CFP: Intimacies of Empire: Childhood, Race and Gender (3/26/07; MLA '07)

Proposed special session for MLA Annual Convention
December 27-30, 2007
Chicago, IL
CFP Deadline: March 26, 2007

        The production of knowledge about the=20
child is intimately related to the governing=20
practices of empire. As Ann Laura Stoler has=20
recently theorized, the "intimate domain" of=20
child rearing "figure[s] in the making of racial=20
categories and in the management of imperial=20
rule." This panel seeks papers that address the=20
relationship between empire (broadly defined),=20
representations of the child, and the material=20
practices of children's lives. Papers are not=20
limited to any particular historical period,=20
geographical location, or literary genre, but=20
they must consider childhood, race and gender.

Possible questions to address (inspired by=20
Stoler's "Tense and Tender Ties" in Haunted by=20
Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American=20
History, Duke UP, 2006):

=FC How is the making of the body politic joined to=20
the making of sexualized and racialized selves?
=FC How do prescriptive literature and associated=20
practices reiterate relations of dominance in the=20
household?
=FC How does the child body operate as a site for=20
the production of racial and sexual inequities?
=FC How are childhood sexuality and gender=20
imbricated in racial ideologies and strategies of=20
rule?
=FC How do reform efforts aimed at children shape racial and sexual categori=
es?
=FC How do institutions attempt to educate the=20
consent and school the desire of young bodies and=20
minds?
=FC How do parenting practices reproduce and/or subvert state rule?
=FC How is the body of the "mixed race" child=20
deployed to constitute knowledge about racial and=20
sexual difference?

Please send a 1-2 page abstract and short cv by=20
March 26 to Lucia Hodgson via email at=20
lhodgson_at_usc.edu.

Participants must be members of the MLA by April 7, 2007.

Lucia Hodgson
Department of English
University of Southern California

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Received on Mon Mar 19 2007 - 14:36:27 EST