Berkshire Conference on Women's History Theme(s) - Gender and the Environment

In the next couple of weeks, the CFP for the 2014 Berkshire Conference on Women’s History Theme(s)—Histories on the Edge/Histoires sur la breche will be released. The conference will be held in late May 2014 at the University of Toronto.

Here’s a bit of information from the upcoming CFP. The conference in Canada prompts conceptual, historical and analytic engagement with critical edges – sharpening, unsettling, de-centring, decolonizing histories in a global context. Edges are spatial: impenetrable borders, stifling boundaries or protective borders and spaces of smooth entry. Edges evoke the creative and the avant-garde. Entangled in the idea of edges are rough encounters, jagged conflicts as well as intimate exchanges. It speaks to the alternative spaces the “edged-out” have carved for themselves and to efforts made to create a common ground, or commons, on which to make oppositional histories.

The theme encourages critical reflection on how gender, an analytic category, material embodiment, cultural recourse, or signifying system works in many ways. Gender has its many ragged edges: where private and public spheres have been defined and redefined; where class, gender, race, ethnicity, nation, kinship, sexuality, and ability/disability have interacted; where masculinities and femininities have been constructed, reconstructed, and deconstructed. So, too, is gender on the edge of debate: a term in need of scrutiny to expose its uses, contradictions, strengths, and weaknesses.

Besides the major theme, there are sub- themes for the conference and we will be asked to submit our proposals to one of the following subthemes:
Borders, Encounters, Conflict Zones, and Memory
Empires, Nations, and the Commons
Law, Family, Courts, Criminality, and Prisons
Bodies, Health, Medical Technologies, and Science
Indigenous Histories and Indigenous Worlds
Caribbean, Latin America, and Afro/Francophone Worlds
Asia, Transnational Circuits, and Global Diasporas
Economies, Environments, Labour, and Consumption
Sexualities, Genders, LGBTIQ2, and Intimacies
Politics, Religion/Beliefs, and Global Feminisms

Alongside these themes, conference organizers are looking for scholars interested in creating panels, roundtables, or workshops that discuss across time, place, and discipline: gender and the environment; women and the environment; and sport, gender, and the environment. Anyone interested in participating can send an email to elizabeth.jewett@utoronto.ca for more information.