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Call for Papers

2015 Feminist and Women’s Studies Association (FWSA) Conference

Everyday Encounters with Violence: Critical Feminist Perspectives

9­-11 September, 2015
School of Geography, University of Leeds

Although violence is an integral part of experiences in mundane living spaces, feminist conceptualizations of violence have so far been mainly confined to violence over women’s bodies. This conference therefore aims to look beyond, or perhaps behind, such understandings of violence by exploring violence and feminist critiques thereof in all its structural, material, legal, social and embodied forms across both the Global North and Global South.

The conference draws upon a wide definition of violence from sources in the arts, humanities and social sciences, seeing violence as both an everyday social force inflicting harassment, harm, suffering, grief and trauma and as a transformative force that (re)produces gendered agency, social action and resistance. It will explore violence as simultaneously structural, subjective, cultural, material, embodied and representational. 

The conference’s focus on violence and gender is situated in the context of everyday encounters: the anticipated or unexpected and deliberate or ad-lib contacts and moments of gendered violence that (re)shape citizenship, identity and subjectivity in daily life. Everyday life spatially ranges from the body and private home space to public venues, state, national and transnational contexts. They interface with social differences along physical, emotional, psychological, sexual, verbal, non-verbal, political, economic and cultural (including ethnic and religious) dimensions. The conference peruses the ways that violence is embedded in this very multiscalar fabric of everyday life via socio-spatially gendered encounters with, among others, modernity, neoliberalism, sovereign power, rule of law, justice, political activism, globalization, development, technology, security, as well as institutional, popular and quotidian cultures. In all these different forms, we are interested in examining the different feminist politics and practices through which violence is upheld, challenged and/or normalized and the discourses through which this violence is rendered both outside and inside of state, law and society. 

On the basis of the above rationale, we discern three (not mutually exclusive) key themes, on which we invite conceptual, methodological and/or empirical papers across disciplines and gender practices. We are particularly interested in papers that discuss these issues through in-depth focus on empirical contexts across the world.

Social difference, justice and violence of everyday life
• Gendered violence and informal justice
• Religious intolerance and cultural violence
• Violence of heterosexuality and homophobia
• Representations and narratives of violence

Bodies and biopolitics of violence
• Biopolitics of violence
• Borders, bodies, violence and (in)security
• Violence as a threat and resource for feminist politics
• Eroticism and intimate violence

Landscapes, spaces and scales of violence 
• Spatialities of violence
• Violence in/of development
• Feminist politics around violence, anti-violence and non-violence
• Feminist encounters with neoliberalism and structural violence

In addition to traditional plenary and paper sessions, we are looking to include practitioner panels, performative workshops, talking circles and World Café style interactions between participants. As a conference critically engaged with the academic community and civil society, we will also be live tweeting and hosting dedicated conference bloggers among the FWSA membership.

Please submit a max. 300-word abstract and max. 100-word bio to Ayona Datta [log in to unmask] and Martin Zebracki [log in to unmask] by 1 December, 2014.

Confirmed keynote speakers

Professor Rachel Pain
Department of Geography, Durham University 

Professor Marianne Hester
University of Manchester

Dr Mo Hume
University of Glasgow

Igea Troiani
Architect and feminist filmmaker

Registration and Conference details:

Registration:
Non-FWSA members: £150 
FWSA members: £100 
Postgraduate students: £100

Accommodation
Apart from a number of hotels in the area, limited accommodation will be available in the University of Leeds on a first come first served basis. Details will be announced in due course.

Accessibility
We are keen to ensure that the conference is inclusive and accessible to as wide a variety of people as possible and therefore have included provisions for on-site (subsidized) childcare and a range of accessibility needs. To request more details or find out if we can cater for your specific access needs please contact Calum Carson ([log in to unmask])

Organising Committee

Ayona Datta
Martin Zebracki
Deirdre Conlon
Emma Kerry

Conference support
Calum Carson

*********************************************
Dr M.M. (Martin) Zebracki
Lecturer in Critical Human Geography
School of Geography
University of Leeds
University Road
Leeds LS2 9JT
United Kingdom

+44 (0) 113 34 33331

http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/m.zebracki
http://www.zebracki.org
@zebracki