Gender, Sexuality and Citizenship, Thirteenth Annual Conference in Citizenship Studies — Wayne State University
Call for Papers – DEADLINE EXTENDED TO DECEMBER 1, 2015
Gender, Sexuality and Citizenship, Thirteenth Annual Conference in Citizenship Studies
Wayne State University
Detroit, Michigan, USA
March 31 – April 2, 2016
Conference Keynote: Margot Canaday, Princeton University, author of The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century America
Plenary Address: John Corvino, Wayne State University, author of What’s Wrong with Homosexuality?
Issues of gender and sexuality have long been realized as central to citizenship. We need only recall the patrilineal citizenship of ancient Greece or women’s suffrage to recognize some of the ways gender and sexuality have been bound to citizenship. Today, gender and sexuality remain at the center of a number of key issues in citizenship, including derivative citizenship, family reunification, and who can sponsor new immigrants as well as marriage and social citizenship rights including adoption, healthcare, end of life care, etc.
Whether we are male or female or transgender, whether we are straight, gay, lesbian, queer, bisexual or transsexual, our identities can facilitate or limit access to full citizenship. How are rights, obligations, and privileges shaped by gender and sexuality? Because we all bear the imprint of both gender and race, how do those traits interact to shape our experiences of freedom and public power? How do gender and sexuality shape not only citizens’ relationship to public power but also the way society constitutes and conceives of the state itself?
The Center for the Study of Citizenship invites proposals for its 13th Annual Conference in Citizenship Studies. We welcome proposals that examine such topics as:
Matters related to sex- or gender-based inclusion and exclusion in public life, past and present;
Social and political constructions of ascriptions such as masculinity, femininity, or queerness as they have affected citizenship;
Theories of citizenship that rely on interactions between sexuality/gender and other identities (e.g., race or class);
Relationships between these identities and leadership, authority, power, or responsibility;
Subjects’ or citizens’ perceptions of the ways in which their identities aid or impede access to (or experiences of) work, health care, religious freedom, child rearing, marriage and relationships, media depictions, law enforcement, incarceration, and other, similarly public topics.
Although the program committee will give preference to proposals directly relevant to the theme, proposals evaluating all aspects of the study of citizenship are welcome. We invite panel proposals, individual submissions, and suggestions for book sessions focused on exciting, new scholarship in the field of citizenship studies.
To apply, please email Amanda Hanlin at citizenship@wayne.edu with three attachments: an abstract of 500 words or less, your C.V., and a 50-word bio. Please be sure that your full name, the name of your institution and your email address are included on each page submitted. If you have a Twitter handle, we appreciate you sharing it with us in the body of your email. Please email us your materials no later than 5:00pm EST on Tuesday, December 1, 2015.
We provide a limited number of scholarships for international scholars. These funds will be distributed on a competitive basis. If you wish to be considered for a scholarship, please indicate so in your email.
We will notify applicants of their acceptance to present work at the conference by December 15, 2015. We will invite presenters to submit full papers for further review by our advisory board. Invited papers will be considered for publication in a peer-reviewed volume in the Wayne State University Press book series, “Citizenship Studies,” edited by the Center’s director, Marc Kruman and Research Fellow, Richard Marback.
