CFP: Berkshire Conference on Women’s History

December 18th, 2009 Posted in Calls for Papers, Conferences, Events

CALL FOR PAPERS

“GENERATIONS:  Exploring Race, Sexuality, and Labor across Time and Space”

June 9-12, 2011, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Proposals due March 1, 2010

The Berkshire Conference of Women Historians is holding its next
conference at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst on June 9-12,
2011. 2011 marks the 15th Berkshire Conference on Women’s History and
the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, which was first
celebrated in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland and is now
honored by more than sixty countries around the globe. The choice of
“Generations” reflects this transnational intellectual, political, and
organizational heritage as well as a desire to explore related
questions such as:

• How have women’s generative experiences – from production and reproduction to creativity and alliance building – varied across time and space? How have these been appropriated and represented by contemporaries and scholars alike?
• What are the politics of “generation”? Who is encouraged? Who is condemned or discouraged? How has this changed over time?
• Is a global perspective compatible with generational (in the genealogical sense) approaches to the past that tend to reinscribe national/regional/racial boundaries?
• What challenges do historians of women, gender, and sexuality face as these fields and their practitioners mature?

To engender further, open-ended engagement with these and other
issues, the 2011 conference will include workshops dedicated to
discussing precirculated papers on questions and problems
(epistemological, methodological, substantive) provoked by the notion
of “Generations.”

The process for submitting and vetting papers and panels has changed
substantially from previous years, so please read the instructions
carefully.  To encourage transnational discussions, panels will be
principally organized along thematic rather than national lines and
therefore proposals will be vetted by a transnational group of
scholars with expertise in a particular thematic, rather than
geographic, field.  All proposals must be directed to ONE of the
following subcommittees and should be submitted electronically.
Please list a second choice for the subcommittee to vet your proposal
but do not submit to more than one subcommittee.  Instructions for
submission will be posted on the Berkshire Conference website (www.berksconference.org) by November 1, 2009.

Preference will be given to discussions of any
topic across national boundaries and to work that addresses sexuality,
race, and labor in any context, with special consideration for pre-
modern (ancient, medieval, early modern) periods.  However, unattached
papers and proposals that fall within a single nation/region will also
be given full consideration.  As a forum dedicated to encouraging
innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship and transnational
conversation, the Berkshire conference continues to encourage
submissions from graduate students, international scholars,
independent scholars, filmmakers, and to welcome a variety of
disciplinary perspectives.  Paper abstracts should be no longer than
250 words; panel (2-3 papers and a comment), roundtable (3 or more
short papers) and workshop (1-2 precirculated papers) proposals should
also include a summary abstract of no more than 500 words.  Each
submission must include the cover form and a short cv for each
presenter. If you have questions about the most appropriate
subcommittee for your proposal or problems with electronic submission,
please direct them to Jennifer Spear (jms25@sfu.ca).

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: March 1, 2010.

*Beauty and the Body, Stephanie Camp

*Migrations : race, gender and activism, Annelise Orleck

*Economies, Labors, and Consumption, Tracey Deutsch

War, Violence, and Terror, Madhavi Kale

Youth and Aging, Jennifer Spear

*Race in Global Perspective, Marilyn Lake

*Health and Medicine, Julie Livingston

*Sexuality, Kathy Brown

Religion: belief, practice, communities, Madhavi Kale

Politics and the State, Margot Canaday