Themes

The 7th edition of the European Feminist Research Conference will be interdisciplinary in several ways. Firstly, it will employ the Utrecht expertise of crossing the boundaries of the scholarly and the artistic through a focus on, and a review of, literary, visual and artistic representations. Secondly, it will work with a matrix of intersecting themes rather than with singular conference strands. Thus participating scholars, students and artists are asked to situate themselves in this crosscutting matrix.
 
THEMES  
 
A. Imagination: Art & Politics
In the context of recent geopolitical transformations, Europe has become a polycentric, dialogical and relational space of visual cultures existing in relation to one another. The intensification and diversification of the flows of artistic and cultural productions have put into question many of the earlier models of understanding the boundaries of culture, but also the notions of gender and ethnicity. This theme interrogates the debates in the study of all domains of cross-cultural art practices in Europe. Among the questions it addresses are: what is the role that location and positioning play in the artistic/cultural production? Are cultures still confined to specific territory and canon? How do feminist art practices and feminist art criticism embrace the issues connected with distance, proximity, and movement? We invite papers that address the relationship between aesthetics and politics, the structure and operation of colonial stereotype, cultural hybridity, trans-cultural borrowing and appropriation, and new forms of gendered identity.
Key words: women artists, canon, global art history, cultural hybridity
 
 
 B. Feminism in Post-Secular Europe
This central issue of this theme is a questioning of the religious and the secular, and how such questions are posed in relation to women’s studies and feminism. Within the context of a geo-political hegemonic logic of a ‘clash of civilizations’ and antagonisms along cultural and religious lines, secular contracts are increasingly challenged within and across European nation-states. In spite of the decline in traditional religiosity in many countries throughout Europe, various kinds of ‘believing’ and ‘belonging’ are introduced and rearticulated. We invite papers investigating these recent and contemporary expressions of religious vitality and the challenges they pose to secular states and (secular) feminist legacies. We look forward to papers inquiring into the historical formations, and contemporary re-affirmations, of ‘the secular’ and the ways in which such formations are gendered and ethicized, as well as their sexual politics. We are also interested in documenting feminist complicities with neo-imperialist civilizational projects, as well as tracking the contours of feminisms that resist and unpack such politics.
Key words: religion, ‘clash of civilizations’, religious vitality, believing and belonging, secularity  
 
 
C. Global Connections: Migration, Consumption & Politics In the context of multiple colonial legacies and the end of the Cold War an expanded Europe has become marked by the contradictory rationalities of globalization: on the one hand, increased migration, expanded yet individualized consumption, and rising social liberalism, on the other, restricted citizenship, fortified borders, ethnic polarization and attacks upon multiculturalism.  This cluster explores the connections and disjunctions between these legacies and rationalities and how they impact on the new world order as played out across the social, political and cultural formations of a postcolonial and post/soviet Europe, especially in relation to gender and ethnicity. Among the questions it addresses are: What are the debates on gender and citizenship within the European Union and the Europe beyond it and how do these relate to immigration and ethnic diversity? Is the femininization of migration a sign of increasing agency and mobility or of disenfranchisement and immobility? How does consumerism (including consumption of sex; ethnic exotica) help shape the individual self and is this self a ‘Western’ subject?
Key words: postcolonial cultures, transnational feminism, citizenship, commodification, migration
 

D. Sexuality: Public, Private & Beyond 
This theme focuses on the frictions between local sexualities and the dislocations of a globalizing world. We are interested in two lines of investigation: on the one hand, how sexuality is “on the move”, in several senses of that term: the ways in which sexuality and sexual ‘identities’ change when individuals, ideologies and media move across literal and figurative, across public and private spaces. And how do normative and non-normative, e.g. queer, sexualities relate in particular spaces? On the other hand, and at the same time, we would like to see explorations of the intersecting lines between sexuality, gender, “race”/ ethnicity, religion and nation. Central questions in this panel include, (but are not limited to): how do (non-)normative sexualities, e.g. through interethnic and inter‘racial’ relationships, articulate within globalizing cultures? How do gendered and sexual images, fears and desires help form racial, ethnic and national stereotypes, differences and conflicts (and vice versa)? How are norms of sexuality and gender, including masculinities, and racialized categories co-constructed in historical and contemporary settings? We invite contributions using different styles of inquiry and interpretation from the humanities and the social sciences. Foci on images, poetry, fieldwork, Internet postings, interviews, literature, ethnographies, historical texts, archival documents, personal accounts, journals and innovative blends between these genres are all welcomed.
Key words: globalization, intersectionality, public and private, queer, masculinities     
 
 
E:  War & Violence   
Within the theme of war and violence we invite paper proposals and discussion panels that address the gendered (intersected with class, ethnic, racial and religious) implications of several issues ranging from intrastate violence to international conflicts and postcolonial identities. We welcome papers, which may (but are not required to) address the following questions: What are the dynamics, causes and consequences of international and intrastate violence and armed conflicts, the accompanying legitimizing rhetoric and their representations in different public arenas and media? What theoretical and political implications can be drawn from the ways of conflict prevention and peace building? What are the differences and similarities of memories of WWII and the legacy of fascism and Stalinist terror? Furthermore, we welcome papers on issues like the renegotiation of gender relations in times of military conflict, collaboration, resistance and agency. Interesting would be contributions on governmental violence and political rape: the fe/male (sexed) body as a site of demarcation lines and power struggles; transnational (global) networks of pacifism and the politics and ethics of feminist research and activism at the crossroads of moral universalism and cultural relativism; lastly, postcolonial identities and nationalism as imperial legacies as represented in different national historiographies. The theme and the issues described open up ample space for interdisciplinary approach from disciplines such as gender and conflict studies, history, anthropology, literature, cultural studies, and also a comparative framework, which we would like to encourage.
Key words: conflict studies, political rape, post-socialism, masculinity, trauma   
 
 
F: Media & Technology: The Politics of Representation
Science, technology and media are crucial areas for feminist interventions as such discursive practices both produce and maintain representations, subjectivities - and material bodies. Donna Haraway suggested already 1991 the fleshier notion of “apparatuses of bodily production” to replace foucauldian "discourse" (Haraway 1991). In similar veins have feminists of “new materialism” challenged studies of culture where matter does not seem to matter. But scientific, physical and media-related issues of the body has without a doubt been part of the feminist project since the get-go. Such endeavours have also marked Cultural Studies, Media and Communication Studies as well as Science and Technology Studies with feminist contributions. In this cluster we would like to invite proposals for papers that grapple with various new or old formations of science and embodiment, media and technology, popular and visual cultures. Questions that could be addressed are: If communicative practices of meaning-making constitutes cultures – which makes media, technologies and media materialities decisively important for understanding contemporary culture – how is this played out in various visual and digital settings? What challenges to modern divisions between nature and culture, body and artifice, global and local can be found within emerging biotechnologies or the life sciences and how are they communicated, commercialized and popularized?
Key words: science, technology, media, visual culture and bodies
 
 
G. Multi-Ethnic Europe: Identities, Boundaries & Communities
While globalization is not entirely new, today Europe experiences an unprecedented amount of border crossing for economic, social, and political reasons with far-reaching consequences for identity and belonging. 'Multi-ethnic Europe' invites papers which may (but are not required to) address the following set of questions: Given that the globalization of travel, communications and media now allows migrants to remain actively engaged with 'homelands' in other parts of Europe or on other continents, how do people imagine and experience belonging in Europe? How do (intersections of) gender, citizenship, religion, class, generation, sexuality and/or ethnicity configure people's mobility and their power/status within migrant and religious communities or within the nation? How does Europe imagines its own historical dealings with ethnic others; and how does this past inform current debates on multi-ethnic Europe? How have negotiations over inclusion and rights been impacted by various political movements (human rights; feminism; neo-conservatism; neo-fascism, religious fundamentalisms)?And finally, what are the sites of conflict --intended as issues or social phenomena--  that exemplify material and/or discursive struggles over European boundaries, identity and citizenship? Do the existing feminist theories on multi-ethnic Europe allow for an adequate articulation of new configuration in Europe or do we require additional theoretical and interpretative tools in order to account for the complexity of new political subjectivities and social realities we are experiencing? 
Key words: multiculturalism, transnationalism, European-ness, political subjectivities, in/exclusion, intersectionality 
 
 
H. Stories to Tell: Fiction, History & Memory 
Traditionally, feminist approaches have greatly valued storytelling, as the power of narrative provides knowledge and engenders the configuration of selves. However, a number of feminist and other researchers have recently started to ask new critical questions regarding storytelling's uses. What exactly are the intersections of narrative styles and gendered identities that are at the same time racially, ethnically, and sexually defined? Can we really equate storytelling with agency, or even with subversion? In addition, it needs to be assessed how exactly (hi)stories and memories have their impact on society and/or bring public attention to social concerns. Being ideologically constituted, it remains questionable whether historical and autobiographical narratives of experience can be trusted at all, and if not, how problematic and/or relevant that is.  Furthermore, a number of academic approaches has questioned if stories can only be told with words, or if there are other possibilities of 'telling.' What role does the body play as an archive of memory? And how do we account for stories that cannot be told—because they are too painful to relate, or because their telling is suppressed by dominant forms of representation? All these questions make it necessary to reconsider and redefine storytelling and its uses, and to ask anew how we can explore these questions in a feminist way. 
Key words: feminist assessment of the powers of narrative, intersectionality, reliability of (hi)stories and memories, unspeakability, other modes of telling    
 
 
I. Generations in Feminism: Women’s Movements of Past, Present & Future
This theme seeks an interdisciplinary range of papers focusing on women’s and feminist movements in past, present and future. A discussion about the interconnectedness of these movements across different European and global spaces and chronologies is envisioned. With this, we wish to discuss generation in feminism, i.e. a discussion of generations in feminism, the intergenerational dynamics inside women’s movements, but also feminist generation and regeneration, or the productivity of feminism. What is it that keeps the women’s and feminist movement going? What are the singularly European perspectives on feminist generation, in what way do women’s movements interact with other movements, and what are the specificities of the European women’s and feminist movements of past, present and future, both in epistemological and in practical terms? What are their strategies of acting, situating and repositioning themselves in the changing, historical or contemporary, contexts of European policies (especially equal opportunities), cultural developments, and politics of knowledge? 
Key words: generations, new feminisms, histories of women's movements, EU-equal opportunities  
 
 
J. Cultures of Knowledge: Sciences, Humanities & Gender
The contributions for this theme can vary widely, from new discussions on epistemology and science studies, via feminist theory to the position of women in academia: We invite papers, which may (but are not required to) address the theme from theoretical, social and cultural, and policy oriented perspectives. The papers we are interested in can concern developments in feminist theory and gender studies – new and changing (epistemological) concepts and contexts as well as developments in the gender dimension in science. How, where and by whom are gender studies practiced nowadays, and how do they relate to other disciplines? What is the relation between integration of the gender dimension in research and the participation of women? How are cultures of research in (inter)disciplines, universities, research institutions, laboratories gendered? The more policy oriented perspective concerns issues like valorization of knowledge, the gender and excellence debate, or the use and the impact of EU gender and science policies. Furthermore we welcome papers on gender and memory in the cultures of science, the uses of scientific (auto)biography, institutional history. Cultures of knowledge can also be studied by analyzing popular representations of sciences (museums & mass media) and representations of sciences in film and documentary, literary fiction, science fiction. 
Key words: knowledge, women/gender in science, epistemology, feminist theory, representations of gender and science
 
 
K. Social & Economic Europe: Geographies of Work & Care
Within the theme of ‘Social Economic Europe’, we invite paper proposals and discussion panels that explore the dynamics of women and men’s lives in contemporary Europe. We particularly encourage papers that specifically address the linkages between developments at different geographical scales, e.g. in what ways do developments at the European level impact on the social and economics contexts of people’s local lives. Furthermore, we would like to receive papers that address new readings and interpretations where the individual and the social, personal experiences and institutional practices, geographical scales between global and local are examined together without presupposing a-priori hierarchy. Research questions that can be addressed in this theme are for instance: What is the influence of old and new labor markets on the lives of men and women? What is the meaning of globalization for women and men in different geographical spaces? We would also like to encourage papers on issues like geographies of care, old and new identities, post-modernity and youths, globalization and environmental change. How is globalization interwoven within European cities, in relation to old and new “communities”, ”nomadism” and the hard experiences of women and men migrants?  
Key words: Labor market, geographies of care, environment, nomadism, old and new identities   
 
 
THEME COORDINATORS  
 
Theme A - Imagination: dr. Marta Zarzycka, prof.dr. Kirsi Saarikangas, Domitilla Olivieri
 
Theme B - Post-Secular Europe: prof.dr. Willy Jansen, dr. Sarah Bracke, dr. Chia Longman  
 
Theme C - Global Connections: dr. Sandra Ponzanesi, dr. Gail Lewis, Sabrina Marchetti, Aleksandra Sojka  
 
Theme D - Sexuality: prof.dr. Gloria Wekker, Lena Eckert, Malena Gustavson
 
Theme E - War & Violence:  prof.dr. Andrea Petö, Izabella Agardi   
 
Theme F - Media & Technology: dr. Cecilia Åsberg, prof.dr.hab. Elzbieta Oleksy,  dr. Edyta Just, prof.dr. Nina Lykke
 
Theme G - Multi-Ethnic Europe: dr. Rutvica Andrijasevic, prof. Allaine Cerwonka, Maayke Botman
 
Theme H - Stories to Tell: Doro Wiese, dr. Babs Boter, prof.dr. Adelina Sanchez
 
Theme I - Generations in Feminism: prof.dr. Berteke Waaldijk, dr. Iris van der Tuin, Sandra Prlenda

Theme J - Cultures of Knowledge:  prof.dr. Mineke Bosch, prof.dr. Kaat Wils, dr. Christine von Oertzen
 
Theme K - Social & Economic Europe: dr. Bettina van Hoven, prof. dr. Anastasia Lada