Appel à com : "Women's Memory-Work : Gendered Dilemmas of Social Transformation"

[Madeleine L.]

CALL FOR PAPERS

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE:
“Women's Memory-Work: Gendered Dilemmas of Social Transformation”

August 24-26, 2010
University of Limerick, IRELAND
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
* MARJORIE AGOSÍN, Professor of Spanish, Wellesley College, USA
* PUMLA GOBODO-MADIKIZELA, Professor of Psychology, University of Cape
Town, South Africa
* MARY L. KELLER, Associate
Professor of Religious Studies, University of Wyoming, USA
* MARY NASH, Professor of
Contemporary History, University of Barcelona, Spain
The 3-day international conference Women's Memory-Work: Gendered Dilemmas
of Social Transformation seeks to explore women-centered expressions of
historical experience as
fertile ground for cultural agency and social transformation in national
and transnational socioeconomic and political arenas. Inspired by the
United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820, which call
for a gender-sensitive implementation of national stability in
peacekeeping operations, this conference invites the participation of
scholars, activists and artists whose work addresses women’s engagement
with the public memory of nations emerging from conflict and belonging
to the class of “transitioning democracies.” At the same time, the
conference intends to generate a larger dialogue that includes insights
associated with women’s production of and participation in public and
commemoration rituals in polities that are beyond the “transitioning”
phase of democratic development, but which remain entangled in dilemmas
of uneven historical and political representation and
economic/territorial disparities.

The central questions the conference will be exploring are:
* What are the politics and ethics of
producing and reproducing gendered memory-work? Who can participate?
Who is excluded? What are the critical variables of potential
alliances? Where do obstacles/limitations lie?
* In what ways might we be able to re-read
traditional performances of womanhood, associated with upholding
conservative social values of kinship and nationhood (among others), so
as to reassess their potential participation in a radical
politics/ethics of remembering, but also of envisioning future paradigms
and material practices?
* How do women’s memories of traumatic
repression and/or dogged dissidence participate in the historical
imaginary and political vision of cultural identities and transitioning
democracies?
* What are the challenges we face in building bridges across local
gendered activism and international discourses of
human rights and law? And how may we insist on the importance of
gendered memory-work without re-inscribing the conceptual boundaries we
seek to undermine?
This project is funded by the Irish Research
Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of
Foreign Affairs of the Irish Government. As a transnational and
multidisciplinary project, the conference aims to cover a wide range of
disciplines—anthropology, geography, political philosophy, law, history,
religion, sociology, psychology, literature, fine arts and cultural
studies at large. We welcome proposals for papers in topics that
include, but are not limited to:
* Gendered memory and political/cultural
subjectivity
* Female consciousness and larger social
subalternities (racial, ethnic, sexual, etc)
* Women’s cultural/political participation in peace processes
* Gendered politics/ethics of witnessing and
testimony (“traumatic” or otherwise)
* Women’s rights and human rights
* Women’s self-referential narratives
(autobiography, memoir) and memory performance
* Women’s agency beyond alterity
* Gendered labor and ecocriticism
* Women and the “war-story” (official or
sectarian)
* Gendered models of
reconciliation/forgiveness/healing
* Gendered dilemmas of redressing the past,
seeking justice/peace
* Gender as/and strategic essentialism(s)
Please submit a 300 word abstract for a
20-minute presentation by April 16, 2010 to womensmemory@ul.ie. All
proposals will receive acknowledgement of receipt within a week from the
closing date, and a final reply as to the acceptance of the proposal by
May 14, 2010. If an abstract is accepted for the
conference we request that a full draft paper is made available to the
conference committee by July 31, 2010. A selection of papers from the
conference will be published.
We also welcome thematic panel proposals (maximum 4
speakers).


Please submit the abstract or panel proposal with abstracts
in Word or RTF formats along with the following information:
* Name of author(s)
* Affiliation
* Position
* Contact information
* 1-page CV
If you have questions about the conference or
about submitting a proposal please direct them to Emma Leahy—
emma.leahy@ul.ie

Joint organizing chairs:
Cinta Ramblado—Lecturer in Spanish, University of Limerick
Yianna Liatsos—Lecturer in English, University of Limerick