From the Margins to the Center: Feminist Disability Studies and/in Feminist Bioethics
August 24, 2008
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO A SPECIAL ISSUE OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FEMINIST APPROACHES TO BIOETHICS (IJFAB)
Vol. 3, no. 2, Fall, 2010
From the Margins to the Center:
Feminist Disability Studies and/in Feminist Bioethics
Guest Editor, Shelley Tremain
In recent years, work done in mainstream bioethics has been challenged by the emerging field of disability studies.
A growing number of disability theorists and activists point out that the views about disability and disabled people that mainstream bioethicists have articulated on matters such as prenatal testing, stem cell research, and physician-assisted suicide incorporate significant misunderstandings about them and amount to an institutionalized form of their oppression.
While some feminist bioethicists have paid greater attention to the perspectives and arguments of disabled people than other bioethicists, these perspectives and arguments are rarely made central. Feminist disability theory remains marginalized even within feminist bioethics.
This issue of IJFAB will go some distance to move feminist disability studies from the margins to the center of feminist bioethics by highlighting the contributions to and interventions in bioethics that feminist disability studies is uniquely situated to make.
The guest editor seeks contributions to the issue on any topic related to feminist disability studies and bioethics, including (but not limited to):
- Critiques of bioethics by feminist disability theorists from within feminist bioethics
- The relevance of feminist disability studies in developing countries
- What’s still missing from feminist arguments in the debates about stem cell research and other forms of biotechnology
- The importance of perspectives of disabled embodiment in feminist bioethics
- How the critiques of bioethics advanced in disability studies are gendered
- The integration of political analyses of disability into feminist bioethics
- The critique of notions of normalcy embedded in (feminist) bioethics
- The reevaluation of feminist approaches to care from a feminist disability studies perspective
Articles should be 3,000 - 8,000 words in length. Shorter pieces written for the Commentaries section of the issue should be 2,000-3,000 words in length.
All submissions should be double-spaced, prepared for anonymous review (no identifying references in the body of the text or bibliography), accompanied by an abstract of 150 words, and prepared in accordance with the journal’s style guidelines which are posted on the IJFAB website (www.ijfab.org).
Contact information – email address, street address, and affiliation (if applicable) – should appear on a separate page which also includes a statement verifying that the work has not been previously published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
Submissions should be sent as email attachments in Microsoft Word or rtf to Shelley Tremain at s.tremain@yahoo.ca The deadline for submissions is April 30, 2009. The guest editor strongly encourages authors to contact her before completing their submissions.
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Embodied Resistance: Breaking the Rules in Public Spaces
August 20, 2008
Call for Abstracts: Embodied Resistance: Breaking the Rules in Public Spaces
Embodied Resistance: Breaking the Rules in Public Spaces
Co-Editors, Chris Bobel, University of Massachusetts Boston and Samantha Kwan, University of Houston
This edited collection will assemble scholarly yet accessibly written works that explore the dimensions of resistance to embodied taboos of all sorts. We are interested in pieces that describe and analyze the many ways that humans subvert the social constraints that deem certain behaviors and bodily presentations as inappropriate, disgusting, private and/or forbidden in various cultural and historical contexts. Empirical, historical, theoretical and narrative contributions are equally welcome. This book, intended as a supplemental text for use in undergraduate and graduate classrooms, aims to advance and deepen our understanding of the motivations, experiences and consequences associated with the bodies that break the rules through the (intersecting) lenses of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, culture, religiosity, class and nation. The editors welcome submissions from scholars in a range of disciplines, including but not limited to sociology, women’s and gender studies, anthropology, science studies, cultural studies, literary studies, disability studies, psychology, and history. We especially encourage scholarship which focuses on areas outside the US and the West.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to, practices that challenge:
- Traditional attire norms, e.g., older women who do not “dress their age,” fat women who “show skin,” and parents who refuse to dress their children in traditional gender attire
- Conventional hair and body norms, e.g., women who conspicuously do not shave, youth who experiment with hair colors and cuts, and individuals with numerous and various forms of body art
- The binary construction of gender, e.g., various practices and performances by individuals who identify as transgender, queer, or metrosexual
- Biological processes considered contextually taboo, e.g., mothers who conspicuously breastfeed in public and women who do not hide the fact of their menstruation
- Physical conditions that carry stigma, e.g., cancer patients who do not conceal their hair loss, people with HIV/AIDS who speak openly about their infection status, and intersex individuals who publicly discuss their condition
- Cultural, religious, and/or ethnic norms, e.g., Muslim women who wear hijab in spite of policies or laws that forbid veiling and Falun Gong practitioners who meditate in public demonstrations
SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: We invite authors to submit an abstract on or before December 19, 2008. Submissions should take the form of a 250-500 word abstract outlining the intent and scope of the paper, and where appropriate, author’s theoretical, empirical, and/or methodological framework. Authors will be notified by February 13, 2009about the status of their proposal. Full papers are expected by May 29, 2009.
Please direct inquiries and submissions to BOTH editors at:
Chris Bobelchris.bobel@umb.edu
Samantha Kwan sskwan@uh.edu
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Society for Analytical Feminism
August 11, 2008
The deadline for submissions for the Central Division Meeting is August 15, 2008. Details are on the society’s webpage.
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Reasoning, Activism & Change: Philosophical Considerations
August 11, 2008
CSWIP annual conference: October 3-5, 2008, Windsor, Ontario.
Most of the necessary information is now available there, including registration information and a link to register on-line.
We urge you to register soon as fees will go up by $20 after September 12.
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Sexual Selves
August 11, 2008
The Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love
May 1-3, 2009
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Keynote Speakers:
Martha Nussbaum
Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics
University of Chicago
&
Cressida Heyes
Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Gender and Sexuality
University of Alberta
Invited speakers:
- Scott Anderson
- Ellen Feder
- Deirdre Golash
- Jacob Hale
- Richard Mohr
- Johanna Oksala
- Melissa Orlie
- Laurie Shrage
- Anita Superson
- Ludger Viefhues-Bailey
The theme of the conference (“Sexual Selves”) is sexuality and sexual identity. Papers will consider themes of sexuality and sexual identity understood from epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical perspectives. We encourage both continental and analytic approaches to these issues.
Papers should not exceed 4000 words in length.
Abstract should not exceed 150 words.
Send your document as an email attachment to Helga Varden at hvarden@illinois.edu
Submission Deadline: October 15, 2008
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