FEAST (Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory) CFP for Fall 2015 Conference
Aug 17, 2014 → Aug 28, 2014
FEAST
The Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory
invites submissions for the Fall 2015 conference:
Contested Terrains: Women of Color, Feminisms, and Geopolitics
October 1-4, 2015
Sheraton Sand Key Resort, Clearwater Beach, Florida
Submission deadline: February 27, 2015
Keynote speakers:
Kimberlé Crenshaw, Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA and Columbia and founder of the African-American Policy Forum. An international activist, Crenshaw is well known for her foundational scholarly work on intersectionality and critical race theory. Professor Crenshaw's publications include Critical Race Theory (edited by Crenshaw, et al., 1995) and Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech and the First Amendment (with Matsuda, et al., 1993). Her work on race and gender was influential in drafting the equality clause in the South African Constitution and she helped facilitate the inclusion of gender in the U.N. World Conference on Racism Declaration. In the U.S., she served as a member of the National Science Foundation's committee to research violence against women and assisted the legal team representing Anita Hill.
Sunera Thobani, Associate Professor at the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia. A founding member of RACE (Researchers and Academics of Colour for Equity) and a past President of Canada’s National Action Committee on the status of Women, Thobani’s research focuses on critical race, postcolonial and feminist theory, globalization, citizenship, migration, Muslim women, the War on Terror and media. Professor Thobani is the author of Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2007) and numerous other works. As a public intellectual, Thobani is well known for her vocal opposition to Canadian support of the U.S. led invasion into Afghanistan.
Invited Sessions:
• Invited Panel honoring the work of María Lugones
• Invited Panel on U.S. Wars/Imperialism and the Women Within FEAST encourages submissions related to this year's theme. However, papers on all topics within the areas of feminist ethics and social theory are welcome.
Description of this year’s theme:
Engaging in feminist theory in the 21st century requires placing emphasis on the ‘where’ of its production. Such an emphasis includes considering the situated perspectives and geopolitical locations out of which a given theory is produced. Another equally important part of contemporary engagement in feminist theory concerns appreciating the ways that theory travels and changes through the traveling. The notion of contested terrains is invoked to refer to the many junctures of perspective, location and travel with which feminist theory must contend in an era of multinational reception.
For example, it is at the juncture of perspective, location, and travel that one finds the often contested political identifier “women of color.” The term is contested not only because there is no singular “woman of color” perspective and/or location, but also because of the diversity of possible stories of travel in and out of ‘women of color’ spaces. As Jacqui Alexander explains, one is not born but becomes a woman of color. That “becoming” is by no means a given and, for many, ‘woman of color’ is not a personal identifier. The term is contested, and its meaning is continually recreated through the contesting.
Feminism is practiced and theorized within contested terrains in a transnational world. Understanding the connections and disputes created by borders, castes, classes, and other boundaries is at the heart of geopolitics. Feminist geopolitical analyses concern the spaces, places, relations of power, and interchange among feminists in local, regional and global contexts, paying careful attention to the locations out of which we theorize and practice feminism(s).
This year’s FEAST conference invites submissions that take up this notion of contested terrains in relation to women of color, feminism, and geopolitics. We welcome papers that take both theoretical and practical approaches to these issues and related issues in feminist ethics, epistemology, political and social theory more broadly construed.
Topics to consider may include, but are not limited to:
• Situated knowledges, including the racialized terrains of knowledge production
• Intersectional theories of space and place
• “Women of color,” “third world women,” “women of the global South,” “postcolonial women” and other descriptors as contested identifications
• Tensions between White/US feminism, women of color feminisms, third world feminisms, and transnational feminisms
• Women’s agency and autonomy as contested feminist assumptions
• Contested conceptions of home and homelands
• The different social locations and embodied experiences of racism
• Perspectives on trauma and violence, terrorism and conspiracy, security and danger
• The geopolitics of mobility and immobility, including tourism, migration, detention and deportation
• Gatekeeping geographies, technologies of surveillance and border patrols
• The geopolitics of intimacy, including the racialized affective labor of mail order brides, transracially and transnationally adopted children and migrant domestic workers
• Geopolitical analyses of neo-liberalism, global capitalism and militarism, including their effects on women of color
• Ecofeminisms and resource conflicts
• Solidarity movements among diverse groups of women of color and white feminists
Call for abstracts: Difficult Conversations
A signature event of FEAST conferences is a lunch-time “Difficult Conversation” that focuses on an important, challenging, and under-theorized topic related to feminist ethics or social theory.
In keeping with this year’s theme of Contested Terrains, this year our topic for the difficult conversation panel is Damage by Allies. This conversation hopes to provide an environment conducive to dialogue for and among women of color and white academics concerning the harm that can be done by well-meaning feminist allies who, despite possible commonalities of values, can sometimes undermine the viewpoints and work of women of color. We hope that women of color will be able to bring to light both subtle and obvious experiences of damage done by allies and open a discussion about how this might be avoided or dealt with effectively in the future.
We are soliciting abstracts (see below) that address, in both North American and transnational contexts: concrete experiences of the sorts of hardship that academics and activists of color experience at the hands of allies; well-intentioned but misplaced pedagogical and political strategies; strategies for being a better ally to marginalized peoples in academia and elsewhere; strategies for women of color to respond to misplaced attempts at solidarity; and effective transnational activism that does not undermine the agency of its intended beneficiaries.
Submission Guidelines
Please send your submission, in one document (a Word file, please, so that abstracts can be posted), to FEAST by February 27, 2015. In the body of the email message, please include: your paper or panel title, name, institutional affiliation, e-mail address, surface mail address, and phone number. All submissions will be anonymously reviewed.
Individual Papers
Please submit a completed paper of no more than 3000 words, along with an abstract of 100-250 words, for anonymous review. Your document must include: paper title, abstract of 100-250 words, and your paper, with no identifying information. The word count (max. 3000) should appear on the top of the first page of your paper.
Panels
Please clearly mark your submission as a panel submission both in the body of the e-mail and on the submission itself. Your submission should include the panel title and all three abstracts and papers in one document, along with word counts (no more than 3000 for each paper).
Difficult Conversations and other non-paper submissions (e.g., workshops, discussions, etc.)
Please submit an abstract with a detailed description (500-750 words).
Please clearly indicate the type of submission (Difficult Conversation, workshop, roundtable discussion, etc.) both in the body of your e-mail and on the submission itself.
For more information on FEAST or to see programs from previous conferences, go to: FEAST
Questions on this conference or the submission process may be directed to the Program Chairs, Ranjoo Herr Herr and/or Shelley Park Park