The theme for the 2015 Gender Matters Conference, "All in the Family?", focuses our attention on the many ways that gender shapes and is shaped by notions, structures, practices, performances, and representations of “family” broadly defined. While conference planners invite work on all matters related to gender, we are particularly interested in work that problematizes the concept of family and examines it in local, transnational, and global contexts and through multiple lenses.conference planners invite work on all matters of gender, we are particularly interested in work that explores how evidence-based practices and outcomes related to gender and/or sexuality are used to affect positive change, behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, policies and procedures.
Potential Topics for Papers and Panels
do representations of family in popular culture reify, expand, transform our
understandings of gender? How do
institutional and symbolic changes in family interrelate?
does a queer, postmodern family look like? How is family performed?
might recent institutional changes (such as rulings allowing same-sex marriage)
change the gendered nature of this (too?) long-term family arrangement?
do (material/imagined/virtual/fictional/representational/religious) families
act as sites for constructing gender and sexual identities? For constructing systems of power? For fomenting resistance?
do social media create new “families of choice”? How do they function to discipline/surveil
have emigration/immigration, remittances, and long-distance/long-term
separation of children and parents shaped families?
has the mass incarceration of darker, poorer, predominantly male people affected
taking care of whom? How is caregiving
raced, classed, and gendered? What
generational patterns have emerged?
does the gendered division of labor shape family relations? How does the Global
North/Global South division of labor shape the family?
sexual divisions of labor in the family inherently generate inequalities?
do families support or deny women’s power over their bodies, sexual activity,
and reproductive choices?
have the increased participation of women in the military, the increase in multiple
call-ups, and the high rate of serious injuries, including PTSD, affected
families? How has the high rate of
sexual assault in the military affected the response to the military’s
self-characterization as family?
what ways are the causes and consequences of the many refugee crises (in Syria,
Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Gaza, Mexico, Arizona, etc.) gendered?
- How is violence within families and
communities and between families and communities gendered? How are responses to that violence gendered?
We will announce our plenary performances upon final confirmation.
Deadline: 2 January 2015
Acceptance Notifications: 30 January 2015
Registration Deadline: 27 February 2015 ($25 students; $55 regular)
Deadline: 20 March
2015 ($40 students; $70 regular)
Matters Conference: 17-18 April 2015 (Friday