Call for Papers: SEWSA 2011: Structural Adjustments: Queering Privatization, Framing Disaster
The GSU Women’s Studies Institute is proud to be hosting the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Southeast Women’s Studies Association, titled “Structural Adjustments: Queering Privatization, Framing Disaster,” from March 24-26, 2011.
The conference’s keynote speakers will be Lisa Duggan of New York University, author of Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy, and Julia Sudbury of Mills College, author of Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-Industrial Complex.
As the Institute describes the conference:
Recent devastation in Haiti and Chile, and their resonances with the breached levees in New Orleans, urge and remind us to put these events in context. Crumbled edifices, flooded and abandoned neighborhoods, and sensationalized images of the newly displaced surrounded by piles of rubble speak less to the physical weaknesses of buildings and more to the bankruptcy of social institutions that determine which populations and communities will be most impacted. As with official narratives of war and militarization (cast as “just” or “necessary”), or development and democracy (cast as “progress” or “inclusion”), the recourse to the framework of “natural disasters” overlooks the realities of systemic inequalities, and their gendered, sexualized, racialized, and classed dimensions.
This theme sheds light on such issues as the structural adjustment programs that have devastated indebted economies, the impact on buildings of these (un)natural disasters, and the shifting spaces resulting from gentrification and privatization. SEWSA 2011 will bring together scholars interested in asking how feminist, womanist, and queer modes of analysis can intervene in these narratives and open up possibilities for revisioning alternatives.
To allow for the broadest possible participation by GSU faculty and students, the call for papers has been extended until November 15. The organizers stress that proposals need not be restricted to the conference’s theme: proposals can be on any topic related to the topics of gender, sexuality, and social justice.
The official call for papers and submission guidelines are available on the Women’s Studies Institute website. For inquiries contact sewsa2011info@gmail.com; submissions can be emailed to sewsa2011proposal@gmail.com.
Please considering submitting your work!