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Please find below the first call for papers for a session organised for the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Annual Conference, London 31 Aug - 2 Sept 2011 (www.rgs.org/ac2011<http://www.rgs.org/ac2011>) Co-convened by Christine Eriksen (University of Wollongong) and Mark Riley (University of Portsmouth) Sponsored by the RGS-IBG Women and Geography Study Group Imagining rural landscapes beyond traditional gender(ed) structures The aim of this session is to evolve the wider themes of gender relations and the gendered nature of rural landscapes that increasingly have taken centre stage within both rural geography and feminist enquiry over the last 30 years. Covert and less visible as well as overt gender roles and traditions have been shown to be important factors in understanding landholders' engagement with, for example, agricultural practices and natural hazards. The 'doing of gender' in everyday rural practices has with time ensured the normalisation of hegemonic masculinity in everyday life. Research has furthermore shown how the normalisation of patriarchal relations through discursive practices is legitimised through the media, while institutional patriarchal structures resistant to change reinforce them. The applications of shifting scales of analysis have, however, revealed gender relations, gender identities and hegemonic relationships as being socially constructed and ideologically premised. It has highlighted the importance of understanding how boundaries are drawn and redrawn and how gender identities are performed over time. Hegemonic masculinity in many rural landscapes has, for example, been challenged on many fronts since the 1970s due to the demographic and structural changes associated with amenity-led migration from urban centres to rural landscapes. The outcomes of particular discourses (such as the family farm or wildfire management) may furthermore be quite pluralistic as there are manifold ways of acting upon it. It is therefore important to pay greater attention to explicitly gendered social experiences and the construction and performance of gender identities within rural landscapes. What, for example, are the implications of embedded gender roles on resilience to natural hazards or agricultural restructuring in 21st Century changing rural landscapes? What can we learn from a geographical imaginational of rural landscapes beyond traditional gender(ed) structures? This will be an interactive session with five 12-minute successional presentations followed by a 30-minute group discussion/question time. Please send your name, affiliation details, and email address along with your abstract of no more than 250 words to both: Christine Eriksen ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>) and Mark Riley ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>) Deadline for submission 14th February 2011 ------ Christine Eriksen PhD FRGS Associate Research Fellow Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research School of Earth and Environmental Sciences University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia Tel: +61 (0)2 4221 3346 Email: [log in to unmask] Web: http://www.uow.edu.au/science/eesc/eesresearcacademics/UOW073400.html