Call For Applications:
Women have long organized across national borders, even before the current nation-state regime solidified. Activists have come together around issues including resistance to colonialism, struggles for national liberation, movements for social and economic justice, and other efforts to gain rights. As a field of study, transnational feminism emerged in the 1980s in response to a singular “global” feminism that erased differences within and between nations. While it underscores the emancipatory potential of inter-national networks and alliances for activist women, this scholarship also addresses the challenges to solidarity that arose from, among others, economic globalisation, (neo-)colonialism, and racism.
It consequently uses multiple frameworks of difference, epistemologies, and methodologies to tackle the complexity of women’s lives and politics. Transnational feminism is a highly interdisciplinary field that seeks to disrupt national narratives and nation-oriented approaches while remaining attentive to differences among women within countries. In the Canadian context, transnational feminist analyses can be used, for example, to think about the country’s multinational realities where Indigenous, Diasporic, and Québécois feminisms each posed a distinct challenge, not only to hegemonic understandings of feminism but also to the nation-state.
Organized by the L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History at McMaster University, this two-day workshop will bring together scholars from Canada and around the world to address the methodological and epistemological challenges of writing transnational feminist histories. While this workshop is open to scholars in disciplines other than history, proposals from non-historians should indicate the ways in which their paper addresses questions of women’s activism in the 19th or 20th centuries from an historical perspective.
We welcome proposals of 250 words by 30 September 2017. Invitations to present at the symposium will be issued by 15 October 2017. Given that the workshop will involve discussing papers in depth, participants will be required to submit papers of approximately 8000 words by 1 May 2018 to allow for pre-circulation. After the symposium, presenters will be invited to submit papers for the consideration of the editors of the L.R. Wilson Rethinking Canada in the World Series with McGill-Queen’s University Press. The edited volume will stand as a key contribution to ongoing critical work on transnational feminism as well as women’s activism in Canada and abroad.
The Wilson Institute will provide assistance towards lodging and travel re-imbursement for accepted speakers.
Deadline for proposals: 30 September 2017
Applicants should submit their proposals and a one-page CV to the L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History with the subject line Transnational Feminism to: wilsonch@mcmaster.ca
If you have any questions, please contact Amanda Ricci, riccia1@mcmaster.ca .
