Invitation for Proposals on Interdisciplinary Scholarly and
Creative Work

Graduate Interdisciplinary Studies Conference: .Dangerous
Places, Potential Spaces: Emerging Feminist Connections and
Activisms in Local and Global Contexts.
 
University of Maryland
May 24-26, 2006

Website: www.freewebs.com/wsgo2006conference

Featuring plenary sessions and workshops by feminist educator
Dr. Peggy McIintosh, feminist postcolonial theorist Dr.
Sangeeta Ray, and Black feminist scholar Dr. Beverly Guy-
Sheftall.

Interdisciplinary scholars are courageous risk-takers; they
often conduct their research and teaching in .dangerous
places. in which their work is undervalued, misunderstood
and/or not supported. Young scholars are particularly
vulnerable to the ramifications that can result from pushing
boundaries and working at the margins of their academic
locations. In response to this ongoing challenge to our
scholarship and/or research and teaching endeavors, this
conference will highlight and celebrate the scholarship of
graduate students working in the areas of women.s, gender
and/or feminist studies, sexuality studies, cultural studies,
and other interdisciplinary academic locations having as
their central locus progressivepolitics and intersectional
theoretical and methodological approaches.

As signaled by its title, the conference identifies and will
provide a forum for discussing compelling intellectual issues
currently driving feminist/critical politics and will bring
together graduate students in related interdisciplinary
academic locations who are working to transcend divides,
dichotomies and boundaries of all sorts in their activisms,
research, and teaching.

Call for Proposals
As a .potential space. for making professional, intellectual
and/or activist connections among and between graduate
students and established scholars working on similar issues,
the conference will be divided into four thematic seminars in
which the customary division between audience and presenter is
collapsed. Each seminar will feature interactive working
sessions co-facilitated by one invited senior scholar and one
graduate student whose own research, teaching and/or
activisms fit within the rubric of that seminar.s thematic
mandate.

Participants . including the senior scholar . will each be
asked to prepare and present short position papers (3-4 pages
each) in which they address some key issues, debates and
conversations of the seminar as outlined below. Following
these presentations, the moderators will facilitate
discussion and/or activities among the session participants
designed to draw out common themes and controversial issues
that participants identify as having significant potential
for future work in the area under discussion.
 
All proposals should be related to the study of gender as it
intersects with other dimensions of identity (such as
religion, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, national
origin, mental, emotional, and/or physical ability, etc.).
Graduate students committed to interdisciplinarity,
intersectional approaches and whose work addresses
feminist/critical politics should send a 200-word abstract
via e-mail by March 1, 2006 indicating in which of the
following seminars they.d like to participate:

1. Building Community and Making Intellectual
Connections

Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Plenary Speaker and
Seminar Scholar-Participant

Concerned with strengthening the connections between
intellectual communities, this seminar invites submissions
from scholar-activists whose research, teaching, and/or
activism consciously utilizes multiple critical perspectives
and approaches from a variety of academic locations to
transcend epistemological and/or disciplinary divides,
dichotomies and boundaries to create that which could not
have been otherwise. Topics to be considered include but are
certainly not limited to:

· How to navigate an interdisciplinary
graduate program when your professors are trained in
specific disciplines

· How to do social justice work within the
university and across various academic locations

· The difference between and practical
applications of multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary
methodologies and approaches

· Being an advocate of feminism and other
critical/oppositional politics within
.traditional. disciplines

Abstracts for this seminar should be submitted by March 1,
2006 to Angel Miles at amiles3_at_umd.edu.

2. Transforming Structures of Oppression

Plenary Speaker and Seminar Scholar-Participant to
be determined
 
This seminar invites works that engage oppression and
resistance at a structural level. Participants will explore a
broad range of topics pivoting on the connections between
systemic oppression and structures and individual people.s
lives and experiences. Questions include, but are not limited
to:
 
· How do institutions reproduce and
maintain oppressive systems (such as racisms, white
supremacy, classisms, heteropatriarchy, able-bodied
normativity, among others)?

· How do public health institutions produce
normative meanings for bodies?

· How does the state determine gender,
race, and class differences and maintain them?

· How is the prison-industrial complex
situated within a racialized social order?

· What does heterosexism and homophobia in
the state look like today?

· How do public transportation systems
produce normative assumptions about the public as
able-bodied?

· How is the state and/or other
institutions responsible for hate crime legislation
that address trans-identity expressions?

Abstracts for this seminar should be submitted by March 1,
2006 to Laura Logie at llogie_at_umd.edu.

3. Globalization and Transnational Feminisms

Dr. Sangeeta Ray, Plenary Speaker and Seminar
Scholar-Participant

This seminar will explore gendered processes within a
transnational framework. How do global economic, political
and cultural processes impact the lives of gendered subjects
differentially across the globe? How do they (re)
construct/deconstruct particular kinds of gendered
relations? How are gendered relations associated with
shifting racial, sexual, national, cultural and other
processes? Within this transnational framework, how do local
groups resist? How do they connect with each other across
borders? What are the power relations inherent in these
kinds of feminist and other activisms across borders? As
part of this larger theme, topics can include but are not
limited to:

· Transnational feminist theory and
transnational feminist interventions in various
disciplines across the academy

· Local activisms and transnational
feminist connections

· New (and historical) intersections of
gender, race, ethnicity, culture, nation and
sexuality in a global frame

· The politics of gendered symbol systems

Abstracts for this seminar should be submitted by
March 1, 2006 to Vrushali Patil at vpatil_at_umd.edu.

4. Women.s Studies in Translation: Accessing
.Feminist Education. across the Spectrum of
Difference

Dr. Peggy McIntosh, Plenary Speaker and Seminar
Scholar-Participant

Women.s studies has developed into a thriving academic field
of inquiry within the academy, and more and more women.s
studies educators are being innovative how they develop and
share feminist knowledge inside and outside of the academy.
This seminar will support a conversation on these innovations
in teaching, with a particular focus on how women.s studies
practitioners interpret what counts as .feminist education,.
and how they translate that knowledge to different kinds of
learners across a variety of learning settings. Papers may
address (but are not limited to) the following topics:

· Innovative approaches in undergraduate
and graduate teaching

· Teaching women.s studies in
non-women.s studies disciplines and working in
interdisciplinary spaces

· Activist orientations toward the
classroom; social justice teaching

· Feminist education and women.s
liberation organizing

· .Special. strategies for addressing
.special. needs

· Women.s studies in elementary and
secondary school settings

· Community education and popular education

· The women.s studies Ph.D. (e.g.,
curriculum, pedagogy, process, politics)

· Accessing feminist education across race,
class, age and geography (e.g., girls, young women
who don.t attend college, and incarcerated women)

· Teaching .different. feminisms and
feminisms of difference (e.g., black feminism,
feminisms of disability)

· Translating feminisms across multiple
literacies (e.g., visual literacy, multimedia
education)

· Working collaboratively across and within
disciplinary fields of specialization

· Scholarship of teaching and learning
within women.s studies

· Feminist pedagogies

 
Abstracts for this seminar should be submitted by March 1,
2006 to Nikki Stewart at nstewart_at_umd.edu.

Artwork and Multimedia submissions are also encouraged.
Conference organizers are also soliciting non-text-based
contributions from scholars, activists, theorists, and
artists working in the areas of performance and fine art.
Submissions meeting the above criteria for intersectional and
interdisciplinary study which take the form of short
plays/performance scripts (or digital recordings of those
short performances), paintings or other types of visual or
technology-based art forms, are encouraged. Please contact
Kristen Williams at kwilli14_at_umd.edu.

Submit Your Abstract
Please submit your 200-word abstract as an attachment to the
following person(s) as appropriate by March 1, 2006:

For Seminar #1, .Building Community and Making
Intellectual Connections,. Angel Miles at amiles3_at_umd.edu
For Seminar #2, .Transforming Structures of Oppression,"
Laura Logie at llogie_at_umd.edu.
For Seminar #3, .Globalization and Transnational Feminisms,.
Vrushali Patil at vpatil_at_umd.edu
For Seminar #4, .Women.s Studies in Translation:
Accessing .Feminist Education.across the Spectrum of
Difference,. Nikki Stewart at nstewart_at_umd.edu.

To submit proposals for artwork, performances, and
multimedia: Kristen Williams at kwilli14_at_umd.edu.

In addition, include a brief (3-5 sentence) bio of yourself
with your abstract along with your preferred method of
contact (email/phone/mailbox). You will be notified by April
1st along with more information on paper guidelines.

We look forward to receiving your abstracts!

_______________________________________
Kimberly A. Williams
Doctoral Candidate, Department of Women's Studies
University of Maryland, College Park

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Received on Thu Feb 02 2006 - 14:31:11 EST