CFP: ISSG Online Graduate Conference: Memory and Violence - Feminist methods for research and resistance

How can our research methods resist oppression and historical injustice? How do feminist methods correspond with resistance? What is our collective responsibility as a community of feminist researchers, and how can we incorporate this into our daily practice? In this year’s ISSG Graduate Conference on “Memory and Violence - Feminist methods for research and resistance,” we will discuss how to integrate feminist research methods with our visions for resisting oppression and making a better world. People from all disciplines (inside and outside the academy) are welcome to apply!

Feminist analysis of memory and violence pose challenges to traditional approaches to the study of the past. Addressing the complexities of memory challenges teleological, universalizing, and linear approaches to history, allowing us to tell stories that do not have a beginning or end, and to explore creative ways of understanding alternative temporalities. Feminist analysis also raised important questions about the absence of emotions in academic studies in general, and in tracing instances of violence in particular. Feminist methods of resistance challenge the division between theory and practice in the academy, and can help us think about the multidirectional and multi-layered aspects of memory and violence, separately and together.

The ISSG Graduate Conference will be held virtually on Friday, April 28, 2023, from 1:00-5:00pm. In order to challenge the common conference structure, this conference will consist of two sections: the first, from 1:00-2:30pm, will be a closed workshop. In this section all participants will circulate in advance a short piece of writing or part of a piece of writing that will be read and discussed by all participants of this panel. The second panel, from 3:00pm - 5:00pm, will be open to the public, and will consist of speakers and Q&A section.

The conference is open to everyone that thinks and works with feminist methods, and who is interested in methodologies that challenge mainstream canonization. We welcome any stage or type of writing, from chapter drafts or seminar papers to personal reflections, essays or creative writing. Some particular themes we will discuss are:

• • Interdisciplinary methods, and learning processes between different disciplines
• • Creative methodology and alternative methodology
• • Feminist methods for historical research
• • The connection between activism and the academy
• • Feminist methods for ethically representing violence
• • Feminist theorizations of epistemic violence and oppression
• • Feminist memory studies The politics and ethics of oral history
• • The ethics of care in feminist methodology**
• • Working from within the academy as feminists
• • Academic research as maintaining the socio-economic status quo
• • Memory and historical injustices

**Thank you to Sasha Doster for suggesting this theme in the Feminist Methodology Discussion Group!

This is only a preliminary list of themes. We encourage anyone that deals with this topic to submit a proposal.

Submission guidelines:

Please submit a short abstract (up to 250 words) of your presentation + a short paragraph (can be a couple of lines) on yourself and the questions that occupy you in your studies.

In the conference we aspire to create a safe environment to think together and challenge current injustices in the institution we are part of.

Please submit the abstract and short paragraph to: Mairead (mch2203@columbia.edu) and Elya (era2145@columbia.edu) by March 31, 2023.

Looking forward to thinking together,

Mairead Hynes and Elya Assayag

ISSG graduate fellows 2022-2023