March 29th -30th, 2019
Keynote speakers: Micha Cárdenas and Candi Brings Plenty
- Micha Cárdenas is an Assistant Professor of Art & Design: Games and Playable Media at the University of California Santa Cruz. Cárdenas is an artist and theorist who works with the algorithms and poetics of trans people of color in digital media.
- Candi Brings Plenty is a Queer Indigenous, Two Spirit, cis Oglala Lakota Sioux Activist & Spiritual Practitioner. She is a direct descendant of Crazy Horse’s band and honors her Aztec Mexica ancestry. Her red lipstick is her warpaint as she takes her place on the frontlines as a Two Spirit Warrior Queen. She is the founder of the Standing Rock Two Spirit Nation encampment and continues to stand in the face of the colonizer to protect the sacred.
Inspired by the ongoing necessity of resistance in today’s political climate, the Gender and Women’s Studies department at the University of Wisconsin – Madison invites proposals that consider resistance broadly and across disciplinary boundaries. We are seeking graduate student papers, panel proposals, social justice projects, healing workshops, and art and performance pieces that critically investigate how aesthetics, bodies, knowledges, performances, and scholarly and artistic practices function as sites/sights/cites of resistance in myriad ways. Of particular interest are the different possibilities for resistance enacted by queer, crip, Two Spirit, feminist, trans, indigenous, POC, and decolonial ways of knowing, seeing, and being. Recognizing the University of Wisconsin’s settler colonial relation to the Ho-Chunk, Potawatomi, Menominee, Oneida, Chippewa, and Mohican tribes, nations and communities, the conference highlights indigeneities and de-colonial practices both in the upper Midwest and globally.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Intersectional Approaches to Reclaiming Identity and History
- Race, Disability, Indigeneity and Queerness
- Alternative Embodiments, Bodywork Practices, and Body Modifications
- Political and Social Opposition
- Counterculturalism
- Queer Community and Kinship
- Navigating Hostile Climates
- Resistance and Reclamation of Identity in Medicine, Science, and Engineering
- Carcerality, Carceral Systems, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline
- Resistance in American Contexts, Global Contexts, and/or the Global South
- Labor, Capital, and Economics
- Transgression and Punishment
These are just some of the many possibilities for submissions. Papers on all genres, periods, and methodologies will be considered, including creative work and healing workshops.
Presentation Modes & Abstract Due Dates:
Paper Presentation: We welcome individual papers no longer than 20 minutes. Proposals should include a title, brief explanation of activities, and a 250-300 word abstract of your paper.
Panel Presentation: We welcome proposals for panels up to 60 minutes in length, allowing time for a question and answer period. Proposals should include a title, rationale for the panel, and individual paper abstracts of 250-300 words.
Creative Presentation: We welcome proposals for creative performances or presentations. Proposals should include a title, brief explanation of activities, and a 250-300 word abstract or artist statement.
Healing Workshops: We welcome proposals for workshops broadly related to processes of healing up to 90 minutes in length. Proposals should include a title, brief explanation of activities, and a 250-400 word abstract contextualizing the workshop in relation to the symposium theme.
Please send all submission to GWSCONFERENCE19@GMAIL.COM by midnight on March 1, 2019.