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Calls for Papers
Call for Papers, Panels and Proposals for the
Women’s Studies Section of the Annual WSSA Conference
April 14-17, 2010 ~ Reno, Nevada ~ Proposals due Dec. 1, 2009
The Western Social Science Association (WSSA) invites you to participate in the Spring 2010 meeting of the Association, being held April 14 – 17, 2010, at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno, Nevada. As an organization, the WSSA is committed to multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship, service, and collegiality.
In April of each year, 900 or more social scientists gather for the Association’s annual conference. At a typical conference, held over three and one-half days, participants organized in some 30 sections and affiliated groups present 900 papers at 300 disciplinary and interdisciplinary panel sessions. Some of the larger affiliates include: Association of Borderlands Studies, Canadian Studies, the International Sociological Association, Sociology, Association for Institutional Thought, and Women’s Studies. While membership in the Association is encouraged, it is not necessary to present.
The Women’s Studies Section provides a venue for scholars from many disciplines to discuss issues pertinent to scholarship and leadership among and between traditional disciplines involved in Women’s Studies. The richness of the Women’s Studies Section derives from its very nature as an interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary program.
Download the Call for Papers and a Proposal Form for the Women’s Studies Section. For more information, or to submit proposals or register for the conference, visit WSSA's web site at http://wssa.asu.edu.
Ancient “Unspeakable Vice” and Modern Pedagogy:
Talking about Homosexuality in Classical Antiquity in
the 21st Century Academy
2011 Annual Meeting of the APA, San Antonio, TX
Abstracts due Feb. 1, 2010
Sponsored by the Lambda Classical Caucus. Organized by Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos (Berea College) and John P. Wood (University of North Carolina at Greensboro).
In E. M. Foster’s novel, Maurice, published posthumously in 1971 and turned into a film in 1987, two young men in early 20th century England, strongly attracted to each other, attend a class at Cambridge University during which they translate Plato’s Symposium. When a student reaches a passage on same-sex love, the instructor says in a flat toneless voice: “Omit: a reference to the unspeakable vice of the Greeks.”
Although a century later the picture has changed and ancient accounts of homosexuality are more freely discussed in academia, prejudice against and misinformation on the sexual practices of the Greeks and Romans continue to persist. The 2011 LCC panel is soliciting papers that discuss the challenges of teaching such texts at university level and provide feedback on the responses they provoke among students. Questions that individual papers may address include but are not limited to the following:
• What pedagogical methods and interpretive tools (e.g., social theory,
feminist theory, queer theory, psychoanalytical theory) do we employ in
teaching what is nowadays considered to be nonnormative sexuality?
• What are the sources that we regularly use to demonstrate the sexual
plurality of the ancient world and increase awareness about the
nonuniversality of modern sexual practices? Are some texts less suitable
than others? What are the criteria for creating a textual canon, if any
(e.g., the content of the piece, the complexity of ideas expressed in it,
its author and genre, the familiarity of the students with it, or simply a
personal fondness of the instructor for a particular text)?
• What are the benefits of exposing students to ancient texts that are
critical of same-sex desire?
• How do we effectively teach the transition (in terms of both similarity
and difference) from Greek and Roman sexual ethics to that of late antiquity
described in the texts of the Church Fathers? How do we incorporate Greek
and Roman accounts in a syllabus on homosexuality throughout the ages?
• How can we draw on ancient attitudes to homosexuality to inform modern
debates on homophobia, xenophobia, racism, and same-sex marriage?
Abstracts of one page in length are due by February 1, 2010. Please do not send abstracts to the panel organizers. Email them to Nancy Rabinowitz at nrabinow@hamilton.edu. All abstracts will be refereed anonymously. Questions can be addressed to Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos at Konstantinos_Nikoloutsos@berea.edu.