Date: 28.06.2007 – 30.06.2007
Where: Vilnius, Lithuania
The conference aims to explore the critical link between the ideas and practices of gender, on the one hand, and “nationbuilding” on the other, in Eastern/Central Europe and Eurasia.
We tend to focus on the dynamics of this relationship during two separate, but related periods. One is the time of the “awakening of nations”, which was finalized in the nation-states on the edges of the three Eurasian Empires after WWI, or “national” administrative units in the USSR. The second period, which started after 1989 (or 1991), also implies rethinking of the “national” and new nationbuilding in the post-communist space.

National and gender identities are inseparable and interrelated, and the practices used to “naturalize” gender differences and hierarchies in nationalist and statehood projects are of special interest. Gender and nation as social constructions largely result from «oppositions» or «delineations»; they become especially highlighted at the lines of “passage” or crossing the boundaries/borders. The notion of «borderlands,” borders, and boundaries, both geographical and social, is a key one for the conference.
Conference organizers are hoping for an interdisciplinary academic debate of the interception of gender, empire, nationbuilding, and borders within the following topical areas:
Etching the edges of Europe: borderlands as gendered space;
Empire and gender order;
nation, citizenship, masculinity and femininity;
“national motherhood” and patriotic masculinity;
gendered iconography of the national idea;
women’s bodies and nation’s boundaries;
gendered spaces of national politics;
nationalism, sexuality, militarism;
intellectual women in national movements;
gendering national memories;
national church» and gender order;
empire, nation, reproduction, and welfare;
«as a woman, I have no nation»: feminism vs. nationalism;
nationalism and post-Soviet masculinity;
migration, mixed marriages, trafficking.
Conference languages are the regional lingua franca of Russian and English.
Proposals for individual papers or complete panels can be sent to
gender@ehu-international.org
Please include your contact information, brief CV and paper description of up to 250 words. The deadline is April 1, 2007; acceptance notification by May 1, 2007.
homepage: http://www.gender-ehu.org/?54_1&id=72