Call for Papers - Women's and Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes (WGSRF)

Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2018

May 27-30, 2018 – University of Regina, Saskatchewan

Women's and Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes (WGSRF) is calling for papers that reflect on the theme for this year’s Congress meeting: “Gathering Diversities.” We invite proposals for papers, panels, or workshops that consider the possibilities and limits of “Diversity talk” as it takes place inside and outside the academy.

We invite proposals that consider the following themes:

Theme 1: Precarity, Diversity and Labour. How have diversity initiatives and arguments affected the types of labour that are cultivated or demanded? How have discourses about diversity enabled an intensification of demands for neoliberal “flexibility” in work? How does this travel across borders and between and around different types of labour? How is diversity talk impacting academic labour and what kinds of effects is it having on precarious forms of academic work or workers? What kinds of diversity are “desired” by universities and what kinds are not?

Theme 2: Indigeneity and Diversity. How has diversity been theorized to include or exclude Indigenous knowledges, experiences and subjectivities? How are recent initiatives aimed at “Indigenizing and Decolonizing” the university impacting Indigenous faculty, students, staff, and communities?

Theme 3: Intersectionality and Diversity. What are the tensions or overlaps between thinking about diversity and intersectionality? How might diversity initiatives consider intersectional analysis? Does an intersectional frame change how we understand or conceptualize diversity? Are discourses of diversity a product of Western liberal cultures and how might these discussions change in light of global and transnational feminist work on topics such as climate change, migration, violence, conflict, and solidarity?

Theme 4: Open Call: We also welcome proposals outside of the above themes that explore topics in the field of Women’s and Gender Studies in all of its articulations. Panel sessions and workshops are typically scheduled to be 75 minutes in length, and papers are expected to be approximately 8 to 9 double-spaced pages, or 15 to 20 minutes, for individual submissions. If you are proposing a workshop, please indicate if the expected time frame is different from typical scheduling.

Please submit a proposal in French or English, including a panel or paper title as well as a paper abstract of 250 words or less. We highly encourage panel proposals: for panel proposals, please include a brief panel abstract as well as individual paper abstracts. Please make sure to include your name and email contact information on the proposal—proposals will be anonymized before review. Authors will be informed once a decision has been made about their proposal.

Deadline for submissions: December 11, 2017. Please send proposals by email only, in Word format, to: wgsrfcongress2018@gmail.com