CALL FOR PAPERS: GENDER ACROSS BORDERS II: RESEARCH SUBJECTS
Friday & Saturday, April 21 & 22, 2006
Institute for Research & Education on Women and Gender. University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

Keynote Speakers (invited): Molly Carnes (Wisconsin-Madison), Co-Director of Wiseli’s Women in Science & Engineering Leadership Institute; Bhanu Kapil, Naropa University

Gender Across Borders II forwards research involving women and gender in history and in the present, with an emphasis on national and international trends in women’s scholarship. This year’s theme is Research Subjects. This interdisciplinary and international conference will take seriously questions orbiting the subjection of bodies to research: we are interested in ethical and contentious issues of both subjects of research and subjects as researchers. In particular, we are interested in proposals and research that take into account the sexed and gendered nature of their subjects. Proposals for panels and individual papers might consider:

Subjects of research:
• Research Methodology and our Subjects: Research, methodology, writing (scientific or otherwise) openly concerned with the sex/gender/sexuality of its subjects. Papers might consider how research situates our subjects in relation to gender, sex, or neutrality, and/or in relation to other social ‘indicators’ such as “race,” class, disability, nationality, etc. Explorations of implications of methodology, categorization, and sampling of populations making visible the particularity of subjects are of special interest, as are papers that address how such categorization might effectively hurt our subjects. Papers might also address the incorporation or exclusion of sexed/gendered/sexualized dimensions of subjects (intentional or otherwise) in social planning, policy, architecture, design, art, and media. The subjection of oneself to gendered/sexed/ sexuality research and analysis (self-reflexive ethnographies, new & mixed media, art, film, etc.) are also welcome.
• Goals of Research: consideration of sex/gender/sexuality of subjects in terms of the effects of and/or goals of research, therapy, treatment, artistic or theoretical interventions.
• Subjects in Context: implications of situating, analyzing, and/or treating gendered subjects within a specific social context whether defined as global, transnational, rural, cosmopolitan, communitarian, postcolonial, etc.
• “Other” subjects: non-human life, animal research (ethics and care), sexuation, inanimate subject matter. Perspectives on the relation between human and the non-human are also welcome.
• Material and Historical Conditions of Research: considerations of the production of knowledge, research, artifacts, artwork, both historically and in the present, including analysis of physical space of research, geography, funding, access to materials, institutional support, etc.

Subjects who research:
• Productive Constraints of Researchers: Analyses of how (gendered) researchers are subjected to particular methodologies and constraints, whether temporal, material, economic, physical or geographic. One might consider the productive limitations therefore placed on data, analysis and conclusions. Or, one might reflect on the position of the self as observer, how one situated to see/analyze/look in particular ways. We very much encourage retrospective analyses of completed projects, presentations and analyses of research in progress (dissertations, thesis work, experiments, etc.), or descriptions of future research given such considerations.
• Subjects of Empire/Colonizing Subjects and Research;
• The Demand: “Subjects, research!” Issues of collaboration, supervision, and authority (pre- & postdoctoral relationships); research as labor; questions of subjectivity and writing.
• Emerging Women Scientists and Engineers: Researchers whose work does not explicitly discuss gender are welcomed and encouraged to present their current research in format most appropriate to their work: panel discussion, power-point presentations and/or poster display.
• “Work Life” Forums: balancing research, family, sanity.

Poster-prizes will be awarded to outstanding poster displays in the exhibit accompanying the symposium. We welcome proposals for panels, individual papers and poster displays from all disciplines. Abstracts should be included in the body of an email sent to adspain@buffalo.edu, and must not exceed 300 words.

Deadline for Panel Proposals: January 10th, 2006.
Deadline for Individual Papers and Poster Displays: February 15th, 2006.