[Discussion] Gendered Bodies, Transnational Politics

[Gonul]

Distrib. by: Central-Eurasia-L - Announcement List for Central Eurasian
Studies


CONF./CFP- Gendered Bodies, Transnational Politics, Cairo, Dec. 2003

CALL FOR PAPERS

Gendered Bodies, Transnational Politics: Modernities Reconsidered

December 12-14, 2003, Cairo, Egypt

"Gendered Bodies, Transnational Politics: Modernities Reconsidered" is a

workshop organized by the Institute for Gender and Women's Studies
(IGWS) at
the American University in Cairo and the Center for the Study of Gender
and
Sexuality (CSGS) at New York University. It is co-sponsored by the
Middle
Eastern Studies Department, the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern
Studies, and the Diversity Studies Initiative, Graduate School of Arts
and
Science at New York University.

This workshop seeks to understand and explore the complexities
surrounding
gender and sexuality dynamics in the Middle East, North Africa and
Central
Asia by facilitating a conversation between scholars working in (a)
women's
studies in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia; (b)
transnational
feminism; and (c) gender and sexuality studies. It provides a space for
an
epistemological conversation that reexamines the ways in which dominant
discourses on modernity and the articulation of social and political
space
and place -- as delineated by political and cultural visions of the
postcolonial world order and its boundaries -- have critically informed
women's and gender studies over the past few decades.

Especially welcome are contributions addressing the following questions:

1) To what extent have dominant discourses of modernization that posit
modernity as a singular path and framework affect the ways in which
gendered
and sexualized knowledge is produced and reproduced in general, and in
Middle East/ North Africa and Central Asian area studies, in particular?

2) What sorts of questions animate women's, gender and sexuality studies
at
specific geographical locations? What sorts of genealogies mark these
questions? Who authors them at what sites? And how do they travel within
the
global academy?

3) How does the notion of grounding conceptual frameworks fare in an
intellectual era grounded in a moral economy that privileges things
hybrid
and transnational at the expense of local, localized, and localizing
practices?

4) Between the call to get beyond area studies and the demand for
localized
practices, how do we/can we envision gender and women's studies in
Middle
East/North Africa/Central Asia with an emancipatory component? In other
words, what are the epistemological concerns that emerge in and produce
specific research agendas and methodological practices around the study
of
gender and sexuality dynamics in Muslim/Arab/Central Asian contexts?

A limited number of scholars from outside the Middle East/North Africa
region will be funded.

Please send an abstract of 750 words by May 1, 2003 to:
<igws@aucegypt.edu>

Abstracts will be accepted in Arabic or English.

Notification of accepted abstracts: June 15, 2003

Full papers (15-20 pages, including bibliography) due, for circulation
to
workshop participants: October 1, 2003

For more information, please contact:

Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi
E-mail: <rabab.abdulhadi@nyu.edu>

or Dr. Martina Rieker
E-mail: <mrieker@aucegypt.edu>