Graduate Student conference at the University of British Columbia

Vancouver, 4-5 December, 2009

Throughout history, sports have mobilized the masses. From antiquity to modernity and beyond, competitive physical engagement has continued to captivate the hearts and minds of individuals as well as entire nations. In all this time, sports and sporting events have served a wide variety of political purposes, ranging from a supposed symbol for peace (as in the case of the Olympic Games) to a staging ground for rivalries on a local, regional, national and international level. While, in such cases, the connection between sports and politics may be relatively obvious, it is not always merely the question of success and defeat, of supremacy and inferiority, which is at stake in sportive contexts. Rather, sports can be seen as a mirror of an array of social and cultural ideologies: Categories such as honour, courage and honesty (for instance, in recent doping scandals) are as fundamental factors in the discourses informing and surrounding sports as constructions of gender, race and class; body images and the fetishization of athletes have proven as Continue reading →

The European Social Science History Conference (ESSCH) is the largest Europe based conference for historians and social scientists in all fields, gathering more than 1000 participants every second year. The next European Social Science History Conference will take place in Ghent, Belgium, from the 13th to the 16th of April 2010. The Gender and Women Network is one of the largest networks of the ESSCH. Seventeen sessions are scheduled for the next conference.

We would like invite all scholars working in this field to consider applying with a paper, a panel or a roundtable proposal for this conference. Please register your proposal at http://www.iisg.nl/esshc/. The deadline is 1 May 2009.

Below you will find a list of possible themes, but these are by no means meant as limiting. On the contrary, feel free to suggest other themes (NB! for all themes we especially appreciate panels that bring together perspectives from different national/regional contexts).

• Gender and body politics (war mass rape, sterilizations, human rights, etc…)
• The impact of post structuralism on women’s and gender history and social sciences.
• Feminisms Continue reading →

The Radical History Review – Issue #108: „Enclosures“

Abstract Submission Deadline: February 1, 2009

The Radical History Review seeks submissions for an issue dedicated to the theme of “Enclosures”: a term that refers to the twin phenomenon of proprietary demarcation and dispossession that has accompanied the global transition to industrial capitalism in cities and rural areas alike. In a variety of geographical and chronological contexts, this issue will explore both the symbolic and the literal, material senses of the historical process of enclosure.

Contemporary thinkers have evoked the concept of enclosure in a vast variety of settings and across the ideological spectrum, from Garrett Hardin’s prescriptive discussion of the “tragedy of the commons” and the neoliberal doctrine of the inherent instability of the commons, to E. P. Thompson’s studies of the social and legal conflicts over the peasantry’s use of the commons in early modern England. The concept of the commons has become a Continue reading →

IFK Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, Wien
Zeit: 13.05.2009-15.05.2009
Ort: IFK, Reichsratsstraße 17, 1010 Wien
Deadline: 13.03.2009
KommentatorInnen:

• Prof. Hartmut Böhme (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
• Prof. Martina Kaller-Dietrich (Universität Wien)
• Prof. Gesine Krüger (Universität Zürich)
• Prof. Christina Lutter (Universität Wien)
• Prof. William M. Reddy (Duke University)
• Prof. David Sabean (University of California, Los Angeles, National Humanities Center, NC)
• Prof. Jakob Tanner (Universität Zürich)

Fokus: Die Historische Anthropologie steht vor einer immensen Aufgabe. Der Rückblick auf die Geschichte eröffnet ein gleichermaßen vielfältiges wie verwirrendes Bild einer „Moderne“, die sich zu geographisch, gesellschaftlich, ökonomisch und kulturell unterschiedlichen Erscheinungsformen von Modernisierung und Modernität ausdifferenziert hat. Je nach Standpunkt erscheinen die Wachstums-, Vervielfältigungs- und Reflexionsprozesse von Wissen, Macht, Medien, Techniken und Dingen als Fortschrittsszenarien oder als Dekadenzerscheinungen bzw. als Emanzipationsgewinne oder als Unterdrückungsstrategien. Jenseits solcher „Meistererzählungen“ Continue reading →