CFP - DISABLING FEMINISM: Sex, Gender & Disability Studies

CFP - DISABLING FEMINISM: Sex, Gender & Disability Studies

The Critical Feminist Studies Division of the Cultural Studies
Association (CSA) invites submissions for the 9th Annual Meeting to
be held in Chicago at Columbia College, March 24-26, 2011.

Traffic at the intersection of feminism and Disability Studies has
already been in motion for a long time. In 1989 Susan Wendell
observed that:

"Some of the same attitudes about the body which contribute to
women's oppression generally also contribute to the social and
psychological disablement of people who have disabilities. In
addition, feminists are grappling with issues that disabled people
also face in a different context: Whether to stress sameness or
difference in relation to the dominant group and in relation to each
other; whether to place great value on independence from the help of
other people, as the dominant culture does, or to question a
value-system which distrusts and devalues dependence on other people
and vulnerability in general; whether to take full integration into
male dominated/able-bodied society as the goal, seeking equal power
with men/able-bodied people in that society, or whether to preserve
some degree of separate culture, in which the abilities, knowledge
and values of women/the disabled are specifically honoured and
developed."

These questions are even more pressing today as new scholarship,
political actions and artistic representations are reinterpreting the
shared spaces of identity.

Some questions to consider:
What are important conversations taking place between feminism and
Disability Studies?
How can a feminist approach (whatever that means) to
ability/able-bodied privilege (however defined) raise new questions
regarding the self, the state, and cultural conceptions of disability?
How does Disability Studies force a reconsideration of traditional
concepts within feminist theory and Women's & Gender Studies?

Topics include, but are not limited to:
-Social construction of disability/social construction of gender
-Gendered disabilities
-Historical conceptions of femininity/masculinity and disability
-Power, oppression and connections between ableism and sexism
-Eugenics, sterilization, abilist reproductive politics
-Prosthetics
-Global disability rights movements
-Representations of disability
-Anti-discrimination laws
-Reconstructive surgery
-LGBTQ and disability
-Sexuality and disability

Critical Feminist Studies dedicates itself to work that builds upon,
even as it critiques, the institutions and practices of Women's &
Gender Studies, focusing in particular on transnational formations
and movements, queer and sexuality studies, and politics, practices,
and representations.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Studies_Association)

One of the aims of the Division is to maintain a collegial space for
the ideas and initiatives of graduate students and junior faculty
within Cultural Studies. It is the largest Division within CSA.
The Division has sponsored special annual themes:
Girls Studies (2007)
Time & Temporality Studies (2008)
The Body & Embodiment (2009)

To submit, please include the following:
1. Your name, email address, phone number, and institutional affiliation
2. Paper/Presentation Title
3. 500-word abstract

Deadline for submissions: September 1, 2010

Send inquires and submissions to:

Sarah L. Rasmusson & Sabrina Starnaman
Co-Chairs, Critical Feminist Studies Division
criticalfeministstudies@gmail.com

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