DEADLINE EXTENDED: CFP: Stony Brook University -- Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Graduate Conference

deadline for submissions: 
January 20, 2019
full name / name of organization: 
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies - Stony Brook University

CFP for Stony Brook University’s Third Annual

Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Graduate Conference:

“Asking for a friend (of Dorothy): what to expect when you’re expecting the end of the world?”

Keynote: Shanté Paradigm Smalls, Assistant Professor, English, St. John’s University

April 5, 2019 (if we survive)

 

Times are tough. In the face of catastrophic climate change, the threat of nuclear war, alternative facts, and a rising autocratic right-wing populism, it is very clear that we cannot have nice things in late capitalism. However, what is also very clear that 1) queer, crip, and feminist scholars/activists have their work cut out for them, and 2) a sense of humor and irreverence for the normative structures of power that have led us to the current moment are more necessary than ever.

This year’s theme, “Asking for a friend (of Dorothy): what to expect when you’re expecting the end of the world?” therefore aims to address both how to cope, as well as how to resist the dire state of current affairs. Women, trans people, queer people, people of color, people with disabilities, immigrants, indigenous peoples, and the working poor have long understood that this world is not for them, but now, more than ever, it is imperative for feminist and queer activists and scholars to consider what world making politics and practices are necessitated by a planet undergoing unprecedented transformations. We must collectively ask ourselves, what can be done to cope and take care of ourselves and each other in the face of such psychic and material violence, but also what can be done to resist it?

Engagement with and production of theory remain critical to such conversations, but we also wish to address approaches to the current moment as broadly as possible. While it is imperative to grapple with the immediacy of the present, can we “turn to the past in an effort to imagine a future,” (Cruising Utopia, Jose Esteban Munoz)?Can we think of nostalgia as a tool of critique? How does fiction from the past and present, television, film, digital media, YouTube, social media, or anything else help us cope with the end of the world, or avoid it? Is being deeply invested in reality TV a completely acceptable way to cope? How do novels help us think through the end of the world/late capitalism/climate change/fascism? Should we grasp at utopian straws, or is a turn towards embracing nihilism our best bet? In other words, what politics and practices should practitioners of queer/feminist/crip theory and activism embrace, or reject, as we prepare for an uncertain future (or obliteration)?

World making requires activism, performance, academic scholarship, infrastructure (metaphoric and literal), organizing, and humor. “Asking for a friend (of Dorothy): what to expect when you’re expecting the end of the world?” graduate conference thus encourages submissions from people situated across broad disciplinary attachments. Topics might include (but certainly are not limited to):

  • cultural productions, including objects, archives, performances, activism, that imagine feminist, queer, and crip futures;

  • the role of humor, irony, camp, sarcasm, and irreverence;

  • looking to the past to imagine queer potentialities;

  • the radical possibilities that might be desired through the examination of queer/feminist/crip nostalgia;

  • critical race theory;

  • Black studies;

  • ethnic and decolonial studies;

  • Indigenous studies;

  • media and film studies;

  • performance studies;

  • queer and feminist theory;

  • disability studies;

  • visual culture;

  • cultural studies;

  • literature;

  • feminist science studies;
  • Ecofeminism/environmental studies
  • urban planning.

 

We invite submissions of papers, workshops, performances, film, art, and panel proposals that address this year’s theme. Please send abstracts of 250 words or less to friendofdorothy19@gmail.com by January 20, 2019.