Feral Feminisms, a new independent, inter-media, peer reviewed, open access online journal, invites submissions from artists, activists, scholars and graduate students for a special issue entitled, “Feminist Un/Pleasure: Reflections on Perversity, BDSM, and Desire,” guest edited by Toby Wiggins. 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, Toby Wiggins (wiggins.yorku@gmail.com).

Courtesy Co.Design, http://www.fastcodesign.com/

What gets you off? Desire is a slippery concept, difficult to hold or describe, and certainly not consistent or interchangeable. An insatiable yearning for some is for others abhorrent and deserving of reprimand. The social complexities of perversion are therefore always in flux, influencing diverse manifestations of sexuality and its censorship. According to Freud’s early formulations on the two principles of psychic functioning, and later developed in his writings on the death drive, pleasure and unpleasure are intimately bound. Our primary drive encompasses both the unpleasure of an increase in excitation and the pleasure of its release. In other words, an individual’s relationship to unencumbered indulgence continually grapples with its denial. This fundamental tension also resonates beyond psychoanalysis, in feminist genealogies, as an ambivalence towards BDSM and “perverse” sexualities. Echoed in Carole Vance’s influential anthology, Pleasure and Danger, and the ongoing battles of the sex wars, feminist sexuality encompasses both enjoyment and suffering wrapped tightly around the politics of desire. This apparent contradiction of painful enjoyment also weaves throughout BDSM sexuality itself, where the lines between violence, sex, and love begin to blur.

This special issue of Feral Feminisms aims to complicate, untame, queer and radicalize tumultuous legacies of pleasure and unpleasure by reflecting upon the current intersections of feminist desire and BDSM sexuality. Topics of inquiry may include, but are not limited to:

● pleasure and pain in feminist sexualities

● resonances of canonical sexologists such as Richard von Kraft Ebbing on contemporary perverse sexualities

● the instability of sexual subcultures vs mainstream

● gender and power play

● representations of perverse feminist sexuality in film, literature, and art

● Fifty Shades of Grey and histories of erotic fiction

● psychoanalytic theories of BDSM and/or perversion

● affect and kinky feminist desire

● sex work and professional dominatrices

● critical interrogations into the construction of subversive sexualities

● masochism, sadism, fetishism

● the politicization of BDSM

● death, the death drive, and queer sexualities

● addressing white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, colonialism, heteronormativity, and/or patriarchy through scenes of perversion
● limit experience

● BDSM sexuality as performance

Submission guidelines:

Articles, no longer than 7,000 words, should be prepared for anonymous peer-review. Please include a separate document with the contributor’s name and email, affiliated school (if applicable), a 100-word abstract, and a 60-word biography. All references should be in MLA citation style. For written submissions: 1 inch (2.54 cm) margins. Times New Roman 12pt. Double spaced. Include page number in header. Bold headings.

We also welcome the submission of shorter creative pieces, cultural commentaries, or personal narratives between 500-2500 words, poems, colour or black & white images, and films, or a combination of mediums. Written submissions should be in Microsoft Word format. Image submissions should be in jpeg, with a maximum file size of 1MB. Film submissions should be uploaded to Vimeo with a link to the film provided in the submission email; if you are submitting a film or multimedia piece and do not wish to upload to Vimeo, we are open to establishing other means of submission – please contact the Guest Editor (email provided above). All art and non-text based submissions should be accompanied by a paragraph length artist statement that outlines the goals of the work and how it engages with the CFP.

All submissions are subject to double-anonymous peer review, are reviewed by 2-3 peer reviewers, and receive collegial feedback on their work.

Previously published articles will not be considered without the permission of the editors. Do not simultaneously offer your article to another publication. The author(s) always retain copyright of their work. The author(s) may republish provided they request permission from the Managing Editors and they agree to acknowledge that it appeared in Feral Feminisms.

These submission guidelines can also be found at www.feralfeminisms.com

Email submissions to: Toby Wiggins (wiggins.yorku@gmail.com)

Women and Children as New Tools of Trade in the 21st Century: Exploring Policy, Research, Community and Legal Frameworks for addressing Human Trafficking

In response to global concern about the trafficking of women and children, the Third International Law Conference on Women and Children offers an interactive platform for conversations that will facilitate new and comprehensive ways of addressing human trafficking.

The 2013 Conference will take place from September 26 – 27, 2013 at the Recital Hall, Muson Centre, Lagos, Nigeria.

Plenary Speakers include:

Prof. Osita Agbu, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Lagos, Nigeria.

Prof. Aderanti Adepoju, Co-ordinator, Network of Migration on Africa and member of The Hague Process on Refugee and Migration Policy.

Abstracts for oral presentation at the conference will consider but are not limited to the following sub-themes related to discussions on Human Trafficking with focus on WOMEN AND CHILDREN:

•Emerging Issues in the Trafficking of women and children for Prostitution
•Cultural practices promoting the marginalisation and trafficking of women and children
•Micro-credit financing and trafficking of women and children
•Poverty as a major trigger of human trafficking
•Global politics and human trafficking
•Family institutions and human trafficking
•Policy frameworks and interventions for reducing human trafficking
•The Constitution, human trafficking and the place of women and children
•Problems with trafficking research in Developing Countries
•Funding, Authority and research with trafficked women and children
•Local and International Cartels and Human Trafficking
•Gender and human trafficking
•Silent triggers of human trafficking (request for human organs, health care, religious, cultural and political triggers)
•The media and trafficking of women and children
•Internal conflicts, Corruption and human trafficking

In addition to plenary presentations, the conference will include presentations by legal practitioners, policy makers and researchers. We invite you to respond to the conference Call-for-Papers by submitting a 250 word abstract and 120 word Bio on the conference website.

The deadline for Submission of Abstracts is: August 15, 2013 with notification of acceptance by August 22, 2013.

Full details of the conference, including an online abstract submission form, can be found at the conference website:
http://www.nbailcwc.com

Deadline for submissions: September 1, 2013

The intention of the fellowship is to encourage research in the area of feminist science fiction within the University of Oregon Libraries, which house the papers of authors Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Kate Wilhelm, Suzette Haden Elgin, Sally Miller Gearhart, Kate Elliot, Molly Gloss, Laurie Marks, and Jessica Salmonson, along with Damon Knight. The UO Libraries Special Collections and University Archives is also in the process of acquiring the papers of James Tiptree, Jr. and other key feminist science fiction authors.
This award supports travel for the purpose of research on, and work with, these papers. These short-term research fellowships are open to undergraduates, master’s and doctoral students, postdoctoral scholars, college and university faculty at every rank, and independent scholars working in feminist science fiction. In 2013, $3,000 will be awarded to conduct research within these collections. This fellowship has been created as part of the UO Center for the Study of Women in Society’s 40th Anniversary Celebration. Questions: email Jenée Wilde.

Jenée Wilde
University of Oregon
Center for the Study of Women in Society
541-346-2838
Email: jenee@uoregon.edu

Visit the website at http://csws.uoregon.edu/?p=16615

Announcement and call for papers: Congress of the International
Committee of Historical Sciences, special theme: The History of
the Girl, Jinan, China, August 23-29, 2015

The Congress of the International Committee of Historical Sciences will be
held in Jinan, China from 23-29 August 2015. One of the Specialised Themes
focusses on the History of the Girl. The aim of this session is to bring
together scholars working in the field and to identify common themes and
differences in the history of the girl across the world. In order to
establish some cohesion for the discussion the focus will be on girls aged
from early adolescence to the early 20s. Paper proposals are welcome on all
periods of time as well as from as wide a geographical span as possible.
Topics to be discussed include:

Public discourses on girls
Girls and the family
The culture of adolescent girls
Coming of age
Sex education
Debates on the education of girls
Dress and fashion
Girls work
Consumerism and girls
The modern girl
Representations of girls
Literature and writing for girls

Professor Mary O’Dowd
School of History and Anthropology
Queen’s University Belfast
Belfast BT7 1NN
Email: m.odowd@qub.ac.uk
Visit the website at http://www.cish.org/congres/**
ST29-Towards-global-history-**girl.pdf

Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, Issue 4, Queer, feminist digital media praxis

Editors: Aristea Fotopoulou (University of Sussex), Alex Juhasz (Pitzer College), Kate O’Riordan (University of Sussex/ University of California, Santa Cruz)

We invite contributions to a peer-reviewed special issue that brings together artistic, theoretical, critical and empirical responses to a range of questions around mediation, technology and gender equality. In particular we are interested in exploring what the concept of praxis could offer in our thinking about the intersections of gender, digital media, and technology.

Praxis in both Marxist and in Arendtian political thought brings together theory, philosophy and political action into the realm of the everyday. Inspired from this premise, and continuing the conversations that started during the workshop Queer, feminist social media praxis at the University of Sussex in May 2013 (queerfemdigiact.wordpress.com), we focus here on the conditions for a feminist digital media praxis. Media praxis, in other words the ?making and theorising of media towards stated projects of world and self-changing? (mediapraxis.org), could be a vital component of feminist and/or queer political action. We are interested in the different modes of political action for social justice, enabled by digital technologies and social media, including theory, art, activism or pedagogy. What kinds of possibilities or impossibilities do these technologies and platforms offer for interpreting and intervening in the world?

The fourth issue of Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology seeks submissions that explore the concept of feminist, queer, digital media praxis. We welcome unpublished work from scholars of any discipline and background, including collaborative, non-traditional, or multimodal approaches that can especially benefit from the journal’s open access online status.

Topics and approaches might include, but are not limited to:

–       Affect, desire and disgust
–       Diffractive readings
–       Digital storytelling
–       Herstories, archiving and remembering
–       Feminist pedagogy
–       LGBTQ Youth
–       New media bodies
–       Imaginaries, futures and technological utopias
–       Radical art practices
–       Science, technology and social justice

We invite submissions for individual papers on any of the above themes or related themes. Contributions in formats other than the traditional essay are encouraged; please contact the editor to discuss specifications and/or multimodal contributions.

All submissions should be sent by 15th August, to A.Fotopoulou@sussec.ac.uk. They should be accompanied by the following information in the email message with your submission attachment:

–       Name(s), affiliation(s), email address(es) of the person(s) submitting.
–       Title of the text
–       Abstract of 400-600 words

Please note that Ada uses a two-level review process that is open to members of the Fembot Collective. For more information about our review policy, see these guidelines: http://adanewmedia.org/beta-reader-and-review-policy/.

Important dates:

– Deadline for abstracts: 15th August 2013
– Notification of accepted papers: 1st September 2013
– Deadline for full essays: 5th December 2013
– Expected publication date: May 2014

About Ada:

Ada is an online, open access, open source, peer-reviewed journal run on a nonprofit basis by feminist media scholars from Canada, the UK, and the US. The journal?s first issue was published online in November 2012 and has so far received more than 75,000 page views. Ada operates a review process that combines the feminist mentorship of fan communities with the rigor of peer review. Read more at http://adanewmedia.org/beta-reader-and-review-policy/. We do not ? and will never ? charge fees for publishing your materials, and we will share those materials using a Creative Commons License.

Information about the editors:

Aristea Fotopoulou is postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Sussex, working at the intersections of media & cultural studies with science & technologies studies. She is interested in critical aspects of digital culture, emerging technologies and social change, and in feminist/queer theory. She has written about digital networks and feminism, and recently, on information politics and knowledge production, and on social imaginaries of digital engagement. She currently explores practices of sharing in relation to biosensors and other smart technologies, and also works with Kate to produce SusNet, a co-created platform of feminist cultural production, art and activism.
>
> Alexandra Juhasz is Professor of Media Studies, Pitzer College. She has written multiple articles on feminist, fake, and AIDS documentary. Her current work is on and about YouTube, and other more radical uses of digital media. She has produced the feature films, The Owls, and The Watermelon Woman, as well as nearly fifteen educational documentaries on feminist issues like teenage sexuality, AIDS, and sex education. Her first book, AIDS TV: Identity, Community and Alternative Video (Duke University Press, 1996) is about the contributions of low-end video production to political organizing and individual and community growth.

Kate O?Riordan is Reader in Digital Media and Associate Professor of Art at the University of Sussex and the University of California Santa Cruz respectively. She is the author and editor of three books, most recently The Genome Incorporated: Constructing Biodigital Identity. Her interests and expertise range from gender, sexuality and digital culture to human cloning, genomics and other biodigital symptoms. She is currently engaged in work at the intersections of art, science and media about in-vitro meat, biosensors and smart grids and questions about sustaining knowledge in feminist art and activism.

CFP: Women from the Parsonage: Pastors’ Daughters as Writers, Salonnières,
Translators, and Educators

Many prominent writers and thinkers, especially from the second half of the seventeenth into the nineteenth century, were the sons of pastors. The advantages of their upbringing and especially the education they received in the parsonage, most often from their pastor-fathers themselves, has been acknowledged and highlighted. However, the upbringing and privileged education of pastor-daughters have rarely been acknowledged and thus have received little attention. A surprising number of women writers from this period, most prominently the Brontë sisters and Jane Austen, were brought up and educated by their pastor-fathers, but little attention has gone to the favored education they received at the hand or direction of their pastor-fathers and how, in turn, their education inspired literary production. There are many less recognized women writers who also emerged from parsonages to become important writers, celebrated salonnières, accomplished translators, or distinguished educators in their time. In the Protestant regions of Europe these women put the privileged education they had received in their fathers’ parsonages to good use, taking part in public literary, intellectual, and pedagogical discourse by publishing in such genres as autobiographies, novels, poetry, treatises on education, travel writing, and translations. Essays for the proposed edited volume investigate individual lives, education, and works of well known as well as lesser known daughters of clergymen from the long eighteenth century who, encouraged by their favored education, took up the pen to contribute to the literary culture of their time.
If you like to contribute to this comparative investigation about pastors’ daughters, e-mail a 300-word proposal to Cindy K. Renker (cindy.renker@utdallas.edu) by June 31st. Please include a brief CV with your submission. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by September 10, 2013. The anticipated submission date for completed articles (6,000 to 6,500 words) is January 15, 2014.

Cindy K. Renker (University of Texas at Dallas) Email: cindy.renker@utdallas.edu

Call for Papers
ex aequo – Portuguese Journal of Women’s Studies
nr. 29 (2014)

Special Issue
Feminist Perspectives on Methodology and Epistemology: Debates, Challenges and Dilemmas

Editors: Maria do Mar Pereira (University of Leeds; Universidade Aberta) and Ana Cristina Santos (Centro de Estudos Sociais – Universidade de Coimbra)

Since its emergence, one of the key missions of feminist research has been to develop an interdisciplinary and critical analysis of the epistemological assumptions and methodological principles and procedures of ‘mainstream’ science. This project has had significant and influential effects: it has not only led to innovation in knowledge production, but also contributed, in many countries and disciplines, to the transformation of mainstream scholarly practice.

However, the feminist project of methodological and epistemological critique is neither linear nor uncontested, and despite its undeniable achievements, remains unfinished. There continues to be intense debate over, for example, the nature of the relation between feminism and methodology (is it possible and desirable to speak of “feminist methodologies”?), the complex methodological dilemmas that feminist researchers grapple with (particularly, in the negotiation of power in the research process), or the strategies we should adopt to expand and deepen the feminist challenge to mainstream scholarship, strengthening the impact of feminist research within and beyond the academy.

With the publication of this special issue, ex aequo – the Portuguese Journal of Women’s Studies hopes to create an international and interdisciplinary space for analysis of these debates, challenges and dilemmas. We welcome pieces that engage with these debates, challenges and dilemmas from a wide range of perspectives. The articles can be exclusively theoretical or offer theoretically-grounded analyses of concrete experiences of empirical work.

Possible themes include, but are not limited to:
– feminist theoretical debates about methodology and epistemology (including the role  of such debates in the development of women’s, gender, feminist and queer studies, and their contribution to the critique of mainstream knowledge production)
– the practice of feminist research: epistemological and methodological dilemmas and paradoxes
– innovation in feminist methodologies: developing new methodological strategies to analyse established or emerging objects and questions
– feminist epistemologies: new proposals, classical proposals revisited, and their impacts on scholarly practice
– the relation between epistemology, methodology and political action in feminist research
– citizen’s responsibility, public social science, and the impacts of feminist epistemology beyond the academy
– conceptualising and doing intersectional feminist research: articulations with queer, postcolonial, black, disability, migration and environmental scholarship

This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, and authors are encouraged to submit proposals on other topics which fit the theme of the special issue. ex aequo accepts submissions in Portuguese, English, Spanish and French.

Deadline and Guidelines:
The articles must be submitted by September 10th, 2013, to apem@netcabo.pt<mailto:apem@netcabo.pt>
All submissions must be formatted in accordance with the guidelines presented here: http://www.apem-estudos.org/novosite/?page_id=490
The articles which do not fulfill the guidelines listed above with regards to length, formatting and referencing will not be accepted.
All articles will undergo a peer review process.

Open Section:
As an inter and multidisciplinary journal, ex eaquo is always open to contributions from the disciplines and different tendencies, in an attempt to reflect the broad scope, the diversity and plurality of the theoretical and epistemological approaches that have characterized women, gender and feminist studies. It also aims to question and discuss the problems that affect social relations between women and men in Portugal.
This panel, composed by essays from several sources, aims at broadening the scientific exchange in the area of women and gender studies.
There is no closing date for the Open Section. Submissions must be sent to the Board of the Journal to apem@netcabo.pt<mailto:apem@netcabo.pt>

Jahrbuch für Historische Bildungsforschung, Vol. 20 (2014) (Yearbook for History of Education)

(1) Topic: Machines and Mechanization in the History of Education: Devices, Myths, and Processes

Edited by Christian Kassung and Marcelo Caruso

Machines have a life of their own: They have power units, and they are
programmed to perform certain tasks. The more autonomously they act, the more radically they question the line between nature and culture.
This is why they are so ambivalent: both fascinating and disturbing.
The fascination of machines is closely connected to their growing
sophistication and the extension and transformation of their
applications. At the same time, however,  this also poses a threat to
human autonomy,  for the existence  of machines  always defines man in
technical terms as well.

When Wolfgang Hochheimer, a Professor at the now dissolved Berlin
teachers college, argued for the extensive use of teaching machines in
the 1960s, he referred to a colleague who contended that those
machines helped to achieve democracy,  which was one of the central
ends of education at that time, much better than in the past.
Moreover,  Hochheimer  argued  that  teaching  machines  were
“consistently  patient”  and  “consistently open”  towards   everybody
–  from  “highly   educated”   to  “underdeveloped”   individuals
(W.  Hochheimer, “Erziehung durch Maschinen?”, in: Der Spiegel
30/1963, 24 July 1963). In the context of unconditional
democratization during the post-­-WW II era, the promise and the
threat of machines culminated in the fallibility of the  teacher:
“Every  teacher  who  can  be replaced  by a machine  deserves  to be
replaced,”  Ken  Komoski argued (“Lehrautomaten.  Der Tod des
Paukers”, in: Der Spiegel 29/1961, 12 July 1961). Back then, Komoski
was a  machine  programmer  from  the  circle  around  Burrhus
Frederic  Skinner.  He  later  became  a  professor  at Columbia
University and a UNESCO consultant. Since 1967, he has been running
the Educational Products Information  Exchange,  substantially
supported  by private foundations.  In the heat of these post-­-war
debates one often forgot or ignored the fact that machines  of various
kinds had been used for conveying  knowledge already since antiquity
and that, more broadly, they had already always been used as
“extensions of man.”

As machines have increasingly been permeating modern societies, it is
hardly possible anymore to draw a clear line between  technology  and
nature.  At the same  time,  in the course  of the
institutionalization  of modern education,  a  growing  aversion
against  the  world  of  machines  and  mechanization   has  been
taking  roots. Machines are soulless, the argument goes, when it comes
to pedagogic relationships, for real education begins
where  unpedagogical  drill  always  ends:  with  man.  However,  in
the  21st  century,  “man”  as  such  possibly  does
not  exist  anymore:  Current  communicative  environments  and  the
proliferation  of  “artificial  life”  –  cf.  the socializing
effects  of  tamagotchis  or  Japanese  nursing  homes  replacing
human  beings  with  robots  –  have intensified the question of the
place of machines in education and socialization.

The Jahrbuch für Historische Bildungsforschung dedicates its 20th
volume to machines and mechanization in the
history of education. This concerns, on the one hand, “interfaces” of
human beings and increasingly complex networks  of machines,  objects
and media. On the other hand, it also concerns  education  towards
machine-­- adapted  values  and  representations  or socialization
“for  a life  in the  context  of technical  constructing  and
organizing”  (von  Hermann  &  Velminski,  Maschinentheorien  /
Theoriemaschinen.  Frankfurt  am  Main,  2012,  p.
12). Against this backdrop, articles may tackle not only questions of
how to teach the artes mechanicae as well as the evolution of these
teaching modes. Rather, drawing on analyses of machines and
machine-­-inspired ways of thinking,  they may also problematize  the
implicit  knowledge  of things, concepts  of social transformation,
pedagogic semantics, agency in educational processes as well as the
historical materiality of individual devices.

Deadline for proposals: 31 August 2013
Notification of acceptance / rejection of proposals by 30 September
2013 Deadline for articles: 15 March 2014

Please e-­-mail  your proposal to Prof. Dr. Marcelo Caruso,
Humboldt-­-Universität  zu Berlin: marcelo.caruso@hu-­-
berlin.de.

(2) General contributions: For this section, colleagues are encouraged
to submit articles on any historical topic related to education.
Articles dealing with the time prior to the 18th century are
particularly welcome.

Please  e-­-mail  your proposal  for the section  General
Contributions  to Prof. Dr. Ulrich  Wiegmann,  Deutsches
Institut für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung, Berlin: u.wiegmann@imail.de.

________________________________________
H-EDUCATION
History of Education Discussion Network
E-Mail: h-education@h-net.msu.edu
WWW:  http://www.h-net.org/~educ
________________________________________