Centre for Feminist Research at York Univ., Toronto (Web)

Time: 16.-18.08.2024
Venue: Toronto
Proposals by: 22.03.2024

The Centre for Feminist Research at York Univ. invites abstracts from scholars, researchers, activists, and artists for the fourth annual Critical Femininities Conference on the theme of Generation. To generate is to cause, create, or bring about. A generation may refer to a relation in time or the creation of art, scholarship, solidarity, or power. This conference aims to explore the multifaceted dimensions of and attitudes towards femininity across different generations, interrogating how various social, cultural, political, and technological factors intersect with and shape our experiences. In this moment of intergenerational conflicts, climate crisis, and generative AI, the time has come to think critically about our generations and what we generate.
Critical femininities as a discipline and praxis rethinks feminine embodiment under heteropatriarchy and provides an entry point to reclaiming femmeness as an intersectional, complex and generative subjectivity (McCann 2018; Hoskin and Blair 2022; Taylor and Hoskin 2023). The generative aspect of femininity reveals the multidimensional modes of resistance and power that arise in taking up femme identity. Femme and femininity hold generative potentials that are not restrained to regulatory discourses of lack, shame, or failure. In rethinking femininities and generation, we harken the affective aspects of femme-becomings, accounting for the creative energy that comes with „what a femme body does,“ rather than the notion of „what a femme body can do“ we have adhered to under systems of oppression (McCann 2018, 118). An affective perspective on femme embodiment and generations offers radical possibilities for femme to be experienced and lived through messy, artful and bodily practices (Athelstan 2015; Kafai 2021; Schwartz 2018).
Feminism has often been chronicled throughout history as a series of generational waves, each with its own distinct approach to gendered issues and its own understanding of femininity (Hemmings 2011; Rampton 2015). While this wave framing has been critiqued as exclusionary of Black feminists and other marginalized groups (Springer 2002), there remains a strong scholarly interest in the intergenerational feminine and feminist solidarities that extend beyond temporal boundaries (Purvis 2004). Expanding beyond bioessentialist notions of family, queer communities and scholars have found ways to envision alternative generational kinship structures that eschew heteronormative nuclear family dynamics, especially resisting the limiting performances expected of femmes and feminine subjects (Eguchi and Long 2018). BIPOC, Queer, Trans, disabled and femme interventions and critiques of the lineages defined by patriarchy, white supremacy, and colonization disrupt hegemonic ideologies that have made these subjects simultaneously hypervisible and invisible in the fabrics of society. Thus, the theme of -generation- is an act of epistemic resistance to centre voices that have been erased for so long and disrupt taken-for-granted assumptions about what it means to create or bring about.

With this, the organizers invite submissions on generations of femininities for our third annual Critical Femininities Conference. Possible themes may include (but are not limited to):

• Critical interventions and reinterpretations of generation in relation to whiteness, imperialism, colonialization, sexuality, procreation, sex work(ers), disability, and trans femininities.
• Femme perspectives and meditations on generation/generators, generations, kinship, and lineage.
• BIPOC, Trans, Queer, disability, and femme interventions in and reinterpretations of generational traumas.
• Disruptions in intergenerational relationships due to failure of or harm by oppressive actors (e.g. AIDS epidemic; residential schools and sixties scoop; transnational adoption).
• Subjugated knowledges and the generation of popular cultural production and low theory including zines, reality television, street art, animated series, internet cultures, memes, and more.
• Modes of intergenerational fem(me)inine and feminist knowledge transmission, relationships, communities, and identities.
• Queer, BIPOC, femme, and feminist environmental and anti-capitalist critiques of the generation of wealth, electricity, or products.
• Transnational, queer and trans BIPOC critiques and cultures of femininities.
• Reimagining femininities across generations and generational nuances in queer feminine kinships (e.g. sex work, Ballroom culture, drag cultures, lesbian communities, commodified sexualities, and erotic performance).
•  Indigenous, Indigiqueer, and Two-Spirit cosmologies of and perspectives on femininity, generation, and kinship.
• Decolonial, postcolonial, and Indigenous critiques and cultures of femininities.
• Generating art and other forms of creative resistance against normative constructions of femininity.
• Critical disability studies convergence with femme critiques of „exhaustion,“ „austerity politics“ and „debility politics“
• – Posthumanism and the Dishuman as a turn to „generation“ and creative notions of the body

Submission Guidelines: Submissions can take the form of sole-authored or co-authored academic papers, experimental or artistic presentations, including autotheory, personal narrative, artist talks, visual art and film, poetry, music, storytelling, life-writing, and performance. The organizers welcome submissions from undergraduate students, graduate students, emerging and established scholars, artists, and those working beyond the university. Please send submissions to criticalfemininities@yorku.ca by March 22, 2024.

For single presentations: Please submit a 250-word abstract that indicates your main argument or focus and the format for your presentation and a 100-word bio (50-word bio for multiple authors). Single presentations should be 15-20 minutes in length and will be organized into thematic panels.

For panel presentations and roundtables: Please submit a 250-word abstract that indicates the main theme and format of the panel presentation/roundtable and 50-word bio for each presenter (minimum of 3 panellists). Group presentations should be no longer than 60 minutes to allow time for Q&A.

For more information and updates you can follow the organizers @crit_fem on Instagram.

Contact: Laura Brightwell, PhD Candidate, Gender, Feminist, & Women’s Studies, York Univ., lbright@yorku.ca

Source: qstudy-l@mailman.rice.edu