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REMINDER: 27TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MEDIEVALISM: MEDIEVALISM(S) & DIVERSITY
(http://www.medievalism.net/conferences/ksu2012conference.html)
There will be both the  traditional "Brick-n-Mortar" conference (Kent State University Stark) and (new) a "Cloud Conference" online for those who are unable to travel.  Student papers will be considered, but please also note and encourage your students to participate in the STUDENT ESSAY CONTEST (see below).

INFORMATION: 27TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MEDIEVALISM: MEDIEVALISM(S) & DIVERSITY
(http://www.medievalism.net/conferences/ksu2012conference.html)
DEADLINE: June 1, 2012

Send titles and abstracts to:
Dr. Carol Robinson, Conference Chair
Kent State University Trumbull
4314 Mahoning Avenue, NW
Warren, Ohio 44483
clrobins@kent.edu
FAX: 330-437-0490

THEME:
Is there diversity in medievalism? How has medievalism represented diversity of religion, race, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, gender,...? How have medievalist works supported issues concerning equity and inclusion? How have medievalist works oppressed and suppressed? Are there elements of bigotry and discrimination? What about human rights as a medieval concept, as a contemporary concept? Media to consider might include (but are not limited to) any of the following: novels, plays, poetry, films, art works, the Internet, television, historical works, political works, comics, video games. Angles to consider might include (but are not limited to) any of the following: race, gender, sexuality, disability/ability, religion, corporation and/or class, nationality, human rights, political correctness, marginalization, anti-marginalization tactics, rewritten codes, rewritten ideologies, re-affirmed codes, re-affirmed ideologies.

THE BRICK-N-MORTAR CONFERENCE STRUCTURE: This is being hosted by Kent State University Stark (October 18-20, 2012).

THE CLOUD CONFERENCE STRUCTURE (password-protected): Those suffering from the weak economy, we will still be providing a conference experience online (at a cheaper rate).  The Cloud Conference part is being hosted fully online by MEMO and members of the KSU Trumbull Campus (October 15 to November 15, 2012).  Individuals will post papers (PDFs), videos (YouTube),sound recordings, or other media online which will be either hosted directly within the password-protected site or linked to from outside the site (as in the case for YouTube video presentations).  Anyone registered for the Brick-n-Mortar conference will have access to this part of the conference as well and be able to comment/discuss presentations in text format online.

Publication Opportunities:
Selected scholarly papers related to the conference theme will be published in "The Year's Work in Medievalism."

============================
STUDENT ESSAY CONTEST
SPECIAL DEADLINE: July 15, 2012

DEADLINE: June 1, 2012

Send completed essays to:
Dr. Carol Robinson, Conference Chair
Kent State University Trumbull
4314 Mahoning Avenue, NW
Warren, Ohio 44483
clrobins@kent.edu
FAX: 330-437-0490

RULES:
1. Students must be college undergraduates currently enrolled for for classes at their academic institution.
2. Essays must address the theme "Medievalism(s) and Diversity" (see description above).
3. Essays must be MLA formatted, double-spaced, and in 12 point font.
4. Essays must be submitted in PDF format via email or in paper format via regular postal mail to either Dr. Carol L. Robinson or Dr. Elizabeth Williamsen (see the addresses below).
5. NO FAXED SUBMISSIONS!
PRIZES
1ST PLACE: The winning essay will be published in Medievally Speaking, be mentioned on the International Society for the Study of Medievalism web site, and receive $100.00 prize money. The paper will also be expected to be presented in a Special Session at the 27th International Conference on Medievalism.
2ND PLACE: The essay that earns Second Place status will be mentioned on the International Society for the Study of Medievalism web site, and receive $75.00 prize money. The paper will also be expected to be presented in a Special Session at the 27th International Conference on Medievalism.
3RD PLACE: The essay that earns Third Place status will be mentioned on the International Society for the Study of Medievalism web site, and receive $50.00 prize money. The paper will also be expected to be presented in a Special Session at the 27th International Conference on Medievalism.
HONORABLE MENTION: Any essay that earns an Honorable Mention status (which may or may not happen) will be mentioned on the International Society for the Study of Medievalism web site. The paper might also be invited to be presented in a Special Session at the 27th International Conference on Medievalism.

Invitation to the Scholarly Community

The editors of The National Political Science Review (NPSR) invite submissions from the scholarly community for review and possible publication for a Special Issue on:

BLACK WOMEN IN POLITICS:
MOVING FORWARD -- NEW QUESTIONS, NEW DIRECTIONS

A recent study, appearing in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, suggests that Black women are often rendered invisible in the social sphere. This study brings to light what we might already know via anecdotal evidence. However, it leaves us wondering how do we study Black women? When Black women are the subjects of the research, must they always be compared to other racial/ethnic groups? Which methodologies and methods are better suited for unearthing and explaining Black women's experiences as political and social actors?  And, finally what new knowledges are produced when interdisciplinary approaches and unconventional methodologies and methods are employed?

In addressing these questions, this special issue seeks to interact with and advance the continuum of Black women's studies with a special focus on Black women and politics. The editors are soliciting articles for a themed issue of the National Political Science Review (NPSR) to be published in 2014. This special edition will be devoted to (1) questions of epistemology and the politics of knowledge production; and (2) the lives and lived realities of Black women--their cultures and politics, their representations in media, their involvement in new media, and their activism. We invite research length papers on Black women in politics and Black gender politics from a wide range of disciplines including Black women's studies, political science, religion, Black Studies, sociology, Women's Studies, and philosophy among others. Papers may take any theoretical and or methodological perspective that centers Black women's political phenomena -- broadly defined. All submissions should be written in a manner that is accessible to a wide scholarly audience. Papers should be no longer than 25 pages, inclusive of notes and references, and should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition). We especially encourage papers that employ not only quantitative, but also qualitative and interpretive methodologies, which analyze and explain the triumphs and challenges faced by Black women domestically and globally.  Particular attention will be given to the ways in which feminist and womanist scholars have challenged disciplinary conventions in producing transformative, interdisciplinary knowledge. Articles may be inspired by, but are certainly not limited to, the following themes:
*             Black women and reproductive justice
*             Black women's response to nation states, colonialism and neo-colonialism
*             Black women's contemporary social and political activism
*             Black women's experience with and negotiation of the criminal justice system
*             Black women and the politics of representation: sexuality, media, and/or texts
*             Black women's informal political participation in movements and organizations
*             The politics of knowledge production
*             Transformational approaches to intersectionality scholarship
*             Black women in international relations and comparative politics
*             Black women in politics, new social media, and virtual social networks
The NPSR is a refereed journal of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. Its editions appear annually and comprise the highest quality scholarship related to the experiences of African Americans in the American political community, as well as in the wider reach of the African Diaspora in the Western Hemisphere. It also focuses on the international links between African Americans and the larger community of nations, particularly with Africa.
Please email submissions and cover letter, no later than October 1, 2012, to:
Dr. Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd at ngaf@rci.rutgers.edu AND Dr. Julia Jordan-Zachery at jjordanz@providence.edu.

<http://www.excusemeimwriting.com/2012/03/08/poetry/call-for-submissions-for-my-body-my-health/>

Call for submissions for an edited volume on women and health

Editors: Kit-Bacon Gressitt and Jodie Lawston, PhD

Description

Women's health became a key issue for the women's liberation movement in
the 1960s as women began to explore every aspect of themselves: their
traditional roles, their expanding opportunities, their bodies, even their
genitalia. And health continues to be an issue of keen interest for
feminists -- Third Wave, Second Wave and certainly our surviving Suffragists
-- as women struggle for proper diagnoses; advocate and care for for their
ill children, parents, partners and themselves; address patriarchal
attempts to control their health (as exemplified in the recent
congressional hearings on birth control); and demand clinical trials that
test new drugs on women, not just men. ...

For more information, please click
here

<http://www.excusemeimwriting.com/2012/03/08/poetry/call-for-submissions-for-my-body-my-health/>
 (
www.excusemeimwriting.com/2012/03/08/poetry/call-for-submissions-for-my-body-my-health/
 )

Papers are sought for this Working Session of the annual conference of the
American Society for Theatre Research, taking place in Nashville November
1-4.  

The rapidly growing interdisciplinary field of Age and Aging Studies opens
onto gerontology, sociology, bioethics, anthropology, and a wide range of
approaches springing from the humanities and arts, especially in Europe.
However, as reflected at the recent European Network in Age Studies (ENAS)
conference, the theatrical representation of Age and Aging has just begun to
emerge as a major subject of critical inquiry. The proposed Working Session
seeks a wide range of papers exploring representations, from classic to
contemporary, of Age and Aging in dramatic, theatrical, and cultural
performance. Short performances and videos will also be considered. Building
on the pathbreaking work of Kathleen Woodward, Anne Basting, Thomas Cole,
Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Stephen Katz, Mike Featherstone and Andrew
Wernick, and Valerie Lipscomb, as well as work in several European
languages, the session will raise questions and seek perspectives about
questions such as these:

Is there a dramaturgy of Age?

What are the performative differences between the spectacle of age and the
experience of age?

What emotions and what bodies (and what emotions about the bodies) are
associated with Age and Aging?

Why has the youth/age binary been absent from the identity debates in
theater and performance studies on race, gender, disability, and other
bio-markers of the past decades?

In what ways are ageism and stereotyping factors in theatrical
representations of aging? 

By May 31, 2012, please send 300-word abstracts or two-minute performance
links to elinor.fuchs@yale.edu . Final papers should be no longer than 2500
words.

2012 CFLE's National Sex Ed conference, being held on November 28-30, 2012 in Somerset, NJ. This year's conference is shaping up to be an extra exciting year - we have Dr. Joycelyn Elders joining us as one of our keynote speakers, as well as an exciting line up of other noted presenters including: Barbara Huberman, Deborah Roffman, Dr. MaryJo Podgurski, Al Vernacchio, Dr. Sheri Winston, Dr. Eric Schoenberg, Sue Montfort, Dr. Sue Milstein & Bill Taverner!  

We are currently seeking proposals for workshops for the general workshops. Proposals are due on May 15th, and presenters will receive a discount on their conference registration.  To find out more about the conference, and to submit your proposal, visit:  www.sexedconference.com  

We are putting together an edited collection, tentatively titled Staging Women's Lives in Academia.  The subtitle, yet to be figured out, will indicate that our focus is upon women in literature and languages.  The book, under serious consideration at Rutgers University Press for its new Higher Education Studies series, will focus upon nodal points of professional (graduate school, pre- and post- tenure, mid- and later- career, and retirement) and personal life for women in academia.  We have two key premises:  that choosing not to continue down the traditional path of academic life stages is as significant as following it, and that the usual conflation of academic and age-specific life stages is deeply gendered.  

 

Our design for the collection outlines professional life stages.  These range from:

 

*                     finishing the degree  (who chooses to write or not write the dissertation);

*                     seeking academic or other employment post-Ph.D.;

*                     beginning and then remaining in the profession (publishing, promotions, moving into administration or not);

*                     leaving academia once employed (whether in a full-time or part-time, pre-tenure or post-tenure position);

*                     deciding to retire or to continue working.

 

We welcome essays from women who have followed a traditional career path, but also from those who've travelled other roads.  We can readily see a graduate student writing about the decision to get the Ph.D. but not pursue academic employment, for example, an adjunct writing about mid-career parenting decisions, an administrator writing about being "stuck," an associate professor talking about the decision not to seek promotion to full professor, etc. Parenting, elder-care issues, and general assessment of "professionalization" values can also lead to priorities other than those usually counseled through professional advice venues.  

 

Although we of course want contributors to draw upon personal experience, we will be asking that they both theorize and concretize their essays.  As you think about this call, we'd like to ask that you also think about some very basic questions that could help others, such as: "Do/did you discover that your experience was typical, but nonetheless didn't expect it?"  "What would you point out as the key features of this stage to a colleague just beginning it?" "How do you think your experiences were shaped by the kind of school you worked at and where your school was situated?" and, everyone's favorite, "What would you do differently if you had it to do again?"  

 

Besides these basic questions, there are many others that you might consider, such as: What is gendered about your career path, your career experience?  How did race/ethnicity, age, class, sexuality, and culture affect your academic experience at each stage?  How did your academic work feed into, enhance, or distract from other parts of your life?  Or how much of your personal life intersects with or clashes with your work life?  Has your work changed over time?  Have you changed over time in terms of your enthusiasm for, and interest in, your work?  

 

We want contributors to be frank, but we also want these essays to encourage "best practice" discussion and also to serve as references for other women.  Because responding fully to some of these topics may be difficult, we are willing to accept proposals or essays by authors writing under a pseudonym or anonymously.  We also invite proposals written by several people in dialogue with each other.  

 

Please consider sending in a proposal for this collection, but also think about students and colleagues who fall under the "did not choose to" rubrics who may not be receiving notes such as this.  Please forward this call to them.  We would like to receive proposals by June 1, 2012.  Proposal packets should include a 500-word abstract (or a full essay, if appropriate) and a brief c.v.  Final essays should be around 6250 words, including notes and Works Cited, although we will consider shorter pieces.  They should be sent to both of us:  

 

Michelle Massé at mmasse@lsu.edu

Nan Bauer-Maglin at nbauer-maglin@gc.cuny.edu

 

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of FeministFormations, 2013, 25(2)

This special issue will take up the concept of "states of emergency" as an object of feminist analysis.  We seek essays that will interrogate the ways in which a "state of emergency," whether it be about economic scarcity, morality under siege, sexual violence or national security, is politically constructed and (re)produced through myriad technologies of power.  How do political actors define a moment as a state of emergency in order to mobilize publics, re-define citizenship, or deploy political machinery?  At the same time, we invite scholarship that names states of emergency made invisible by existing public discourse. In addition to essays that analyze the role and power of difference in framing narratives of emergency, we invite papers that question what can "count" as a state of emergency.  For example, how can the racialized, sexualized and gendered exigencies of the everyday be seen as constitutive of affected "states"? How are so-called "natural disasters" of environmental calamity or contamination dependent on variable distinctions between "natural" and "unnatural"?

We seek papers that interrogate "states of emergency" in relation to gender, sexuality and race on topics such as war, institutions, law, literature, popular culture, "natural disasters," state and intimate violence, citizenship, immigration, environment, population, health, and economic instabilities.  We welcome contributions with U.S., global and transnational foci.

The special issue will focus on the following themes and questions but is not restricted to them:

*  How are "states of emergency" produced, claimed and deployed?  What are the institutional (e.g., government, media, religion) and/or informal (e.g., local networks) mechanisms that create /construct or facilitate a "state of emergency"?

*  How and why are certain events framed as "natural disasters"?  Why are certain experiences with environmental disasters represented as "natural" and what division between "nature" and "human" is required?  How do the global and transnational operate within these constructs of "natural" and in locating disaster?

*  What does it mean to approach disaster relief from an intersectional perspective?  What lessons have we learned frompost-disaster relief efforts in the United States, such as after Hurricane Katrina and 9/11?  How do such efforts operate at an international level, as with the UN in the post-Rwandan genocide projects?

*  How are discourses about environmental states of emergency (such as with populations, environmental contamination and global warming) deployed and informed by understandings of gender, race and sexuality and other naturalized categorizes such as "health" and "safety"?

*  How have the issues of immigration and economic recession been crafted as "states of emergency" in the United States and/or in other countries?  What political projects have they served?  What counts as a "state of emergency?"

*  How does the state produce narratives about states of emergency--stranger abduction, morality under siege, economic scarcity or debt, sexual violence--in ways that are shaped by gendered, sexualized and racialized discourse?

*  How do feminist understandings of affective "states" alter the framework of "states of emergency"?  What cultural or emotional terrains do we traverse when we include such understandings of "states of emergency?"

*  How do representations--fiction, memoir, film, art, television, online sites--address states of emergency? How can representations reinforce or resist dominant narratives about women/subjects in crisis?

Manuscripts will be subject to blind review and must adhere to the publishing guidelines of the Feminist Formations journal, found at: http://feministformations.arizona.edu<http://feministformations.arizona.edu/>.

Please contact any one of the co-editors with questions:

Jill Bystydzienski, The Ohio State University bystydzienski.1@osu.edu<mailto:bystydzienski.1@osu.edu>
Jennifer Suchland, The Ohio State University suchland.15@osu.edu<mailto:suchland.15@osu.edu>
Rebecca Wanzo, Washington University in St. Louis rwanzo@wustl.edu<mailto:rwanzo@wustl.edu>

CALL FOR PAPERS



Submissions are sought for an edited volume titled Tenuous Veneers: Women of Color in the Academy --Narratives of Distress and Success in the Tenure Process.  The theme for this compilation derives from dialogues with faculty of color whose receptions on university and college campuses in the U.S. resonate with the immigrant experience of attempting to settle and acculturate in a new country.  The familiar concept of embracing a "land of opportunity" serves as a useful metaphor for the challenging and disorienting experiences faculty members of color often undergo as new arrivals onto the landscape of academic opportunity.



Faculty women of color often come enthusiastically onto campuses where we discover that the terrain of the ivory tower is uncharted by forerunner academics of color who have paved the way in integrating the hallowed halls of traditionally Anglo academe.  Navigating this reality can be fraught with painful difficulties that are rarely understood or even noticed by the dominant academic culture, and adapts well to W.E.B. DuBois' famous quote regarding the American Negro, in that the faculty woman of color "is gifted with second-sight in this American [university] world,--a world which yields [her] no true self-consciousness, but only lets [her] see [her]self through the revelation of the other world.  It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.  One ever feels [her] two-ness,--an American [academic], a [faculty woman of color]; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one [ethnic other] body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder" (Adapted from The Souls of Black Folks, 1903).



Tenuous Veneers builds from this truth while also seeking to be inclusive of a representative range of narratives from distress to success for women of color in academe.



Submissions for this edited volume are invited and encouraged in order to tell a complete and balanced story that reveals both the challenges and the rewards of careers in the academy for faculty women of color.



Please email 500-word abstracts by April 30, 2012 to: masmith@seattleu.edu<mailto:masmith@seattleu.edu>

 October 5-7, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, CCS


This conference invites papers that think about the production of  
knowledge made possible by the synergies between feminist theory and  
sinology. "Feminist Sinologies" should be taken to be more  
conceptually and topically expansive than the study of Chinese women,  
past and present.

It is our aim to bring together theoretically rich and well-  
historicized papers across many disciplines in the humanities that  
develop meaningful linkages between theories in feminism today (such  
as intersectionality, recessive action theory,  female masculinity,  
ecofeminism, reflexivity/positionality, queer theory, queer assemblage  
queer temporality, disability studies, postcolonialism, lyric theory,  
Marxist historicism, and affect theory, just to name a few) and  
oft-explored topics in sinological studies (such as Chinese  
modernism/modernity, translingual and translation praxis,  
(Neo)Confucianism, (Neo)Buddhism and the West, nationalism and visual  
culture, Chinese-Jesuit print culture, Chinese diaspora and coolie  
culture, human rights discourse, performative Chineseness, socialism  
and democracy, positivism and international law, financescapes,  
ecoscapes, and the global economy--also just to compile a short list.

The panel seeks papers working with all historical periods. Papers  
might situate the conjunction of feminism and sinology in the context  
of contemporary geopolitical issues; compare and contrast a  
"feminism-studies" approach and a sinological studies approach to a  
certain text or work of art; or close-read a particular event that (it  
will be argued) can no longer be understood without a  
feminist-sinological framework.

An interdisciplinary committee will be formed to select the papers.  
Announcements for the selection will be posted June 31, 2012 by email.  
Participants must be prepared to submit un-committed work.

Those interested are invited to send a 250-word proposal describing  
the nature of the project and its relevance to the central concept of  
Feminist Sinologies to Nan Z. Da (nda@umich.edu) by June 1, 2012