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Call for Papers Theme: Contingent Belongings Subtitle: Queer Reflections on Race, Space, and the State Type: Interdisciplinary Conference Institution: University of Minnesota Location: Minneapolis, MN (USA) Date: 16.–17.9.2011 Deadline: 20.6.2011 __________________________________________________ The field of queer studies has made important contributions to interrogating the notion of belonging as a technology of cultural, social, and political membership. Yet scholarship in sexuality studies has not always attended to the multiple contingencies that structure belonging, particularly in relation to the unevenness of spatial and racial formations that shape access to cultural and national citizenship. Recent discussions of homonormativity and homonationalism have demonstrated the importance of understanding how social and political belonging are contingent upon the exclusion of certain bodies and practices. The recent repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the criminalization of immigration with the passage of SB1070 illustrate the contradictory logics of national, sexual, and racial belonging. This conference examines the contingencies of belonging in relation to racial and sexual imaginaries and practices. How can we understand the desire to belong? What are the costs of belonging, and who can refuse to belong? Who gets to determine the framework for belonging? What does resistance look like under these conditions? We hope to create a vibrant space for intellectual exchange with an emphasis on interdisciplinary scholarship. We welcome submissions from faculty, graduate students, and independent scholars from a wide range of fields, including gender and sexuality studies, ethnic studies, American studies, geography, history, education, media and communication, and cultural studies, among others. Suggested topics include (but are not limited to): - immigration, citizenship, and law - space, movement, and diaspora - intimacy, kinship, and family - affect and desire - U.S. empire and settler colonialism - labor, neoliberalism, and biopolitics - culture as a site of critique/resistance/knowledge production - activism and coalition - queer world-making and alternative practices - aesthetics and decolonization - race, place, and identity Please submit abstracts of 250-300 words and a brief bio of no more than 100 words to <[email protected]> by June 20, 2011. Conference applicants will be notified by July 15th. Keynote speakers: Christina Hanhardt, Department of American Studies, University of Maryland Christina Hanhardt will speak about her forthcoming book, Safe Space: The Sexual and City Politics of Violence, which examines U.S.-based LGBT activism against violence since the mid-1960s in the context of the race- and class-stratified city. Nayan Shah, Department of History, University of California, San Diego Nayan Shah will speak about his forthcoming book, Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality and the Law in the North American West. Shah is the author of Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Sponsored by the Graduate Interdisciplinary Group in Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota, with support from the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies. Contact: Karisa Butler-Wall Graduate Interdisciplinary Group in Sexuality Studies University of Minnesota Email: [email protected] Web: http://contingentbelongings.wordpress.com __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org __________________________________________________
