European Journal of English Studies, Vol. 16: Guest Editors: Evgenia Sifaki & Angeliki Spiropoulou

Socio-historical developments that have characterised the turn of the present century, such as increasing globalisation, migration and transnationalism, new technologies, the growth of the beauty industry and the medicalisation of the body, as well as various initiatives in equality and human rights legislation, have ushered in new conditions of experiencing and thinking subjectivity.

This issue seeks to interrogate the new experiences and conceptualisations of gender and sexualities that have been part of these transformations. Specifically, notwithstanding the assimilation of traditional feminist demands in official cultural discourses, what new forms of resistance to conventional gender discourses, categories and practices, and inversely, what novel manifestations of resilient gender asymmetries have emerged in this allegedly ‘post-feminist’ era?

We invite contributions that address Continue reading →

Ester Boserup Conference 2010 – Conference Commitee

Time: November 15-17, 2010
Venue: Vienna, Austria
Deadline: June 28th, 2010

Ester Boserup was one of the pioneers of an integrated theoretical approach to questions of development and sustainability. 2010 marks the centennial of her birth. The Ester Boserup Conference 2010 Long-term trajectories in population, gender relations, land use, and the environment wishes to pay tribute to her work and to her intellectual heritage.

Keynote presentations structure the conference. They highlight Boserups theoretical work, intellectual legacy and relevance to policy institutions (preliminary topics include):

• Billie Lee Turner II: Agriculture and Land Use
• Ramon Lopez: Development Issues
• Marina Fischer-Kowalski: Long-Term Socio-Ecological Change
• Wolfgang Lutz: Population, Education and Economy (tbc)
• Meliss:  Leach: Sustainable Livelihoods (tbc) Continue reading →

Postgraduate Arm of the White Spaces Research Network, University of Leeds

Zeit: 18.-20.08.2010
Ort: Leeds, UK
Deadline: 10.05.2010

The research postgraduate arm of the White Spaces Research Network, supervised by Dr Shona Hunter, will hold its inaugural conference at the University of Leeds over August 18th-20th 2010. This conference will support the network’s aim of building a sustainable base from which to develop further research leaders in the field of critical whiteness studies. Like the larger White Spaces Research Network, the PGR arm is international in scope, engaging postgraduate scholars from Switzerland, Germany, France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. It welcomes and encourages engagement from postgraduates from universities both within and outside of Europe.

The August conference will serve as both an opportunity for PGR students to present research and a chance for members of the network to meet and discuss the future direction of the PGR arm. The first day of the conference will be devoted to Continue reading →

Business History Conference (BHC) – Conference Theme: „Knowledge“

St. Louis, Missouri
31 March 2011 to 2 April 2011
Deadline: 1 October 2010

The history of business has for millennia been entwined with the pursuit and acquisition of knowledge. Artisans have jealously guarded trade secrets; merchants have networked to improve their access to information on market trends; promoters have fostered business education; scientists and engineers in corporate research and development laboratories have devised innovative artifacts, techniques, and theories; management consultants, journalists, and business academics have hailed the emergence of a „knowledge industry“; business leaders, philanthropists, and academic administrators have established universities and foundations to nurture innovation; and, most recently, lawmakers and computer programmers have created an Internet that has facilitated the creation of new kinds of knowledge that have transformed the conduct of business, public affairs, and private life.

In keeping with the recent expansion in the mandate of the Business History Conference (BHC) to embrace not only the dynamics of business decision-making, but also the relationship of economic institutions to culture, politics, and society, Continue reading →

This call for papers is for a transdisciplinary anthology about gender and biology written by international researchers, aimed at a public audience. Empirical research in biology, psychology, and other life sciences sometimes undergirds popular notions of female and male sexual difference, while much of current biology actually opens a space for variable and non-static views of sex and gender; instead of emphasizing dichotomous difference, the natural sciences may look into sameness and the continuum of morphologies, behaviors and processes in between. Our aim is to make these insights public knowledge.

We would like to highlight different areas of biology and related disciplines that question popularly held ideas of biology. There exist many popular conceptions about biology, sex, gender, and bodies that stem from supposedly common-sense notions of gender, human evolution, biological processes animals in general, and even life at the microbial level. Often these popular beliefs are distantly connected to the ideas developed and held by researchers in Continue reading →