The call for the Organization for the Study of Communication, Gender & Language’s 2012 awards is out! The deadline for this year’s awards is June 15; please consider submitting your good work. Also a reminder that the deadline for paper and panel proposals for next October’s OSCLG conference on Tacoma, Washington is June 1. You can find more information on both of these at the OSCLG home page www.osclg.org
“We must stop being polite and behaved, and find new inventive tactics to shift the paradigm. We are the majority.” – Eve Ensler
This proposal is for a round table discussion on the growing backlash against women taking place in the United States. In 2012, an attack has been launched against the rights of women across the nation. From the pregnancy bill passed in Arizona to the personhood amendment on the docket in Mississippi, women’s reproductive freedoms have come under fire. The attacks don’t stop there. Legislatures passing invasive ultrasound measures; the U.S. Congress trying to redefine the definition of rape to protect the rapist; governors signing bills to criminalize miscarriage and birth control are just a few of the moves to reduce women’s rights back to pre-suffrage days. Since the midterm election of 2010, the status of women as second-class citizens has become, increasingly, more prominent.
Increasingly, women are being asked to embrace a “kinder, gentler” form of America where our voices are not as important as our husbands or our children’s (especially the unborn ones), where we accept unequal pay for the privilege of being allowed to go to work outside the home and where we are silent as men in power demean women in power for daring to call foul on this new contract. As women and men in the academy, what is our role in this new era? How do we shift the paradigm as Ensler says? Do we even want to and what happens if the status quo does not change? These are the question this discussion hopes to address. The outcome, hopefully, is not only fertile ideas for active research projects but, also, a network connection of people committed to reclaiming what many of us see as devastating losses.
Contact Panel Chair Sacheen Mobley-Welsh, Central Washington University for more information at Mobleys@cwu.edu
Gender Matters, by Sara Mills, presents a feminist linguistic analysis of texts – literature, media and lyrics – and conversation. It explores how gender relates to and shapes our understanding of sexism, reading and writing, politeness and public speaking.
The essays in the book examine a range of questions: why is it necessary for feminists to analyze or comment on sexism when sexism is widely regarded as an anachronistic concern? How can feminists describe the effect of gender on the experience of literature? Why are women considered more capable of private rather than public speech? What is the relation between gender and politeness and are women more polite than men? In analyzing these themes, Gender Matters highlights the insights and strengths of both second and third wave feminist analysis for linguistics,and is published by Equinox. See the following link for details:
www.equinoxpub.com/
