Call For Papers: Gender Matters Conference

GOVERNORS STATE UNIVERSITY and

DEPAUL UNIVERSITY

Announce the 3rd annual

GENDER MATTERS: CONTINUITIES & INSTABILITIES

April 12-13, 2013

Downtown Chicago, Illinois

Gender Matters is an academic conference highlighting 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.

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 include, but are not limited to: politics of representation; gendered health and medicine; feminist geographies; futurity and queer temporalities; queer intimacy and kinship; health disparities; illness narratives; globalization; postcolonial feminism; new media; gendered, racialized, and sexualized bodies; parenting; social justice; performativity; intersectionality with ethnicity, race, and/or citizenship; sexual subcultures; activism; public/private spheres; transgender rights; queer(ed) histories and historically queer; feminisms; drag performance; masculinities; gender and/or sexuality as studied in any field.

• 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 guidelines and forms can be found at: http://www.govst.edu/gendermatters Please note that only submissions adhering to the stated guidelines will be accepted.

For individual papers, please submit a title page with complete author contact information, and an abstract of 500 words. For panels, please submit a 500-word rationale and description of the panel, type of panel (paper panel, roundtable discussion, performance), contact information for all panelists, and 250 word abstracts for each presenter.

Please direct inquiries to gendermatters@govst.edu

Important Dates Submission Deadline: 3 December 2012 Acceptance Notifications: 15 January 2013 Early Registration Deadline: 1 February 2013 ($25 students; $50 faculty)* Registration Deadline: 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 presentation, keynote address, continental breakfasts, and closing reception.