New Orleans: A special issue on gender, the meaning of place, and the politics of displacement
The editors of a special issue of the NWSA Journal seek contributions from a variety of disciplinary and multi-disciplinary perspectives offering feminist analyses of the meanings that New Orleans as a place has assumed in both historical and contemporary contexts-especially the contexts created by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
New Orleans has long evoked a unique sense of place, a distinctiveness that was spotlighted and arguably hyper-realized in public discourses surrounding the disaster. Since the fall of 2005 New Orleans, as a place-name alone, prompts debates around race and class and has come to stand in for a host of issues and topics that go beyond the physical space to which the name refers. In most of these public debates, gender has not played as prominent a role as race or class, despite the fact that gendered ideas about crime, poverty, victimhood, refugee status, welfare and government aid, as well as home and homelessness implicitly inform such debates. Furthermore, women-whether as fleeing residents exposed to the threat of violence and deprivation in the Astrodome or as elder care-givers, professional nurses, and health-care workers forced to make life/death decisions in the midst of crisis-have played central roles in the struggles of Katrina survivors. We invite scholars as well as artists, writers and poets to submit work that explores the specifically gendered dimensions of the experience of place endured by inhabitants of the city of New Orleans, the Gulf Coast, and other affected regions as it relates to the hurricane. We also welcome contributions that use feminist analytical tools to illuminate the varied meaning of New Orleans as a place set in various historical, comparative, and global contexts. Potential topics include:
* gender, public rhetoric and media surrounding Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath
* gender-specific existential meanings and practical issues related to displacement
* nationalism, regionalism, public history, public art and heritage in New Orleans
* sexualized and gendered associations with contemporary and historic New Orleans
* diasporic politics and gendered identities prompted by specificities of place
* issues of ownership, liability, responsibility, and control over gendered space
* gendered and sacred meanings assigned to place and religion in New Orleans
* women’s community organizing and activism in historic and contemporary New Orleans
* gendered readiness and response to disaster and crisis as regards Hurricane Katrina
* kinwork, the labor of care, and gendered responses to crisis as regards Hurricane Katrina
* the gendered meanings of home and homelessness in New Orleans
* gender, authenticity and urban/rural dichotomizing of space in New Orleans
* the meaning of public/private in the context of displacement prompted by Hurricane Katrina
* women, architectural engineering/design in New Orleans and the Gulf region
* public policy in New Orleans and the Gulf region
Send one e-copy and two print copies of your manuscript (20-30 pages, doubled spaced), with parenthetical notes and complete references page formatted according to the Chicago Manual of Style, and a separate cover page with author’s name, affiliation, and contact information to:
Tracey Jean Boisseau
Associate Professor of Gender and Cultural History
152 River Road, Edgecomb ME 04556
CfP – Quelle: Newsletter des AKHFG Arbeitskreis Historische Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Universität Flensburg