Call for Papers: Christina Conference

“The 5th Christina Conference on Gender Studies focuses on the role of concepts in feminist thought. Concepts are crucial in all research, and also often deeply political, as feminist scholarship creates and circulates conceptual innovations which transform social realities transnationally. Concepts such as ”gender” and ”queer” have already showed their transformational power. A plethora of others contest realitites, but are also prone to creating conficts and politics of its own within feminist thought: just consider ”equality,” ”sexual difference,” ”representation,” ”sex work,” ”transgender,” ”social construction,” ”materiality,” ”affect,” ”masculinity,” ”body,” ”performativity,” or ”intersectionality.” The choice of concepts in research is always a political choice, and it also takes part in the politics of concepts within feminist scholarship.”

The University of Helsinki, May 23-25, 2013

Details of the call for papers can be found here.

Reminder: Feminists Encountering Animals.

“In Hypatia 27.3, a special issue on “Animal Others”, leading feminist animal studies scholars, Lori Gruen (author of Ethics and Animals: An Introduction) and Kari Weil (author of Thinking Animals: Why Animal Studies Now) present exciting new work on the intersections of sex, race, gender, and species. As co-editors of the special issue, Gruen and Weil invited six scholars to reflect on some of the lively debates occurring within this burgeoning new field of scholarship.  Join the discussion from July 9-13, 2012.”

Links to symposium papers here.

.

June McCarroll, saver of many lives

You know how you’re not dead? Specifically, I mean you know how you haven’t been killed by a huge truck barreling down the highway and crushing you to custard?

For that I suggest we all take a moment and thank June McCarroll, the woman who first had the incredibly brilliant idea to paint a line down the middle of a road….

McCarroll, a nurse (and later physician) with the Southern Pacific Railroad, proposed her idea to the chamber of commerce and Riverside Country Board of Supervisors, who gave the idea careful and studied ignoring. It’s a likely assumption that her gender may have played a role in her inability to get the officials to take her seriously.

More here.

Thanks, J-Bro!