Call for papers
Graduate Conference in Gender Studies
Central European University, Budapest
May 3-5, 2018
abstract submission deadline: January 5, 2018
IN/EQUALITIES
narrative & critique
resistance & solidarity
“Inequality” and “equality” have become central concepts in a wide range of domains engaged with struggles against injustice, from the structures of social movements, political and policy discourses, to activist practices, artistic productions, and academic inquiry, particularly in Gender Studies. With this conference we aim to examine the cultural and political infrastructures and productions that underpin, enable, deploy, or contest ‘official’ discourses of equality in policy or legislative frameworks. In a context in which discourses of equality are often embedded in and supportive of projects of nationalism and quite sympathetic to neoliberal infrastructures of value, precarization and normalization, it is critical to investigate possibilities of addressing persisting injustices, and the varied forms such an address might take.
Developed from a multidisciplinary field concerned with injustices around gender, race, class, sexualities, economic disparities, and bodily vulnerability, this graduate student conference in Gender Studies aims to create an open space to advance this engagement by reflecting on our methods, perspectives, vocabularies, and practices.
How are in/equalities produced, narrated, performed, sustained, or contested? We use the themes of narrative & critique and resistance & solidarity, as avenues through which to formulate new investigations and conceptualizations of “in/equalities”.
Along the lines of narrative & critique, we are interested in both cultural productions of art, literature, performance, and visual culture, as well as notions of how narrative and critique figure in cultures of in/equality. How do narratives or practices of telling and re-telling index a potentiality or offer tools to produce, diversify, or change cultures of in/equalities? We encourage examinations on the methodological considerations of critique that we might have when situating our research in political landscapes. How can we engage with effective as well as affective forms of doing critique when interested in structures of power and in- and exclusion?
In addition, we aim to think about cultures of resistance & solidarity as strategies that create forms of belonging and dissident networks. Departing from decades long commitment of transnational feminisms to establish local and global collaborations, we wish to examine how discourses of in/equalities are navigated and negotiated in spaces of resistance, especially within contexts in which power functions through a constant construction of distinct subjectivities that are put in binary opposition to each other. How and where do we trace alternative cultures of dissent, different vocabularies or discourses, or experiences and gestures that complicate the concept of in/equality?
We invite proposals related, but not limited to, the following areas of investigation:
- - queer narratives
- - hegemonic narratives of equality
- - embodiment
- - materiality of experience
- - affect
- - cultural and political infrastructures of in/equalities
- - transnational feminism
- - feminist art and visual culture
- - dissident politics and sub/cultures
- - virtual contestations
- - eco- criticism
- - biopolitics
- - regimes of citizenship and migration
- - postcolonial, decolonial, or affective critique
- - production of the commons and undercommons
We invite submissions of proposals for papers and presentations addressing these themes. PhD students, as well as recent graduates and early stage researchers are invited to apply. We also welcome pre-constituted panels around the topics of the conference. Presentations should be 20 minutes long and delivered in English.
The deadline for abstract submissions is January 5, 2018. Please send the title and abstract (300 words) to in-equalities@ceu.edu, including a short biographical statement (100 words) of the presenter, institutional affiliation, and any technical assistance required. Applicants will receive a response regarding their submission by February 1, 2018.
This conference is organized by doctoral students of the Gender Studies Department at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. The conference organizers will look into housing options should your attendance be contingent on this kind of support. There is no participation fee, and lunch and refreshments will be provided for participants. For inquires you can email us at in-equalities@ceu.edu.
