21/01/2023
Upcoming conference in the Department of English, University of Dhaka on March 11, 2023
"Mapping gendered spaces in language, literature and culture"
The Department of English, University of Dhaka, invites proposals on “Mapping Gendered Spaces in Language, Literature and Culture” for a daylong conference to be held on Saturday, March 11, 2023.
The conference will bring together scholars from a wide range of disciplines, who will call into question, encourage discussions on and help shape discourses centering around the conventional stereotypes of patriarchy.
The conference will examine, for instance, woman’s hairdo as metonymic sites, as evident in the fictional spaces ranging from classical epics such as The Mahabharata, The Shahnameh, Samson Agonistes, and The R**e of the Lock to popular culture, such as in Disney animations, e.g. Mulan, Rapunzel.
This subversive act of cutting off a woman's hair serves as one metaphoric instance of historical specificities of colonization not only of the physical or the material but also of the gendered body. These specificities reveal significant nuances in the way gender operates to protest or protect from different disciplinary effects as well as to negotiate with different types of uncertainties and to inculcate a desire to end violence.
By extension, such issues are pertinent to all forms of thought, cultural expressions and lived experiences under asymmetrical power arrangements. Therefore, the conference will also investigate the role of language in communicating, archiving, or shaping agendas and ideologies pertinent to gender and colonization.
The conference will provide opportunities for graduates, undergraduates, doctoral students and academics from different disciplines to explore women’s lives, life and freedom.
We invite abstracts on the following areas (but not limited to):
● Alteration of the human body for religious, aesthetic, or social reasons.
● Body modification and mutilation
● Decolonialism and decolonial epistemologies
● The legacy of colonialization
● Language and questions of identity
● Gender abolition and feminist futures
● The politics and pitfalls of “inclusion” and/or “representation”
● Media and representation of resistance
● Women, qu**rs, and trans radicals
● Theorizations of gender, struggle, and liberation
● Feminism and the ongoing context of settler colonialism
● Gender struggle, illegality, and anarchism
● Discussions of the body, sexuality, and/or desire within anarchism
● Gender, militancy, and street politics
● Intersections and exchanges between Indigenous, and Women of Colour feminisms
● Everyday practices of feminism and their influence/importance within cultures of resistance
● Transitional female being
● Women in myth and folklore
● Ecopolitics and gender
● Gender and language education
● Language, gender, sexuality and power
● Gendered identity and language learning
● Gender representation in EFL materials
● Heteronormativity in ELT
● Language, gender equality and social change
● Sexism in language
Please send an abstract of 250-300 words and a short bio of 75 words to [email protected].
● Deadline for abstract submission: Tuesday, January 31, 2023.
● Confirmation of acceptance: Tuesday, February 7, 2023.
● Last date of registration: Tuesday, February 28, 2023
For registration, you are required to make a payment of TK. 1,500. Payment may be made either by BKash (01672211941) or in cash in the office of the Department of English, University of Dhaka. If you are making a Bkash payment for registration, please follow the link https://forms.gle/kV4WKhSqNiBfaUpB7 to the Google form and fill it up with your Bkash transaction ID.
Mapping gendered spaces in language, literature and culture
