National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) Annual Conference 2022
Killing Rage: Resistance on the Other Side of Freedom
November 10-13, 2022 | Minneapolis, MN | Program
Roundtable Discussion of Gender, Women’s, Sexuality, Feminist and Queer Studies Academic Job Market Report (2006-2018)
This roundtable discusses a new data-driven analysis of the Gender, Women’s, Sexuality, Feminist and Queer Studies (GWSFQS) job market (2006-2018). These data (to be published in Signs in 2023) show that job opportunities, while fluctuating, grew strongly in the decade after the 2007-2009 recession, outpacing growth in advertised jobs in English, History, Sociology, and similar interdisciplinary fields. This roundtable will present key findings from the report and reflections on GWSFQS as an institutionalized field within the corporatized university from five feminist scholars (Professor Jigna Desai; Associate Professor Zenzele Isoke; Professor Priti Ramamurthy; Assistant Professor Mairead Sullivan; Professor Brenda Weber).
Moderator: Elizabeth A Wilson, WGSS, Emory University
Presenters: Jigna Desai, University of Minnesota; Zenzele Isoke, University of Minnesota; Priti Ramamurthy, University of Washington; Mairead Sullivan, Loyola Marymount University; Brenda R. Weber, Indiana University
Literature and the Question of Queer Reproduction (Panel)
Moderator: Cricket Keating, University of Washington
Presenters:
Caleb Knapp, University of Washington
"Sojourner Truth, Feminism, and Sexual Harm": This paper examines how Sojourner Truth’s Narrative (1850) addresses questions of sexual harm. It focuses on the text’s intimation that Truth was sexually abused by her mistress. The text figures sexual assault differently than early white feminist writing, which tended to frame it as a violation of liberal rights, and contemporary feminist slavery studies, which tends to view sexual violence under slavery in heterosexual and biologically reproductive terms. While scholars have focused extensively on the feminism of Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” (1851) speech, this paper unpacks the feminist politics of Truth’s neglected account of sexual violence in the Narrative.
Jey Saung, University of Washington
"Queer Kinship Imaginaries: Octavia Butler Beyond the Reproductive Impasse": This paper explores the ways Octavia Butler’s short story “Bloodchild” (1984) pushes beyond the intellectual impasse in queer and trans studies that presents reproductivity as wholly revolutionary or wholly complicit with heteronormativity. Focusing on the story’s central figures of the “pregnant man” and racialized refugee, I argue that feminized reproductive labor and perceived Asian complicity with state violence informs contemporary queer kinship imaginaries. This analysis expands understandings of race, coercion, and queer family.
Chelsea Grimmer, University of Washington
"Poetry and the Paradoxical Experiences of Queer Non-Reproductivity": C. R. Grimmer will combine arts-based practice with a critical framing of their poetry collection, The Lyme Letters, an epistolary verse that spells out a memoir. R, a non-binary femme character, narrates their experience of disease and recovery through letters to doctors, pets, family members, lovers, and a "Master." R explores the paradoxical experiences of queer non-reproductivity, disability/crip life, and the healing that can be found in liminal spaces. C. R. will read selections that emphasize queer non-reproductivity, disability/crip love, and interspecies intimacy, offering some critical framing through the work(s) of Mel Chen, Karen Barad, and José Esteban Muñoz.
Transnational Feminist Resilience, Resistance and Solidarity in Times of COVID-19 (Roundtable)
Roundtable participants will reflect on the systemic inequalities laid bare by the global pandemic as well as on the impact of the pandemic on transnational feminist praxis in Latin America, the Middle East, East Asia, and North America. In particular, participants will explore the effects of the prolonged closure and isolation caused by Covid-19 on transnational feminist praxis, resistance and organizing as well as on research and teaching. The session will end with participants elaborating on how a framework of transnational feminist solidarity could inform more effective responses to such challenges as a global pandemic in the future.
Moderator: Cricket Keating, University of Washington
Presenters: Simona Sharoni, Merrimack College; Laila Farah, DePaul University; Amy Lind, University of Cincinnati; Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, San Francisco State University; Yi-Chun Tricia Lin, Southern Connecticut State University