“The Seed of the World that is to Be”: the Activism of Emily Greene Balch

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Balch, n.d. Soon after she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946

On November 14, 1946, Emily Greene Balch became the third woman to be awarded the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize.1 In commemoration of that event, The Albert M. Greenfield Center for the History of Women’s Education has compiled the following biographical overview of Balch’s remarkable life and achievements.

“Differences as well as likenesses are inevitable, essential, and desirable. An unchallenged belief or idea is on the way to death and meaninglessness.”
–Emily Greene Balch, Nobel Lecture

 

One of Bryn Mawr College’s most distinguished alumnae is Emily Greene Balch, who, in 1889, became a member of the the school’s first graduating class. In an era in which bachelor’s degrees for women were still a novelty and post-college careers were even more rare, Balch set herself apart by effecting real change on both the local and global scale. Her history stands in direct opposition to the dissenting voices of her time that asserted that women were not worth educating, and her achievements appear no less remarkable today.

Balch at 10 years old

Born in 1867, Balch grew up in the Jamaica Plain area of Boston. Though she would later convert to Quakerism in 1921, she was heavily influenced by her Unitarian upbringing. Late in her life she would recall a sermon by Unitarian minister Charles Fletcher Dole that inspired her to dedicate herself to the “service of goodness whatever its cost” when she was just ten years old. “In accepting this pledge,” she wrote, “I never abandoned in any degree my desire to live up to it.” 2

Balch was also a dedicated student: her excellent academic performance at Bryn Mawr, where she took her degree in Greek and Latin, culminated in her being awarded the prestigious European Fellowship to fund a year of further study abroad. After a year studying sociology in the US, she applied the funds from her fellowship to a year at the Sorbonne to study poverty alleviation policies, and returned to Boston determined to apply her education to the task of realizing her moral convictions. Her most notable achievement during her first years out of school was the 1892 founding of the Denison House College Settlement, an initiative to bring “social and educational services into a poor immigrant neighborhood” by integrating educated women and the urban poor in a living environment.3 From early in her career she acted on the belief that the most effective way to create change was by erasing divisions between groups of people, fostering contact and mutual understanding.

Balch at Bryn Mawr

Driven by a desire to instill her own compassion in others, she decided to become a teacher and joined the faculty of Wellesley College after several more years of preparatory study. Though she was successful as a professor, Balch continually prioritized hands-on work and research, taking leave (both paid and unpaid) to conduct research on Slavic immigrants. This effort produced the highly acclaimed work Our Slavic Fellow Citizens (1910). In 1913 she became the chair of the Department of Economics and Sociology at Wellesley.

Balch advocated unequivocally for peace in the years leading up to and during the First World War. Her active involvement in international politics began while she was still teaching at Wellesley: in 1915 she joined the International Congress of Women at The Hague, an organization that took the stance of promoting mediation rather than military action in response to the conflict in Europe. However, her outspoken avowal of peace during the war was controversial, eventually leading to her dismissal from Wellesley College.

U.S. delegation to the International Conference of Women for a Permanent Peace, held at The Hague, The Netherlands, 1915

After departing from Wellesley in 1918, Balch continued to champion peace both in her editorial work with The Nation and in her co-founding (with Jane Addams) of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. In 1946, she became the third woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Balch’s life is notable not just for her international advocacy, but also for the way in which she wove together her global vision with her ability to foster connections between disciplines, groups, and individuals. She lived this vision fully as a student, an academic, a poet, a Quaker, and as a public voice for change. In her acceptance speech for the American Unitarian Association Award in 1955, she used words of connection, unity, and growth that were consistent with her lifelong commitment to global community: “The time has come to break down the dikes and let the healing waters flow over us. I see in us, young and old, the seed of the world that is to be.”4

 

Further reading on Emily Greene Balch:
Nobel Lecture (1946)
Emily Greene Balch: the Long Road to Internationalism  (2010)
Improper Bostonian: Emily Greene Balch, Nobel Peace Laureate, 1946 (1964)
Emily Greene Balch of New England: citizen of the world (1965)

1. The first was Bertha von Suttner in 1905; the second was Jane Addams (close friend and colleague of Emily Green Balch) in 1931.
2. Miller, Heather. “Emily Greene Balch: Nobel Peace Laureate 1967-1961.” Harvard Square Library. Web. 11 November. 2012. <http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/balch.html>
3. Buehrens, John A. Universalists and Unitarians in America: A People’s History. Boston: Skinner House Books, 2011. p. 130
4. Benjamin, Michelle; and Mooney, Maggie. Nobel’s Women of Peace. Toronto: Second Story Press, 2008. p. 35

 

International Conference on Narrative 2013, International Conference on Narrative 2013

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 International Conference on Narrative 2013

Manchester Metropolitan University 27th-29th June

Plenary Speakers

Catherine Belsey – Swansea University

Diane Negra – University College Dublin

Nicholas Royle – University of Sussex

 Sponsored by the International Society for the Study of Narrative and hosted by Manchester Metropolitan University, the International Conference on Narrative is an interdisciplinary forum addressing all dimensions of narrative theory and practice. We welcome proposals for papers and panels on all aspects of narrative in any genre, period, discipline, language, and medium.

Proposals for Individual Papers

Please provide the title and a 300-word abstract of the paper you are proposing; your name, institutional affiliation, and email address; and a brief statement (no more than 100 words) about your work and your publications.

Proposals for Panels

Please provide a 700-word (maximum) description of the topic of the panel and of each panellist’s contribution; the title of the panel and the titles of the individual papers; and for each participant the name, institutional affiliation, email address, and a brief statement (no more than 100 words) about the person’s work and publications.

Please send proposals by email as a PDF, Word or RTF document to narrative@mmu.ac.uk

Deadline for receipt of proposals: Monday January 14 2013

Conference Coordinators: Ginette Carpenter and Paul Wake (MMU)

Please address any enquiries to narrative@mmu.ac.uk

Website: www.narrative2013.org

All participants must join the International Society for the Study of Narrative. For more information on ISSN, visit http://narrative.georgetown.edu

 

 

Call for proposals: Queering Archives special issue of the Radical History Review

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Queering Archives

Call for Proposals, due February 1, 2013

Editors: Daniel Marshall, Zeb Tortorici, and Kevin Murphy

This issue of Radical History Review reflects on the notion of the “archive” that has been radically opened up by activists, archivists, and scholars. Beginning with feminist and postcolonial critiques of institutional and bureaucratic consolidations of power, what has come to be called the “queer archive” has emerged from those who both collect new materials and critique existing historical materials across varied modes of public memory work. On the one hand, these include institutional libraries with LGBT/queer collections (e.g. Cornell University’s Human Sexuality Collection and the New York Public Library’s Gay and Lesbian Collection), grassroots community-based archives (e.g. the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives and the Lesbian Herstory Archives), and queer archives of trauma and of the emotions. On the other hand, they include the recent critical and interpretive practice of “queering” colonial and national archives for multiple queer contents (and absences). While archives as places are distinct from the critical act of queering an archive, both endeavors are often characterized by preoccupations with the notion of in/visibility, the identification of LGBT/queer practices, and the question of the LGBT/queer historical and archival subject.

We are thus interested in how some queer archival narratives privilege models of historical subject recovery, such that they purport to recuperate (and define) particular voices and subjectivities of the past. In doing so, do such practices reassert traditional notions of archival authority? How have postcolonial and queer critiques of the archive and archival practice sought to alter the idiom through which the subjects of the archive are constructed? While avoiding simplistic laudatory readings of LGBT/queer archive formation, we aim to historicize the complications, omissions, and racial/gendered/class implications of queer archival engagements (as well as the ways in which some historians, archivists, and queer archival practices struggle against such phenomena).

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Archival knowledge and LGBT/queer political campaigns.

• Archives as sites for reading political contests in histories of sexuality and gender (e.g. the Sex Wars, decolonization, anti-capitalism, the War on Terror).

• The archive’s performance of an educational role, including the ideas of public history and public pedagogy.

• The ways that scholars have sought to “queer” mainstream, national, state, municipal, judicial, and colonial archives.

• Personal and critical reflections on being “in” an archive (as part of the collection, archivist, volunteer, researcher, etc.).

• How archives sustain or attenuate particular activist, affective, intellectual and/or kinship relationships.

• Archival work as a site for enabling intergenerational collaboration and coalitionist work, understood broadly.

• The ways in which archives have interacted with and influenced the development of academic fields of research regarding sexuality, gender and history.

• Different modes or genres of archiving and public memory work.

• Innovations in archiving that have been generated by LGBT-specific public memory work, including the ways in which this work has built on, departed from or influenced mainstream practices (e.g. queer oral history methodologies).

• How LGBT/queer archives challenge (or affirm) prevailing notions of whose material ought to be collected, and what types of material ought to be collected.

• “Archival homonormativity” and erasures, in terms of language, ethnicity, race, (trans)gender, sexuality, (dis)ability and class.

The Radical History Review features scholarly research articles, but will also consider photo essays, film and book review essays, interviews, reflections, interventions, essays on public history activities, teaching materials, archival field-notes, and “conversations” between different interested parties such as community historians and academics, users of archives, archive volunteers, and older/younger generations of people involved in archive communities.

At this time we are requesting abstracts that are no longer than 400 words; these are due by February 1, 2013 and should be submitted electronically as an attachment to contactrhr@gmail.com with “Issue 120 submission” in the subject line. By March 1, 2013, authors will be notified whether they should submit a full version of their article to undergo the peer review process. The due date for completed drafts of articles will be July 1, 2013. An invitation to submit a full article does not guarantee publication; publication depends on the peer review process and the overall shape the journal issue will take.

Please send any images as low-resolution digital files embedded in a Word or rich text document along with the text. If chosen for publication, you will need to send high-resolution image files (jpg or tif files at a minimum of 300 dpi), and secure written permission to reprint all images.

Those articles selected for publication after the peer review process will be included in issue 120 of Radical History Review, scheduled to appear in fall 2014.

For preliminary e-mail inquiries, please include “Issue 120” in the subject line.

Abstract Deadline: February 1, 2013 contactrhr@gmail.com

 

contactrhr@gmail.com
Email: contactrhr@gmail.com

Essay Competition: Submit by the End of the Month

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Margaret Bailey Speer at her desk in Yenching

The November 30th deadline is approaching for the second annual essay competition of The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education! We would like to remind and encourage both current students and all alumnae to submit essays addressing the topic of:

‘Transformations: How has the Bryn Mawr College experience made you the person you are today?’

Consider how your experience at Bryn Mawr has shaped you, be it academically, personally, professionally, or otherwise. What have been the most surprising challenges? How have the people you met changed you? How has Bryn Mawr served as a lens or an entry point into the world? We want to hear your stories, memories, and reflections.

Prizes have been kindly sponsored by the Friends of the Bryn Mawr College Library: the winning student essay will earn a prize of $500, and the alumna winner will receive a gift pack including a copy of Offerings to Athena, among other items related to the college’s history. All entrants will also have the chance to have their work published on the Greenfield Center website. Past entrants Kai Wang, Wendy Chen, and Emily Adams had their essays on the relevance of single-sex education posted on this blog.

Please submit essays of no more than 2,000 words to the Director of the Center, Dr. Jennifer Redmond, at jredmond@brynmawr.edu, by Friday, November 30th, 2012. See our earlier post for more information.

Purchasing Privilege

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Pembroke Hall Interior

Money has played a vital role in women’s higher education from the earliest days of its establishment, both as the means for change and as a lubricant for societal acceptance of that change. It is tempting to view women’s path into higher education as a narrative about dismantling privilege across the board, which in many ways it has been. However, privilege is multi-faceted, and exists in many overlapping and entangled forms. Like many histories of rights and access, this complex entanglement has resulted in a slow and graduated pattern of progress rather than a straight upward trajectory, partially because of the participation of many agents with varied approaches and priorities: some of the institutions that fought the oppression of women early on did so from a foundation of financial and racial privilege, while others took more radical approaches to economic and racial diversity without directly addressing gender.[1] M. Carey Thomas firmly believed that women’s intellectual capacity matched that of men, but her approach to securing gender equality (as embodied by Bryn Mawr) was based on appropriating, rather than dismantling, the elite status associated with the liberal arts education.[2] In the process of carving out their own stake in education, women have often used money to reify the elite status of the educated rather than changing the tone of the debate to include a broader view of equality. However, though the disparities and contradictions of early progress in educational access may not be consistent with the interpretation of “equality” that we attempt to hold ourselves to today, they should not be considered failures. Rather, they are indicative of the complexity and length of time that it takes to apply holistic change to society.

The strong association between liberal arts education and elite status is deeply rooted[3] and self-reinforcing: not only does it require access to a source, such as books or tutors, but traditional education also demands time and space in which to study—both of which are derived directly from wealth. Virginia Woolf asserted that the material prerequisites of education were not to be romantically discounted, famously declaring that intellectual productivity demands not only “a room of one’s own”, but also the rather significant income of at least five hundred pounds per year.[4]

Our recent look back at nineteenth-century college entrance exams makes these requirements feel tangible: would the passage of any of these exams been conceivable for an applicant that did not have the financial means to acquire tutors and study materials, find well-lit and heated spaces for study, and apply the ample amount of time that the work requires? The actual tuition of attending a school like Bryn Mawr, hardly insignificant, is only the crowning expense atop a pyramid of socioeconomic privilege that made attendance an imaginable possibility. Nor was it the final expense: Jen Rajchel, in her exhibit “Residing in the Past”, has also discussed the ways in which the exposure of economic privilege was woven into the fabric of daily life once the student arrived at school.

In addition to the material aspects of education, money can purchase immaterial advantages. A physical setting for the school could have been acquired without indulging the sumptuous details boasted by the Bryn Mawr College campus, but the institution in any lesser form would not have embodied the future of women’s education as envisioned by M. Carey Thomas. The campus’s deliberate mimicry of the magisterial style of its predecessors was an intangible but crucial component of the political statement that Thomas was making about the educability of women, and it would have been diluted or lost had the school been a different (less expensive) physical environment.

The achievement of higher education for women simply cannot be imagined without the role of financial privilege in the narrative: the sum of the tangible and intangible things afforded by money is that wealth grants a public space in which to pioneer change: at Bryn Mawr[5] and Johns Hopkins[6], dissenting voices were only overcome and outweighed by the Garrett family fortune. Women’s right to education may have been fought for heroically in the cultural battleground of public opinion, but it was also purchased. This fact, though not always flattering, is an important part of our history and must inform any discussion of our institutional identity.

Research assistance by Jessy Brody.

 

Sources:

Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz. The Power and Passion of M. Carey Thomas. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Penguin Books, London, 1945.

 

[1] Often, different forms of privilege were in dialogue with one another during the formation of institutional identity. In her biography of M. Carey Thomas, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz reports that Harvard president Charles W. Eliot cautioned against coeducation while advising the Thomas family on school policy for Johns Hopkins University: as paraphrased by Mary Thomas, mother of M. Carey Thomas, “coeducation does very well in communities where persons are more on an equality, but in a large city where persons of all classes are thrown together it works badly, unpleasant associations are formed, and disastrous marriages are often the result.” (Horowitz, p. 48)

[2] Several of the resources on this site, which are part of an effort to process our own history, have explicitly acknowledged that in most cases the documented use of the word “women” is a recognized stand-in for “white, middle- or upper-class women”. For example, see Jessy Brody’s exhibit, “Athletics and Physical Education at Bryn Mawr College, 1885-1929“

[3]In ancient Rome, the liberal arts were the near-exclusive property of men of the ruling class; to be educated was to be elite, and only the elite were educated, as William V. Harris describes in Ancient Literacy. The Renaissance and Enlightenment saw the revaluation of the classical canon and its integration into early modern education, influencing the elite who led the American Revolution. Liberal education remained essentially a classical education throughout the 19th century. Even today, remnants of the philosophy of ancient education remain in the idea that the liberal arts prepare one to be a good citizen, able to lead and succeed in high-status, male-dominated occupations such as politics and business, even without conferring profession-specific qualifications. The liberal arts, albeit in changed form, remain a mark of social status. For more information about the development of the liberal arts in the United States, see Classica Americana, Reinhold, The Culture of Classicism, Winterer, The Mirror of Antiquity: American Women and the Classical Tradition, 1750-1900, The American College in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Roger Geiger, The Shaping of American Higher Education: Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary System, A History of American Higher Education, Thelin, American Higher Education, A History, Lucas.

[4] Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Penguin Books, London, 1945.

[5] As early as 1883 Carey Thomas had a desire to install herself as president of Bryn Mawr College. However, her path to the presidency was to be long and drawn out. Upon the resignation, due to failing health, of the College’s first president, the trustees responded to the subject of her potential appointment with the admission that they were “terrified at the thought of putting a woman in sole power.” Thomas’s eventual installation as president was effected through an exchanged in which Garrett offered the school $10,000 per year, or more than 10% of the annual budget, on the condition that Thomas be given the presidency. (Horowitz, p. 257)

[6] Though M. Carey Thomas had originally enrolled at the Johns Hopkins Medical School (which was part of the university that several male members of her family had helped to found), her frustrating first year resulted in her subsequent departure for Leipzig. Though she was allowed to sit for exams and consult with professors, she was not permitted to attend classes. (Horowitz, p. 98) Coeducation remained a subject of conversation, but was strongly opposed by a large percentage of the board. When the medical school needed money, Mary Garrett took advantage of their desperation and offered to raise the needed sum on the condition that the school begin admitting women on equal terms with men. It was only by applying pressure during a moment of financial need, and the contribution of a humongous sum, that Garrett was able to secure coeducation despite its unpopularity with the administrators. (Ibid, pp. 233-35)

Re:Humanities – Call For Papers/Proposals Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore Colleges April 4-5, 2013

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Re:Humanities
Call For Papers/Proposals
Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore Colleges
April 4-5, 2013
rehumanities@gmail.com
www.haverford.edu/rehumanities
#rehum13

Keynote Speakers:
Tara McPherson, Ph.D. (Associate Professor, University of Southern California) and David Angel Nieves, Ph.D. (Associate Professor, Hamilton College) Re:Humanities 2013 explores various aspects of multimodal storytelling and argument. We seek  undergraduates who are exploring cross-platform approaches to course projects, digital
scholarship, and student collaborations. Topics might include, but are not limited to, interdisciplinary approaches to the following:
* Gaming and Narrative
* Transmedia Storytelling
* Infographics and Informatics
* Cultural criticism through the lens of new media platforms
* Digital forms of argumentation
* Visual models of record & witness
* Oral and auditory experimentations
We encourage submissions on these or related topics and invite you to contact
us with any questions.

We invite submission of criticism and projects at all stages of development, with
the understanding that the work will have reached a level of completion to
present at the conference, April 4-5, 2013. Presenters must be undergraduates at
the time the project was initiated.
Support: students selected to present will receive a small award to defray travel
costs. Lodging and meals will be arranged at no cost to participants.
Submission Deadline: November 20, 2012 (Midnight GMT)
Decisions announced: End of November 2012
Format for Submission: all submissions must include your name, institution, and a
titled description of your project (from 300-500 words). Send a .doc/.docx, .pdf
or .jpg file to rehumanities@gmail.com. (We are happy to accommodate you if
your submission requires a different format. In this case, please contact us before
the submission via email.)
We look forward to your participation!

Call for Papers: Southern History of Education Society (SHOES) annual meeting, March 2013

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The College of Charleston in South Carolina is pleased to host the Southern History of Education Society (SHOES) annual meeting. The 2013 SHOES meeting will be held at the College of Charleston on Friday & Saturday, March 15 & 16, 2013.

Dr. Jon Hale will be the lead organizer from the College of Charleston. Dr. Katherine Chaddock of the University of South Carolina will provide important support as well. The 2012 meeting at Florida State University was a great success thanks to the hard work of Dr. Robert Schwartz, Kathleen Callahan, and the graduate students at FSU.

We hope to continue the strong SHOES tradition here in Charleston through programming and meaningful dialogue. We are fortunate enough to have secured space at the historic Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture to hold our annual meeting. As always, there is no SHOES conference registration fee.

Call for Proposals for the March 2013 Meeting

Annual SHOES meetings provide opportunities for historians to share research
(from emerging to completed) in a variety of formats. SHOES encourages
participation by graduate students and colleagues who have not previously
attended as well as those that are regulars. Papers for this year’s SHOES
program should connect broadly to the theme of equity, access, and
opportunity in the history of education.

The lengths of all sessions and time allotted for presentations will depend
on the number of proposals submitted. We encourage you to forward this call
for proposals to colleagues and anyone who might be interested at your
institution or elsewhere.

You are invited to submit a proposal (two pages maximum) in one of the
following categories:

1. Papers. The proposal should include the title, name and affiliation of
the author, and a brief (200-word) description or abstract. The program
committee will group several papers into a single session that includes
presentation and discussion time.

2. Panels. A panel of three to five members may be proposed to explore a
topic from a variety of perspectives. Please submit the title, a brief
(200-word) descriptive rationale and/or summary of the individual
presentations, and the names, titles, and institutional affiliations of the
participants.

3. Works in Progress. This type of presentation may include research
efforts at a stage prior to completion. Scholarly discussion with members
of SHOES may enhance the research project. Graduate students seeking advice
regarding their research are especially encouraged to submit a proposal.
Provide a description or rationale (200 words) for the presentation and your
institutional affiliation.

Proposal Submissions and Meeting Inquiries

Submit proposals to arrive no later than January 11, 2013, to:

SHOES Conference c/o Jon Hale Assistant Professor of Educational
Foundations College of Charleston 86 Wentworth St., Room 235 Charleston, SC
29424

Electronic submissions are preferred. Email your attachment (in Microsoft
Word, please) with “SHOES Proposal” in the subject line to: halejn@cofc.edu
< mailto:kc11b@my.fsu.edu>

Accommodations and Meeting Logistics:

Charleston is a wonderful place to visit especially in March! The program
committee will send the final SHOES program in January 2013. Specific
information about campus meeting rooms will be included in the program.

We will meet on Friday morning and afternoon, with precise starting times to
be determined when the paper and other proposals are all in. A reception
will be held on Friday night. We will end on Saturday around mid-day with a
brief business meeting.

We have blocked rooms at the Days Inn, the Francis Marion Hotel, and the
Kings Courtyard Inn, all of which are located downtown and within a 15 to 20
minute walking distance of our meeting location. Limited parking is also
available at the Avery Research Center. You can call to book a room at a
reduced rate ­ just mention you are with the SHOES conference being held at
the College of Charleston.
Days Inn: 877.361.2506 (group rate available until February 14, 2013)
Francis Marion Hotel: 877.756.2121 (group rate available until January 14,
2013)
Kings Courtyard Inn: 843.723.7000  (group rate available until February 14,
2013)
Additional Helpful links include:
College of Charleston: http://cofc.edu/ <http://cofc.edu/>
Avery Research Center: http://avery.cofc.edu/ <http://avery.cofc.edu/>
City of Charleston: http://www.charlestoncvb.com/
<http://www.charlestoncvb.com/

Women’s Caucus for the Modern Languages Award

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The Women’s Caucus for the Modern Languages is pleased to announce:

The 2012 Florence Howe Award

Prize Date: 2012-11-30

Each year, the Florence Howe Award ($250) for feminist scholarship recognizes two outstanding essays by feminist scholars, one from the field of English and one from a foreign language. The recipient is announced at the annual MLA meeting. For consideration, essays of 6250-7500 words, written from a feminist perspective, must be published in English between June 2011 and September 2012. Submit an electronic copy to Kirsten Christensen, Department of Languages and Literature, Pacific Lutheran University at kmc@plu.edu Deadline: November 30, 2012. WCML membership required.

The 2012 Annette Kolodny Award

The Annette Kolodny Award ($400) is presented annually to a graduate student member of the WCML scheduled to give a paper at the MLA. To apply, send an electronic copy of your abstract, CV, and MLA session information to Kirsten Christensen, Department of Languages and Literature, Pacific Lutheran University at kmc@plu.edu Deadline: November 30, 2012. WCML membership required.

For further information about these awards and about the Women’s Caucus of the Modern Languages, go to: http://www.wcml.org/

Call for journal articles: Special Thematic issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies on white privilege

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Call for Contributors—

 Special Thematic issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies on WHITE PRIVILEGE

The Journal of Lesbian Studies will be devoting a thematic journal issue to the topic of WHITE PRIVILEGE.  There is little scholarship that focuses specifically on whiteness and white privilege in lesbian studies.   Possible topics to be considered include an examination of white privilege in:

•           lesbian relationships
•           lesbian communities
•           intersections of white racial identities and lesbian identities
•           representations of lesbians
•           lesbian health
•           feminist theory
•           fiction
•           poetry

Please send a one-page abstract of your proposed contribution to me at
adottolo@brandeis.edu by November 30, 2012.    Proposals will be
evaluated for originality and writing style, as well as how all the
contributions fit together.  Potential authors will be invited to
write full articles in the range of 10-15 double-spaced pages.

Please let your colleagues and students know about this project, and
feel free to post on relevant listservs.

In Sisterhood,

Andrea L. Dottolo, Ph.D.
Women’s Studies Research Center
Brandeis University

 

Call for papers: Women’s History in the Digital World, the first conference of The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education

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Call for Papers: Women’s History in the Digital World

Keynote Speaker: Professor Laura Mandell

Director, Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture
Professor, Department of English, Texas A&M

Bryn Mawr College

March 22nd and March 23rd 2013

The first conference held by The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education will be held on Bryn Mawr College campus and will bring together experts and novices to share insights, lessons, and information on the landscape of women’s history in the world of twenty-first century technology.

‘Women’s History in the Digital World’ will bring together scholars, archivists, digital humanists, students, and all those interested in the development of women’s history in the new era of digital humanities research. The conference will begin with a keynote address by renowned digital humanist, Professor Laura Mandell on Friday March 22nd, followed by a reception. Panels will be held all day on Saturday March 23rd.

The Center seeks scholars working on women’s history projects with a digital component, investigating the complexities of creating, managing, researching and teaching with digital resources. We will explore the exciting vistas of scholarship in women’s histories and welcome contributors from across the globe.  Key issues, new projects, theoretical approaches and new challenges in the digital realm of historical and cultural research on women. All thematic areas and time periods are included: this is a chance to share knowledge, network and promote stimulating conversations in women’s history in the context of digital humanities initiatives today.

We invite individual papers or panels on new projects, theoretical approaches, teaching, research and new challenges in the digital realm of historical and cultural research on women.

Please email abstracts (200 words max) and a bio (100 words max) to greenfieldhwe@brynmawr.edu by December 14th 2012.

Check the website for further updates or follow us on Twitter @GreenfieldHWE