National Women’s Studies Association

Conference Theme: Protest, Justice and Transnational Organizing

Conference dates and Location: November 14–17, 2019, San Francisco, CA, USA

Panel title: Documenting Feminist Movements: Action, Memory, and Visibility

This panel seeks papers on documentary films that make the personal political, expose injustices, and record feminist movements as tools for feminist protest, calls to action, and creations of archives. In the interest of considering documentaries from a transnational approach, we are interested in films produced in any culture and any language. How can documentaries occupy a pedagogical function within the university and within the larger public? How can they function in tandem with grassroot movements? What institutional obstacles must filmmakers navigate? How has technology facilitated the diffusion of feminist documentaries? How can feminist archives inform, support, or initiate feminist movements? How do filmmakers deal with the aestheticization of political movements or humanitarian issues? How have amateur documentaries influenced feminist protest? How can documentaries create transnational dialogues?

Topics may include but are not limited to:

—rape culture

—prostitution

—sexuality

—abortion

—representations of women in the media

—race

—feminist history

—rage

—ageism

—ableness

—trans lives

—access to education or healthcare

—production and distribution of feminist documentaries

—feminist archives

—teaching with documentaries

Please send a 150–300 word abstract to Tessa Nunn (tessa.nunn@duke.edu) no later than 15 February.