Third Annual SIUC Graduate Student Conference, April 4-5, 2008 (Carbondale, IL, USA)
deadline for submissions: February 1st, 2008
The role of sex, gender and sexual identities in world history is a rapidly expanding, yet contentious field. We are requesting paper proposals dealing with any area of this subject from the early modern period (ca. 1450 CE) to the present. We encourage interdisciplinary, historically based approaches and analysis of these themes in their religious, cultural and political contexts as well as their presence in art, literature, film, music, and philosophy in American, European, and World history. Possible themes and topics could include, but are not limited to the following:
– Changing definitions of gender, masculinity and femininity
– Roles of eroticism and pornography in political, social and cultural contexts
– Hetro-, bi-, and homosexuality in the early modern and modern world
– “Sexual deviance,” “sex crimes” and prosecution
– Courtship, marriage, desire, and love
– Marriage guides, sexual education and sexual manuals
– Gendering of nations, ethnicities, cultures, etc.
– Role of celibacy or sexual abstinence
– Parenting, “fatherhood” and “motherhood”
– Sexual “liberation”, “free love,” and contraception
– Labor, sex roles and/or discrimination
– Warfare, conflict/violence and gender roles
– Criminality and “gendered” punishment
– Prostitution and/or concubinage
– Intellectual/philosophical discourse on sex and the body
Please enclose a 150-word abstract of your paper and brief CV to tcrogg[at]gmail.com by February 1, 2008.