Proposed Panel for NWSA 2006:
Politics and Performance in an Age of Control

We are forming a panel for the National Women¹s Studies Association annual
conference in the Bay Area, June 15th ­18th, 2006
(http://www.nwsaconference.org/). We invite proposals from people working on
projects abut ways that performance (in public or private, the theater or
the street) is political or ways that activism is performative. How can we
contextualize relatively recent performative politics or the politics of
performance in relationship to newer forms of power, for example global
capitalism, Empire, biopolitics? Are new strategies for political action
necessary in this new age of control? In what ways might these strategies
constitute a post-identitarian politics and/or do they continue to address
problems of race, class, gender, sexual and national oppression and
privilege? Are these technologies of power, truth, knowledge or control
really new, and how does that make a difference for activists and academics?

We are interested in gathering scholars working on these and related
questions from a variety of disciplines, including english, comparative
literature, women¹s studies, sexuality studies, media studies, history and
anthropology. We are particularly interested in exploring these critical
questions vis-à-vis racialized, gendered and sexual modes of
subjectification; relationships between and body politic body or between
more private identity performances and more public, political
collectivities; and post- or anti-identitarian activisms. We want this to be
an interdisciplinary panel (or roundtable if we get enough good submissions)
and are interested in people working with a variety of methodologies,
objects and locations.

Some possible topics include:
* transnational economic justice movements
* anti- or post-identitarian queer politics
* gender politics of veiling inEurope
* religion as social reform
* interface between reproductive technologies and the citizen-subject
* performativity and politics of transnational media
* public protests of various kinds (hunger strikes, boycotts, eco-terrorism)
and the state
 

Proposals should be submitted via e-mail to Margot Weiss (mdw8_at_duke.edu) or
Naomi Greyser (ngreyser_at_stanford.edu) no later than Friday, October 28,
2005. Please paste into the body of the email a 1-2 page (250-500 words)
proposal description, along with a 50-100 word abstract and your:

Name

Institutional Affiliation

Address

Phone

E-mail

All conference participants must be current members of NWSA and
pre-registered for the conference by April 17, 2006.

Best, Margot Weiss and Naomi Greyser

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Received on Sat Oct 29 2005 - 14:49:23 EDT