1st Annual IFjP Conference
August 2-4, 2012
University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
“Leaving the Camp – Gender Analysis Across Real and Perceived Divides”
The aim of this conference is to serve as a forum for developing and discussing papers
that IFjP hopes to publish.
Call for Papers
The nature and quality of the insider-outsider feminist conversations with and about
International Relations (IR) has captured the attention of many scholarly debates.
However, it remains questionable as to whether the opening up of conversational
spaces between Feminist IR and mainstream IR, and the perceived voice which may
have been won, have indeed facilitated a questioning of IR’s traditional roots.
Similarly, in a fast-changing world where rhetoric and reality are conflated in
the discourse of interconnectedness, so-called divides between feminist academics
and gender policy makers are taken as a given and hence, sometimes become weakly
conceptualised and under-theorised.
Against the backdrop of this brief outline of the problem, the conference seeks
to bring scholars and practitioners together to critically consider the implications
of erecting epistemological and empirical fences, and to explore ways in which gender
analysis – as it intersects with the analysis of other identities such as race,
class, ethnicity and sexual orientation – may be used to challenge preconceived
ideas about camps, silos and borders. Perhaps answers are to be found in the shared
assumptions of, for instance, feminist, queer and postcolonial activism and/or studying
of global politics. ‘Gender’ as the dominant category of analysis for ‘borders work’
could therefore also be contested.
Sub-themes include the following:
- Theorising the idea of borders and divides – myths and realities
- Gender across the policy/donor/practitioner/academy divide
- Gender across geographical divides (gendering transnational spaces)
- Gender across institutional divides (gendering international organisation(s))
- Gender across feminist divides
- Gender across disciplinary divides
We invite submissions for individual papers or pre-constituted panels on any topic
pertaining to the conference theme and sub-themes. We also welcome papers and panels
that consider other feminist IR-related questions.
Send abstracts (250 words) to: Heidi Hudson (hudsonh@ufs.ac.za)
Deadline for submissions: March 30th, 2012
We will, however, confirm acceptance of submissions before the deadline.
Early submission is therefore recommended.
More information will be available on the IFjP website (www.ifjp.org)
at a later stage.