The theme of the 2011 Feminisms and Rhetorics conference is “Feminist Challenges or Feminist Rhetorics?: Locations, Scholarship and Discourse.” The Feminisms and Rhetorics conference is sponsored by the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition, and will be hosted by Minnesota State University, Mankato October 12-15, 2011.
The conference committee is strongly interdisciplinary and therefore our theme seeks to recognize the spaces between disciplines and communities. The conference theme is meant to acknowledge the academic and socio-discursive spaces that feminisms, and rhetorics on or about feminisms, inhabit. Major political, religious and social leaders have recently discussed feminism, including the Dalai Lama, but the discussion seems to revolve around cultural or essentialized discourses of feminism. This spotlight on feminism is, of course, not new, and they ways feminism is engaged in public discourse is much different than that of academic discourse. However, in Rhetoric and Composition, we have seen many significant publications lately focusing on what it means to be a woman in the field, how to be a successful woman in the field, and the connections between feminist theory and feminist pedagogy.
We seek proposals that speak to the challenges and diversities of feminist rhetoric and discourse, in public and private life, in the academy, and in the media. We welcome proposals on topics that significantly engage disciplines other than Rhetoric and Composition, and that have consequences for communities located outside of the academy.
For more, go here.
Feminist Philosophers 