Center for Women’s & Gender Studies

*Critiquing Culture*

The Cultural Studies Graduate Conference at George Mason University 2012

Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars. -Walter Benjamin

The Cultural Studies Student Organizing Committee (SOC) at George Mason
University invites paper proposals for our 6th annual Cultural Studies
Graduate Student Conference. The conference will take place on Saturday,
September 22, 2012 at George Mason University (Research 1 Building, Room
163) in Fairfax, Virginia.

CALL FOR PAPERS

At George Mason University, we acknowledge the need to specify Cultural Studies as an academic field with definable features and particular modes of methodological inquiry. In our view, Cultural Studies examines cultural objects as products of the wider social, historical, economic and political conditions that structure their formation, and acknowledges the interrelationship between these factors. In particular, Cultural Studies focuses on power relations and inequalities, which shape the horizon of possibilities for any cultural object at hand, be it a political discourse, an economic model, or a mass cultural product. As a field, Cultural Studies has expanded both geographically and theoretically, building upon its origins in the Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies through the inclusion of a range of critical approaches including Marxist political economy, post-structuralism, feminism, critical theory and post-colonial studies. While the objects of Cultural Studies vary widely, the field aims at political relevance and efficacy.

In an attempt to establish a vibrant community for scholars working in precisely this interdisciplinary vein, the Cultural Studies Student Organizing Committee at George Mason University invites graduate students to submit research papers for a conference specifically oriented toward the examination of cultural objects, whether through Marxist, structuralist/poststructuralist, feminist, or other critical lenses. We encourage the submission of papers related, but not limited, to the following broad themes:

- Political Economy
- Mass & Popular Culture
- Gender & Sexuality
- Race & Ethnicity
- Representation & Aesthetics

And, given that 2012 is an election year, the conference strongly encourages papers that address, critique, or otherwise analyze:

- American Electoral Politics

*Abstracts of no more than 300 words and a current CV should be sent to critiquing DOT culture AT gmail DOT com (critiquing.culture@gmail.com) by 1
June 2012. Please include presentation title, presenter’s name, institutional affiliation, contact information, A/V requests, and any special needs required in the email. Abstracts should be sent as .doc or .rtf file attachments.*

CFP: Feminists Face the State:
A Berkeley Symposium on Politics, State Power and Gender
November 7, 2012
9 am – 5 pm

How does state power organize, and is organized by, gender? This conference will build a sustain dialogue around the intersection of gender, politics and the state. It aims to recuperate the notion of “facing” the state as a form of active, feminist critique vis-à-vis state power. By “facing the state,” we hope to both explore the different gendered forms of power implicated in the multifaceted nature of the state as well as “face” – as feminists – the intractable and deeply ambiguous relationship between the state and the project of feminism. In doing so, we hope to use this conference as a forum to collaboratively build approaches that critically and imaginatively think beyond existing state-related structures and practices and that reimagine the possible.

With this line of inquiry in mind, we call for papers that provide feminist analyses of the state and/or analyze the relationship between the state and feminism. Possible topics might include: What does a comparison of the welfare, neoliberal and security state paradigms reveal about the state as a gendered institution as well as the possibilities for feminist critique? In what ways does the state act as a privileged institution for gendering social structure and practice, or does it merely reproduce, and perhaps amplify, the gendered fall-out of the market and other social institutions? What might a “feminist” state look like – is it an oxymoron? To what extent does focusing on “masculinity” provide a useful – or limiting – framework for understanding the state? How might we “face” the state from an intersectional perspective? How is feminist critique expanded by looking beyond the modern Western capitalist state to other state formations across time and place?

This all-day conference will take place on November 7th, 2012 (appropriately the day after the U.S. Presidential Elections), and it is funded by the Department of Sociology at UC Berkeley.

If you are interested in participating, please contact me, Jennifer Carlson, at jdawncarlson@berkeley.edu by Monday, April 30th, with a 200-word abstract.

Call for Papers

CLGBTH Affiliate Program

127th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association

January 3-6, 2013 in New Orleans

Presenters sought for a panel on locating LGBT history beyond the gay
ghetto. Potential topics can include: the LGBT community as actors in urban
gentrification or anti-gentrification efforts, historical spaces in which
LGBT and heterosexuals interacted, LGBT involvement or leadership in social
or political movements other than LGBT activism, sexuality and urban
development, and more. Potential presenters should send a 250 word abstract
of their proposed presentation, a CV, and a short (~100 word) bio to Katie
Batza at cbatza1@uic.edu by April 20, 2012.

“Queer Mythologies: Untangling Sex and Gender Myths”
An area of multiple panels for the Film & History Conference on “Film and
Myth”
September 26-30, 2012
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
www.filmandhistory.org
Deadline: June 1, 2012

Movies and television are one important way that many of us learn about
gender and sexuality. The stories we see played out on the large or small
screen tell us – explicitly or implicitly – what it means to be male or
female, what it means to be in love, what the narrative possibilities are
for constructing a life and forming relationships with other people. Too
often in film history, gay and lesbian lives have been mythologized – in
films from Cruising to Boys Don’t Cry to Brokeback Mountain – as lonely,
desperate, and destined for a bad end, a trajectory famously catalogued by
Vito Russo in The Celluloid Closet. Queer lives are often positioned
as opposite “normal,”  heterosexual lives. Yet other – queer – mythologies
are possible: from Hedwig’s re-imagining of the origin of love myth in
Hedwig and the Angry Inch, to Omar and Johnny happily splashing each other
at the end of My Beautiful Laundrette—certain films find ways to
re-construct dominant mythologies and perhaps define new ones. How do
films, TV, and online media perpetuate, subvert, or otherwise engage with
these and other myths concerning sexuality and gender?

This area, comprising multiple panels, will treat all aspects of myths
concerning sexuality, gender, and queerness in film, television, and
on-line media. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the
following:

Coming Out Stories
Romantic Mythologies
Classical Mythology Queered
Politics and Sex: From Myth to Public Policy
The “Gay Gene”: Science and Gender
“It Gets Better”: On-line Mythologizing
Mythologies of the Closet
Either/Or: The Myth of Gay or Straight

Proposals for complete panels (three related presentations) are also
welcome, but they must include an abstract and contact information,
including an e-mail address, for each presenter. Please e-mail your
200-word proposal by June 1, 2012:

Pamela Demory, Area Chair, 2012 Film & History Conference
“Queer Mythologies: Untangling Sex and Gender Myths”
University of California, Davis
Email: <phdemory@ucdavis.edu>

Queer Studies Easter Symposium
30 April – 3 May, 2012 Mexico City
Conference Languages: English and Castilian
Conference Homepage:

http://www.enkidumagazine.com/chics/queerstudies/qs_12.htm

Deadline for submission of paper proposals: 20. March 2012

The International Society for Cultural History and Cultural Studies (CHiCS), AIDSinCULTURE.org and Enkidu Magazine invite the global community to a vibrant and exciting multi-disciplinary, multi-lingual and multi-cultural Queer Studies Easter Symposium in Mexico City in spring, 2012.

The Symposium aims at exploring recent developments in theory and method in Queer studies as well as the broad themes of sexual diversities through time and space, gender constructions, sex-gender subjectivities, and sexual identity constructions from a wide and diverse range of perspectives.

The conference has this year a very broad, interdisciplinary scope and papers addressing virtually all cultural, social and artistic expressions and constructions of genders and sexualities from a wide range of perspectives will be considered. Wide and diverse interpretations of the conference theme ranging from the predictable to the surprising are encouraged.

More than 400 scholars from more than 35 countries have participated in previous editions of the Symposium and the conference. The event promises to be equally diverse, multi-cultural and multi-lingual in 2012.

Last year, the Symposium filled up very quickly and sadly a number of very exiting papers could not be accommodated in the program on time. Early submission is therefore suggested.

The program will be organized in a large number of special thematic sessions and sub-conferences covering a highly diverse series of topics. Of particular interest are contributions that explore Queerness and Border crossing from a wide range of different perspectives as well as representations and social constructions of sexual diversities through time and space.

Possible themes and topics might include:

- Colonisation of the body and the mind
- Representations of indigenous sexualities in colonial and postcolonial discourse
- Ethnopornography
- Silence and subtext
- Historical representations of alternative sexualities
- The historiography of homosexualities and sexual identity formations
- Sexualities in transition
- Maculinities
- The role of culture in gender identity and sexual identity formations

Papers are welcomed on virtually all related topics and themes, independently of time, period and geographical focus. Also papers of comparative phenomena will be considered.

Interdisciplinary perspectives are especially appreciated since all these topics in themselves stretch across several disciplines: history, cultural studies, literary studies, linguistics, psychology, political sciences, pedagogy, ethnology, anthropology, sociology…

The conference aims at bringing together academics working in all relevant disciplines as well as activists, artists and other professionals, and promoting innovative multidisciplinary and multicultural exchange and dialogue. Graduate and postgraduate students are encouraged to attend and present papers.

CHICS’ academic conferences are characterized by traditional paper presentations in panel sessions with three speakers each, followed by lively exchange, dialogue and interaction between speakers and audience in many small groups, workshops and seminars rather than by formal plenary sessions. Our conferences provide a forum for diverse voices from all over the world, to come together and make connections across linguistic, cultural and academic barriers.

The conference sessions will be conducted in Spanish and English. Some sessions will be bilingual and conducted in both languages with interpreters. Other sessions will have simultaneous translations. Many sessions will be conducted with interpreters for sign language (on request).

* Paper and panel proposals

500 word abstracts should be submitted to the organising committee in English, Castilian, Nahuatl, German or French. The languages for presentation will be English and Castilian.

Papers should be of approximately 20 – 30 minutes duration (circa 8 – 10 pages). Other forms of presentation, for instance workshops, panel debates and poster sessions will be considered on request. Typically, a panel of academic papers includes 3 (maximum 4) speakers and 1 moderator (session chair). Each session will last for 2 hours allowing for 30 minutes for each speaker and a further 30 minutes for questions and discussion.

* Proposals for panel sessions

Proposers should submit:
(1) Session title and a session intro (ca 100 words),
(2) Paper titles,
(3) Abstracts for each paper (500 words),
(4) Short biography for each participant and the panel chair (ca 100-150 words),
(5) Institutional affiliation and address for each participant,
(6) Audio-visual and other technical requirements.

It is recommended to use the form here: http://www.enkidumagazine.com/chics/queerstudies/registration_form_qs.htm , when submitting a presentation proposal.

However, abstracts will also be accepted as e-mail attachments to queerstudies@enkidumagazine.com .

If you would like to propose a panel session, and want assistance in finding speakers and/or a session chair, we can publish a call for papers for your panel session on the conference web site and distribute it in our newsletter. If you have an idea for a thematic panel session and would like us to publish a call for papers on the conference website, please send us a proposal by e-mail to queerstudies@enkidumagazine.com

* Proposals for individual papers

Abstracts are to be submitted, along with the presenter’s name, address, telephone, email, and institutional affiliation. It is recommended to use the form here: http://www.enkidumagazine.com/chics/queerstudies/registration_form_qs.htm, when submitting an abstract. However, abstracts will also be accepted as e-mail attachments to queerstudies@enkidumagazine.com.

All correspondence for this conference will be conducted via email. You will be notified by e-mail whether your proposal has been accepted or rejected.

We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted within few days. If you do not receive a reply from us within a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to resend your abstract and resubmit your registration form, and if possible, suggest an alternative e-mail address. In particular delegates using hotmail or yahoo accounts to receive conference related e-mails often experience problems receiving conference information by e-mail.

E-mails from the conference organisers are often delivered to your spam folder and not to your inbox, unless you remember to add the following e-mail addresses: queerstudies@enkidumagazine.com and liowlb@enkidumagazine.com to your safe-list. The first address is the general e-mail address of Enkidu Magazine and will be used to send conference newsletters and general information about the conference. The second, is the e-mail address of the academic coordinator of the conference and will be used for individual communication with delegates.

* EXHIBITORS, PUBLISHERS AND ARTISTS:

Artists are welcome to suggest exhibitions and displays of art during the conference.

Organisations, universities and publishers are welcome to sign up for information stands at the conference center.

The following information is required by artists, publishers and other exhibitors during the conference:

1) Technical Description of the information stand or artwork with indications of technical requirements for their presentation, the size and extension of the individual artworks to be presented.

2) Estimated Insurance value of the artworks

3) One image of a representative sample of artistic work from the exhibitions can be sent by e-mail to the conference organizers in the format tiff or jpg.

4) Curriculum Vitae of artist (or organisation).

5) Description of Exhibition (300 – 500 words).

6) Short bio of artist (or organisation).

* CULTURAL AND SOCIAL PRE-CONFERENCE ACTIVITIES

Before the formal academic sessions of conference, we will organise a number of cultural and social activities for conference delegates and we hope that many international delegates will consider arriving in Mexico City some days before the conference and participate in these activities.

In addition conference delegates with name badges will be given discounts and sometimes free access to various theatre plays, concerts, film screenings and other events before and during the conference. The final program for the cultural and social pre-conference activities will be published on the conference web site and will be announced also in the conference newsletter, which will be distributed by e-mail before the conference.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The second-annual Washington University in St. Louis Graduate History
Conference: The History of the Body

October 26-27, 2012 at Washington University in St. Louis

Keynote speaker: Professor Leor Halevi, Vanderbilt University

The Graduate Conference Committee of the History Department at Washington
University in St. Louis invites graduate students to submit proposals for
its second annual Graduate Conference.

We welcome interdisciplinary submissions for this broadly conceived topic,
and are excited to see in what new and creative directions participants
will take this theme. For example, the “History of the Body” might include
bodies used for political and religious expression, gender and the body,
sexualities, the body politic, the transgression of boundaries, the
movement of people, changing ideas of “good” and “bad” bodies over time,
and the idea of bodies in the formation and appropriation of personal and
impersonal spaces. Very literal uses of the “body” as well as more
representational and less-direct approaches are equally welcome.

The Graduate History Conference chooses a biennial rotating theme, allowing
for deeper examination of historical problems and questions over a period
of time. This year will be the second year to explore the “History of the
Body,” and we are eager to see how this provocative topic will develop in
the concluding installment of the conference.

Deadline for submission of proposals: June 1, 2012

Proposals for papers should be between 200-300 words. Final papers should
be approximately 20 minutes in length. Individual papers as well as
proposals for panels will be considered. We welcome new as well as
returning presenters. Please submit proposals to the conference website,
http://history.artsci.wustl.edu/GHA/Conference/Submissions.  For any
questions please contact Ethan Bennett at ethanrbennett@gmail.com.

MSA-14: October 18-21, 2012. Las Vegas, Nevada; Flamingo Hotel

For at least two decades, scholars have addressed the striking convergence between modernist writers and reactionary, right-wing, or fascist regimes. From Andrew Hewitt’s Fascist Modernism and Fredric Jameson’s Wyndham Lewis: the Modernist as Fascist to Leon Surette’s just-published Dreams of a Totalitarian Utopia: Literary Modernism and Politics, critics have sought to determine why so many modernist innovators were drawn to right-wing or reactionary politics. Yet the discussion has still largely been confined to the political leanings of male modernists, adverting to a fairly standard set of usual suspects: Eliot, Yeats, Pound, Lewis, Marinetti. This panel seeks to bring gender more squarely into this discussion, asking whether (or if) female modernists shared tendencies similar to their right-wing or reactionary male counterparts. Were female modernists equally drawn to reactionary or right-wing political regimes? If so, how did gender inflect the nature of their attraction? We encourage papers that tease out the complexities of this historical moment and the specific possibilities of right-wing or reactionary thought available to early twentieth-century female modernists (authoritarianism, National Socialism, Fascism, Maurrasianism, Royalism, Communism,etc.). Prospective panelists should send a 500-word abstract and a short (2-3 sentence) scholarly biography to Annalisa Zox-Weaver (annalisazoxweaver@gmail.com) and Barbara Will (barbara.will@dartmouth.edu) by March 30, 2012.

BLACK WOMEN GENDER & FAMILIES
Call for Papers

Deadline for Next Issue: March 13, 2012
Black Women, Gender & Families invites submissions for consideration in upcoming issues. BWGF is an interdisciplinary, generalist journal that publishes original theoretical and empirical research that centers the study of black women and other women of color, gender, families, and communities. Within this framework, BWGF encourages a range of theoretical and empirical research from the social and behavioral sciences, history, and humanities, including comparative and transnational research, and analyses of domestic policies within the U.S.

Authors are encouraged to visit the journal’s web site at: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/bwgf/submissions.html

The journal has a rolling submission policy and BWGF editors invite you to try out our new electronic manuscript submission system. This secure, personalized resource will allow you to track your manuscript through each step of the acceptance and production process. To set up your personal account and upload your submission, go to: http://caxton.press.illinois.edu/journals/ojs/index.php/bwgf/user/register.

Black Women, Gender & Families is published semiannually by the University of Illinois Press. It is distributed globally by the Press, the JSTOR Current Scholarship Program, and Project MUSE. BWGF is available electronically to subscribers at http://www.jstor.org/r/illinois/bwgf.

Jennifer Harner, Editor
University of Kansas
jhamer@ku.edu

Call for Proposals: Collection on Violence Against Women in Contemporary American Popular Culture
Deadline: April 1, 2012

Despite significant political advancements for American women in the twenty-first century as well as important feminist work to combat gender-based violence in recent years, statistics on violence against women continue to be staggering. This edited collection seeks to explore the role that American popular culture plays in this social phenomenon by bringing together analyses of representations of violence against women in popular cultural texts and practices of the twenty-first century, including but not limited to television, film, music, bestsellers, magazines, blogs, fashion, sports, and cultural movements. As a whole, the collection will engage cultural texts that perpetuate gender ideologies and social practices that support a culture of violence against women, especially ideologies and practices that intersect with issues of race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality, as well as texts that challenge or interrogate that culture.

Essays may focus on representations of or issues underpinning any gender-based act of violence, including acts of intimidation, dehumanization, exploitation, and deprivation, committed by individuals or by social institutions that cause physical, sexual, psychological, and/or social harm to women. A primary aim of the collection is to examine numerous aspects of and questions about the issue of violence against women, but it might include essays that explore how popular culture perpetuates, challenges, combats, questions, or reconfigures ideas about/conventional practices involving the following:

• Definitions of violence against women
• Victim blaming
• Language and violence against women
• Domestic/intimate partner violence
• Workplace violence
• Sexual violence/“rape culture”
• Femicide
• “Self-Inflicted” violence
• Bullying
• Poverty
• Issues of race, ethnicity, and/or class
• Issues of sexuality/sexual identity
• Technology
• War/militarism
• Marriage/family
• Religious practices
• Education
• The law/criminal justice system
• Health services/medical practices
• Antiviolence movements/institutional responses

Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words and a brief biographical statement with contact information to Kara Mollis at mollisk@lindsey.edu by April 1, 2012. Complete essays chosen from the abstracts will be due on September 1, 2012 and should be 4000-6000 words.

LGBTQI Graduate Students and Academia
Deadline: March 10, 2012

The Graduate Student Caucus, an affiliate organization of the MLA, invites proposals for papers to be presented at the 2013 MLA annual meeting (Boston, Jan. 3-6, 2013). Please send abstracts (ca. 250 words) to Ervin Malakaj (emalakaj@wustl.edu) by March 10.

LGBTQI graduate students encounter a variety of barriers – structural, institutional, covert, implicit – as they prepare to enter the profession, which remains an unchanged challenge for many young scholars. We invite scholars from all stages of their academic career to submit proposals for papers that call attention to areas where higher education is falling short of its commitment to equality, diversity, accessibility, visibility, and integration. We welcome papers that would contribute to a larger discussion about how these barriers can be identified and suggestions for how they can be overcome.

Ervin Malakaj
First Vice-President
Graduate Student Caucus of the Modern Language Association
Email: emalakaj@wustl.edu

MLA 2013 Boston – African Literatures Division (Nonguaranteed Session)

QUEER SEXUALITIES IN AFRICAN LITERATURES AND FILM.

This panel seeks papers that examine/theorize LGBTIQ issues in African literatures and film.  Africa, here, includes North and Sub-Saharan Africa.  Especially welcome are papers that explore how recent political events and controversies in Cameroon, Malawi, Uganda, Nigeria and Ghana produce new sites of reading or demand new agendas for deciphering the complexities of
African queer sexualities.   Since the appropriateness of the word queer for African sexualities is often questioned, papers may examine/propose alternative conceptualizations of the spaces of same-sex eroticisms in African everyday lives.

Possible topics include:

• Theorizations and representations of LGBTIQ activism in Africa
• Democracy, human rights and African sexualities
• Theorizing African sexualities beyond/outside Western paradigms
• Africa and the globalization of sexuality studies
• African homosexualities and religion
• Homosexualities and Nollywood
• Colonialism, coloniality and African LGBTIQ intimacies
• Anti-LGBTIQ violence
• Pedagogies of/for African sexualities
• Queering canonical texts
• Constitutionalism and Anti-Homosexuality Bills
• Crime and the representation of same-sex sexual practices
• Same-sex marriage in African film/literatures
• International relations and African LGBTIQ politics
• African Diaspora and African LGBTIQ
• The spaces of African homosocialities and their functions
• African queer liberalisms?
• African homonationalisms?
• African heteronormativities?
• Queerness and spatialities of the libidinal

Please send 300-word abstracts and CV to Taiwo Adetunji Osinubi at: taiwo.adetunji.osinubi@umontreal.ca by March 10.

CALL FOR PAPERS
“Queer Mythologies: Untangling Sex and Gender Myths” An area of multiple panels for the Film & History Conference on “Film and Myth”

September 26-30, 2012
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
www.filmandhistory.org
Deadline: June 1, 2012

Movies and television are one important way that many of us learn about gender and sexuality. The stories we see played out on the large or small screen tell us – explicitly or implicitly – what it means to be male or female, what it means to be in love, what the narrative possibilities are for constructing a life and forming relationships with other people. Too often in film history, gay and lesbian lives have been mythologized – in films from Cruising to Boys Don’t Cry to Brokeback Mountain – as lonely, desperate, and destined for a bad end, a trajectory famously catalogued by Vito Russo in The Celluloid Closet. Queer lives are often positioned as opposite “normal,” heterosexual lives. Yet other – queer – mythologies are possible: from Hedwig’s re-imagining of the origin of love myth in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, to Omar and Johnny happily splashing each other at the end of My Beautiful Laundrette—certain films find ways to re-construct dominant mythologies and perhaps define new ones. How do films, TV, and online media perpetuate, subvert, or otherwise engage with these and other myths concerning sexuality and gender?

This area, comprising multiple panels, will treat all aspects of myths concerning sexuality, gender, and queerness in film, television, and on-line media. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

Coming Out Stories
Romantic Mythologies
Classical Mythology Queered
Politics and Sex: From Myth to Public Policy
The “Gay Gene”: Science and Gender
“It Gets Better”: On-line Mythologizing
Mythologies of the Closet
Either/Or: The Myth of Gay or Straight

Proposals for complete panels (three related presentations) are also welcome, but they must include an abstract and contact information, including an e-mail address, for each presenter. Please e-mail your 200-word proposal by June 1, 2012:

Pamela Demory, Area Chair, 2012 Film & History Conference
“Queer Mythologies: Untangling Sex and Gender Myths”
University of California, Davis
Email: phdemory@ucdavis.edu

Because of the winter break and the start of the semester, we have been asked to extend the deadline for paper proposals to next September’s conference inspired by the life and work of Harry Hay. Even though we have received a wide array of very interesting applications, we’ve decided to
push back the deadline a few more weeks to February 29th.

If you have already applied, thank you for your application and we appreciate your patience with this new deadline. If you haven’t applied, please take a look at the CFP below. We imagine the conference to be a wide-ranging one, which is both historical and contemporary in its emphases. If you think your work might fit, please send us a proposal, and of course encourage friends or colleagues to do so as well.

Many thanks!

CALL FOR PAPERS:
Radically Gay:  The Life & Visionary Legacy of Harry Hay
September 27-30, 2012, New York City

In celebration of the centennial of the birth of LGBT pioneer Harry Hay, CLAGS (the Center for Lesbian & Gay Studies at CUNY) and the Harry Hay Centennial Committee invite proposals for a broad-reaching conference exploring key facets of LGBT life and their evolution over the last six
decades.

Harry Hay’s life and his impact on LGBT history and culture were extraordinary, and the range of his activities was terrifically diverse. In the 1930s and ‘40s, his involvement in progressive politics,
avant-garde art, and the Communist Party all shaped and influenced his formulation of the idea that LGBT people were a distinct “cultural minority” who needed to become conscious of themselves as a people and organize for their own liberation. With that insight, he co-founded the Mattachine Society in the 1950s and helped launch the modern LGBT liberation movement. He was an organizer of the first Radical Faerie gathering in 1979 and remained an active participant and inspirational figure in LGBT movements until his death in 2002. In addition, as a gay activist Hay committed himself to a larger progressive agenda, working in the anti-war movement, on behalf of
Native Peoples, and within Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition. As an intellectual, Hay devoted himself to anthropological and historical research about the origins and meaning of LGBT lives, social roles and consciousness. His research focused particular energy on two-spirit people among Native Americans and matrilineal cultures.

Given this rich array of interests, the conference organizers seek to gather scholars, public intellectuals, activists, students, and artists who will take inspiration from Hay’s life and ideas in order to think together about several strands of LGBT living. In particular, the conference will explore four central themes inspired by and reflective of Hay’s life and times: LGBT arts, political activism, spirituality and sexual identities.

We welcome proposals for full panels, individual research papers, artistic presentations, and “state of the debate” discussions.  We are certainly interested in proposals about Hay’s life itself and any of its many facets. At the same time, we very much encourage proposals that explore and debate
how the questions raised and confronted by Hay have continued to evolve. To that end, papers may be historical, theoretical, contemporary or future-oriented and may address, but need not be limited to, any of the following thematic topics:

LGBT POLITICS

• Significance of Mattachine and homophile political groups, their evolution, and relation to gay liberation activism
• Importance (or not) of homophile and other LGBT political leaders
• Sexuality on the Left
• LGBT radicalism and separatism vs mainstream politics and assimilation
• Coalition-building vs single-issue politics
• Youth as a political constituency
• Assessing LGBT organizing strategies and utopian goals
• Mapping an LGBT agenda for the 21st-century

LGBT SPIRITUALITY

• Historical, cultural, and religious aspects of the Radical Faerie movement
• LGBT perspectives on religion, theology, and spirituality
• LGBT influence on, and conflicts with, mainstream and alternative religions
• Linking the spiritual and the sexual
• Politics of spirituality
• Connections to the natural world
• Queer mysticism, shamanism and spiritual practice
• Ancient roots of queer spirituality
• Native Peoples’ spiritualities

LGBT ARTS

• Harry Hay’s artistic world: John Cage, Will Geer, Lester Horton, Leftist theater, etc.
• Past/present fears of LGBT artistic power (e.g. 1950s “homintern”)
• Representations of LGBT lives in contemporary/historical popular culture
• Past/present uses of art as tool of LGBT political activism (e.g. Gran Fury)
• Role of folk & popular music for political organizing (e.g. People’s Song)
• LGBT contributions to 20th-century avant-garde and popular arts
• Defining a queer aesthetic sensibility
• Studies of specific significant queer artists

LGBT IDENTITIES

• The evolving identities of LGBT/Queer/Questioning/Hetero-flexible/Trans People & others
• The meaning of gender in the LGBT world
• Homophile ­ Gay ­ Queer: differences, overlaps, and relations
• Lesbians & Gay men: past/present/future alliances and cleavages
• Class and socioeconomic issues within LGBT organizing
• Transgender inclusions/exclusions
• Queer archetypes
• Meaning of “gay consciousness”
• Identity as “natural,” “historical,” or “learned”
• Two-spirit tradition and alternative gender roles in non-Western cultures
• The future of sexual identities

For each paper proposed, please submit a 300-word abstract and a 2-page CV for the presenter. If you wish to propose a 3- or 4- person panel, please submit a separate abstract & CV for each paper, and an additional abstract of the panel. All proposals should be sent to Daniel Hurewitz at daniel.hurewitz@hunter.cuny.edu by February 29, 2012, with “Hay Centennial” in the subject line.

We may have space to display/screen some artworks and present some performances along the thematic lines above: if that interests you, please email Daniel Hurewitz at the address above and submit a handful of images or performance selections either as a zip file, downloadable file, or DVD
by February 29, 2012. If the latter, please send to Daniel Hurewitz, c/o CLAGS, 365 Fifth Avenue, Room 7115, New York NY 10016.

Daniel Hurewitz
<dhurewit@hunter.cuny.edu>

Victorian Network is an MLA-indexed (from 2012) online journal dedicated to publishing and promoting the best postgraduate work in Victorian Studies.

The sixth issue of Victorian Network, guest edited by Dr Greta Depledge (Royal Holloway), is dedicated to a reassessment of nineteenth-century constructions and understandings of sex, courtship and marriage. Although the heteronormative and companionate marriage was vital for economic and reproductive reasons – as well as romantic impulses – recent scholarship has illuminated its status as but one of several diverse paradigms of marriage/sexual relationship accessible to the Victorians Across the nineteenth century, profound crises of faith, extensive legal reforms and the new insights afforded by the emergent discipline of anthropology all contributed to a culture of introspection about the practice of marriage, at the same time as advances in science and medicine opened up new interpretations and definitions of sexual practices and preferences.

We are inviting submissions of no more than 7000 words, on any aspect of the theme. Possible topics include but are by no means limited to the following:

• Victorian narratives of queer desire: text and subtext
• Representations of women’s sexuality (angels, whores and spinsters)
• Prudishness and censorship: “deviant” novels and scandalous dramas
• Adultery, bigamy, divorce and other affronts to the ideal of companionate marriage
• Transgressive relationships
• Nineteenth-century marriage law, including prohibited degrees of affinity, property reform and breach of promise
• Representations of sexual innocence and experience (virginity, puberty and prostitution
• Subversion of traditional courtship narratives
• Sex and class: adventuresses, mistresses, sex workers and blackmail
• Customs of the country: courtship conventions, betrothals and bridal nights
• Performance, stylization and parody: gender scripts, consumer culture, theatrical subversion

All submissions should conform to MHRA style conventions and the in-house submission guidelines. The deadline for submissions is 30 May 2012.

Contact: victoriannetwork@gmail.com
Website: http://www.victoriannetwork.org/index.php/vn

*CALL FOR PAPERS:  Film and Video Production* *

2012 Midwest Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference
Friday-Sunday, October 12 – 14, 2012
Columbus, OH, Renaissance Columbus Downtown Hotel
http://mpcaaca.org

*Deadline: April 30, 2012*

The Film and Video Production area of the Midwest Popular Culture and Midwest American Culture Association is now accepting proposals for our upcoming 2012 conference.

Perhaps more than any other art form, film is tied to available technology and much of its magic comes from the filmmakers’ ingenuity as they navigate their vision and the technological limitations they face.  Not only are filmmakers collaborating with technology, but with other members of the
crew and production team, as well as with actors and documentary participants.

We hope that this area’s presenters will explore how life behind the camera influences the final cinematic products our culture so avidly enjoys. Here’s a list of suggested topics, but please feel free to experiment with the idea of production in your proposals:

-The collaborative nature of filmmaking.
-The difference between producing fiction films and documentaries.
-The dearth of women, people of color and GBLT people in the key roles of film production such as directing, producing and cinematography, as well as ways in which we can help remedy the situation.
-Digital video’s effect on democratizing film production.
-YouTube’s and other online sites’ production values.
-Fanvids.
-Experiences running, founding and/or teaching in film/video production programs at the college or high school level.
-Pedagogical uses of film production.
-Behind-the-camera experiences and how they have informed the presenters’ understanding of the nature of film and video.
-Historical analyses of how technological changes have affected filmmaking (the arrival of sound and color, George Lucas and/or James Cameron’s influence on special effects, cinema verité’s reliance on handheld cameras, CGI).
-3D technology.
-Examinations of the future of film and video production.

More information about the conference can be found at http://mpcaaca.org/. Students are eligible for travel grants.  Visit http://mpcaaca.org/about/grants.html for more information.

Please upload your 250-word abstract along with your name, affiliation, and e-mail address to http://submissions.mpcaaca.org/.  Feel free to email me at ahidalgo@purdue.edu if you have any questions.

Thank you very much,
Alexandra Hidalgo
Film and Video Production Area Chair, MPCA/ACA<http://alexandrahidalgo.com/>
–
Doctoral Candidate and Teaching Assistant in Rhetoric and Composition
Documentary Filmmaker
Editor-in-Chief, *agnès films*, http://agnesfilms.com/
Multimedia Editor, *Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society*,
http://www.presenttensejournal.org/

Department of English
Purdue University
500 Oval Drive
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2038