From the FLP mailbox:
Intersectional Inquiries and Collaborative Action: Gender and Race
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana USA
March 2-4, 2017
Deadline for submissions: Saturday, October 1, 2016
Questions of race and gender continue to undergird broad sections of inquiry in the academy and beyond. The ongoing legacies and current manifestations of racism and sexism continue to demand intellectual analysis, institutional recognition, and collective intervention. Reaching a critical crescendo during the political upheavals of the 1960s’ civil rights/anti-colonial era and the responding cultural turn in the humanities, Black feminists have discussed the ways in which both race and gender are co-constitutive and rely on intersecting paradigms of power and constructions of difference. Indeed, the concept of “intersectionality,” coined by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, has become a key mode of framing how identities and sites of contestation around identity are multiple and complex. Furthermore, critics and activists from a myriad of socio-political milieus have underscored the importance of intersectional approaches in struggles for social justice and in the making of inclusive public spaces. From feminist scholarship to human rights policy to commentary via Twitter memes, intersectionality as a theoretical concept, method of analysis, and mode of collaborative action circulates in both grassroots and intellectual discourse.
The Intersectional Inquiries conference will offer a platform for scholars from various fields to interrogate the intersections of race and gender–as manifested materially and discursively–from a broad range of historical, global, and contemporary contexts. We call on scholars, activists, and students to attend rigorously to the ways that race structures gender, sexualities, class, and dis/ability and the dominating matrices of biopolitical violence and imperialism, as well as to trace how racialized subjectivities and non-normative embodiments challenge and radically fracture hierarchy. With this conference, our hope is to inspire impactful intellectual dialogue and assist in building ties that might lead to scholarly- and social justice-focused collaborations.
Our confirmed keynote speaker is Professor Patricia Hill Collins, Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Professor Collins recently co-authored Intersectionality (Polity 2016) with Sirma Bilge. Her first book, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Routledge 1990), won the Jessie Bernard Award of the American Sociological Association for significant scholarship in gender, and the C. Wright Mills Award of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Professor Collins is also the author and editor of several books dealing with race, gender, education, and politics, including On Intellectual Activism (Temple 2012); Another Kind of Public Education: Race, the Media, Schools, and Democratic Possibilities (Beacon 2009); and From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism (Temple 2006).
Topics
The Organizing Committee invites proposals for individual papers, pre-constituted panels, pre-constituted roundtables, and creative works that address one or more of the following topics, or other topics aligned with the conference theme:
immigration
globalism
coloniality and imperialism
violence, terror, and war
social movements and activism
electoral politics
neoliberalism
sexualities
disability
religion and spirituality
education
environment, climate change, and sustainability
space, place, and geography
labor and economics
family and marriage
literature, visual culture, and performance
popular culture (social media, film, television, music, sports, gaming, etc.)
digitization and technicity
theory and/or methodology
feminist jurisprudence.
Submission Guidelines
The deadline for submissions is 11:59 PM (US Eastern Daylight Time) on Saturday, October 1, 2016.
Please submit your proposal here: NDIntersectional.submittable.com/submissions You will first need to become a member of Submittable (which is easy and free).
To allow for as many voices as possible at the conference, proposers may apply for only two of the following roles: paper presenter, creative works presenter, panel chair, roundtable coordinator, or roundtable participant.
We welcome submissions from scholars, activists, artists, and students, including those at the undergraduate level.
Open Call Papers
Individuals submitting paper proposals should provide an abstract of 250 words, a short bio, and contact information. Co-authored papers are acceptable.
Pre-constituted Panels
Panel chairs should submit a 250-word rationale for the pre-constituted panel as a whole. For each participant, chairs should submit a 250-word presentation abstract, a short bio, and contact information. Panels should include 3-4 papers. Co-authored papers are acceptable. Panels that include a diversity of panelist affiliations and experience levels are strongly encouraged.
Pre-constituted Roundtables
Roundtable coordinators should submit a 250-word rationale for the pre-constituted roundtable as a whole. For each participant, coordinators should submit a 250-word abstract of planned comments, a short bio, and contact information. Roundtables should include no more than 6 participants (inclusive of coordinator). Roundtables that include a diversity of panelist affiliations and experience levels are strongly encouraged. Roundtable participants’ remarks at the conference should be brief in order to create substantive discussion with attendees.
Open Call Creative Works
Proposals for audiovisual and other creative works should consist of a 250-word abstract (including the length and format of the work), a short bio of the producer/director, contact information, and requirements for exhibition. Co-authored work is acceptable. If the work is viewable online, please submit a URL.
More Information
Please direct any questions about the conference and the submission process to: NDIntersectional@gmail.com.
Updates about the conference schedule, events, travel and lodging, and more will be posted here.
Conference Organizers: Tara Hudson, Z’étoile Imma, Mary Celeste Kearney, and Christine Venter, University of Notre Dame.
