Feminisms Against Fascism: Consortium-Wide Graduate Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS

DATES: April 23 (evening) & April 24 (all day)

WHERE: Wollman Hall, Eugene Lang College of the Liberal Arts, The New School, 65 West 11th Street, New York, NY, Room B500

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Judith Butler

The Gender & Sexualities Studies Institute at The New School invites submissions for our annual, in-person convening in New York City. This year, we bring together scholars, artists, writers, activists, and students to address the topic of Feminisms Against Fascism.

At a moment of intensifying authoritarianism in the U.S. and globally, feminist theory is uniquely positioned to diagnose what Robyn Marasco has termed “the fascist in the family”: the continuities between violence in the intimate sphere and violence in political life. Feminist analyses have long traced how patriarchal authority, gender binarism, and heteronormativity are naturalized as forms of order: within the family, the nation, and the state. Yet the roots of fascism in everyday life, intimacy, and care often remain undertheorized. This conference asks: How might feminist theory reframe fascism itself? What does it mean to confront authoritarianism not only as a political regime, but as an affective, familial, and libidinal structure? And how must feminist organizing transform in response?

The conference will feature a keynote lecture by Judith Butler, whose work on gender, performativity, nonviolence, cohabitation, and authoritarian affect has been central to contemporary feminist and anti-fascist thought. Butler’s recent engagements with anti-gender politics, nationalist melancholia, and the affective life of authoritarianism provide a critical framework for understanding fascism not only as coercive power, but as an affective economy organized around fear, resentment, attachment, and fantasies of purity.

We welcome academic papers, creative projects, performances, and workshops, and especially encourage submissions that engage multiple disciplines, methodologies, and modes of expression. By centering graduate voices and collective organization, Feminisms Against Fascism aims to cultivate a participatory, urgent, and politically engaged feminist community across the consortium.

Please submit your proposal for a 15-minute presentation. The presentations will be grouped as panels according to subject. We welcome academic papers as well as presentations of creative work.

Note that this will be an in-person event at The New School in New York City, and unfortunately financial support for travel will not be provided.

Submission Guidelines:

Please submit a 250-word abstract and a brief (100-word) bio by February 20 by completing this form. Participants will be notified by March 13.

For questions or for accessibility needs, contact genderstudies@newschoo.edu.