/call-for-submissions/

Call for papers: IFRWH Conference at Jinan, China, 27-29 August 2015

The next IFRWH conference will be held at Jinan, China in August 2015 in conjunction with the CISH conference (23-29 August). A number of themes and panels on women’s histories have been included in the main conference and that is a big step in taking women’s histories forward and a measure of the acknowledgment of the work of feminist historians.  The IFRWH conference will be held over one and half days at the end of the CISH conference, and will include a meeting at which the new officers and board of the Federation will be elected.

Based on the proposals that national committees originally put forward for the main CISH conference, and on consultation with the IFRWH board, we have decided on the following overarching theme for the conference:

Women and Modernity
The drive towards modernity has been one of the ways in which large-scale transformations in society in economic, political, and social have been pursued across the world over the last three centuries. The conceptual framework of modernity has straddled  diverse global locations. The tensions and conflicts in such broad-based changes encapsulate colonial and imperialist drives not only between the “west” and the “east,” but also within the “east” and the “south’. Women’s particular gendered experiences in nations and regions which have undergone these often rapid changes have led women to emerge as active agents, redefining/refining our notions of resistant subjectivities.
In order to maximize participation in the conference by delegates from all the different national committees of the IFRWH, we would also welcome proposals relating to these two conference sub-themes:

1.  Retrieving women’s histories from small archives and recently uncovered collections (including any period of historical enquiry)

2.  Resistant subjectivities

We hope you will be keen to participate in the IFRWH conference in this very important new location in China in 2015.

To download the conference paper/panel proposal form, click below.

Click Here for Paper/Panel Proposal Form

For more details, see the conference website: http://www.ifrwh.com/

*Feral Feminisms CFP ISSUE 3 – Feminine Feelers Deadline – 15 March 2014*

*Feral Feminisms,* a new independent, inter-media, peer reviewed, open access online journal, invites submissions for a special issue entitled “Feminine Feelers,” guest edited by Zorianna Zurba. Submitted contributions
may include full-length academic essays (about 5000 – 7000 words), shorter creative pieces, cultural commentaries, or personal narratives (about 500 – 2500 words), poetry, photo-essays, short films/video (uploaded to Vimeo), visual and sound art (jpeg Max 1MB), or a combination of these.
*Please direct inquiries and submissions to Guest Editor, Zorianna Zurba.*

Prior to the recent Affective Turn in critical and cultural theory,
feminist theory and philosophy had already been critiquing the role of
rationality and the exclusion of emotion in Western thought. Elspeth Probyn
(1993) argued for the inclusion of experiential accounts in understanding
the relationship between feminist epistemology and ontology; and, Alison
Jaggar (1989) worked to restore inquiry as the wisdom of love to Western
epistemology by validating emotional acumen as a highly developed skill.
For Jaggar, the one who feels different is an emotional outlaw. Emotional
outlaws are a kind of precursor, grandmother or godmother, to Ahmed’s
(2010) affect aliens: the feminist killjoy, who is angered by the sexist
joke, or the melancholic migrant, who longs for something lost, or the
unhappy queer, whose happiness is already impossible. Claire Hemmings
(2012) has argued that being outside of emotional norms can offer a kind
of unification, where affective dissonance is a starting point for
feminist politics and can encourage affective solidarity.

But what of a return to previous conceptualizations of feeling in
understanding the feminine and feminism? Luce Irigaray (1991), for example,
writes of the erasure of the figure of the female lover and the
simultaneous loss of the expression of feminine carnality, female divinity,
and the representation of the female body. In light of these and other
recent works (Cvetkovich, 2012; Grosz, 2011), how might we consider moving
forward by taking into consideration feminine feelings?

Feminine Feelers are flustered, fraught, and feral. Feminine Feelers recall
feminine modalities of feeling that have gone otherwise. Feminine Feelers
ponder the position of emotional misfits such as female mystics, poets,
artist, grandmothers, godmothers, cyborgs, golems, lovers, and Other(ed)
figures. Feminine Feelers also highlight moments in feminist thought which
illuminate the role of feelings and accounts of the body. What challenges
does the turn to affect pose to feminist theory? How might we cultivate the
sensory in order to tune into what is going on? Is the female an outsider,
or is the feminist the outsider? How does outsider status offer a critical
distance from cultural and emotional hegemonies? Must this distance be
maintained in order to preserve difference?

This special issue of *Feral Feminisms* seeks to bring together scholars,
activists, and artists to think through and feel through categories.
Submitted contributions may include papers, visual art, film, poetry and
literary pieces. Submissions are encouraged to address, but are not limited to, the
following topics:

● Cults of the feminine
● Indigenous femininities
● Figures and examples: emotional outlaws, affect aliens, fantastic feelers
● Vocabularies of feeling
● Feminine and feminist genealogies
● Theoretical and methodological disjunctures within feminist and queer
phenomenology, affect studies,
cultural emotion studies, cultural anthropology
● Art and literature movements and their relationship to affects: the new
sincerity, Remodernism, etc.
● Edges, excesses, and limits of Feminine Feelers and feminine feelers
● Animality, feelings, and non-human animals

For submission guidelines, please see:
http://feralfeminisms.com/submission-guidelines/

—
visit our website: www.feralfeminisms.com
like us on facebook: www.facebook.com/feralfeminisms

9th EDC – Education and Development Conference 2014
5-7 March 2014, Bangkok, Thailand
Bangkok, Thailand

Join us for our 9th Annual Education and Development Conference, an
innovative and exciting opportunity for individuals interested in education
and development Learn, share and network with prominent scholars and
professionals in the field.

Inquiries: contact@tomorrowpeople.org
Web address: http://www.ed-conference.org
Sponsored by: Tomorrow People Organization

Dear Scholars, Students, NGO and governmental representatives:

We are happy to announce EDC 2014, hosted by Tomorrow People Organization.
This highly exciting and challenging international Conference is intended to
be a forum, discussion and networking place for academics, researchers,
professionals, administrators, educational leaders, policy makers, industry
representatives, advanced students, and others interested in Education.

More specifically, it targets:

Scholars: Share your research, learn some new approaches, hear about others’
experiences and pass on your knowledge and experience.

Government officials and policy makers: Learn about the best practices,
educational development strategies and educational systems around the world;
network with other policy makers and NGOs working in the field of supporting
educational development.

NGOs: Network with other international NGOs, possible donors and colleagues
from around the world and share your achievements and strategies with
others.

Graduate students: Meet your colleagues from around the world, make new
friends, and improve your knowledge and communication skills.

Company representatives: This is a chance to improve your leadership skills,
learn more about the importance of permanent education in achieving the high
performances of your organization, meet your colleagues, exchange ideas and
establish new connections and partnerships.

Others: Anyone who is interested in making some positive changes around them
and gaining new knowledge, skills and friends and becoming more useful to
their own communities.

Education and Development Conference 2014 will provide unlimited resources
and opportunities to interact with prominent leaders in the field of
education and greatly expand on your global network of scholars and
professionals.

We welcome: ORAL, POSTER and VIRTUAL presentations. Early submissions are
strongly encouraged due to limited space in the venue, as applications are
reviewed on a rolling admission basis – as long as space is available.

The conference topics include, but are not limited to: Adult Education, Arts
Education, Anthropology and Education, Curriculum, Early Childhood
Education, Educational Systems and Policy, Educational Psychology,
Environmental Education, Gender and Education, Guidance and Counseling,
Health Education, Higher Education, History of Education, IT and Education,
Language Education and Literacy, Lifelong Learning, Mathematics Education,
Mentoring and Coaching, Multicultural Issues in Education, Philosophy of
Education, Physical Education, Primary Education, Quality in Education,
Race, Ethnicity and Education, Research and Development, Rural Education,
Science Education, Secondary Education, Sociology of Education, Special and
Inclusive Education, Teacher Education, Values and Education, Vocational
Education and Training, Other areas of Education.

Papers presented at the conference will be published in a dedicated ISBN
publication of EDC2014 Conference Proceedings.

We look forward to seeing you in Bangkok in March 2014, as one of our
participants, coming from over 60 countries worldwide!

Sincerely,

EDC 2014 Organizing Committee
Email: contact@tomorrowpeople.org

Flying: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Kate Millett

30 May 2014
School of Arts
Birkbeck, University of London
Supported by Feminist Review Trust

Keynote: Victoria Hesford (SUNY Stony Brook University), author of Feeling
Women’s Liberation (Duke UP, 2013)

Papers are invited for an interdisciplinary conference dedicated to the work of Kate Millett. Millett became an iconic figure of second wave
feminism after the publication of Sexual Politics in 1970. As one of the
first pieces of academic feminism to come out of the American academy,
Sexual Politics was a handbook of the Women’s Liberation Movement.
Moreover, after appearing on the cover of Time Magazine in the same year as
Sexual Politics was published, Millett became one of the Movement’s most
recognizable faces. However, arguably, Millett has since largely
disappeared from both the public eye and contemporary feminism, despite the
fact that she has continued to publish (Flying [1974], The Prostitution
Papers [1975], The Loony-Bin Trip [1990], Sita [2000], and Mother Millet
[2001]), make films (Three Lives [1971], Not a Love Story [1981], The Real
Yoko Ono [2001]), and sculpt.

In aiming to reflect on/account for/address/redress some of this silence,
this conference is compelled on the one hand, by recent calls in feminism
to re-engage with the second wave (see Hemmings’ Why Stories Matter, Duke,
2011) and to re-visit foundational feminist texts (see Merck and Sanford’s
Further Adventures of the Dialectic of Sex, Palgrave, 2010). Moreover, it
is also influenced by Victoria Hesford’s recent Feeling Women’s Liberation
(Duke, 2013), which places Millett as a central figure in the production
and remembrance of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Hesford’s publication
signals that now is perhaps a timely moment to create a larger dialogue
about Millett; to ask questions about Millett’s role in feminist history;
and to discuss how her work is situated in and amongst more contemporary
feminist concerns. The conference thus aims to: consider new frameworks for
approaching Millett’s past or ongoing work; interrogate the politics and
possibilities of the second wave; explore the politics of memory,
forgetting, and citation in feminism; critically reflect on the potential
difficulties of some of Millett’s past work travelling into the present;
and to consider whether and how (despite her ongoing feminist work) Millett
might be produced as ‘untimely’ in the feminist present. Topics might
include, but are not limited to:

Affect and the second wave
Feminism and autobiographical writing
Feminism and forgetting
Feminist film-making
Generational politics or the politics of mother/daughter relationships
Lesbian politics and the Women’s Liberation Movement
Narrating mental illness
Non-monogamy as feminist politics
Race and feminism
Sexuality and the second wave
Sexual Politics and feminist literary criticism
The media and the second wave
The Women’s Liberation Movement

The conference invites proposals for individual papers, panels, or artistic
responses from any discipline and theoretical perspective. Submissions are
welcome from students, activists, artists, academics, and unaffiliated
researchers. Please send a title and 300 word abstract for a 20 minute
paper along with your name, affiliation (if applicable), and 100 word
bibliography to s.mcbean@bbk.ac.uk by 28 February 2013.

The conference is organized by Dr Sam McBean (Birkbeck, University of
London) and is being supported by the Feminist Review Trust.

Select papers will be sought for publication as part of an edited
collection. For further information please email Sam at s.mcbean@bbk.ac.uk

Conference website: flyingkatemillettconference.wordpress.com

The Sophia Smith Collection and the Smith College Archives at Smith College are pleased to offer four annual research support programs: the Margaret Storrs Grierson Scholars-in-Residence Awards, the Caroline D. Bain Scholars-in-Residence Awards, the Friends of the Smith College Library (FSCL) Scholars-in-Residence Awards, and the Travel-to-Collections Fund. Grierson, Bain, and FSCL Scholars will receive awards of $2500, intended to support research visits of four to six weeks. For smaller projects, researchers should apply for Travel-to-Collection funds.

We welcome applications from faculty members, independent scholars, and graduate students who live at least 50 miles from Northampton, Massachusetts, and whose research interests and objectives would be significantly advanced by extended research in the holdings of either the Sophia Smith Collection or the Smith College Archives.

Bain, Grierson, and FSCL scholars will be expected to give a work-in-progress colloquium to the Smith College community during their residency. It is expected that at some later time they will send the Sophia Smith Collection and the College Archives a copy of the final results of their research, whether in published or unpublished form.

We encourage potential applicants to contact our reference archivists to inquire about the relevance of our collections for their projects before submitting their proposals. Reference queries can be made online or by calling (413) 585-2970.

Applications for the Bain, Grierson, or FSCL Scholars-in-Residence Fellowships should include six copies * of the following: 1) the completed cover sheet (print out the cover sheet page and complete it by hand); 2) a proposal not exceeding six double-spaced pages, in 12-pitch font; and 3) a curriculum vitae. The proposal should describe the research to be undertaken and its relationship to current research in the field, the holdings to be consulted and their significance to the work, and the current status of the project as well as your plans and schedule for completing it. Two letters of recommendation (one copy of each), clearly indicating the applicant’s name and project title, should be sent under separate cover.

All applicants will be considered for the Bain, Grierson, and FSCL fellowships; you need only submit one application.

Applications must be postmarked by February 15th. Awards will be announced April 1st.

Travel-to-Collections funds are available to offset travel expenses of researchers engaged in a study that would benefit from access to the holdings at Smith College. We also welcome and encourage requests from researchers at the pre-proposal stage who would like to survey our holdings as they formulate their research agendas. We review applications for these funds once each year. Applications should be postmarked by February 15th. Awards will be announced April 1st.

Applicants for Travel-to-Collections funds should submit six copies * of the following: 1) a curriculum vita; 2) a letter outlining their research interests and needs; and 3) a proposed budget (not to exceed $1000) for travel and accommodations. We do not cover costs for meals, photocopies or other research-related costs. Graduate students should also arrange for two letters of recommendation (one copy of each, to be sent either with the application or separately) that speak to their scholarly experience, ability and promise.

http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=208682