Coalition of Women in German (WiG) – Women in German – 37th Annual Conference 2012 (Web)

Time: October 25-28, 2012
Venue: Shawnee Inn and Golf Resort, Shawnee on Delaware, PA
Deadline: March 1, 2012
Website

This panel seeks to explore works by German-language women which demonstrate the phenomenon of women who subvert traditional gender roles while at the same time living them. That is, frequently in works by women we find figures who appear to remain within the parameters of traditional gender roles, and yet they are constantly pushing the „scented“ envelope that encloses them by innovatively creating ways of being that fulfill their goals and desires in quietly transgressive ways.

Papers might include topics such as:

• Female characters in literature or other media who transgress boundaries while remaining within them.
• Quietly transgressive lives of women as expressed in their memoirs or letters.
• Women’s ways of pushing borders through travel or travel writing.
• Women who achieved a broad education for themselves within a restrictive society.
• Female characters in fairy tales or other fantasy genres who live out a female „wish list“ of actions and behaviors beyond the boundaries oftraditional women’s roles.
• Women’s texts as deceptive transgressions of gender roles.
• The rhetoric of transgression employed in order to appear to be operating within prescribed roles while subverting them.
• The intersection of the subversion of gender roles with other categories such as sexuality, race, class, age, ethnicity, religion, disability, etc.
• The simultaneous reproduction and rewriting of gendered scripts

Please send 200-word abstracts to the co-chairs by March 1, 2012:
Michelle S. James: michelle_james [at] byu.edu
and Sarah Reed: screed [at] wisc.edu