Thinking Gender 2020

Sexual Violence as Structural Violence: Feminist Visions of Transformative Justice

March 6, 2020

Carnesale Commons, UCLA

SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED

Call for Proposals

The UCLA Center for the Study of Women invites submissions of graduate student papers, roundtable presentations, and poster proposals, and undergraduate student poster proposals for our 30^th Annual Thinking Gender Graduate Student Research Conference.

This year’s conference theme, Sexual Violence as Structural Violence: Feminist Visions of Transformative Justice, will focus on feminist, queer, trans, anti-carceral, transnational, and intersectional approaches to sexual violence. The conference will feature a keynote panel of scholars and activists, headlined by MARIAME KABA, founder of Project NIA, Chicago Freedom School, the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young Women, the Chicago Alliance to Free Marissa Alexander, and other organizations.

Recent #MeToo mobilizations against high-profile predatory sexual abusers including Harvey Weinstein, R. Kelly, and Jeffrey Epstein have heightened public conversation around sexual violence. While important contributions have challenged dominant approaches to sexual violence, much of it has remained caught in legalistic, carceral, or criminal justice discourses that emphasize the punishment of individual actors to the exclusion of envisioning alternative definitions of repair and justice. Such dominant approaches center evidence and proof, and offer only the punishment of individual perpetrators as remedy, often in ways that exacerbate existing structural inequalities. Decades of scholarship and activism have demonstrated the inefficacy of such punitive models to curb sexual violence as well as the ways in which they exacerbate the policing of already marginalized communities.

We ask instead:

What questions, analytics, and strategies emerge if we think of sexual violence as a function of empire, settler colonialism, militarism, the afterlife of slavery, the patriarchal family, white supremacy, dispossession, incarceration, immigration detention and deportation, and labor exploitation, among other forms of state and capitalist violence, rather than only caused by the actions of a particular individual that can be addressed through punishment? What alternative methodologies and epistemologies have been and must be invented and mobilized to frame sexual violence in these ways? How does this require us to have more expansive definitions of what sexual violence means?

How can we imagine remedies to sexual violence within a prison abolitionist framework that opposes carceral systems, not only by working to dismantle literal prisons but also by challenging a culture that imagines punishment and imprisonment as the main responses to societal problems? What histories of feminist Indigenous, queer/trans, anti-racist, and anti-colonial organizing against sexual violence can we excavate as durable traditions for doing so?

What capacious understandings of harm and alternative definitions of justice, repair, and remedy might emerge out of such frameworks?

We invite proposals for papers, roundtable presentations, and posters from graduate students, and posters from undergraduate students. Successful submissions will center anti-imperialist, anti-racist, Indigenous, intersectional, anti-carceral/abolitionist frameworks for understanding sexual violence. This is an interdisciplinary conference and we encourage submissions from all fields of study. Topics may include but are not limited to studies of sexual violence in the context of:

Transformative justice
Empire
Indigenous feminism and settler colonialism
White supremacy and white nationalism
Militarism/War
Neocolonialism
Neoliberalism
Cultural, artistic, and aesthetic production
Historical and contemporary activism and organizing
Labor exploitation and labor organizing
Citizenship and migration
Deportation and detention
Critical refugee studies
Afterlives of slavery
Incarceration and punishment
Political repression and authoritarianism
Sexual harassment and workplace violence
Intimate partner and family violence
Reproductive justice
Social institutions of control (i.e., education, foster care, mental health, housing, health care, workplaces)
Trauma, memory, and forgetting

Submission Guidelines

Eligibility

Registered graduate students from any institution are eligible to submit paper, roundtable presentation, and poster proposals.

Registered undergraduate students from any institution are eligible to submit proposals for poster presentations only.

Individuals may present in only one capacity at the conference, although you may submit an application to be considered in all presentation categories.

Unpublished papers are preferred for submission. Recently published and forthcoming papers will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Registration Fee

To participate in Thinking Gender, successful applicants will be required to pay a registration fee of $50, the entirety of which will go towards covering conference costs.

Extended Deadline for Proposal Submissions

Deadline for Paper and Poster Proposals: Monday, November 4, 2019, at 11:59PM PDT

Once submissions are reviewed and accepted, all participants in the paper panel sessions will be required to submit a draft of their paper by Monday, February 10 , 2020, for pre-circulation among their co-panelists and faculty moderator.

Online Application Form

All proposals must be submitted using the online application form.

Modes of Research Participation and Application Requirements

**GRADUATE STUDENT APPLICANTS ONLY: If you would like your application to be considered for more than one type of presentation, please follow the submission guidelines for Paper Panel Presentations.**

Graduate Paper Panel Presentations:

Paper Panels will be comprised of graduate student paper presenters and a faculty moderator who will read and provide detailed feedback and questions on each paper. Paper presentations will be 12 minutes long. Panelists will be required to submit their paper drafts by Monday, February 10, 2020, for pre-circulation among their co-panelists and faculty moderator.

Panel Presentation application requirements:

Paper proposal (2-3 double-spaced page maximum) that includes a thesis/research question, discussion of methodology and theoretical framework, explanation of your argument and supporting data, and conclusions or anticipated conclusions
Works Cited or Reference List (1 page maximum)
CV (2 page maximum)

Graduate Roundtable Sessions:

Roundtable sessions will provide presenters and attendees the opportunity to interact and engage with one another’s scholarship in a less formal setting than a Paper Panel. Graduate students with papers in development who are not yet ready to present on a paper panel are encouraged to apply for a roundtable presentation. Presenters will each have 5 minutes to present their work and 5 minutes for feedback, to be followed by general discussion with roundtable participants. Accepted proposals will be grouped by shared themes and interests, and assigned to a roundtable chair who will facilitate the discussion.

Roundtable application requirements:

Proposal abstract (200 words maximum) that includes a thesis/research question, discussion of your argument, and anticipated conclusions
Works Cited or Reference List (1 page maximum)
CV (2 page maximum)

Graduate and Undergraduate Poster Session:

Graduate and Undergraduate students will present visually compelling research posters. During the poster session, each presenter will be present with their poster for discussions and questions with circulating attendees. Posters will remain on display throughout the conference.

Poster Session application requirements:

Poster proposal (1-2 double-spaced page maximum) that includes a thesis/research question, discussion of methodology and theoretical framework, explanation of your argument and supporting data, and conclusions or anticipated conclusions
Works Cited or Reference List (1 page maximum)
CV (2 page maximum)

All materials must be submitted using the online application form.

Extended Deadline for Paper and Poster Proposals: Monday, November 4, 2019, at 11:59PM PDT

Only complete submissions received by the deadline will be considered.

Questions?

Contact Bri-Ann Hernandez, 2020 Thinking Gender Conference Coordinator, at thinkinggender@women.ucla.edu.

Thinking Gender 2020: Call for Proposals