Category Archives: Category_Calls for Papers

CfP: (Queere) Erinnerungskultur: Jahrestagung 2025 des Fachverbandes Homosexualität und Geschichte (FHG) (10/2025, Graz); bis: 30.04.2025

Vorstand Fachverband Homosexualität und Geschichte e.V., Elena Barta, Michael Schön, Martin Sölle, Karl-Heinz Steinle (Web)

Zeit: 11.10.2025
Ort: Pavillon der Sozialdemokrat*innen im Grazer Volksgarten, Graz
Einreichfrist: 30.04.2025

Zur Jahrestagung des Fachverbands Homosexualität und Geschichte (FHG) laden die Veranstalter:innen in diesem Jahr nach Graz/Österreich ein und freuen sich sehr, dass sie dabei von der Stadt Graz unterstützt werden. Der öffentliche Teil der Jahrestagung wird als ganztägige Fachtagung stattfinden. Die Veranstalter:innen möchten die diesjährige Jahrestagung erneut dem Themenfeld der (queeren) Erinnerungskultur widmen. Als Vortragsdauer sind 30 Minuten mit anschließender Diskussion vorgesehen. Für die Vortragenden sind Honorarzahlungen und die Erstattung von Hotel- und Fahrkosten vorgesehen. Die Vortragstexte werden als Beiträge für die vereinseigene Fachzeitschrift „invertito. Jahrbuch für die Geschichte der Homosexualitäten“ angefragt werden.

Aufruf zur Einreichung von Beiträgen (PDF)
Gedenken hat einen hohen Stellenwert im öffentlichen Diskurs und Handeln. Erst in den letzten Jahrzehnten haben sexuelle und geschlechtliche Identitäten jenseits der Heterosexualität einen Raum und festen Ort in der Gedenkkultur gefunden. Oft wurden diese angeregt und/oder erstritten von lokalen Geschichts-Initiativen und häufig erst nach langen Diskussionen umgesetzt.
Für die Vortragsthemen der Jahrestagung können konkrete Gedenk-Projekte in den Blick genommen werden: Solche, die umgesetzt wurden wie z.B. 1994 der „Frankfurter Engel“ in Frankfurt/Main, 1995 das „Mahnmal für die lesbischen und schwulen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus“ in Köln, 2008 das „Mahnmal für die im Nationalsozialismus verfolgten Homosexuellen“ in Berlin oder die „Gedenkkugel“ der Initiative „Autonome feministische Frauen und Lesben aus Deutschland und Österreich“ als Gedenkzeichen an lesbische Frauen im KZ Ravensbrück im Jahr 2022 oder das jüngste „Denkmal für Männer und Frauen, die Opfer der Homosexuellen-Verfolgung in der NS-Zeit wurden“ 2023 in Wien. Insbesondere interessiert auch die Auseinandersetzung mit Projekten in Planung wie das „Projekt Gedenkzeichen in Graz“. Continue reading →

CfP: Always Here: Non-Binary Gender, Trans Identities, and Queerness in the Global Middle Ages (c. 250–1650) (10/2025, New York); by: 15.04.2025

Binghamton University’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CEMERS) (Web)

Time: 24.-25.10.2025
Venue: Binghamton Univ.
Proposals by: 15.04.2025

Queer, trans, intersex, non-binary, genderfluid, and gender-nonconforming people and sources are abundant in the premodern textual, artistic, and artifactual record, and studies of gender and sexuality in the medieval period are flourishing as never before. Yet, work on the LGBTQIA+ Middle Ages remains limited—especially in our classrooms and in sharing our work with nonacademic queer and trans communities. Many important sources remain out of reach for students, and an alarming amount of queer and trans medieval and early-modern history is not available—and its existence routinely denied—to LGBTQIA+ people beyond academia. Even researchers and teachers dedicated to pre- and early-modern gender and sexuality frequently remain siloed according to language and region: Latinists speak primarily to Latinists, Arabists to Arabists, and so on, while scholars of the Americas are often absent from conversations among scholars of premodern Africa and Eurasia. Thus, despite recent growth and successes, the study of the queer and trans pre- and early modern remains disturbingly fragmented and vital sources inaccessible to many.
In our own historical moment, members of the LGBTQIA+ community face frightening and rising levels of violence and oppression. So what are we, as scholars of the medieval and earlymodern periods, to do? CEMERS seeks to bring together researchers dedicated to the study of non-binary gender, trans identities, and queerness during the premodern period broadly defined, to share research and discuss the challenges of LGBTQIA+ scholarship. The organisers invite proposals for papers and panels for CEMERS’ 2025 conference. The conference will include plenary lectures by Leah DeVun (Rutgers Univ.) and Pernilla Myrne (Univ. of Gothenburg), as well as plenary roundtables dedicated to translation and pedagogy. The organiseres hope to facilitate conversations between scholars across disciplines and geographic and linguistic boundaries, with the purpose of moving beyond academic silos to build a broad, truly global, and ideally collaborative textual and theoretical basis for future research. They are particularly eager for papers that examine regions beyond Western Europe, but Europeanists are welcome and encouraged to submit proposals. Read more … (Web)

Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte in Österreich – Newsletter #01 für 2024

Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte in Österreich – Newsletter #01 für 2024

Soeben wurde der erste Newsletter Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte in Österreich (2024) zusammengestellt und als PDF verfügbar gemacht: (PDF).

Enthalten sind darin:
– Berichte
– Ankündigungen und Calls for Papers
– Forschungsprojekte
– Angaben von Publikationen und abgeschlossenen Dissertationen

Zumeldungen zum Newsletter wurden von Birgitta Bader-Zaar (Institut für Geschichte der Univ. Wien) auf der Basis von Aussendungen über einschlägige Verteiler an den Universitäten Graz, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, Linz, Salzburg und Wien sowie der Central European University zusammengestellt. Der Newsletter Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte in Österreich ergänzt in erweiterter und lockererer Form den Bericht für den Newsletter der International Federation of Research in Women’s History (IFRWH) (Web), der neuerdings nur noch in komprimierter Form veröffentlicht wird.

Wer gerne den nächsten Call für Zumeldungen zum Newsletter erhalten möchte und bisher nicht von bestehenden Verteilern erfasst wurde, melde sich bitte (bis auf Weiteres) bei birgitta.bader-zaar@univie.ac.at.

CfP: Wartime work (19th-20th century): Working in war and post-war context (11/2025, Tours), by: 31.03.2025

Damien Accoulon, CeTHiS, Univ. de Tours; Clément Collard, CHSP, Sciences Po Paris; Candice Grelaud, LER, Univ. Lumière Lyon 2; Gwendal Piégais, CWS, Univ. College Dublin

Time: 27.-28.11.2025
Venue: Univ. de Tours
Proposals by: 31.03.2025

The industrialization has profoundly transformed the world of labor and the nature of war. Wars themselves have become industrialized and have gradually increased in scale since the mid-nineteenth century. The Crimean War (1853-1856) and the American Civil War (1861-1865) were the first conflicts involving mechanized armies: more powerful gunboats, larger caliber artillery pieces and more efficient locomotives were all industrial products that made this change in scale possible.
Against this backdrop of industrialization of societies, economies and conflicts, we need to understand how wars disrupted the world of labor. The workers’ mobilization has always been central in the historiography of contemporary conflicts, especially of the First and the Second World War. Over the last few decades, the historiography has moved away from the simple story of mobilization of the industry for the war effort, and since the 1980s and 1990s has given way to a social and political history that pays more attention to trade union movements, work in the rear or in occupied territories, and the societal transformations that followed the conflict.
Under the influence of transnational histories, works on colonial empires and gender studies, new perspectives opened in this field of study. New attention has been paid to actors (female labor, but also racialized workers on the European fronts, the contribution of colonial workers to the global war economy, etc.) and their agency, exploring both individual and collective strategies of behavior and survival. While the study of forced labor has been central to the approach to Nazi and Soviet regimes at war (Bonwetsch, 1993; Plato, Leh & Thonfeld, 2010; Westerhoff, 2012), highlights of forced labor in colonial empires have effectively demonstrated links between European front and the French and British colonial empires, thus moving beyond the Western framework (Tiquet, 2019; Stanziani, 2020). This approach could be applied to other spaces and conflicts, as outlined out by work on the American Civil War (Lause, 2015; Zonderman, 2021) or the Vietnam War (Foner, 1989; Sears, 2010). Read more and source … (Web)

Four questions will be explored during this symposium: Optimizing manpower in wartime | Work in transitions from peace to war and from war to peace | Social mobilization, work and conflict | Gender and work during conflict

CfP: Queer Journeys in North American Literature and Culture (11/2025, Innsbruck); by: 16.05.2025

Department of American Studies at the Univ. of Innsbruck; Ben Robbins, Devon Anderson, and Matthias Klestil (Web)

Time: 14.-15.11.2025
Venue: Univ. of Innsbruck
Proposals by: 16.05.2025

This conference will consider the diverse ways in which journeys undertaken by queer people have been represented in North American literature and culture, as well as how queer journeys more broadly interact with social structures, transnational relations, and cultural forms. LGBTQ+ people in North America and beyond continue to experience forms of mobility characterized by complex and often fraught economic, cultural, and affective dynamics. The conference topic is especially politically urgent as transphobic legislation recently enacted in a number of US states and provinces across Canada has forced many transgender people to migrate in order to access gender-affirming care (Phares), severely impacting the mobilities and freedoms of trans individuals.
Discussions of queer mobility draw on a growing field of scholarship across the research areas of globalization and diaspora (Aizura), Indigenous studies (Driskill et al.), ecocriticism (Cram), and regional studies (Tongson), among others. Such research has shown that the contested mobilities of LGBTQ+ people have deep historical roots. Many queer communities within North America have been shaped by internal migration from rural environments to more anonymous, heterogeneous urban centers, which has led to the growth of LGBTQ+ populations in large metropolises such as San Francisco, Toronto, and New York (Chauncey; D’Emilio; Kaiser). Yet scholarship has demonstrated that there are also forms of queer migration from urban to rural environments and within rural spaces that may be obscured by the privileging of the metropolitan in queer culture and discourse (Halberstam; Herring; Thomsen). More widely, a focus on queer journeys in transnational contexts sheds light on additional obstacles to movement and rigid hierarchical structures. During periods of particularly intense legal and social oppression of queer people, such as the “Lavender Scare” of the Cold War era in the US (Johnson), many LGBTQ+ citizens were forced into exile to foreign countries, where they could enjoy relative freedom … read more (Web).

Source: genus-request@listserv.gu.se

CfP: (En)gendering the Digital World (Publication); by: 15.03.2025

Journal „Kvinder, Køn & Forskning|Women, Gender & Research“; Univ. of Copenhagen (Web)

Proposals by: 15.03.2025

More than ever, our lives (and deaths) are entangled with the digitally-mediated world, and our virtual expressions are part of how we become recognisable subjects in the world. The hopes that groups like the cyber-feminists placed in the 1990s internet, as a gender-less space, appear massively compromised. Instead, many of the most powerful actors in the tech ecosystem appear to benefit from a kind of ‘digital patriarchy’ (Little and Winch 2021). Poor quality and exploitative forms of labour, required to support our platform economies, have blossomed, much of it being in the shadows (Murgia 2024), heavily gendered, and racialised (Van Doorn 2017). In this era that is marked by the birth of the iPhone in Jobs-ian legend, the Musk-y realms of X, and the Zucker-punch of the Meta-verse, rationality, quantification, and innovation appear to still be imagined as masculine qualities, while vulnerability, emotionality and qualitative knowledge remain associated with women and the private. Therefore, “(en)gendering” the digital world and including diverse gendered positions becomes crucial in understanding and interrogating the contemporary digital world.
As a result of platform cultures and the datification of society, bodies, lives and livelihoods are increasingly broken into data sets capable of being analysed, acted upon or optimised by ourselves and our institutions. Our capacities and futures are shaped by (predictive) algorithms which not only reinforce existing power relations but create new ones. Even with the sophistication of data classification systems, lived realities of gender, race and sexuality continue to be flattened, binarised and processed to be ‘tractable’ by powerful digital interests (D’Ignazio and Klein 2020). Modern algorithms are highly indebted to behavioural analytics, whose mechanisms were precisely tuned to predict the supposedly mysterious ‘behaviour of women, children, people of colour and the poor’ (Lepore 2020, p.325). How might these groups of people re-assert their influence on knowledge production, now that algorithms increasingly run the economic/”surveillance” model of the digital world (Zuboff 2015)? Can new technologies really produce forms of ‘non-gendered objectification’, beyond bodies and labels (McAdam and Marlow, 2010)? Read more … (Web)

Source: genus-request@listserv.gu.se

CfP: Connection: The Fifth Annual Critical Femininities Conference (08/2025, virtual space); by: 22.03.2025

The Critical Femininities Research Cluster at the Centre for Feminist Research at York Univ. (Web)

Time: 15.-17.08.2025
Venue: virtual space – via York
Proposals by: 22.03.2025

Connection: joining, uniting, fastening, bringing together. Audre Lorde highlighted how when we “make connection with our similarities and our differences” (53), we remind ourselves of our own and others’ affective capacity. Femininity can be a rich and creative site of connectivity that expands beyond colonial imaginaries of womanhood and gender. Critical femininities is a site where we can connect, disconnect, and reconnect with the world, each other, and our own gendered selves. Connections can be tangible and intangible, with these boundaries being increasingly blurred as technologically mediated communication methods saturate our lives.
Critical Femininities is a growing field that seeks to develop nuanced critiques of femininity in all its variations beyond its characterization as a patriarchal imposition and where femininity is not synonymous with ‘woman’ (Dahl 2012, Taylor & Hoskin 2023, 79). Rethinking femininity as a concept opens space for a dialogue on the complex, multidimensional feminine expressions beyond heteronormative relations. Additionally, the field of critical femininities offers alternative frameworks centering connection through community building and a love politics that emphasizes a praxis of care extending beyond the personal and into the building of political communities (Nash, 2019).
This conference marks half a decade of cultivating digital community dialogue around critical femininities, opening up intentional digital space for expanding normative definitions of connection. There are also possibilities in the ways we disconnect. As Alyson K. Spurgas (2021) writes, “there is promise in embracing a fracturing, in falling apart—as antidote to the normative and neoliberal logic of keeping it together.” There is value in interrogating the connective void left when white supremacy, colonization, ableism, transphobia, misogyny, and other violent structures disconnect us from our femininities. The potential inherent in diving into disconnection also leaves room for exploring unexpected or idiosyncratic instances of re-connection to femininity.
The organisers invite you to connect with us through submissions that reflect diverse critical connections for the fifth annual Critical Femininities Conference. Possible themes may include (but are not limited to): Read more … (Web)

Source: qstudy-l-request@mailman.rice.edu

CfP: Masculinities, Militaries, and Mass Violence in Transition (Second International MKGD-ZMSBw Conference, 01/2026, Potsdam); by – extended: 15.04.2025

Research Network on Military, War and Gender/Diversity | Militär, Krieg und Geschlecht/Diversität” (MKGD) (Web) 

Time: 22.-23.01.2026
Venue: Potsdam
Proposals by – extended: 15.04.2025

The military and war were among the first subjects of the history of masculinity, when it developed as a subfield of the emerging discipline of gender history in the 1980s. Until then, most military historians had regarded military service and warfare as exclusively masculine activities. Even today, for many scholars studying armed forces and conflicts the maleness of their research subject seems so self-evident as to require no critical scrutiny.
Historians of masculinity challenge this gender blindness, arguing that “gender” is crucial for understanding past and present armed forces and military conflicts around the globe. They use “gender” as a research subject and methodological approach, conceptualizing it as an analytical category, which works in intersection with class, race, ethnicity, age, sexuality etc. For them, “gender” as a social, historically specific construct of perceived differences between the sexes, shapes discourses on and representations of armed forces in peace and war, informs military laws and regulations, permeates the organisation and culture of regular and irregular armed forces, and frames individual as well as collective identities, experiences and memories.
Important areas of research in the history of masculinity, the military and war include the link between the supposedly “natural” male duty to serve as soldiers protecting home and family as well as male citizenship rights, which has long been used to deny women their rights as citizens; the resistance against an inclusion of women in the military in general and in combat positions in particular; the importance of male heterosexuality for the construction of a virile concept of military masculinity, which went hand in hand with the persecution of homosexuality; and sexual harassment within the armed forces and against women and men of the enemy. Read more … (PDF).

Keynotes
– Thomas Kühne (Clark Univ., Worcester, MA): Masculinity, War, and Genocide: State and Perspectives of Historical Inquiries
– Aaron Belkin (San Francisco State Univ.): Gender Identity and Violence in Authoritarian Times: Reflections on Transgender Military Service

CfP: Women and Health in the Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic World (12/2025, Funchal); by: 31.03.2025

Intercontinental Cross-Currents Network; Inês Tadeu, Univ. of Madeira and Julia Nitz, Martin Luther Univ. Halle-Wittenberg (Web) 

Time: 04.-06.12.2025
Venue: Univ. of Madeira, Madeira Island, Portugal
Proposals by: 31.03.2025

Notions of women’s health in the long 19th century were part and parcel of transatlantic societies‘ gender politics. Therefore, it doesn’t come as a surprise that foundational twentieth-century feminist scholars turned to questions of women’s health in their critique of patriarchal power structures. In the 1970s and 1980s, researchers such as Caroll Smith-Rosenberg, in their so-called “feminist reconstruction of history,” argued that we should study nineteenth-century health discourse in order to make apparent how the social role of women was constructed. This argument was based on the assumption that changes in social and cultural attitudes are made “evident in the language of health” (7). They believed that models of health and sickness showcased a plurality of notions of womanhood, i.e., they indicated what was considered personal shortcomings in women, what was construed as social problems, appropriate moral behaviour, women’s citizenship roles, etc. Scholars started to dissect health concepts and their cultural environment to see what judgements and expectations ideas of health have conveyed (see Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America; 1986, 6-7). After a two-decade-long interest in issues of women and health, interest ebbed until more recently when the Covid-19 pandemic starkly highlighted the gendered and racialised norms and prejudices tied to notions of health. This global health crisis generated renewed interest in questions of women and health across many disciplines, including medicine, history, social science, cultural and literary studies, as well as queer and gender studies.
This interdisciplinary conference contributes to the conversation by focusing on comparative transatlantic perspectives on women and health in the long nineteenth century. The organisers invite scholars and professionals from diverse fields to explore the intricate relationship between health discourses and concepts of womanhood, as well as the experiences and realities that women encountered, engaged in, resisted, or helped create.
The organisers encourage cross-disciplinary studies and comparative transnational perspectives. Thus, the conference will address a broad range of topics, including but not limited to: Read more and source … (Web)

CfP: Crisis, Addiction, and Disability in German and English Literature, Culture, and Media (Publication); by: 15.03.2025

Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik (Web)

Proposals by: 15.03.2025

The intersection of crisis, addiction, and disability in German and English narratives remains an underexplored yet highly relevant field within literary, translation, and cultural studies. While literary representations of addiction often engage with individual and societal crises, questions of identity, social exclusion, and medical pathologization, the intersectional aspect of addiction and disability is frequently overlooked. At the same time, the translation of such narratives plays a crucial role in shaping their reception and interpretation across different linguistic and cultural contexts. Translation studies can make a significant contribution by examining how addiction and disability are interpreted, adapted, or even transformed in intercultural transmission.
This interdisciplinary edited volume invites contributions from literary, cultural, and translation studies that explore the representation of crisis, addiction, and disability in German and English narratives. Submissions may focus on literary works from various periods and genres, as well as intermedial and transmedial adaptations. Additionally, the editors welcome contributions that examine the representation of these themes in translation practice and the challenges of transferring culturally specific concepts into different linguistic and cultural spaces. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

  • Literary and cinematic representations of crisis, addiction, and disability in German and English cultural history
  • Intersectional perspectives on crisis, addiction, and disability: interactions between social, cultural, and bodily factors
  • Pathologization and social marginalization: narratives of crisis, addiction, and disability in German and English literature
  • Transcultural challenges in the reception and adaptation of crisis, addiction, and disability narratives Continue reading →