cfp.english.upenn.edu

WOMEN AND POPULAR CULTURE:
OF SOCIAL JUSTICE, SEXUAL POLITICS AND THE STATUS QUO

CONFERENCE AT SOUTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY, THURSDAY-SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21-23, 2010

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: BEVERLY GUY-SHEFTALL (SPELMAN COLLEGE), PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL WOMEN’S STUDIES ASSOCIATION, ANNA JULIA COOPER PROFESSOR OF WOMEN’S STUDIES

The past decade has seen considerable changes in the spaces women occupy in American culture, including an increase in the number of women with major roles in politics and in the media. Indeed, women’s engagements with social media have opened up new opportunities for grassroots activism and the creation of more distributed communities.

At the same time, the same explosion of popular media that has made strong and important women more visible continues to reinforce traditional stereotypes with pabulum like Desperate Housewives, the explicit, meat-market materialism of contestants on Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? and The Bachelor, and the implicit body-hating ethos of shows like The Swan and Extreme Makeover. And one need only briefly visit social media sites, look at other outlets for new media, or listen to popular music across all genres to discover that extreme forms of sexual objectification, violence against women, and misogyny are as ubiquitous as ever.

We are soliciting one- page abstracts that examine the degree to which contemporary popular culture serves as a site of containment or resistance for the agendas of women interested in promoting and advancing social justice and equality; concomitantly, this entails the ongoing critique and deconstruction of persistent ideologies, agendas, cultural vehicles, etc., which continue both implicitly and explicitly to base women's value (or lack of value) on their appearance or sex appeal.

• Papers presented at the conference will be held to a strict 20-minute time limit.
• Selected papers will be peer-reviewed and published in Plenum: The South Carolina State Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies
• Registration fee: $85.00 (includes Friday night banquet and one-year subscription to Plenum
• Continuing education credit available

SUGGESTED TOPICS (Please feel free to propose papers or panels on other topics of interest):

*Feminist Cultural Critiques
*Women and the War
*New Washington Women
*Oprah Winfrey
*Women News Anchors
*Women’s Political Campaigns: Image over Substance?
*First Lady Michelle Obama
*Lesbians in Popular Culture
*Women Directors in and outside of Hollywood
*Women in Hollywood
*Women in Popular Music
*Pop Feminism
*Post-feminism
*Popular Women Writers
*Global Capitalism and Feminism
*Stereotypes of Poor Women
*Women in Administrative Positions
*Television: Should we relegate it to the trash bin of history?
*Body Image, Gender and Appearance
*Women and Misogyny
*Women’s Studies Today
*Feminist Theory Today
*What are Feminists?
*Women and Political Power

Abstracts due by July 15, 2010; send to sstein at scsu dot edu.

For more information, please contact:
Prof. Susan Isabel Stein, sstein at scsu dot edu or Prof. Angela Shaw-Thornburg, ashawth at scsu dot edu