University of Texas tells women what to wear

Via Jezebel.

A reader spotted this sign up at the University of Texas School of Nursing in Austin.

Our reader said the signs popped up this week. “Revealing clothing MUST NOT be worn while in the School of Nursing Building. It distracts from the learning environment.”

“It distracts from the learning environment.” Oh, OK. For a second there I thought we were only teaching young girls in elementary, middle and high school that their bodies are nothing but shameful sin receptacles which must be covered up and hidden at all times from men who absolutely cannot control themselves at the slightest hint of a woman’s skin. Good to see that this outdated sexist bullshit is being instilled in college students in a professional training program, too!

Lego to launch new female scientist line

Yay! Lego will soon be launching a new line of female scientists — and blocky bits of equipment for those scientists. Here’s a link.

Thanks, Jender-Mom!

 

CFP: Bodily Difference, Elemental Difference: Alterities of Political Ecology

EDIT: Note date changes below (amended 9 June 2014)

 

Call for Papers
38th Annual Fall Colloquium

Towson University
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies

Bodily Difference, Elemental Difference: Alterities of Political Ecology

Friday, September 5, 2014 (NEW DATE)

Félix Guattari has written, “Now more than ever, nature cannot be separated from culture; in order to comprehend the interactions between ecosystems … we must learn to think ‘transversally’.” To think ‘transversally’ would be to intertwine deliberately the ecological and the political, thinking these concepts simultaneously in order to do justice to both.
Taking Guattari’s suggestion seriously, how might bodily difference and radical bodily specificity inform a transversal ecological-political philosophy? How does non-normative bodily experience— of race, ability, cis and transgender, class, sexuality— open up ways of approaching ecological-political concerns, of parsing “eco-logy”? How might political experiences of bodily discontinuity and asymmetry inform philosophical ecologies? How do philosophical traditions explore the significance and specificity of lived bodies ecologically?

We’d be very interested in papers exploring but certainly not limited to the following topics:

Environmental Politics of Disability, Universal Access
Existential Phenomenologies of Bodily Alterity
Political Ecology of Vital Materialism
Intersexualities and Ecofeminism
Transgender Ecologies
Environmental Racism and Eco-Imperialism
Political-Ecological Implications of Neoliberalism
Political-Ecological Implications of Mass Incarceration
Bodies & Body Schemas in Fanon, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, Baldwin,
Deleuze, Foucault, Jay Prosser, Eli Clare

Please send prepared for blind review in one email (1) an attached abstract of 500 words plus (2) in the body of your email detailed contact information
by July 25th (NEW DATE!) to
and expect to hear back by July 31st from

Dr. Emily Anne Parker eparker@towson.edu
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
Towson University
8000 York Road
Towson, MD 21252