The Australian Homosexual Histories Conference brings together members of the GLBTIQ community, academics, professional and independent scholars, researchers and students within the broad field of sexuality and gender studies. It has been running annually since about 2000 and has generated some pioneering and innovative work on the histories of GLBTIQ life, politics and culture in Australia. Some of that work has been published in the Gay and Lesbian Perspectives volumes.

In 2013 the Conference is being held at the 1888 Building, University of Melbourne, on 15–16 November.

The program includes more than 30 papers ranging across Australia’s very queer past – from the letters of a 19C sodomite, figures such as Alice Anderson, Donald Friend and John Bray, AIDS, law reform, websites and magazines, the gay life of communities such as Canberra and Elliott, homosexual Melbourne in the 1920s and the 1970s and much, much, much more.

We are pleased to announce that our keynote speakers will be Shane Carmody, formerly of the State Library of Victoria, now of Melbourne University; and Professor Raewyn Connell of the University of Sydney.

Registration is $80 ($40 low and unwaged) for the two days, which includes morning and afternoon teas on both days. (There is a daily rate as well ($50/$20). You can register online at: http://alga.org.au/2013/2728

For more information, please contact the organisers, Graham Willett (gwillett@unimelb.edu.au) or Yorick Smaal (y.smaal@griffith.edu.au).

The American Philosophical Society (APS), the nation’s first learned
society, invites applications for its two-year *Andrew W. Mellon
Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellowship*, beginning in September 2014.  The APS
seeks applications from recent PhDs in the fields of history of science,
art history, 18th- or 19th-century American history, or any other related
humanities disciplines. The fellowship, based in the APS Museum, will
provide hands-on experience in curatorial work and the opportunity to
pursue an independent research project, preferably one related to the
collections or programs of the Society’s library and museum.

The Mellon Fellow will conduct research in the APS collections in
preparation for the APS Museum’s interdisciplinary exhibitions exploring
the intersections of history, art, and science. The exhibitions take place
in Philosophical Hall, located within Independence National Historical
Park. As the public face of the APS, the museum researches and interprets
the APS’s extensive collections for the regional, national, and
international visitors who converge on Philadelphia’s historic district.

The Fellow’s primary responsibility will be to conduct scholarly research
for exhibitions, programs, and other related activities. He or she will be
fully integrated into the APS Museum staff, working closely with the
curator and others on the curatorial team. The Fellow will gain extensive
experience in planning and implementing exhibitions as well as researching
and writing interpretive materials for non-scholarly audiences (exhibition
texts, publications, etc.). Depending on the Fellow’s interests and the
Museum’s needs, he or she may also participate in public programming,
museum education, collections management, and/or grant-writing.  Twenty
percent of the Fellow’s time will be reserved for his or her own
independent research, ideally using resources at the APS or kindred
regional institutions. The Fellow will also have the opportunity to network
with APS Library staff and other post-doctoral fellows in the region’s
cultural institutions.

This two-year Fellowship will extend from September 1, 2014 through August
31, 2016. Compensation is $45,000 a year plus benefits, along with
additional funds for research support, travel, and relocation. The
Fellowship may not be held concurrently with any other fellowship or grant.

*The deadline for receipt of all materials is December 9, 2013.***

*Qualifications:*

– PhD in any humanities discipline, awarded within the past five years.
The history of science, 18th- and 19th-century American history, and the
history of art often relate most closely to exhibition content.
However,the museum’s approach is interdisciplinary, and applications
from qualified
researchers in any humanities discipline are welcome.
– Excellent analytical and writing skills; experience in writing for
different purposes and broad audiences (including but not limited to
scholars).
– Broad interests, along with the intellectual and conceptual tools
necessary for working across disciplines and time periods, and for making
creative connections.
– Flexibility and the capacity to learn quickly and to work both
independently and in collaboration with others.

– Project-oriented organizational skills applied to both academic and
practical tasks.
– Strong interest in exploring a career in the museum field. **

*REQUIRED MATERIALS (APPLICATION CHECKLIST)*

Applications must be submitted by EMAIL only to
MellonFellowship@amphilsoc.org with the subject line as follows:  Last
Name, First Name_Mellon Application 2014-16

Include:

– Cover letter stating interest in exploring curatorial work.
– Completed application form, found at
http://www.amphilsoc.org/grants/curatorialfellowship

·         Comprehensive Curriculum Vitae, with items listed within
categories in reverse chronological order (Include external support
received during graduate study: fellowships, teaching or research
assistantships, tuition grants, etc.

·         Statement of current research interests (no more than 1,500
words). This statement should include a description of a potential research
project during the Fellowship, preferably one related to the APS
collections or programs.

·         Excerpt(s) from completed dissertation or thesis (no more than
5,000 words); example of non-scholarly writing if available.

·         Confirmation Letter of Academic Status (candidacy or degree
conferred).

·         Three confidential letters of recommendation, which must be
submitted on the APS recommendation form provided at
http://www.amphilsoc.org/grants/curatorialfellowship

·         *See application form for further instructions.*

*To Download Application Form and Recommendation Forms:  *

http://www.amphilsoc.org/grants/curatorialfellowship

*For further information on Library and Museum collections:*

http://www.amphilsoc.org/library

http://www.apsmuseum.org/collections

* ** *
*The deadline for receipt of all materials is December 9, 2013.*

Rolling submissions open for the Digital America Journal
First issue to be released on October 21, 2013

“We believe that Millennials have a unique perspective on the role of digitization in our culture and around the world. We also believe that some student work deserves a second life beyond the classroom. Digital America is a new journal project that seeks to bring these two beliefs together. Housed in the American Studies Program at the University of Richmond, our journal will publish cutting edge student work on digital culture and American life.

“Send us your essays, commentary, films, audio, multi-media, new media pieces, and process pieces. All submissions should engage American life and digital culture and/or digitization in some way. We encourage creative responses to these parameters as we understand the complexities of engaging “America” in a global, networked world.
Digital America publishes quarterly with the first issue set to appear on October 21st. Submissions are rolling.”

Send all contributions to submissions@digitalamerica.org
Visit the website at http://www.digitalamerica.org

@digital_ur
facebook.com/urdigitalamerica

Attachments: Queer Investments in Capital and Globalizations
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
March 6-8, 2014
Organized by the Graduate Interdisciplinary Group in Sexuality Studies
Sponsored by the Steven J. Schochet Endowment for GLBT Studies

With keynote speaker, Robert McRuer, Professor of English, George
Washington University. Professor McRuer will be presenting on his latest
book project on “cripping global austerity politics.” McRuer is the author
of Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability and co-editor of Sex
and Disability.

The Graduate Interdisciplinary Group in Sexuality Studies invites proposals
for our second conference, “Attachments: Queer Investments in Capital and
Globalizations,” at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. The
conference will be a two-day series of conversations in race, ethnic,
queer, sexuality, gender, and disability studies, attending to the
affective and economic investments in and resistance to financial, sexual,
cultural, legal, political, national, and global economies. We invite
papers which extend recent debates about homonationalism and “slow death”
to consider the ways in which queer attachments to and resistance of
capital, globalization, and the state trouble dominant notions of progress.
We encourage presenters to consider the multitude of ways in which
investments and attachments can be or have been made queerly: investment in
communities, in institutions, in movements, in “the future,” in
citizenship, as well as time and monetary investments; and attachments to
debt, relationships, dreams, contracts, medicine/medical interventions, to
prosthetics, identities, to cultural and political obligations, to
liberalism, radicalism, and so on.

We hope to create a vibrant space for intellectual exchange with an
emphasis on interdisciplinary scholarship. We welcome submissions from
graduate students from a wide range of fields, including gender and
sexuality studies, ethnic studies, American studies, geography, history,
education, media and communication, sociology, and cultural studies, among
others.

Suggested topics include (but are not limited to):

Affect, attachments, and investments

Immigration, citizenship, and diaspora

Empire and colonialism

Labor: sexual, affective, activist, academic, etc.

Production and consumption of media, aesthetics, and culture

Race, place, and identity

The politics of idleness, unproductivity, and failure

Kinship, family, and coalition

Consumption, consumer culture, and tourism

Neoliberalism and biopolitics

-Industrial complexes: military, non-profit, prison, and medical

Disability and crip politics

Post-humanism, animality, and technoscience

Please submit abstracts of 250-300 words and a brief bio of no more than
100 words to queerattachments@gmail.com by NOVEMBER  1, 2013. Conference
applicants will be notified by December 1.

TRAVEL GRANTS for presenters will be available, sponsored by the Steven J.
Schochet Endowment for GLBT Studies. We will award up to three travel
grants of up to $500 each. More details will be available upon acceptance
to present.

The Graduate Interdisciplinary Group in Sexuality Studies (GIGSS) is a
group of graduate students from all disciplines and all levels who are
committed to creating new opportunities for interdisciplinary conversation
and research in sexuality studies at the University of Minnesota.

The Steven J. Schochet Endowment for GLBT Studies, named for the late
University of Minnesota alumnus, is dedicated to the advancement of GLBT
scholarship across the University and in the broader Twin Cities community.

The Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association invites submissions for individual papers, and for complete panels, for its Women’s Studies area for its 2014 conference (to be held in Chicago, from April 16-April 19, 2014). We welcome papers and panels on any facet of popular culture relating to the study of women and gender, including, not by no means limited to:

-Women’s participation in, and creation of, literary works and print culture

-Women’s involvement as consumers and producers of film and television culture, and representations of women within television and film

-Women as the subjects of, audiences for, and responders to advertising

-Women’s engagement with popular music, as artists, consumers, and fans

-Women’s engagement with social media and their work as bloggers and cultural critics

All submissions will be due by November 1, 2013, and must be uploaded through the PCA-ACA website, available at:

http://ncp.pcaaca.org/

Please send all inquires to:

Holly M. Kent, Ph.D.
Department of History
University of Illinois, Springfield
hkent3@uis.edu

Call For Papers – Feminist Un/Pleasure: Reflections on Perversity, BDSM, and Desire / Deadline 15 November 2013

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.

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)

Thurs 22 May–Fri 23 May 2014: The Royal Society, London

CALL FOR PAPERS – PLEASE SUBMIT ABSTRACTS BY FRIDAY 1 NOVEMBER 2013

How are we to recover, interpret and understand women’s experiences in science? Popular history delivers stories of a few ‘heroines’ of science, but perhaps these narratives do more to conceal than reveal? Where were the workaday women scientists – now largely invisible – whose contributions have helped shape science today?

This  international conference aims to locate and examine women’s participation in science, to identify areas for further research and to reflect on how historical interpretations can inform the role of women in science today. The programme will include contemporary science-led panels to provide context and help build connections between the past and the present.

‘Science’ and ‘participation’ will be defined to encourage maximum inclusivity and we welcome contributions from a broad, multidisciplinary perspective. Themes may include (but are not limited to):

• Women and learned societies
• Women and spaces of scientific production
• Women and scientific education and learning
• Representations of women scientists: media, fiction, film, art
• Scientific collaboration
• Women within familial and social networks of science
• Gendered roles in science
• Science today: issues and challenges
• The ‘leaky pipeline’: women leaving science

Selected papers from the conference will appear in a special issue of the Royal Society’s history journal Notes and Records (final papers to be submitted by end of September 2014).

Proposals for panels and for individual papers are encouraged. Please send abstracts for papers (max 20 minutes) of no more than 200 words, and for panels of no more than 400 words, along with brief biographical details, to Dr Claire Jones: C.G.Jones2@liverpool.ac.uk and Dr Sue Hawkins: S.E.Hawkins@kingston.ac.uk by the deadline of Friday 1 November 2013.

Regular updates concerning programme and registration will be posted at the conference website: http://womeninscience.net/?page_id=438.