CFP: Feminism, Science & Materialism conference

Call for Papers: 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 ³new sciences² 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 ³agential realism,² 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.