UPDATE: Dangerous Places, Potential Spaces: Emerging Feminist Connections and Activisms in Local and Global Contexts (grad) (3/2

full name / name of organization: 
Kimberly Williams
contact email: 

Deadline Extended to March 27th 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, feminist sociologist Dr. Karen Rosenblum, 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 progressive politics 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 27,
2006 to Robyn Epstein at HTUrepstein_at_umd.eduUTH.

2. Transforming Structures of Oppression
Dr. Karen Rosenblum, Plenary Speaker and Seminar Scholar-
Participant

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 27,
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 27,
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 27,
2006 to Nikki Stewart at nstewart_at_umd.edu.

Artwork and Multimedia submissions are 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 27, 2006:
        
. For Seminar #1, .Building Community and Making
Intellectual Connections.: Robyn Epstein at repstein_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
15th 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 Tue Mar 07 2006 - 18:22:00 EST