[Discussion] Transnational,Transgender,Transdisciplinary,Transcultural

[Gonul Pultar]

Call for Papers

THE WOMEN'S STUDIES PROGRAM AT PURDUE UNIVERSITY
announces a symposium on

TRANS/POSITIONS:
Transnational,Transgender,Transdisciplinary,Transcultural
A CONFERENCE ON FEMINIST INQUIRY IN TRANSIT

APRIL 7-9, 2005

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
Rey Chow, Brown University; Darlyne Bailey, Teachers College, Columbia 
University;
Inderpal Grewal, University of California, Irvine;
Ruth Vanita, University of Montana;
Siobhan Somerville, University of Illinois


Transit: from the Latin transire, to go across, as in passage from one
subject to another. Responding to recent shifts in feminist inquiry,
this conference seeks to bring together feminist scholars in the
humanities, social sciences, and sciences to think through the
development of "trans" studies and "trans" methodologies. We invite
proposals that explore the turn from interdisciplinary and multicultural
projects to transnational, transgendered, transdisciplinary, and
transcultural feminist projects. We welcome proposals for papers and
panels, as well as performance pieces, poetry, and fiction.

We offer the following questions to help generate varied, specific
submissions:

How has the concept of "trans"--and its attending emphases on processes
of crossing, changing, becoming--shifted attention in feminist studies
from matters of difference and deferral to those of movement and
mutation? What might be the effects of this shift on questions of power
and agency, categorical imperatives and emerging networks, and
reconceptualizations of the workings of language, representation,
performance, culture, politics?

How can we reexamine the relation of Area Studies, Ethnic Studies, and
Postcolonial Studies to various fields in Anglo-European studies and
thought? What analyses of race, sexuality, gender, class and other
identity markers do or do not translate easily or innocently across
historical periods, genres, or national contexts?

In terms of "trans" methodologies, how do we see academic disciplines
interrogating themselves or resisting self-interrogating? What does
feminist transdisciplinarity risk, and what does it have to gain, by
becoming professionalized within the academy? Do projects that
transgress discipline, for example women's autobiography or matters of
law and policy, enable us to bridge epistemological gaps? How does the
shift to "trans" methodologies enable us to rethink the body? nature?
materiality? reimagine space and place in globalization theory and in
local settings? reimagine the global and the local themselves?

How do trans/positions enable us to resist certain forms of
impositions? For example, how has transnational thought enabled queer
theory to reflect upon the colonizing potential of coming-out
narratives? Which formulations of queer critique and theories of
racialization are specific to US contexts and which are relevant to
other national or transnational contexts? How have activist communities,
for example the anti-globalization movement, contributed to the
formation and development of transmovements?

How has the call to think across cultural, national, and gendered
boundaries become more politically urgent, but also more difficult in an
atmosphere of backlash, after 9-11?

Given the potential for cooptation by market imperatives of
globalization and seemingly transparent calls for global unity, how
might the trans movement be understood as enabling yet troubling,
promising yet ominous?


Deadline for Submissions: October 5, 2004
Accepted applicants will be notified by mid-November

Please send a detailed abstract or panel proposal (1-2 pages) to:

Ruth Salvaggio, Director
Women's Studies Program
Beering Hall of Liberal Arts and Education, Rm. 6164
Purdue University
100 N. University St.
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2098

We also welcome submissions via e-mail but NOT as attachments
send to: rsalvaggio@sla.purdue.edu 
<https://charon.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr/basilix/basilix.php?RequestID=CMPSNEW&premail=-1&is_ssl=&cmps_to=rsalvaggio@sla.purdue.edu>


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