Call for Abstracts: Feminism, Science & Materialism

*Call for Abstracts: Feminism, Science & Materialism*

http://sciencestudies.gc.cuny.edu/call-for-abstracts-feminism-science-materialism-conference/

Call for Abstracts: Feminism, Science & Materialism conference

Graduate Center, City University of New York

February 14-15, 2013

Keynote Speaker: Karen Barad

In the past decade, feminist theory has elaborated new materialist
perspectives to re-imagine nature, biology, and matter more generally and
to critically address new developments in biology, physics, neuroscience
and other scientific disciplines. This scholarship revisits the
relationship between human corporeality and subjectivity, questions and
redefines the boundaries of human and non-human and nature and culture, and
elaborates on their mutual entanglements. New feminist theories address
materialization as a complex and open process and matter as lively and
productive.

This conference, organized jointly by the Center for the Study of Women and
Society and the Committee on Interdisciplinary Science Studies at the
Graduate Center, will engage with feminist perspectives on the
onto-epistemological questions raised by the materialist turn. We invite
papers from various disciplines that address a wide range of issues,
including, but not limited to:

- The intellectual and scientific context of the new turn toward materialism

- The relation of matter — including the biological body — to the social.

- The relation between new materialism and previous materialisms (such as
Marxism and phenomenology) and particularly their feminist elaborations.
What are the continuities and discontinuities between feminist materialisms
from the 1970s thru the current moment?

- The insights, knowledge and methodologies offered by the new materialist
studies of science offered. What new frontiers have they opened? What can
the "new sciences" offer for feminist theory?

- The political implications of neo-materialism for feminism as a project,
theory and a movement for social justice. How can we account for durable
hierarchies and the normative production of gender, race, class and
sexuality within new materialist frameworks?

- Critical applications of "agential realism," as elaborated by Karen
Barad, and other theoretical innovations for addressing material-discursive
relations and the epistemological questions they raise

- Empirical research using materialist feminist frameworks

Space for paper presentations is limited. To apply, please send an extended
abstract of 1000 words and a short bio to feminism.science@gmail.com by
November 1, 2012.