Call for Papers
Governors State University and DePaul University announce
Gender Matters: Continuities & Instabilities
April 12 - 13, 2013
Downtown Chicago, Illinois
Gender Matters is an academic conference highlighting graduate student and faculty research on gender, women, and sexuality across all disciplines and historical periods.
Conference planners seek to bring together students, activists, and researchers to discuss the ongoing role of gender in structuring society.
We invite submissions for individual papers or pre-constituted panels.
Theme - Continuities & Instabilities
This year’s theme, Continuities & Instabilities, focuses our attention on the ways
gender and sexuality stay the same and change over time and in relation to
cultural shifts at the macro level, as well as how they are (re)constructed moment
to moment through unstable micro-practices. While conference planners invite
work on all matters of gender, we are particularly interested in work that explores
how the mutable character of gender and/or sexuality is used to both maintain
and resist existing social relations historically and contemporarily.
Potential Topics for Papers or Panels
- Politics of representation
- Gendered health and medicine
- Feminist geographies
- Futurity and queer temporalities
- Queer intimacy and kinship
- Health disparities
- Illness narratives
- Globalization
- Postcolonial feminisms
- New media
- Gendered, racialized, and sexualized bodies
- Parenting
- Social justice
- Performativity
- Intersectionality with ethnicity, race, and/or citizenship
- Sexual subcultures
- Activism
- Queer intimacy and kinship
- Public/Private spheres
- Transgender rights
- Queer(ed) histories and historically queer
- Feminisms
- Drag performance
- Masculinities
- Gender and/or sexuality as studied in any field
Featured Events
We are pleased to feature the following plenary events:
- Keynote Speaker:Jack Halberstam, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Gender
Studies, and Comp. Lit. at the University of Southern California, will deliver the
keynote address based on the forthcoming book, Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal.
- Featured Performance: “Booby Trap: A Hair-Raising Experience,”
a one-woman play about surviving breast cancer one laugh at a time, will be
performed by M. Heather Carver,
Associate Professor of Playwriting & Performance Studies at the University
of Missouri.
- Featured Film: “Rokia: Voice of a New Generation,” a
documentary about Mali, West African singer-songwriter Rokia Traore from director
Laurens Grant.
Submission Requirements
Only submissions adhering to stated guidelines will be accepted. Submissions should be limited to one per person.
- Title page with complete author contact information
- 500-word abstract
- 500-word rationale and description of the panel
- Type of panel (paper panel, roundtable discussion, performance)
- Contact information for all panelists
- Brief abstract and bio for each presenter
Important Dates
- Submission Deadlines: 3 December 2012
- Acceptance Notifications: 15 January 2013
- Early Registration Deadline: 1 February 2013 ($25 students; $50 faculty)*
- Late Registrations: 15 March 2013 ($35 students; $60 faculty)*
- Gender Matters Conference: 12 & 13 April 2013
*Registration fee includes access to conference proceedings including paper and panel presentations, keynote address, featured performance, featured film screening, continental breakfasts (Fri & Sat), and receptions (Fri & Sat).
Inquiries
Please send any questions or comments to gendermatters@govst.edu
