[ExI] Call for Papers: Gender, Bodies, Technology

[Damien Broderick]

“Gender, Bodies and Technology”
http://www.cpe.vt.edu/gbt/

Proposals are invited for an Interdisciplinary Conference
April 22-24, 2010
Roanoke, Virginia
Sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Virginia Tech

Proposal Deadline:  September 15, 2009

We invite proposals from scholars in the humanities, social and natural 
sciences, visual and performing arts, engineering and technology for 
papers, panels, new media art and performance pieces that explore: the 
technological production of gendered and racialized bodies, historical 
and contemporary feminist appropriations of technology in aesthetics and 
representations of embodiment, and the gendered implications of 
technology in contexts ranging from classrooms to workplaces to the 
Internet. We construe technology broadly to include material culture and 
the apparatus of daily life, such as writing, books and the built 
environment.

Specific topics might include, but are not limited to:
-Technological production and control of classed, racialized, aged and 
gendered bodies
-Work, healthcare, education and activities of daily life as produced 
through technologies
-Performance, new media and other creative expressions as sites for 
engaging/enacting/destabilizing conventions of embodiment and technology
-Biopolitics and medical engineering of reproduction, sexual identity 
and gender
-Personal narrative and oral history as sources of embodied theorizing
-Surveillance, containment, in/security and militarization
-Identity and technological design, production and use; gender, race, 
age, class and sexuality in SET (sciences, engineering and technology) 
fields
-New media art and feminist aesthetics
-Technologies of development and sustainability; eco-feminism
-Activism, participatory decision-making and issues of technological 
citizenship

As an assemblage of people and technologies we see the conference itself 
as enacting the conference theme. We welcome innovative uses of 
technology and creative session formats, including performance and 
interactive presentations, as well as traditional paper presentations. 
Using the form attached, please submit a proposal of up to 300 words for 
each individual presentation, including not only the scholarship you 
will engage but also the format that you wish to use. For panels, 
include an abstract for each presentation. Please specify in your 
proposal any special requirements for technology or space that you 
anticipate. Proposals will be reviewed by Virginia Tech Women’s and 
Gender Studies faculty/affiliates with appropriate expertise and 
notification of the outcome will be made no later than October 15, 2009.

Proposals should be submitted via our website at 
http://www.cpe.vt.edu/gbt/. If that is not possible, or if you have 
questions, please contact:

Sharon Elber
GBT Conference Co-Planner
STS/Women’s and Gender Studies (0227)
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24061
selber at vt.edu<mailto:selber at vt.edu>