CFP: Women’s & Gender Studies Consortium Conference, April 2023

Call For Proposals for the 2023 Women’s & Gender Studies Consortium Conference

Sustaining Hope: Feminisms, Freedom, and the Future

April 13-15, 2023

Co-Convened by:
UW-System Women’s and Gender Studies Consortium
UW System Gender and Women’s Studies Librarian

Fully Virtual Event!

This year’s theme invites participants to occupy spaces of hope alongside uncertainty as we shift our collective gaze towards an unknowable and improvable future.  Drawing on the foundational work of feminist abolitionist Mariame Kaba and other proponents of radical hope, we investigate how grief and sadness hold the seeds to our own survival and freedom.  We position hope as intersectional concept grounded in solutions we have yet to fully understand and map out.  We invite proposals which foreground an intersectional-feminist lens to map out inclusive societal structures, equitable institutional frameworks, cross-movement solidarities, and collective approaches to social change.  We ask scholars, students, activists, artists, civil society leaders, and all members of the community to reflect on strategies for harnessing joy and hope in tandem with anger, frustration, and rage. How do we support a society that offers improved conditions for all, particularly Black, Indigenous, and people of color? How do we retain hope and remain joyful in the face of ongoing inequities, injustice, and the pandemic? What does it mean to chart a future that is difficult to discern?  How do we slowly and systematically develop new solutions to systemic change?  What does it mean to utilize hope as a strategy for change?

The deadline for submissions is 11:59 PM (US Central Daylight Time) on Friday, November 4, 2022.

Roundtables, individual papers, panels, healing workshops, art, and performances are encouraged in the following areas:

Abolition Feminisms
Climate Justice and Ecofeminisms
Critical Approaches to Trans Care and Trans Justice
Disability Justice and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Post-Roe Reproductive Justice
Refusing the Colonial State in (and out) of the Feminist Classroom 

Applications from across campuses and beyond are welcome! As an interdisciplinary conference, we welcome all disciplines, schools, and colleges, and hope to represent work from the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and the arts. We welcome submissions from Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, LGBTQ+ Studies, and Sexuality Studies. We also encourage proposals from studies related to other historically marginalized groups, including African Studies, African American Studies, Native American Studies, Latin American Studies, and all area studies from around the world. We encourage intersection with areas such as: Ethnic Studies, Class Studies, Disability Studies, International Studies, Poverty Studies, Peace Studies, Global Health, and Environmental and/or Sustainability Studies, and other inter-disciplines.

The conference co-conveners and sponsors are honored to hold this event under the auspices of the UNESCO Chair on Gender, Wellbeing and a Culture of Peace as part of a global United Nations Platform on education, science, and culture.