THE BERKSHIRE CONFERENCE ON THE HISTORY OF WOMEN
June 9-12, 2011, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

“GENERATIONS:
Exploring Race, Sexuality, and Labor across Time and Space”

Proposals due March 1, 2010

The Berkshire Conference of Women Historians is holding its next conference at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst on June 9-12, 2011.

2011 marks the 15th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women and the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, which was first celebrated in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland and is now honored by more than sixty countries around the globe. The choice of “Generations” reflects this transnational intellectual, political, and organizational heritage as well as a desire to explore related questions such as:
• How have women’s generative experiences – from production and reproduction to creativity and alliance building – varied across time and space? How have these been appropriated and represented by contemporaries and scholars alike?
• What are the politics of “generation”? Who is encouraged? Who is condemned or discouraged? How has this changed over time?
• Is a global perspective compatible with generational (in the genealogical sense) approaches to the past that tend to re-inscribe national/regional/racial boundaries?
• What challenges do historians of women, gender, and sexuality face as these fields and their practitioners mature?

To encourage transnational discussions, panels will be principally organized along thematic rather than national lines and therefore proposals will be vetted by a transnational group of scholars with expertise in a particular thematic, rather than geographic, field.

For more information about the procedure for submitting proposals visit the Berkshire Conference web page, www.berksconference.org. The process for submitting and vetting papers and panels has changed substantially from previous years, so please read the instructions carefully.