Wednesday 6th May - Friday 8th May 2015
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Call for Presentations:
From Medea and Lady Macbeth, to Mary Tudor and Eva Peron, to Myra
Hindley and Dorothea Puente, to human rights activists working to
prevent violence targeted at women, the human imagination has been
captured by the complex relationship between women and evil. We are
fascinated by stories of real and fictional women who perpetrate evil
deeds, experience evil as victims, fight against evil and take the blame
as scapegoats for evil that exists in the world. These accounts raise a
host of questions about the nature of evil itself and why cultural cues
encourage us to see the relationship between women and evil in very
different terms from the way we understand the relationship between men
and evil. What distinguishes evil from something that is simply at odds
with gender roles, laws and other means of regulating behaviour? Why
are women vilified as monsters, temptresses, bitches and evil incarnate
when they break the rules? Is the emotionally- and ideologically-loaded
language of evil is even useful in this context, or is an entirely
different framework needed?
The Evil, Women and the Feminine project offers a space for inter-,
cross- and multi-disciplinary explorations of these and other questions
concerning the dynamics of the relationship between women and evil. We
invite proposals for presentations that take the form of talks,
workshops, performances, readings, film screenings, art installations
with commentary and other interactive content. Activists,
anthropologists, archaeologies, archivists, artists and other creative
professionals, civil servants, members of the clergy, clinicians,
correctional authorities, historians, journalists, jurists and other
legal professionals, military personnel, researchers, writers and others
with an interest in the project are encouraged to submit proposals on
themes that include but are not limited to:
Theology and Theodicy:
- Women who theorise about evil
- Theological considerations of case studies involving women
- Alternative religious perspectives on the relationship between women and evil
- Female deities and spirits
- Considerations of whether evil committed by women inherently different from evil committed by men
- Explorations of the relevance and usefulness of the language of evil to discuss unlawful or immoral behaviour
Big Evils/Lesser Evils?:
- Women and genocide, genital mutilation, murder, sexual abuse, torture, human trafficking, drug smuggling, etc.
- Women who experience or perpetuate social evils: racism, sexism,
homophobia, economic deprivation, corporate exploitation, environment
devastation, etc.
Multi-cultural and Historical Perspectives:
- Indigenous/tribal traditions concerning women, femininity and evil
- Folk lore dealing with women, femininity and evil
- Assessments of changing attitudes toward the relationship between women and evil (and the sources of those changes)
Women and the Law:
- Case studies of women whose crimes are considered evil
- Accounts of experiences with women who have either perpetrated or suffered from acts considered evil
- Legal trends in cases that involve women whose conduct has been coded as evil
- Activism on behalf of female perpetrators and victims
- Deviant sexuality
Women and Medicine:
- Clinical perspectives on female perpetrators and victims
- The medical establishment as locus of evil - and the women who must engage with it
Women and Power:
- Considerations of the relationship between power and evil, and whether
women can gain and maintain power without doing things that others
perceive as evil or monstrous
- Revenge plots
- Personnel management strategies for regulating the workplace
- Self-help and professional development models for gaining/maintaining/managing power in the workplace
Motherhood:
- Monstrous motherhood: mothers who kill/abuse/neglect children
- Evil or monstrous maternal bodies
Women and Evil in the News Media:
- Journalistic case studies, including first-hand accounts of how particular stories were presented for public consumption
- Contemporary, historical, or comparative assessments of language and imagery used in reports about female perpetrators
Women and War:
- Women as warriors and efforts to protect the 'fairer sex' from combat
- Women and war crimes
- Holocaust narratives: women as oppressors and victims
- Female jihadists, freedom fighters, terrorists
Representations of any aspect of Monstrous Femininity - women who
perpetrate evil, women who fight against evil, women who suffer from
evil perpetrated by others and women who are scapegoated as the source
of evil in:
- literature
- cinema
- television
- performance
- visual arts
- music
The Steering Group welcomes the submission of proposals for short
workshops, practitioner-based activities, performances, and pre-formed
panels. We particularly welcome short film screenings; photographic
essays; installations; interactive talks and alternative presentation
styles that encourage engagement.
What to Send:
300 word proposals should be submitted by Friday 23rd January 2015. All
submissions are at least double blind peer reviewed. Proposals should be
submitted simultaneously to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in
Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in
programme, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract,
f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: EWF7 Proposal Submission.
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes
and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold,
italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper
proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you
should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in
cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic
route or resend.
Organising Chairs:
Natalia Kaloh Vid:
n...@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher:
ew...@inter-disciplinary.net
The conference is part of the At the Interface programme of research
projects. It aims to bring together people from different areas and
interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are
innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at the
conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an
ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be developed for publication in a
themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will
require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the
conference.
Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and
professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend
for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this
commitment, please do not submit an abstract for presentation.
For further details of the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/evil/evil-women-and-the-feminine/call-for-papers/