Center for Women’s & Gender Studies

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>

Registration for (Dis)locating Justice, the 2012 CWGS Graduate Student Conference is now open! This year’s conference will be held on March 29-30, 2012 at the Student Activity Center. The conference is free and open to the public but seating is limited. Lunch will be provided for those attendees who RSVP by Monday, March 26, 2012.

We have a dynamic program of events designed to energize and inspire the UT community with new knowledge and productive tools to augment their current and future projects. The CWGS student-run conference provides graduate students and select undergraduates at the University of Texas at Austin and other universities the opportunity to share their research highlighting issues in women’s, gender, and/or sexuality studies with the UT-Austin community at large and CWGS community partners. This year’s theme is “Gender and Justice.” Given the multiple meanings of justice, we have especially designed this year’s conference to engage in dialogs across disciplines and colleges.

We have invited Dr. Radhika Balakrishnan, current Executive Director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, to deliver our keynote address on Friday evening.  She will share anecdotes of her research and advocacy experiences on examining economic, social and women’s human rights. She will also share how this experience has been productive in generating collaborative research between disciplines, the academy, and the community. If you would like to only attend the keynote and closing reception, please select the ticket designated “Balakrishnan Keynote & Reception.”

The planning committee has worked hard to create a dynamic event for the entire UT community and we hope to see you there.

Register online today at http://utwgsconference.eventbrite.com.

Fashion
UCLA’s 13th Annual Queer Studies Conference
October 14-15, 2011

Call for Papers
Deadline May 13, 2011

UCLA’s LGBTS Program is pleased to announce a Call for Papers for its upcoming Queer Studies Conference featuring presentations by graduate students as well as faculty and advanced undergraduates.

This year’s conference will explore and exploit issues of fashion, queerly construed. We wish to invite a wide range of questions and panels on subject topics as drag, female masculinities, male femininities, queer making and self-fashioning, cloning and styling, and, of course, the culture and politics of the fashion industry itself. Questions of class, economics, history, ethnicity, race, (im)migration, geography, exploitation, and sublimation are at the forefront of our query. We seek to know what might be a new analytic or interdisciplinary methodology through which to attend to multiple registers of fashion.

Keynote Speakers:
Jack Halberstam, Monica Miller, Mignon R. Moore,
Karen Leigh Tongson, and Deborah R. Vargas

Closing Performance:
“Queerture: A night of rocket science and fashion design”
with artistic director Tania Hammidi

Proposals for individual papers should take the form of abstracts; panel proposals should also include both a list of participants and paper abstracts. CVs must accompany all abstracts. Submissions from undergraduates should be accompanied by a brief letter from a faculty member highlighting the strengths of both the student and the student’s proposal.

Deadline for abstracts and CVs: May 13, 2011
Send abstracts and CVs to lgbts@humnet.ucla.edu
Contact: Catharine McGraw (310) 206-1145 & lgbts@humnet.ucla.edu

The deadline for you to submit an abstract for the 2011 Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking has been extended !

Our keynote speaker is Siddarth Kara, award-winning author of Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery. Our theme is still very much knowledge-focused: “What we know, and what we need to know.”

This year there are a number of improvements to the conference, such as longer speaking times, a lower registration fee, lower hotel room rates, special tracks for student papers to receive feedback, and two full days of presentations.

This will be the third year for this great opportunity to present your work and to form working relationships and friendships with others working as academic researchers, victim service providers, law enforcement officials, government officers, and foundations that support anti-trafficking work.

As always, we encourage all types of submissions: descriptions of the work of your organization (particularly an analytical or integrative view), academic papers, analyses, theoretical contributions, identification of problems and need for knowledge, and so forth.

We invite you to visit the conference web site at http://humantrafficking.unl.edu and see for yourself.

Don’t delay! The deadline for 300-word abstracts is now April 21, 2011!

For questions, please contact Dr. Dwayne Ball at dball1@unl.edu.

REGISTRATION IS OPEN for Feminist Action Project 2011: Feminism is for
Every(body)

April 1 & 2 at the UT School of Social Work

Organized by students, aimed at building community, this conference is
open to everyone interested in social justice. Come join us to talk
about body politics and increasing accessibility to feminist thought.
We will explore reproductive justice, size acceptance, images of
women in the media, activism in academia, and more!

Presenting keynote speakers:
Loretta Ross, the national coordinator of SisterSong Women of Color
Reproductive Health Collective, co-author of Undivided Rights: Women
of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice, and longtime human rights,
anti-racism,and anti-sexual violence activist

Marianne Kirby, a blogger, artist, and the co-author of Lessons from
the Fat-o-sphere. Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce With Your Body

We have many exciting panels, workshops, and presentations lined up.
Sample titles include:
- Women of Color in the Media: Deconstructing a Lens of Inequality
- Airport security, our bodies, and rape survivors
- Beyond Waves of Controversy: Feminist Art Making and Queer Political Forms

Register and join the conversation at:

http://www.feministactionproject.blogspot.com

Dear CWGS MA & Portfolio Students,

We invite you to participate in a planning discussion for the October 2012 International Conference on Women’s Human Rights with a focus on women’s human rights organizing in the Americas. This conference is part of the Embrey Women’s Human Rights Initiative, the Center for Women’s & Gender Studies grant-funded project to develop education for women, gender, and human rights. The upcoming meeting builds on an initial pre-planning discussion held in February, and we encourage new faculty, students, and organizers to join the conversation; please see below for details on the initial discussion.

This conference should support the work of faculty, students, and community organizers in Austin, and we need your participation to ensure that the conference will speak to you!

Please join us for a discussion
Monday, April 4, 11:00-12:30
Gebauer (GEB) 4th Floor Conference Room (to the left off of the elevators): http://www.utexas.edu/maps/main/buildings/geb.html
Bring your lunch, and we will provide cookies and coffee.

At this meeting, we will develop:
1. Conference topic and title
2. Conference concept (what it will look like)
3. Plans for community/university and cross-university partnerships for which we may partner with other centers and institutes to provide new project seed money

We also hope to have time to discuss:
4. Goals for the conference
5. Possible keynote or plenary speakers
6. Possible performers or films for the evening event
7. Strategies for circulating the conference announcement and call for proposals.

Please share this announcement with faculty, students, and organizers who may be interested. If you would like more information, please contact Kristen Hogan at hogank@mail.utexas.edu

This meeting will build on an initial shape developed by faculty and staff at a pre-planning meeting in February. Here’s some of what that group contributed:

Conference Goals:
The assembled group described their hopes that such a conference would:
1. Unsettle thinking about gender & human rights,
2. Contribute to ongoing flows of research & conversations,
3. Connect UT faculty with visiting presenters (don’t overlook the work our faculty are doing),
4. Feed back into the EWHRI by supporting new courses or course content, and
5. Involve faculty, community organizers, and students in planning stages and conference.

What will the presentations at the conference look like?
1. Conference organizers will create a call now for partnerships of university and community organizers to collaborate on a project; Centers/Institutes will collaborate to provide seed money to co-researchers in exchange for their report on the work at the conference.
2. Organizers may solicit papers in collaboration between faculty at two different institutions.
3. Organizers will create time and space for networking and project building at the conference.
4. Sessions may consist of results presentation or works in progress.

Calling Innovative Academics Within and Without Anthropology:

New Directions in Anthropology Conference: April 29-30, 2011
University of Texas, Austin

DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACT SUBMISSION: MARCH 6, 2011

Anthropology is not stagnant. Continuously it changes, grows, and evolves, transforming the world in which we live. As a new generation of academics and practitioners, such constant metamorphosis is paramount to our research methodology and pedagogy. Modern anthropology can only benefit from an inter-disciplinary approach to social science; therefore, it is important that anthropologists remain in dialogue and collaborate with academics in other disciplines.

We invite you who are making innovations in science, arts, humanities, and more, to share with us your knowledge and wisdom, your trials and errors, your fresh ideas and new directions.

The Anthropology Graduate Student Association (AGSA) will hold its 4th annual student research conference, New Directions in Anthropology, on April 29-30, 2011. This conference will highlight your research and projects aimed at changing theoretical constructs, incorporating new viewpoints, implementing innovative methodology, and branching out beyond the generally accepted limits of anthropology. It presents a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary dialogue, pushing the boundaries of traditional anthropology.

What makes your work different than that which came before? Were you working against a canon, and found an interesting way to step outside of it? Did you examine an old problem through a new lens, discovering a new and helpful perspective? Have you found creative ways to present fresh thoughts and ideas? Tell us about it! This is your opportunity to think outside the proverbial box.

What new directions are YOU taking?

The over-all goal of this conference is to foster community amongst students from multiple disciplines and to provide a supportive environment where individuals can both share and receive feed-back on their current innovative research.

Please submit abstracts by email to: newdirectionsanthropology@gmail.com by March 6, 2011. Abstracts should be limited to 300 words and should be accompanied by a brief bio stating your research interests, subfield, year in program of study, and contact information.

Submitters will be notified of acceptance by April 1, 2011.

Please email any submission questions to the above listed conference email address.

*(Dis)locating Queer: Race, Region, and Sexual Diasporas**

A Graduate Conference at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
May 5-7, 2011*
*Keynote speaker:* Eithne Luibhéid, Associate Professor, Gender & Women’s Studies, University of Arizona.

Author of *Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border* (U of Minnesota Press, 2002) and co-editor of *Queer Migrations: Sexuality, U.S. Citizenship, and Border Crossings *(U of Minnesota Press, 2005).

This is an exciting time for work at the intersections of Queer Studies, Critical Race Studies, and studies of region. “Queer” continues to be a critical location for agency and activism. However, those who undertake Queer Studies must also be conscious about uncritically endorsing racialized, spacialized, and classed norms while striving for a deeper
understanding of intersectionality. In contemplating the potential to “queer” the study of race, region and sexual diaspora we intend to challenge assumptions that undergird the construction of nationhood, race, migrations, community, settlement(s), and locality.

(Dis)locating Queer invites presentations that queer the analysis of race, region, and sexual diaspora and which unsettle racial, regional, and diasporic assumptions within queer studies. We seek presentations that investigate these intersecting lines of inquiry, asking what queer does rather than what “queer” is.

We encourage submissions organized around one or more of the following themes, but welcome presentations that use other rubrics to address the topic of race, region, and sexual diasporas:
-Race/citizenship
-Region/location
-Movement/diaspora
-Academy/activism
We invite proposals for panels, paper presentations, and artistic performances. The final day of the conference will be devoted to seminars on pre-circulated papers. Please indicate in your abstract if you would be interested in submitting your work early for a seminar. It is possible to both present a paper and participate in the seminar. We are eager to receive submissions from a wide range of disciplines and interdisciplinary fields.

*Guidelines:
*** Panel proposals must include a title and a panel abstract not to exceed 500 words. Each panelist must submit a one page CV.
*** Individual papers must include an abstract (250 words maximum) and one page CV
*** Please submit all materials electronically to dislocatingqueer@gmail.comby March 15, 2011

We look forward to submissions that are insightful, creative, and challenging, and we hope to host a truly interactive, supportive conference.

Kwame A. Holmes
Graduate Fellow, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities
PhD Candidate, Department of History
University at Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
kaholmes@illinois.edu

The 2011 UTSA English Graduate Student Symposium “Theory in the Flesh: Bodies of Scholarship, Activism, and Community”

Sponsored by the Department of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio

May 7, 2011 at The University of Texas San Antonio in San Antonio, TX

Keynote Speaker: AnaLouise Keating

Proposal Submission Deadline: March 15, 2011

A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives-our skin color, the land or concrete we grew up on, our sexual longings-all fuse to create a politic born out of necessity. – This Bridge Called My Back

With ‘Theory in the Flesh,’ Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga, co-editors of the foundational feminist text This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color, sought to establish a theoretical terrain that incorporated the various aspects of identity for women of color and grounded these elements in lived experience.

This symposium seeks to commemorate 30 years of This Bridge by exploring the applications, relevancies and politics of Theory in the Flesh in our contemporary moment. This interdisciplinary symposium will bring together graduate students, scholars, writers, artists and performers.

We invite papers that engage the concept of the corporeal, the self, community, and activism. Papers may challenge, complicate, critique, or expand current conceptualizations of the Theory in the Flesh in all disciplines, including, but not limited to, literary, cultural, queer, feminist, environmental, American, political, subaltern, bicultural, and popular cultural studies.

We also encourage topics that propose new and imaginative approaches to discourse analysis, methodology, and pedagogy. Visual arts and rhetoric proposals are highly encouraged; the symposium will feature an exhibition of artistic responses such as paintings, drawings, and sculptures related to our theme. We also invite creative writing proposals that bridge disciplines and explore questions of revolution and imagination.

Some possible topics include:
- Language
- Desire
- Concepts of communities/nations/space
- Alternative literacies
- Pedagogies in the grade school, university, or feminist classroom
- Discourses of development, progress, and difference
- Feminist methodologies
- Discourses of nativism, hybridity, and mestizaje
- Rhetorics of nationhood, sovereignty, and terrorism
- Local and global policies
- Environmental studies
- Queer studies
- Popular Culture
- Science Fiction
- Film Studies
- Music Studies
- Imagination in the arts
- Poetry as a revolutionary art form
- Politics and poetry
- Body studies
- Technologies of imagination
- Socio-linguistic studies

Please submit 250-word individual abstracts or panel proposals (comprised of a 250-word abstract for the panel as a whole and titles for each paper) to utsagradconf@gmail.com by March 15, 2011. Paste your proposal into the body of the email message and include any technology requests. Please also include your contact information. If submitting a work of art, please attach a low-resolution image of your piece, if possible, in addition to your abstract. The conference registration fee is $20.00 for pre-symposium registration and $25.00 for registration at the symposium.

Contact: utsagradconf2011@gmail.com
Deadline for submission: March 15, 2011
Facebook: “Theory in the Flesh”

Feminist Acton Project is still looking for panel, workshop, and presentation proposals for their second annual activist conference, to be held on April 1st and 2nd, 2011 on the UT-Austin campus. The theme is “Feminism is for Every(body),” focusing on body politics and increasing accessibility to feminist thought. Loretta Ross, women of color reproductive rights activist, will give the keynote address, and they also present fat activism blogger Marianne Kirby. The final submission deadline is Monday, February 14, 2011. See CFP or www.feministactionproject.blogspot.com for details, or e-mail feministactionproject@gmail.com.

18th Annual Emerging Scholarship in Women’s & Gender Studies Conference, Call for Papers
The 18th Annual Emerging Scholarship in Women’s & Gender Studies Conference
Conference Date: April 8th, 2011

CALL FOR RESPONSES
Submission Deadline: February 11th, 2011

The CWGS graduate student-run conference provides an opportunity for undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty from all departments to engage in round-table panels which address a diverse array of women’s and gender studies topics posed by CWGS faculty affiliates. Graduate students, faculty, and community activists from outside the University are also welcomed to attend. The Center’s annual theme for 2010-2011 is “Gender and Justice” but research on any aspect of gender and/or sexuality is welcome.

Please visit the Conference Website for a listing of panels and submission instructions:

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/cwgs/events/conferences/Student.php

Please save the date for the Third Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking at the University of Nebraska! The conference will take place September 29, 30, and October 1 at the Cornhusker Hotel in Lincoln, Nebraska.

We are pleased to announce that our keynote speaker will be Siddarth Kara, author of the award-wining Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery, and Fellow with the Carr Center on Human Trafficking at the Harvard Kennedy Center of Government.

Information on the conference, submission of abstracts, registration, dates, venue, and speakers will soon be available at http://humantrafficking.unl.edu.

There will be a number of changes to the conference, including a student track where students can present paper for feedback.

Keep your eyes open for the call for papers!

Hope to see you there!

This interdisciplinary conference, presented by Writing Across Communities, focuses on presentations of graduate student work. The 2011 conference focuses on “constructing space” as both a theoretical and practical concern, inviting discussion about how physical, rhetorical, and spiritual constructions of space can best be undertaken sustainably, ethically, and in concert with one another. Our keynote speaker is Dr. M. Jimmie Killingsworth, of Texas A&M, and co-author of Ecospeak. We would like to invite graduate students in your department working on any of these issues to submit abstracts of their work for inclusion in the conference program. Please forward the announcement and attachments (PDF of Call for Papers and Conference Flier) to your department.

CALL FOR PAPERS
Writing Across Communities at the University of New Mexico presents the
Second Annual Earth Day Conference, Friday, April 22, 2011

Theme: Constructing Space(s): Making our Home(s) in the 21st Century
Keynote Speaker: Dr. M. Jimmie Killingsworth, co-author of Ecospeak

Presentation proposals and paper abstracts due by February 25, 2011

This interdisciplinary graduate student conference focuses on a range of practical and theoretical issues relating to themes of Earth, practical environmentalism, and environmental sciences. The 2011 conference focuses on “constructing space” as both a theoretical and practical concern, inviting discussion about how physical, rhetorical, and spiritual constructions of space can best be undertaken sustainably, ethically, and in concert with one another.

Climatologists, chemists, biologists, and physicists, among other scientists, have discovered and for years described the wide-ranging impact that human civilizations have on Earth, the environment, and the planet’s other inhabitants. Engineers, architects, policy makers and others have taken scientific data and begun to imagine ways to mitigate or reverse the effects of human activity. Visual arts, literature, philosophy, and the humanities also have traditions of representing and interpreting the relationships between human and nature, human and animal. Finally, native and indigenous perspectives on living with the land have long been in contrast to western understandings of the best use of resources. Our relationships to the Earth, animals, and one another are mediated through these diverse lenses, and because living responsibly in the 21st century will take the input and collaboration of many thinkers and actors, it is imperative to have cross-disciplinary, cross-paradigm conversations about these relationships. By fostering this conversation, Writing Across Communities hopes to complicate and enrich the myriad ways in which we understand ourselves and our planet, and thus perhaps influence our actions upon it.

When and Where? April 22, 2011 at the University of New Mexico campus, Albuquerque, from 9 am to 4 pm.

Submission: Send your presentation proposal or paper abstract of 500 words or fewer to: earthdayconference@gmail.com . The submission should be an attachment in Word (doc or docx), PDF, or RTF format. Include a working title for your paper or presentation, your email, please also include a brief biography specifying your name, institution, department or discipline, and research interests. For panel presentations, submit a single document containing a working title for the panel, working titles for each of the presentations, and the abstracts for each presentation. Submissions must be received by February 25, 2010.

Presentation Format: We welcome submissions of multi-media presentations as well as traditional papers for individual presentations (15 minutes) or three-person panels (45 minutes per panel) from any discipline or combination of disciplines that address the themes of constructed space, creating and making home-places, and emerging environmental paradigms for life in the 21st century.

Questions? Contact Erin Penner, Writing Across Communities Events Coordinator, epenner@unm.edu.

New Majorities, Shifting Priorities:
Difference and Demographics in the 21st Century Academy

Friday, March 4th, 2011
9 am to 5 pm
UCLA Campus, Royce Hall Room 314

The conference is free and open to the public, but space is limited.
RSVP: http://www.csw.ucla.edu/conferences/rsvp

UPDATED INFO will be available at

http://www.csw.ucla.edu/events/new-majorities-shifting-priorities

The UCLA Center for the Study of Women (CSW) is pleased to invite you to an upcoming conference that will address challenges now facing women’s, gender, sexuality, LGBT, ethnic, race, and postcolonial studies in the academy. The
current economic climate has given rise to a crisis in higher education, and the relevance of work being done in these areas of study is being questioned. Budgets are being cut, while numerous programs face the threat of downsizing or closure. CSW, together with the Center for the Study of
Gender and Sexuality (CSGS) at NYU, organized this event as a response to these challenges by bringing experts in the above-mentioned fields together for two roundtable discussions. The roundtable participants will post position papers available to conference attendees on February 15th and these papers will provide the basis for engaged and sustained discussion with the audience on the topics and questions below:

Roundtable #1: Curriculum and Research in Gender, Sexuality, LGBT, Women’s Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Postcolonial Studies (9:30-12:00)

This panel is devoted to developing the most innovative and trenchant arguments that can be made for teaching and research in the areas of gender, sexuality, women’s, LGBT studies and the overlapping and intersecting fields of ethnic and postcolonial studies. Rather than remain on the defensive, fighting to keep the programs we currently have when they are attacked, might we instead take the opportunity to articulate broad, affirmative, forward looking new visions for the 21st century?

Panelists will articulate their intellectual, pedagogical and political visions for the future of these field(s) and address how they might imagine the place of gender, sexuality, women’s, LGBT, ethnic and postcolonial studies if they suddenly could remake the academy in any way they wished. Other questions the panelists will address include: How would you envision these fields of study as central rather than marginal to the academic mission? How might you organize them in relation to the humanities, social
sciences, sciences and professional education (divisions that you may also wish to question/remake)? How could your vision be put into play in the many dialogues occurring now about reorganizing the university? The focus for these papers, and this roundtable, will be on the intellectual grounds for remaking our fields, while the 2nd panel will focus more centrally on the institutional organization of them.

Roundtable #1 Participants:

Lisa Duggan, New York University

Rod Ferguson, University of Minnesota

Inderpal Grewal, Yale University

Laura Kang, University of California, Irvine

Sandra Soto, University of Arizona

Sarita See, University of Michigan

Roundtable #2: Academic Departments and Research Centers (1:30-4:00)

This roundtable is devoted to envisioning the best institutional structures, arrangements, and relationships among units devoted to teaching and research in the areas of gender, sexuality, women’s, LGBT studies and the related fields of ethnic and postcolonial studies. Participants will articulate what those institutional arrangements or structures might be based on their intellectual and administrative expertise and experience, considering how they would proceed if they suddenly had the power to remake the university in any way that they wanted. Other questions include: how would you
institutionalize gender, women’s, LGBT, postcolonial, and ethnic studies? How could the university be structured to position these areas and concerns as central rather than marginal to the academic mission? Participants will
reflect on the current crises and challenges facing their particular institution or higher education as a whole — from contingent labor and reduction of ladder faculty positions, to the student as consumer model, to the new metrics through which universities and their corporate guardians are assessing what works and what doesn’t. In the face of these shifts, are there specific institutional or structural arguments that gender and sexuality studies or ethnic and post-colonial studies are especially positioned to offer as a counter to the corporatized university?

Roundtable #2 Participants:

Laura Briggs, University of Arizona

Kathleen McHugh, UCLA

Ann Pellegrini, New York University

Angela Riley, UCLA

Jenny Sharpe, UCLA

Kathryn Stockton, University of Utah

New Majorities is cosponsored by the University of California Humanities Research Institute; UCLA College of Letters and Science, Division of Social Sciences; UCLA College of Letters and Science, Division of Humanities; UCLA Department of Women’s Studies, UCLA LGBT Studies Program; UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center; Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA; UCLA César Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies; UCLA Afro-American Studies Program; UCLA American Indian Studies Center; UCLA American Indian Studies Program; UCLA Asian American Studies Center; and UCLA Department of Asian American Studies.

Greetings from the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas School of Law.

We are pleased to invite you to register for our seventh annual conference. Entitled “Aftershocks: Legacies of Conflict,” this year’s conference is designed to coincide with performances of The National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch at the University of Texas, an award-winning play written by Scottish playwright Gregory Burke and based on actual interviews with Scottish soldiers from the Black Watch regiment who were deployed to fight in Iraq in 2003. The conference will convene an interdisciplinary group of scholars to explore some of the same intersections of violence, the colonial past, memory, and trauma that Black Watch invokes, as well as the unique role that performance might play in the analysis. It will consider these issues in a variety of geographic spaces and places, with a special emphasis on the legal and political regimes that are meant to preserve memory while also transitioning into post-conflict.
Lawrence Wright, journalist, playwright, and New Yorker Magazine staff writer, will deliver the keynote address on Thursday, February 17, to be followed by a pre-show panel with the playwright and a performance of Black Watch at Bass Concert Hall. The conference proceedings will continue throughout the day on Friday at the UT School of Law. The schedule is pasted at the bottom of this email.

This event is co-sponsored by Texas Performing Arts, the Humanities Institute, the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, UT Libraries, the South Asia Institute, the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, Performance as Public Practice, British Studies, and the Kozmetsky Center of Excellence in Global Finance (at St. Edward’s University).

You can learn more about the participants and register by visiting the conference website. This event is free and open to the public. Because space is limited at parts of the conference, we would appreciate your registration as soon as possible. Early registrants will be eligible for a 15% discount on tickets to Black Watch.

http://www.utexas.edu/law/conferences/aftershocks/index.php

We hope that you will be able to join us for what we are sure will be an exciting and thought-provoking event!

Best wishes,

Karen Engle

Cecil D. Redford Professor in Law & Director
Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice
University of Texas School of Law
727 East Dean Keeton
Austin, Texas 78705

http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/centers/humanrights/

Schedule
Thursday, February 17, 2011 — UT School of Law
4:00 p.m.
Conference Opening: Lawrence Wright, Journalist, Playwright, New Yorker Magazine staff writer
Keynote Lecture sponsored by the UT Humanities Institute
5:15–6:30 p.m.
Pre-Show Panel: “Performance and Human Rights”
Chair: Charlotte Canning, University of Texas at Austin
Gregory Burke, Playwright of Black Watch
Nicholas Cull, University of Southern California
6:45-7:45 p.m.
Reception in Bass Concert Hall
8:00 p.m.
Attend performance of Black Watch by the National Theatre of Scotland at Texas Performing Arts’ Bass Concert Hall.
Friday, February 18, 2011 — UT School of Law
9:00-9:30 a.m.
Continental Breakfast
9:30–11:00 a.m.
“Colonial Legacies”
Panelists:
Chair: Benjamin Brower, University of Texas at Austin
Michael Rothberg, University of Illinois
Priya Satia, Stanford University
Ralph Wilde, University College London, University of London
11:00–11:15 a.m.
Break
11:15 a.m. –12:45 p.m.
“Traumatic Legacies”
Panelists:
Chair: Barbara Harlow
Neloufer de Mel, Colombo University, Sri Lanka
Laura Edmondson, Dartmouth University
Jeffrey Helsing, United States Institute of Peace
1:00–2:15 p.m.
Lunch
2:15–4:00 p.m.
“Institutional and Legal Legacies ”
Panelists:
Chair: Karen Engle, University of Texas at Austin
Kate Doyle, The National Security Archive
Paul Gready, University of York
Helen Kinsella, University of Wisconsin/Madison
Fionnuala D. Ni Aolain, University of Minnesota, University of Ulster, Belfast
4:00–4:15 p.m.
Break
4:15–5:30 p.m.
Closing Panel
Invited participants from each of the previous panels