Call for abstracts for! The deadline is Aug 1 – and we’re looking forward to seeing
your ideas! For more information, contact Ann Braithwaite,
abraithwaite@upei.ca and/or Catherine Orr, orrc@beloit.edu
Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies – Volume II
(under contract with Routledge/Taylor and Francis)
Call for Chapter Proposals – August 1, 2017
Catherine M. Orr and Ann Braithwaite, Editors
Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies II (RWGS II) is an anthology that
addresses the complexities and inherent paradoxes of the expansive
knowledge project known as Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) for audiences
both inside and adjacent to the field. RWGS II continues the work of Rethinking
Women’s and Gender Studies (Routledge 2012)
<https://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Womens-Gender-Studies-Catherine/dp/0415808316/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496332594&sr=8-1&keywords=rethinking+women%27s+and+gender+studies>
but
seeks to complement rather than merely update it. It is both the same, in
that it explores key terms and common narratives, and different, in that it
stretches its scope of exploration vis-à-vis new terms that now circulate
both in WGS and other interdisciplinary knowledge projects. Thus, our focus
in this new volume is more future oriented in that we want authors to think
about what terms are crossing field boundaries and where those
boundary-crossings can take us.*
List of Possible Terms Include (but are not limited to): Nation,
Decoloniality, Race, Anti/Blackness, Inclusion, Consent, Women of Color,
Whiteness, Indigeneity, Women, Cis-, Citizenship, Masculinity, Disability,
Diversity, Affect, Social Justice, Non-human animals, Eco-feminism,
Critical, Civic Engagement, Experience/Experiential Learning, Branding,
Inclusive Excellence, The Ph.D., Violence, Expertise, Entrepreneurship
In exploring a term, we ask each contributor contemplate the following
questions:
–
How are you positioned in relation to the field of WGS? What moves you
to take up this particular term?
–
How does this term function in WGS–intellectually, institutionally,
administratively, and/or pedagogically?
–
What are some of the tensions within WGS generated by this term?
–
How does this term point to, overlap, or contradict other theoretical
languages, approaches, and fields?
–
How does this term reflect different temporalities (disciplinary
histories, “times,” career clocks, or generations) within or beyond WGS?
–
What would a reconsideration of this term offer to WGS as a knowledge
project?
Chapter Proposals DUE August 1, 2017: 500-word abstract that addresses
some or all of above questions plus bio or short CV. Send to:
orrc@beloit.edu and abraithwaite@upei.ca
Final Draft of Chapters DUE: January 10, 2018. 6000 words maximum
(including endnotes), Times New Roman, 12-point manuscript text with
one-inch margins.
*More about RWGS II:
As with RWGS
<https://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Womens-Gender-Studies-Catherine/dp/0415808316/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496332594&sr=8-1&keywords=rethinking+women%27s+and+gender+studies>,
RWGS II focuses on asking how certain terms come to be taken-for-granted in
WGS, exploring both the unacknowledged assumptions and subsequent
unintended consequences of their use. Identifying and interrogating the
functions and effects of these terms continues to reflect our understanding
of WGS as a knowledge project, one that asks questions about how we come to
know something as much as what it is we claim to know. As such, RWGS
II continues
to interrogate the field through a double(d) lens, insisting that the
languages that circulate in the field constitute both our methods of
analysis and our objects of study.
Using the same organizational approach of constructing critical genealogies
of key terms as in RWGS
<https://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Womens-Gender-Studies-Catherine/dp/0415808316/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496332594&sr=8-1&keywords=rethinking+women%27s+and+gender+studies>,
RWGS II extends that earlier project, now unpacking, exploring, and
accounting for terms that are not necessarily unique to WGS but that are
nevertheless influential in its current understandings and practices.
Think, for instance, of terms that circulate just as much in
interdisciplinary projects adjacent to WGS (e.g., Ethnic Studies,
Indigenous Studies, Disability Studies, Queer Studies, Prison Studies,
Social Justice Studies) as they do in WGS. We think of these terms as sites
of encounter that are characterized just as much by agreement and consensus
as by contestation and conflict as they cross inter/disciplinary
boundaries. Their mobilization in WGS has the potential to excite and
agitate the field imaginary in ways that are both productive and
problematic for the present and future(s) of WGS.
Likewise, RWGS II aims to further explore the ways in which WGS always
works both within and against the institution within which it is located,
through a variety of terms and narratives that take the university itself
as a site of encounter in need of further interrogation. What happens if
those terms are faced head on, and even embraced by and in the name of WGS?
What productive work of social change, and of critical reflection on the
relationships between identity/knowledge/power, can occur when WGS—uneasily
to be sure—encounters these terms and practices them “otherwise?” Can such
counterintuitive moves illuminate new–as yet unthought–futures of WGS?
Can embracing a politics of engagement (rather than a politics of refusal)
reveal new genealogies and different trajectories for and of this field, in
academia and beyond?