Rita Stephan at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, Washington DC sends a call for papers regarding WOMEN AND THE ARAB SPRING: RESISTANCE, REVOLUTION, REFORM (rita.stephan@gmail.com)

Jennifer Heath and Rita Stephan are assembling an edited volume about women’s initiative and actions up to and during the so-called Arab Spring. This comprehensive collection will examine historical roots of Arab women’s leadership from antiquity to the present, giving voice to women’s voices by exploring wide-ranging topics such as tweeting in Tunisia, graffiti in Egypt, the campaign for driving in Saudi Arabia, the “women’s revolution” in Syria, the raisons d’etre of Islamist women, the roles of minority women, and more.

The book will feature essays, interviews, and artwork describing women’s leadership (and threats to it), resistance, mobilization, rights, and reforms from numerous points of view and contexts throughout the region, culminating in analysis of what this can mean for the future, its opportunities and challenges.  Their purpose is to produce a cross-over book that will appeal to both scholarly and general audiences and that realistically illustrates Arab women’s agency and strengths.

Deadline for 500-word abstracts, interview proposals, and images, with 300-word author biographies is June 3, 2013.  Articles (no longer than 5,000 words) will be due September 9, 2013. Please send all written materials as WORD.doc and all images as JPEGs to Jennifer Heath, HeathCollom@comcast.net and Rita Stephan, rita.stephan@gmail.com, subject heading SPRING.

For more information contact the authors.

In March of 2006 cable television channel Bravo premiered The Real Housewives of Orange County. The series has since spread to six other cities amounting to a total of 31 seasons. Each cast is different in each city during each season.

But it’s not all about the drama. Many of the housewives are not actually housewives, but hard-working businesswomen who have used the series to develop their careers through beauty products, book contracts, clothing and accessory lines, and spin-off series. There have also been four spin-off shows starring former or current housewives in their own reality series. As reality television continues to grow in popularity and the housewives find themselves as Bravo staples, in the tabloids, and online it seems only fitting that they receive some scholarly recognition.

For this collection, already under contract with McFarland Press, Editor Rachel Silverman of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University seeks original submissions that address the housewives in all their glory. As a critical examination of our current television culture, this collection is grounded in (but not limited to) critical/cultural, media, and television studies. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Analysis of Race, Class, Gender, Sexuality, Religion, and Ability
• Female and/or Male Friendships
• Beauty Standards/Cosmetic Surgery
• Conspicuous Consumption
• Reality-Celebrity status
• Social media, branding, and tabloid exposure
• Spin-off series and International versions of the Housewives

Deadlines: Chapter Proposal – March 1, Notification of Acceptance – March 18, Completed Chapters – July 1

Chapter proposals (300-500 words) should be submitted as an email attachment in MSWord to: Rachelesilverman@gmail.com with “YourLastName – Housewives” as the title. Please include a short biography and a condensed version of your CV with the proposal. Final submissions (3,000-5,000 words) should adhere to APA Style.

IGALA 8 (8th International Gender and Language Association Conference) invites submissions for oral presentations, posters, organized roundtables, and workshops on all scientific approaches and disciplines to analyzing and interpreting the relationships among language, gender and sexuality. The conference, hosted by Simon Frazier University, will be in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, June 5-7, 2014. The abstract submission deadline is Nov. 30, 2013.

With the theme “Shifting Visions: Gender, Sexuality, Discourse and Language,” IGALA 8 aims to bring together scholars from diverse fields of knowledge as well as geographical regions who are interested in broadening and deepening our understanding of the complex relationships among language, gender and sexuality. In so doing, we encourage new ways of signifying these concepts and their interrelationships, in the following conference thematic areas:

1. Education & Pedagogy
2. Politics & Journalism
3. Culture & Literature
4. Media & Technology
5. Ethnicity & Religion
6. Health & Wellness
7. Race & Social Class
8. Age & Life Stages
9. Multiculturalism
10. Multilingualism

Major conference speakers include Bonny Norton, University of British Columbia; Marjorie Goodwin, University of California, Los Angeles; and Jane Sutherland, Lancaster University.  CBC journalist and broadcaster Chantel Hebert will be the special guest speaker, focusing on Canadian French-English Politics.

For general submission guidelines go to www.igala8.com or email info@igala8.com with inquiries.

A “New” Motherhood?: Evolving Policies, Practices, and Families will take place May 2-4, 2013 in New York City. Deadline for paper submissions is December 15, 2012 This conference asks: What factors, past and present, inform our “new” ways of understanding motherhood, fatherhood, and notions of family?

We encourage submissions that provide critical insights into mothering, fathering and family issues; that draw direct links between theories and/or research findings; or that offer practical approaches to issues facing contemporary mothers and families. The overarching goal of this conference is to provide an environment to explore new ideas and approaches for tackling issues that concern mothers as well as important others who fill a care giving role in the family. Examples of possible topics include, but are not limited to: global reproduction; birth practices and rituals; histories of family formation; the “new” fatherhood; changing public policy on maternal care; co-parenting ideologies; activism and motherhood; cross-cultural perspectives on the meanings of motherhood; literary and media representations of the changing figure of the mother; and public health perspectives on motherhood and pregnancy.
We welcome submissions from scholars, students, activists, artists, community agencies, service providers, journalists, mothers and others who work or research in this area. Cross-cultural, historical, and comparative work is encouraged. We also encourage a variety of types of submissions including individual academic papers from all disciplines, proposals for panels, creative submissions, performances, storytelling, visual arts, film, music, audio and other alternative formats.
All submissions will be peer reviewed. Individual presenters, panelists, as well as individuals submitting alternative presentation proposals (e.g., performance, media, music) will be notified of acceptance by January 20, 2013. Following the conference, a selection of papers will be considered for a published, edited collection. Submissions must include a title, and a maximum 250-word abstract for individual papers, panels, and other submission types (e.g., performance, media, music). Additionally, panel submissions must add short (50-100 word) abstracts of the individual papers that will be included in the panel. Conference registrants are invited to submit ONE presentation proposal.

The proposal form can be found on the Museum of Motherhood website: http://www.mommuseum.org/apply/ GUEST SPEAKERS/PERFORMERS: TBA Conference will be held at: Museum of Motherhood, 401 East 84th Street, New York, NY Conference Fee: $150
If you have any questions about the upcoming conference, please feel to email your query to any one of us on the academic conference organizing committee: Aurelie Athan – MA Program Director, Full-time Lecturer, Department of Clinical Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, US. [Athan@exchange.tc.columbia.edu] Lynn Kuechle – Coordinator, Taylor Nursing Institute for Family and Society, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Minnesota, US. [momscholar@gmail.com] Lynda Ross (Chair) – Associate Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies, Athabasca University, Athabasca, AB, Canada. [lyndar@athabascau.ca] Laura Tropp – Associate Professor and Chair, Communication Arts, Marymount Manhattan College, New York, NY, US. [ltropp@mmm.edu]

Governors State University and DePaul University announce the third annual Gender Matters Conference on April 12-13, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. This conference highlights research on gender, women, and sexuality across all disciplines and historical periods. Conference planners seek to bring together students, activists, and researchers to discuss the ongoing role of gender in structuring society. We invite submissions for individual papers or pre-constituted panels.

This year’s theme, Continuities & Instabilities, focuses our attention on the ways gender and sexuality stay the same and change over time and in relation to cultural shifts at the macro level, as well as how they are (re)constructed moment to moment through unstable micro-practices. While conference planners invite work on all matters of gender, we are particularly interested in work that explores how the mutable character of gender and/or sexuality is used to both maintain and resist existing social relations historically and contemporarily.

The deadline for submitting paper proposals is December 3, 2012. Potential topics for papers or panels include, but are not limited to: politics of representation; gendered health and medicine; feminist geographies; futurity and queer temporalities; queer intimacy and kinship; health disparities; illness narratives; globalization; postcolonial feminism; new media; gendered, racialized, and sexualized bodies; parenting; social justice; performativity; intersectionality with ethnicity, race, and/or citizenship;sexual subcultures; activism; public/private spheres; transgender rights; queer(ed) histories and historically queer; feminisms; drag performance; masculinities; gender and/or sexuality as studied in any field.

The keynote speaker will be Jack Halberstam, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Gender Studies, and Comp. Lit. at the University of Southern California. His address will be based on the forthcoming book, Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal.

Submission guidelines and forms can be found at: http://www.govst.edu/gendermatters Please note that only submissions adhering to the stated guidelines will be accepted.

For individual papers, please submit a title page with complete author contact information, and an abstract of 500 words. For panels, please submit a 500-word rationale and description of the panel, type of panel (paper panel, roundtable discussion, performance), contact information for all panelists, and 250 word abstracts for each presenter.

Please direct inquiries to: gendermatters@govst.edu