CFP

Marylin A. Hulme (hulme@rci.rutgers.edu)
Tue, 21 Oct 1997 12:09:04 -0400


>
> FOUNDATIONS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY:
> Scholarship, Activism, Community
> June 10-14, 1998
> SUNY-Oswego
> Oswego, New York
>
> One hundred and fifty years after 68 women and 32 men assembled in
>Seneca Falls, New York, to sign a Declaration of Sentiments that
>initiated a new, activist phase of the women's rights movement, the
>National Women's Studies Association convenes in nearby Oswego to ponder
>that legacy on the eve of a new millenium. What provides the underlying
>base or support from which women's studies and the NWSA can move
>confidently into the twenty-first century? Have we a fund of knowledge to
>draw on? A history of direct vigrous action in support of women and
>girls? Are we a body of persons with a common history or interests?
>
> As a scholarly field, where is women's studies now? Are we a
>unified "discipline?" Should we be? What can we learn from reexamining
>our origins? Since women's experience, issues, and realities color and
>pervade other academic disciplines, what is distinctive about women's
>studies scholarship? How critical is the existence of women's studies
>programs/departments to feminist scholars in the university? How
>thoroughly has feminist scholarship been integrated into the traditional
>disciplines? To the extent that feminist scholarship has been integrated
>into the disciplines, has it been coopted into being less critical and
>potentially transformative? Twenty-five years ago, women's studies was
>conceived as "the academic arm of the women's movement." What is the
>relationship, today, of women's studies to the community? What is the
>relationship between feminist theory and praxis? Has scholarship informed
>activism? Has activism shaped scholarship? What has happened to the
>women's movement, or--as bell hooks prefers--to feminist movement? Why,
>after a presence of almost 30 years in the academy and on the streets, do
>most people (including state commissioners of higher education) not know
>what women's studies is? Who comprises "the women's studies community?"
>Have we discrete and/or overlapping communities: communities of scholars,
>learning communities, disciplinary and metadisciplinary communities,
>issues-oriented communities? What models of collaboration, coalition, and
>governance have we developed?
>
> "Women's Rights Around the World: Past, Present, and Future" is
>the title of the embedded conference, cosponsored with Women's Rights
>National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York. Questions to be
>explored include: What theoretical perspectives inform rights language(s)?
>How do languages of rights translate in various cultures? Can an
>international community create common language? What has been/is the role
>of international organizations like the United Nations in expanding,
>protecting, and defining women's rights? What are the costs of women's
>rights activism? How can/does an international community of women's
>rights activists support and encourage each other? To observe the 150th
>anniversary of the Seneca Falls convention, theorists, scholars, and
>activists are invited to explore the legacy, advance the agenda, and
>create the networks to sustain women's rights activism into the
>twenty-first century.
>
> Conference plenaries are organized around four major topics: The
>Politics of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Communities;
>Feminist Science Education: Towards Interdisciplinary Knowledge and
>Practice; Beyond the Sex Wars: Sex Work and Feminism into the 21st
>Century; and Activism. We invite proposals from teachers, students,
>scholars, activists, and community and cultural workers that address the
>issues raised by both the general and embedded conference themes, or by
>the plenary topics. We particularly welcome presentations about women's
>studies administration, curriculum, scholarship, pedagogy, academic
>politics, feminist theory, and the relationships between our theory and
>our practice, our personal and our professional lives, our scholarship and
>our experience of personal and work relationships. We encourage
>interdisciplinary papers as well as presentations from all fields in the
>humanities, the natural and social sciences, the creative and performing
>arts, health, law, social work, education, community development, and
>other professional and paraprofessional fields. Proposals may be
>submitted for individual papers, panels, workshops, and roundtables. A
>panel is composed of three to four individual papers presenting
>theoretical issues or research data organized around a common theme
>pertaining to any women's studies field. A workshop is an in-depth
>presentation designed to share skills, knowledge, and/or experience in a
>new area of women's studies. In a roundtable, presenters offer ideas and
>facilitate group discussion on problems of mutual concern, focusing on new
>ideas and problem solving. Pre-arranged panels will have a better chance
>of acceptance than individual proposals, workshops, and roundtables.
>
> NWSA Conference 1997
> Proposal Deadline: November 15
>
> PLENARY TOPICS
>
>THE POLITICS OF GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDERED COMMUNITIES
> On the eve of the twenty-first century, how fully integrated into
>local, national, and international communities are lesbians and gay men?
>Is such integration desirable? What alternative communities have been
>developed by queer identities and politics? What is or ought to be the
>relationship between lesbian studies and women's studies? Between queer
>theory and feminist theory? How do intersections of race/ethnicity,
>gender, and sexual preference inform feminist theory? How can women's
>studies faculty continue to integrate material on lesbian and gay lives
>into our classes? What do the politics of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
>transgendered struggles tell us about the social construction of gender?
>Is being "out" in the classroom a dilemma or a duty? How can gay,
>lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered student and teacher activists work
>together to end homophobia in our colleges and high schools? Can
>gay/straight student alliances help transform pain to pride? What role
>can coalition politics play in addressing the needs of queer students?
>How can we make our schools safe for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and
>transgendered teens? What role does school play in growing up lesbian?
>
>FEMINIST SCIENCE EDUCATION: TOWARDS INTERDISCIPLINARY KNOWLEDGE AND
>PRACTICE
> How do language and cultural values affect the understanding and
>production of scientific knowledge? Is scientific knowledge "situated
>knowledge?" What can women's studies scholars and scientists learn from
>(and teach) each other? How do feminist theory and pedagogy operate in
>the science classroom? What are specific processes that foster the
>integration of feminist theory and practice and how can these processes be
>implemented in the science classroom? What classroom activities will
>encourage students to situate science in historical and socio-political
>contexts? Can the science classroom become a site of transformative
>learning, motivating students and teachers alike to undertake
>environmental, social, and political action? Can feminist science
>education become an arena in which theory and practice combine to effect
>social change?
>
>BEYOND THE SEX WARS: SEX WORK AND FEMINISM INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
> How can we move beyond the pro-sex/anti-sex debates in feminist
>analyses of the sex industry and sexuality? How can understand the
>application of new technologies to the commodification of sexuality? Do
>feminist critiques still make sense now that cybersex on the internet
>allows for a diversity of sexual fantasies that do not fit traditional
>gender hierarchies? What can women's studies scholars and sex workers
>learn from each other? How do we create a praxis that breaks down a
>divide between sex workers and academics? What is the line between sex
>work and other commodified forms of sex in contemporary culture?
>
>ACTIVISM
> What does activism mean in a feminist context? How, throughout
>history and in various countries and communities, have women organized to
>protest, to effect social change, or to preserve the status quo? Around
>which issues have they organized? Are there particular forms of activism
>that women have historically engaged in? What encourages activism? Do
>icons, images, actions inspire others? How do media limit and expand
>activist options? Are women's ways of working for social change different
>organizations or social protest movements? What is the relationship
>between activism and female/feminist consciousness? How does activism
>transfer to different groups and generations? What have been the
>political, economic, and social consequences of collective protest for
>women in different cultures and societies and at different moments in
>history?
>
> Send proposals for sessions or individual presentations,
>postmarked by November 10, 1997, to:
> Beatrice Thompson, Conference Coordinator
> 529-A Sooner Drive
> Norman, OK 73072
> e-mail: bthompson@ou.edu
>
>IMPORTANT: Each proposal will be acknowledged as received. When a
>proposal has been accepted, a letter will be sent to each presenter,
>informing her or him of the NECESSITY of being a MEMBER OF NWSA and of
>REGISTERING for the conference.
>
>
> WOMEN'S RIGHTS AROUND THE WORLD: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
>
> An Embedded Conference of the
> 1998 National Women's Studies Association Annual Conference
> June 10-14, 1998
> Oswego, New York
>
> From Seneca Falls to Beijing, numerous conventions, summits, and
>meetings for the rights of women have taken place. In celebration of the
>150th anniversary of the first Women's Rights Convention, the embedded
>conference, "Women's Rights Around the World," focuses on the construction
>of the identities "woman" and "rights," fully recognizing that
>rights-based strategies have been hotly contested and that definitions of
>"woman" and "rights" change over time.
> This embedded conference will explore the relevance of rights and
>rights talk to shaping women's experiences of inclusion, seclusion, and
>exclusion in ethnic groups, regions, nation states, and continents around
>the world. It will celebrate leaders of women's rights movements and
>interrogate the practices that are successful in defining and defending
>women's rights. Realizing that definitions of "women" and "rights" are
>not universal, it seeks to gather many voices together to understand
>strategies, philosophies, successes, and failures. We envision a richness
>of workshops, sessions, speakers, and presentations that will match the
>richness of women's activism world-wide.
> Participants are invited to reflect upon and explore such
>questions as the following: How have women engaged in human rights
>struggles, past and present? What role does feminism play in women's
>activism on their own behalf? Are there common agendas that women in
>various countries can pursue? Are particular strategies, languages, and
>actions effective at particular moments? In what contexts are
>rights-based arguments successful in achieving rights for women? In what
>ways are they constraining? Does the equation of women's rights and human
>rights assist in moving forward an agenda for women?
>
> For more information on the embedded conference, contact:
>
> Vivien Rose
> 1998 Embedded Conference Committee Chair
> Women's Rights National Historical Park
> Seneca Falls, NY 13148
> (315) 568-0007
> e-mail: VIVIEN_ROSE@NPS.GOV
>
>
>Ellen Cronan Rose, Director, Women's Studies Program, UNLV
>4505 Maryland Parkway, Las Vegas, NV 89154-5055
>PHONE (702) 895-0838, FAX (702) 895-0850
>ecrose@nevada.edu
>
>
>
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