[SIGCIS-Members] Fwd: [with] Berkshire Women's History Conference 2014

[Marie Hicks]

Hi all--

Great to see so many of you at SHOT. I wanted to pass along the
following (time-sensitive!) info just in case it hadn't been posted to
the list yet, or if there are folks with a last-minute interest in
submitting proposals:

There is a great conference at Virginia Tech on Gender and Technology
that's been going on since 2007 (I think). It happens May 1-3, 2013:
http://www.cpe.vt.edu/gbt/proposals.html

Unfortunately, the deadline for proposals is TODAY. I am planning to
submit and would be happy to give a nod to other related paper
proposals in my proposal for possible agglomeration into a panel--it
doesn't look like there's a way to submit whole panels.

My paper will look at media technologies and building infrastructure
technologies to talk about discourse and embodiment. I am interested
in unpacking how technologies of infrastructure historically construct
gendered, sexualized bodies through looking at transgender bathroom
projects and discussing how these can be put in historical context and
used as teaching tools to get at a variety of other issues. Here's a
little bit of background: http://mariehicks.net/blog/?p=321

I've pasted the CFP below.

Best,

Marie
______________________
Marie Hicks, Ph.D.
Asst. Professor, History of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology
Chicago, IL USA
mhicks1 at iit.edu | mariehicks.net | @histoftech

______________________________________________________
Call for Proposals

Proposals are invited for the third biannual interdisciplinary conference:
"Gender, Bodies & Technology: Performing the Human," May 1-3, 2014
The Inn at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia
Sponsored by the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Virginia Tech

Proposal Deadline: October 15, 2013

Gender, Bodies, & Technology is an initiative within Women’s and
Gender Studies at Virginia Tech that aims to creatively and
intellectually explore the multiple, proliferating, and gendered
dimensions of technologized bodies and embodied technologies. Through
our initiative and biannual conference, we seek to demonstrate,
theorize, and perform the discursive and material nodes around which
gender, bodies, and technology both cohere and fracture: how, for
example, do the specter and reality of transvaginal ultrasounds index
a historically specific female body? What is the relationship between
expanded combat roles for female soldiers and the U.S. military’s
escalating use of “unmanned” drone warcraft? How should we interpret
airport body scanners and restroom architecture that threaten and
displace transgender persons?

We invite proposals from scholars in the humanities, social and
natural sciences, feminist science studies, visual and performing
arts, life sciences, and STEM fields for papers, panels, workshops,
new media, art, and performance pieces that explore the intersections
of gender, bodies & technology in contexts ranging from classrooms to
the military, and from health care to the media.

Our confirmed keynote speakers include:

Dr. Jennifer Robertson, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan
Micha Cardenas, performance artist and media theorist based at the
University of Southern California
Dr. Shaowen Bardzell, Assistant Professor of Informatics at Indiana University

We invite papers, workshops, and panel proposals that address the
Gender/Bodies/Technology interface. Though not limited to the
following, topics and themes might include:

Gender and the technologies of institutions; the reconfiguration of
public and private spheres
Disability and technologies of expression/representation; enabling and
constricting roles of technology
The intersectional dimensions of online and digital space; visibility
and invisibility issues
Feminist appropriations of technology; technology as liberating vs.
reifying social force
GLBT and queer media
Technology and evolution – post- and trans-humanism; bio-cultural
change and the gendered dimensions of human plasticity
Gender, bodies, and artificial intelligence
Gendered technologies of the self; bodies and gender as objects of
technological intervention
Technological aspects of reproduction and personhood; maternal
capacity; neo-eugenics
Social and other new media and their relationship to gendered bodies;
social media and sexual violence
Genetic and other biological imaginaries made available by
biotechnology; gender and nanotechnology
The GBT configuration in popular media
Avatars, augmented and virtual realities, and the promise of genderless bodies
Gender as code; gender, bodies, and computation
New feminist materialisms; the technological materiality of gender
Technological failures; technophobia and gender
The (bio)technology of transgender, intersex, and other forms of gender variance
Race, ability, class and the politics of visibility in virtual bodies
Gender and digital literacy; the gendered natures of technicity,
technophilia, and expertise
Neuroscience, genomics, and the production of sexual difference
Performance, new media and other creative expressions:
engaging/enacting/destabilizing conventions of embodiment and
technology
Gendered innovations in technological design: gendered objects and design
Technological production and control of classed, racialized, aged,
disabled and gendered bodies
New media, digital representation and virtual gendered environments
How technology links (embodied) individuals and enacts (gendered) worlds
Technologically-mediated warfare, gender, and combat
Gender and the “non-human”; robots, animals and environmental
expressions of gendered worlds
Technologies of development and sustainability; eco- and environmental feminism
Activism, participatory decision-making and issues of technological citizenship

Our conference theme, “Performing the Human,” is an invitation for
embodied creative and intellectual effort. We are committed to
complementing traditional paper presentations from the social
sciences, STEM, and humanities fields with scholarship and performance
from the creative arts. We encourage innovative uses of technology and
creative session formats and we welcome early contact by email if
space and/or technology requirements might present logistical
challenges.

Proposals will be reviewed and notification of the outcome will be
made by November 15, 2013.

For more information or questions please contact:
Christine Labuski/GBT Coordinator and Conference Co-Director
Women's and Gender Studies Program
Department of Sociology
Virginia Tech
McBryde Hall (0137)
Blacksburg, VA, 24061 USA
chrislab at vt.edu