[Commlist] cfp: ATGENDER conference: “Gender Studies and the Precarious Labour of Making a Difference: (Un)paid jobs, Internships, and Volunteering in the Worlds of Activism, Profit, and Non-profit”

“Gender Studies and the Precarious Labour of Making a 
Difference: (Un)paid jobs, Internships, and Volunteering in the Worlds 
of Activism, Profit, and Non-profit”. The conference will be held in 
Utrecht, Netherlands, 27-29 September 2024

Check all the details and submit your work 
here: https://www.atgenderconference.org/

*These are the conference strands you may wish to be part of:*

*
*

*1 / Labour of feminist activism in the digital era
/Coordinators: Ingrid Hoofd, Karolina Szpyrko and Emma Rainey/*

In this stream, we invite applications exploring precarious labour of 
all activist expressions: online and offline, local and transnational, 
grassroot and professionalised, ‘radical’ and ‘commodified’ or 
commercial. Within that, we welcome perspectives that engage in 
theorisations and conceptualisations of various forms of activist 
labour: affective and task-oriented labour, productive and reproductive, 
managerial, administrative, archival and intellectual, labour of 
resistance and labour of radical wit, as well as digital, street or 
office-based forms of activist labour with the inherently conflictual 
social phenomena they inspire (e.g. cases of defamation, deplatforming, 
celebritisation, intellectual property rights, cancel culture).

We wish to go beyond activism of gender studies and feminism. Instead, 
we embrace a plethora of topics, subjects, groups and individuals become 
activist about: racial equality, abolition movements, climate justice, 
animal rights and cross-species justice, labour unionism, work 
conditions and poverty, decolonial, ani-war, and anti-genocide 
movements, to name just a few.


*2 / Making a feminist difference within institutions
/Coordinators: Berteke Waaldijk, Irina Gewinner, Carys Hill, Laurence 
Herfs and Lucie Naude/*

Producing feminist knowledge and doing gender-related work takes place 
in many institutional contexts, many of which will be marked and shaped 
by neoliberalism. For this stream, we invite papers that explore the 
ways in which gender experts & feminist scholars try, fail, succeed, and 
negotiate making a difference in such environments.

Papers and round tables might address:

  * How to balance precarious employment with feminist commitments;
  * How to negotiate being implicated in institutional exclusion;
  * How to practise a politics of care in uncaring institutions,
    nurturing and educating activist mindsets, resisting damaging
    representations & framing of outsiders;
  * Gender studies education and the precarious labour market:
      o dealing with the increasing uptake of precarious low-paid work
        by students,
      o preparing students for precarious employment outside and within
        academia,
      o working with the knowledge and skills that experienced activists
        and professionals bring to feminist classrooms.
  * Internships in gender studies: contact zones of feminist activism
    and gender expertise or disciplining gender graduates for a
    neoliberal labour market;
  * Role of gender experts and feminist scholars in diversity and
    inclusion policies:
      o How can they make a difference beyond ‘doing the documents’? *
      o Feminist understanding of leadership in transforming institutions;
      o The tensions between public (governments, NGOs/non-profit) and
        private (freelance, consultancy) funding of projects and jobs
        for gender equality, queer inclusion, and anti-racism.

*3 / Unequal power relations within gender studies
/Coordinators: Angeliki Sifaki, Andromachi Koutsoulenti, Liz Ablett, 
Maria do Mar Pereira and Maria Elena Indelicato/*

One of the missions of gender studies has always been to identify and 
dismantle unequal power relations, namely within academia. And yet, 
since its emergence gender studies has been demonstrated to also 
function as a space of unequal power relations, reproducing the very 
hierarchies it seeks to critique. In discussions about gender studies as 
a site of work, there has been much debate about a range of power 
imbalances within the field, including its reliance on casualised labour 
or structural inequalities in who gets hired, cited or promoted. More 
recently, there has also been increasing attention to forms of bullying, 
abuse, and sexual/racial misconduct by ‘critical’ scholars towards 
students and precarious (usually early career) colleagues. The responses 
to these revelations have ranged from shock and surprise to weary 
resignation or the disappointment in how alleged perpetrators are 
supported by their institution/colleagues. Those seeking to redress 
abuse and inequality in gender studies have called for better or more 
institutional processes like equality action plans, complaint systems 
and other forms of accountability, though many have also drawn attention 
to the risks and limits of such mechanisms. This stream seeks to 
sensitively unpack what happens when we face inequality and abuse within 
our own communities – from other feminist, queer or decolonial scholars, 
for example – and what forms of accountability and justice we might seek 
beyond punitive logics and existing institutional models.

  * Labour conditions and inequalities within gender studies
  * Abuse, bullying and misconduct within gender studies
  * Intersection between precarity, the neoliberal model of producing
    ‘star academics’ and violence/abuse/misconduct/bullying within
    feminist, queer or other critical spaces within academia
  * Unequal power relations between supervisors and students within
    feminist and gender studies departments
  * Thinking about responses to the hurt or harm caused by misconduct:
    how do we practice and maintain critical and reflexive hope towards
    one another and gender studies?
  * Intergenerational conflict, gatekeeping, and withholding of career
    development resources

*4 / Risks, dangers and prices paid in feminist and queer activism
/Coordinators: Helen Aadnesgaard, Maryna Shevtsova, Åsa Ekvall, Rachel 
Levi Herz and Noor Tazka/*

We delve into the complex and often hazardous world of unseen feminist 
and queer activism, exploring the risks, dangers, vulnerabilities, 
gender inequalities, and hidden prices that civil society organisations, 
activists, human rights defenders, academics, and scholars pay while 
contributing to social change. We aim to discuss different strategies to 
handle these vulnerabilities, survive, and sustain the activist 
activity. We encourage discussion and contributions that refer to an 
intersectional and multicultural lens. This encompasses:

  * activism in perilous zones
  * volunteering in powerful institutions
  * professionalisation of activism
  * affective labour in diverse activist settings
  * solidarity efforts in war zones and authoritarian regimes
  * concrete/latent dangers and risks that queer and feminist activists
    face, both in countries/communities where it is illegal to be
    queer/a queer activist and in more apparent liberal
    countries/communities
  * those who must act during wars, military conflicts, under growing
    authoritarianism, or increasing resistance against women’s and
    LGBTQ+ rights and in conditions that restrict in/directly the
    freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, protest, and academic
    liberties.

*5 / Precarity of paid/unpaid care work
/Coordinators: Guanqin He, Eva Schömer, Ece Canlı/
/and Melpo Paida/*

This theme stream explores the complicated dimensions of (un)paid care 
work and its connections to unequal distributions, social norms, and 
stereotypes about gender roles, etc. We invite contributors to delve 
into the multifaceted aspects of the precarity inherent in (unpaid) care 
work, including emotional, affective, physical, and mental labour that 
extend well beyond the traditional boundaries of professional spheres. 
This extends to domains such as homecare, healthcare, institutions, 
NGOs, and freelancing, etc. We invite papers that explore reproductive 
labour from systemic, institutional, gendered, and relevant dimensions 
of age, race, ethnicity, migration, etc. Submissions from Global South 
would be especially encouraged.

  * Precarious work of homecare
  * Labour of migrant care and migration
  * Care and healthcare labour
  * Ageing, unpaid care work of elderly
  * Labour in international NGOs,
  * Freelancers with feminist, antiracist, anti-ableist aims and
    agendas, etc.

*6 / Affective, cultural and more than human relations
/Coordinators: Demet Gülçiçek, Teresa Masini, Federica Castelli, Sanne 
Koevoets and Cecilia Heil/*

Desiring, attempting, succeeding or failing to make a difference in 
gender studies (and beyond) have a lot to unpack, whether this is 
through precarious or (un)paid work. ‘Our’ attunement (or lack of it) 
with the world around us can be/should be analysed beyond binary 
categories, focusing on affective, cultural and embodied relations. This 
strand invites researchers engaging with affect theories, cultural 
studies and more-than-human discussions with an interest on analysing 
complexities, contradictions and ambiguities, aiming to intervene to 
power dynamics. Methodological insights on the topic are welcomed in the 
strand.

  * Affects, emotions and moods in feminist and queer activism
  * Ways of relating to popular culture and popular feminisms
  * More-than-human engagements of making a difference
  * Artistic and cultural spaces
  * Feminist and queer historiographies
  * Anti-gender movements, gender backlash and ways of resistance
  * Political commitments
  * Politics of nostalgia
  * Imaginary Geographies, Orientalism, Occidentalism
  * Postcolonial theories

*/If you have any questions for the stream coordinators, you can reach 
us at (atgenderconference /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(atgenderconference /at/ gmail.com)>. Please indicate clearly what 
stream you are enquiring about./*


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