AFTER EMPIRE: GENDER BOUNDARIES AS THE BORDERS OF NATIONS
June 28-30, 2007
Centre for Gender Studies, European Humanities University Vilnius, Lithuania
This 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, 2006; acceptance notification by May 1, 2007.
The Centre for Gender Studies at European Humanities University in Minsk- has concentrated on studying gender issues since 1997, and has offered a master’s degree in gender studies since 2000. After being forced to terminate its operation in Belarus in the summer of 2004, the European Humanities University resumed its programs as a university-in-exile in Lithuania, with the support of American and European foundations and governments, and the European Commission for Democracy and Human Rights. Currently the MA program in Gender Studies remains the only one in NIS offering a graduate degree in Gender.
For more information about the Centre for Gender Studies, please, go to: < www.gender-ehu.org> For information on EHU-International programs and activities, see: http://ehu-international.org
For further inquiries please e-mail: Elena Gapova < e.gapova@gmail.com >