From the FLP mailbox, this CFP for the 20th Annual Women’s Studies Conference at Southern Connecticut State University:
“Women and Labor: At Home, At Work, Around the Globe”
Keynotes: Dolores Huerta & Lilly Ledbetter
Friday and Saturday, April 20 and 21, 2012
Proposal Submission Deadline: December 1, 2011
INVITATION FOR PROPOSALS ON INTERDISCIPLINARY SCHOLARLY AND CREATIVE WORK
Our 20th annual conference addresses one perennial struggle in women’s movements across the globe: labor. As we witness this spring the surge of labor movements in the U.S. as labor is challenged—specifically, unionized & feminized labor, we also receive findings, just released in May 2011 by Ms. Foundation for Women, that women are bearing the brunt of today’s economic crisis. More than ever, women’s labor is at the forefront of our struggles. In a different part of the world, we continue to observe women’s critical contribution to what is now called the Arab Awakening. Yet we, too, see little representation of women in the wake of the Egyptian revolution. By all accounts, the report cards on women and labor have made less than significant progress over the decades. In this annual conference, we invite colleagues and activists to take a close look at all issues concerning women and labor, in both private and public domains as well as globally and locally. Employed as a category of analysis in women’s and gender studies, feminist analyses of gender and labor do not simply travel throughout diverse communities and academic disciplines in the U.S., but they also travel globally, generating significant connections with other fields. With this conference, we will have an opportunity to examine the body of activist and scholarly feminist work on women and labor. What aspect of labor continues to be the struggle that women share across the race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, nationality divide? How might we begin to talk about women and labor without collapsing the multicultural, heterogeneous, global and transnational within us? How have women contributed their labor artistically, culturally, and politically, in our communities as well as around the globe? What challenges do women and girls across races, classes, religions, and cultures face in an increasingly globalized world? Going forward, what might labor as a site of knowledge production further benefit our work and struggle in the human community? What are some of the best practices?
More information is here.
-Bridget Crawford
