Category Archives: Gender Issues in Libraries

GSISC 2020 Technologies and Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the Body in Information Studies

This gathering seeks to create an inclusive space for difficult, fruitful conversations around technology, however defined, as it affects and is affected by race, gender, sexuality, and ability. We aim to foster conversations that consider “technology” as the expression of material cultures, labor, and embodiment; as well as sites of empowerment or oppression.

In libraries, and in the professional discourses of librarianship and information studies, we often talk about “technology” as a means to an end. Or, we speculate about technology as though it emanated from the horizon of a futurity that appears sometimes threatening, sometimes empowering, but always inevitable: e.g., artificial intelligence will “revolutionize” the ways we find and use information. Both kinds of discourse omit the ways technologies begin and end in the flesh — how technologies shape habits of body and mind, just as those habits influence the design and construction of technologies.

The planning committee for the 2020 Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies Colloquium invites you to join continue these conversations July 24, 2020 in Washington, DC at George Washington University.

We invite proposals that address the problems, power, and potential of “technologies” in libraries and archives, past, present, and future, and seek a range of interpretations of the concept of technology.

Questions might include, but are not limited to:

  • How do search algorithms, metadata standards, and user interfaces challenge or reinforce white supremacy, heteronormative patriarchy, and ableism?
  • How do our catalogs, databases, finding aids, and collections disguise the traces of oppression, even while perpetuating the violence visited upon the oppressed?
  • How do we talk about the absence of voices (either in the historical record or from our present-day communities) that haunts the architecture and design of our systems?
  • How have technologies been used to selectively forget pasts to perpetuate certain futures? How are technologies used to unearth the forgotten?
  • How do we address the absent presence of laboring bodies behind our technologies, especially those bodies whose labor is devalued and poorly remunerated?
  • How do we begin to redress the inequities that library and information technologies perpetuate, where the default user is most often white and able-bodied, and whose architects, designers, and managers are most often white cis men?
  • What kinds of digital cultural memory and community-based projects are critical right now?

We invite submissions from individuals as well as pre-constituted panels. Submit your proposals here: http://bit.ly/GSISC2020

Deadline for submission: November 15, 2019
Notification by January 15, 2020
Registration opens February 1, 2020

Please direct any questions or concerns to GSISC2020@gmail.com

Organizing committee:
Jennifer Brown, Barnard College
Emily Drabinski, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Leah Richardson, The George Washington University
Hannah Scates Kettler, University of Iowa
Kristan Shawgo, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Dolsy Smith, The George Washington University
Tonia Sutherland, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
Hannah Wang, Wisconsin Historical Society

Feminist Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition

Society for Analytical Feminism

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

Deadline: July 1, 2019

SAF Session at the Eastern Division APA 2020
Philadelphia, PA, Jan 8 – 11, 2019

The Society for Analytical Feminism invites submissions of abstracts of papers or proposals for a session at the 2020 Eastern Division APA meeting in Philadelphia, PA. The Society seeks abstracts of works that examine feminist issues by methods broadly construed as analytic, or that discuss the use of analytic philosophical methods as applied to feminist issues. Authors should submit abstracts for papers of a length appropriate to a 20-minute presentation time. (If you are proposing an author-meets-critics session, involving multiple people, we welcome that information but expect an abstract-length proposal indicating that the author has confirmed to you their intention to participate, as well as indication of the relevance of the book/author to a SAF session, such as the themes to be discussed.)

Please delete all self-identifying references from your abstract to ensure anonymity. Use the form posted here at: https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fforms.gle%2FrQ5azk9o7v6JxcSDA&data=02%7C01%7Cdxf19%40psu.edu%7C319560d0628641934bdb08d6e4597653%7C7cf48d453ddb4389a9c1c115526eb52e%7C0%7C1%7C636947470229660384&sdata=qPyAq6n47DtRdDAqTPfyrrDoaUaFNwIdZLCdXLQFXfo%3D&reserved=0.  Attach submissions as a Word or PDF attachment. Deadline for submissions: July 1, 2018. Graduate students or underfunded professionals whose papers are accepted will be eligible for the Society’s $350 Travel Stipend. Please indicate on submission form if you fall into one of these categories and wish to be considered for the stipend. Direct any questions to feminist.analytic@gmail.com.

The deadlines for submissions to the Central (in Chicago, February 26 – 29) and the Pacific (in San Francisco, April 8 – 12) follow quickly after these (July 15 and August 5 respectively).  Check out the SAF Website — https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsites.google.com%2Fsite%2Fanalyticalfeminism%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cdxf19%40psu.edu%7C319560d0628641934bdb08d6e4597653%7C7cf48d453ddb4389a9c1c115526eb52e%7C0%7C1%7C636947470229670376&sdata=ccc7CoZECUGf5%2BIxxdsqOFJENhUAgSAKMvab5eeaU50%3D&reserved=0 — to submit for the Central or the Pacific.

Playing and Pedagogy: The Theory and Practice of Teaching with Video Games

Hello all,

I’m writing to announce a call for contributions for a special feature in Films for the Feminist Classroom.

Playing and Pedagogy: The Theory and Practice of Teaching with Video Games

Video games and films—both genres increasingly share tropes in their design, aesthetic, and reliance on narrative plots. Video games often use a short film to introduce players to the rules and characters, and action films can rely so much on computer generated imagery that it’s not clear where the computer ends and the “real world” begins. Moreover, films and video games at some times (re)produce status quo norms and hierarchies and at other times offer a path toward radical social justice. In this sense, both serve as forms of entertainment and instruction, pleasure and discomfort. And both can be useful for teaching skills, ideas, and content for educators in various settings.

Considering these similarities, Films for the Feminist Classroom (https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fffc.twu.edu%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cdxf19%40psu.edu%7Cc25907b16bef4499101708d687b5658e%7C7cf48d453ddb4389a9c1c115526eb52e%7C0%7C0%7C636845610496606759&sdata=runjDjANceZsx4HP1F4%2BLaLWlopbYQp8OaGDFDbUyys%3D&reserved=0) is developing a special feature about intersections of gaming/film/video media and pedagogy for an upcoming issue. We are looking for contributions that explore gaming in relation to pedagogy and that in some way critically engage or address hierarchies of power and privilege. We also ask contributors to consider topics relevant to gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, ability, socioeconomic class, religion, and other social, biological, and cultural influences.

We are interested in short essays (1500-2500 words), game reviews, and lesson plans that offer resources for educators who might consider using gaming in their teaching. Proposals are welcome from a range of theoretical and methodological frameworks, that span a range of fields and disciplines, and that explore various media forms, topics, and content. Educators at a variety of phases of their careers—graduate students to retired faculty—and at a variety of locations, including primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities, and community centers, as well as from different countries, are encouraged to submit a proposal.

Proposals may address but are not limited to the following areas:
— crafting a syllabus and/or a unit within a syllabus about gaming
— incorporating game design in lesson plans
— gaming assignments and/or activities that educators could use
— how different educational settings affect the media and pedagogical strategies we use
— rethinking education material and approaches with gaming
— explicitly pedagogical games
— pairing film/video media and readings
— deconstructing and analyzing video games as a class activity
— the cultural dimensions of gaming
— gamergate threats and harassment and the effect on student’s perception of gaming communities
— gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, religion, etc. in relation to video games
— social justice in gaming narratives
— the rhetoric of video games
— experimental or avant garde video games
— pairing film/video media and readings
— how video games can reinforce and disrupt norms
— the relationship between gaming and other participatory and social media platforms

Proposals should be 150-200 words and cite the specific short media you will discuss in the essay. The deadline for submitting proposals is February 20, 2019. If accepted, completed contributions will be due April 15, 2019.

Please submit proposals and direct any questions to ffc@twu.edu or to Agatha Beins at abeins@twu.edu / 940-898-2117. More information about submitting proposals can be found here: https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fffc.twu.edu%2Fcall_4_proposals.html&data=02%7C01%7Cdxf19%40psu.edu%7Cc25907b16bef4499101708d687b5658e%7C7cf48d453ddb4389a9c1c115526eb52e%7C0%7C0%7C636845610496606759&sdata=ZVoFyFUcufriihsokghoYDfse01FmRHnZm5ni%2FlDr6o%3D&reserved=0.

Agatha Beins
Associate Professor
Department of Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies
Texas Woman’s University
Editor, Films for the Feminist Classroom

EDUCATION, SOCIETY, & REFORM CONFERENCE

28-29 JUNE 2019, ANKARA

For more information go to: http://www.edusref.org/

Education, Society & Reform Research (EDUSREF-2019) is an International Conference that aims to bridge the knowledge gap, promote social research esteem, and produce democratic information for potential education reforms.

Main Theme of the Conference is

“Questioning of Changes in Education: Looking for Priorities in Education”

 

Abstract Submission Deadline: 15 April 2019

Early Bird Registration Deadline: 22 May 2019

 

Conference Dates: 28 and 29 June 2019

 

Full Paper Submission Deadline: 15 September 2019

 

(After the conference, the interested presenters may submit their fulltext to Education Reform Journal on www.erjournal.org for possible evaluation.

 

Also the presenters who want to publish their papers in the e-book may send it edusref@outlook.com)

 

Conference Topics

Paper topics may include, but are not limited, to the following:

 

  • Educational Policies and Practices
  • Trends and Challenges Shaping Education
  • Large-Scale Assessments in Education (PISA, TALIS, PIACC etc.)
  • Economic Challenges (i.e. BREXIT) and its Reflections on Education Systems
  • International Benchmarking /Indicators
  • Comparative Studies in education
  • Social Transitions & School Culture and Climate
  • Socio-Psychological Analyses for Education
  • Social Media and its Reflections on Schools
  • Migration and Education Studies
  • Gender and Education Studies
  • Inclusive Education
  • School Improvement
  • Creativity and Innovation in Education
  • Innovative Learning Environments
  • Curriculum Critiques
  • School Leadership
  • Performance Appraisal in Education
  • Law of Education
  • Professional Development
  • Teacher Education
  • Developing Higher Education Systems

 

In order to make the productions of the conference efficient, the authors are expected to answer this question “What are the implications based on the results of study for potential education reforms? “ in the conclusion remarks in their study.

 

Conference Secretary

 

e-mail: edusref@outlook.com

 

 

Pitfalls of neutrality: What does inclusivity mean in libraries?

The ACRL Women and Gender Studies Section (WGSS) is looking for panelists for our accepted program at ALA Annual 2019 in Washington, D.C. The program is called “Pitfalls of neutrality: What does inclusivity mean in libraries?” It is scheduled for Saturday, June 19, at 9:00 am. Each panelist will have approximately 10-15 minutes to speak. To be considered as a panelist, please submit a brief summary of the issue(s) you would address, including your type of library to Laura Bonella (laurab@ksu.edu) by Monday, January 21.

Program description: Librarians are committed to promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion, but what does this mean in today’s political climate? We are frequently required to make decisions that pit free speech against the comfort and safety of other patrons (e.g. allowing political or hate groups to use our meeting rooms), or called upon to defend our collection, exhibit, or program decisions in the face of patron challenges. Even our decisions about configuring the space in our libraries may create controversy – gender neutral restrooms, prayer rooms, lactation rooms, or how we make our buildings accessible.

We are looking for a diverse group of speakers who have handled these challenges and can share their experiences and how they dealt with various situations. Attendees will have the chance to ask questions and interact with the speakers and each other. We would like them to leave the program with strategies from different libraries to consider when examining their own perspectives on equity, diversity, and inclusion and how to address these issues in their libraries. The program is co-sponsored by the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom and will have a panelist from their office.

 

All the best,

Laura Bonella

2019 WGSS Program Planning chair

International Intersectionality Conference

Link to pdf: https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdornsife.usc.edu%2Fassets%2Fsites%2F80%2Fdocs%2FCFR_International_Intersectionality_Conference_CFP_-_FINAL.pdf&data=02%7C01%7Cdxf19%40psu.edu%7C0d1fe79ddcab44dba36d08d665e3e14c%7C7cf48d453ddb4389a9c1c115526eb52e%7C0%7C0%7C636808426748363078&sdata=5mtTTSJelpttrWskRww0BCJfmz4qezwi9LJzq1zRcyM%3D&reserved=0

Call for Papers:
International Intersectionality Conference University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA, USA March 6-8, 2019
The Center for Feminist Research at the University of Southern California (USC) invites submissions of paper proposals for our 2019 Internationality Intersectionality Conference to be held on March 6-8, 2019 on the campus of USC in Los Angeles, CA. Papers presented will be considered for inclusion in a forthcoming Handbook of Intersectionality co-edited by Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro and Nira Yuval-Davis.
This year’s conference theme, “Intersectional Echoes: Cross-Generational Practices and Knowledge Production,” will focus on approaches to intersectional research over time, emphasizing the role of intersectional research in shaping the scope of cutting-edge work across disciplines including but not limited to political science, public health, sociology, psychology, feminist media studies, ethnic studies, literature, social movements, law and public policy.
Proposal Guidelines:
Individual paper proposals should include a 500-word abstract, including a paper title. Please submit proposals in Word format along with contact information including name, address, and institutional affiliation to InterIntersectionality.2019@gmail.com by 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time on January 7, 2019 to be considered. Questions can be sent to Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro, Director of the USC Center for Feminist Research and Conference Convener: ahancock@usc.edu
As we plan our conference in Southern California, a geographic area with a rich cultural history long before European contact, we are mindful of the multi-various ways that power is structured through space and place and how those structures interact with race, gender, gender-identity, nationality, class, [dis]ability, and sexuality.
“Intersectional Echoes: Cross-Generational Practices and Knowledge Production” will explore the history of intersectional research, challenges that drive the field today, and ways to build up intersectional and cross-generational networks for the future. While the notion of echoes conjures up important thinking about haunting and the past, our theme includes and welcomes engagements with non-Western, nonlinear, and non-capitalist temporalities.
We seek papers that explore and/or expand the boundaries of intersectionality as a growing field of study. Comparative, cross-national, interdisciplinary, and cross-generational work that are either interpretive, quantitative, qualitative, or use multiple methods are welcome. Below are some topics that potential contributors might consider:
*Mapping the presence/absence of categories of difference like class or culture *Race, gender, and sexuality in the digital era
*Migration and belonging during times of war or political conflict *Scholar-activism as a practice of radicalizing feminist futures
*Language, cultural meanings, and practices of identity in politics
*Health inequality and future intersectional frameworks of care for self and others *Critical race theory and interconnections with class, gender, and sexuality *Womxn of color and public policy
*Quantitative patterns of intersectional inequality

ACRL 2019 Lightening Talks

Inspire others with quick glimpses at your latest innovations, interesting ideas, and new technologies or services. The sky is the limit! Each five-minute Lightning Talk will require you to create a maximum of 20 slides that advance automatically every 15 seconds. Submit your 150-word proposal by Wednesday, January 16, 2019. It’s that quick and easy! The top proposals will be chosen by the ACRL 2019 Innovations Committee. Winners will be determined by popular vote.

CAPAL19: The Politics of Conversation: Identity, Community, and Communication

CAPAL/ACBAP Annual Meeting – June 2 -4, 2019 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2019

University of British Columbia

Vancouver, British Columbia

The Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians (CAPAL) invites you to participate in its annual conference, to be held as part of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2019 at the University of British Columbia on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam) people. This conference offers librarians and allied professionals across all disciplines an alternative space to share research and scholarship, challenge current thinking about professional issues, and forge new relationships.

Theme

In keeping with the Congress 2019 theme, Circles of Conversation, the theme of CAPAL19 is Politics of Conversation: Identity, Community, and Communication.

 This conference provides an opportunity for the academic library community to critically examine and discuss the ways in which our profession is influenced by its social, political, and economic environments. By considering academic librarianship within its historical contexts, its presents, and its possible futures, and by situating it within evolving cultural frameworks and structures of power, we can better understand the ways in which academic librarianship may reflect, reinforce, or challenge these contexts both positively and negatively.

In what kinds of conversation are we or are we not engaging within the profession, academia, and civil society? How are the various identities that constitute our communities reflected (or not) within academic librarianship, and how do we engage in conversations within our own communities and with communities that we may see as external.

Potential Topics:

Papers presented might relate to aspects of the following themes (though they need not be limited to them):

·       Diversity: how do we ensure our circles (communities, spaces) are diverse? What are the circles available to librarians, and how do we ensure that librarians are not circumscribed by their identities within these circles? This could apply both to academic vs. public librarianship, or academic librarian vs. the broader academic community, but perhaps more importantly, it could ask these questions with respect to women, people of colour, and Indigenous librarians.

·       Intellectual and academic freedom: How do we define our responsibilities and our liberties in these areas? Are these positive or negative freedoms, especially with respect to broader communities?

·         “Imagined Communities”: It is the 35th anniversary of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. How do librarians see themselves in various “imagined communities” (nationality, community of practice, inter- and cross-disciplinary), and what are the politics of our participation?

·       Conversations outside the circles: how do we make our research relevant outside LIS? Is this different for different kinds of research? How do we bring public values and ideas into our work and research?

·       Labour and solidarity: how to we organize ourselves within academic librarianship; how do we connect our conversations with other library workers, other academic workers, other workers as a whole.

·       Conversations within practice/praxis: how are communications and connections established and maintained with the profession and between academic librarians and administrators, faculty, students, and other researchers.

The Program Committee invites proposals for individual papers as well as proposals for panel submissions of three papers. Proposed papers must be original and not have been published elsewhere.

·       Individual papers are typically 20 minutes in length. For individual papers, please submit an abstract of no more than 400 words and a presentation title, with a brief biographical statement and your contact information.

·         For complete panels, please submit a panel abstract of no more than 400 words as well as a list of all participants and brief biographical statements, and a separate abstract of no more than 400 words for each presenter. Please identify and provide participants’ contact information for the panel organizer.

Please feel free to contact the Program Committee to discuss a topic for a paper, panel, or other session format. Proposals should be emailed as an attachment in your preferred format (open formats welcome!), using the following filename convention:

 Lastname_Title.<extension>

Proposals and questions should be directed to the Program Chair, Sam Popowich at

Sam.Popowich [at] ualberta.ca

Deadline for Proposals is: 21/12/2018

Further information about the conference, as well as Congress 2019 more broadly, will be available soon.

ACRL Women and Gender Studies Section 2019 Research Poster Session

The Women and Gender Studies Section (WGSS) invites proposals for the 2019 WGSS Research Poster Session, to be held as part of the ALA Annual Conference General Poster Session, located in the exhibits hall at the Washington, D.C. Convention Center. The WGSS has a dedicated time from 11:30-1:00 on SaturdayJune 22nd for our posters to be displayed and discussed. We would also like those who are able and willing to present their posters at the WGSS General Membership Meeting at 4:30 the same day, to encourage maximum feedback.

The potential scope of the topics includes, but is not limited to, teaching partnerships, critical information literacy initiatives, critical cataloging, archival practices, collection development, and scholarly communications related to women and gender studies. Topics dealing with feminism and librarianship are also welcome. For research ideas, see the Research Agenda for Women and Gender Studies Librarianship.

The deadline for submitting an application is Friday, February 8, 2019. Following a double-blind peer-review process, applicants will be notified in late March if their submission has been accepted for presentation at the conference. Start your application process now at https://www.conferenceabstracts.com/cfp2/login.asp?EventKey=EFRAOCJH . You must login to the site using your ALA username and password, or you can create a username and password for the site before you submit your application.

Diversity, Equity, and Justice Talks: In and Beyond the Library

Members of LITA’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee are seeking to fill its ALA panel slot “Diversity, Equity, and Justice Talks: In and Beyond the Library” with presentations from three panelists interested in approaching the topic of Diversity, Equity, and Justice from their own personal and/or institutional perspective. As libraries, archives, and cultural heritage institutions attempt to embed diversity and equity into the core of their institutional practices, it can be helpful to provide ample platforms for discovering, engaging with, and highlighting powerful narratives that reflect the work we must do in order to continue pushing against institutional oppression–or to highlight where we are not pushing hard
enough.

They invite potential panelists to submit brief proposals around any topic that relates to diversity and equity work at large: employing anti-racist praxis in libraries/your library work, navigating microagressions, allyship, cultural competency–to name a few. However, any and all topics are welcome, and do not need to speak directly speak to technology in any way.

The deadline to submit is December 9.

You can find the online form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf8GoZ4GBvd_–xCOBQ907Y4JCH0fGJKz8KzrDI57SAd55inw/viewform

If you have any questions, please reach out to the committee Chair, Jennifer Brown (jebrown@barnard.edu) or Vice Chair, Jharina Pascual (jharinapascual@hotmail.com).