Fugitive Feminisms: Resistance in a Renewed Age of Fascism

In a political and cultural moment when feminisms are under attack, WGS South invites our community to engage with the generative nature of fugitivity.

Fugitivity has long been part of the traditions of Black, Indigenous, queer-feminist, and migrant and refugee study and practice. Whether in the writings of Harriet Jacobs documenting her view of the world from the garret where she spent seven watchful years before gaining her freedom from enslavement, in Indigenous practices of refusal of colonial demands, or early feminists’ gatherings where they unearthed the functions of patriarchy through consciousness-raising, feminisms have long found nutrients in the underground. Amidst budget slashing, program/department closures and faculty firings, we choose to respond to threats to our discipline’s future by insisting on the importance of continuing on alongside one another, shifting our structure to meet our community where they are in this season of challenge and change.

As WGS South enters our 51st year, we build on our 2026 conference theme of “Feminist Futurities” to ask what strategies from the past, present, and future can guide us through this transformative moment for our field. We invite participants to consider the ways fugitivity can serve as a generative force for building worlds otherwise, producing and living in joy while developing tactics of persistence, resilience, and liberation amidst attack. Particularly as WGS and allied disciplines in the US South and elsewhere are being forced underground, how can we find ways to move toward a more life-giving futurity as we embrace fugitivity in the now? On the other hand, what are the limits of fugitivity as a strategy within fascist regimes? Furthermore, given the virtual nature of this conference, we also invite feminist inquiry into and critique of the role of the digital in preserving (or preventing/disrupting) connection when austerity makes physical gatherings more challenging to facilitate.

We welcome individual paper proposals, panel proposals, workshops, author-meets-readers sessions, performances, and other creative formats that engage with the conference theme. Particularly for those working in visual formats, we are open to proposals for creative uses of our virtual space, including digital galleries or other modes of sharing audio or visual works. Submissions from scholars at all career stages, activists, community organizers, and artists are encouraged. 

Topics may include, but are not limited to: 

• Theories and Practices of Coalition, Collaboration, and Accompliceship

• Artistic or visual presentations of fugitivity and revolt

• Strategies for Survival, including care work, spirituality, and mutual aid

• Resistance Archives, Memory Studies, and other repositories of struggle

• Stories from Campus - Departments and Programs navigating threats

• Feminism beyond the Ivory Tower - engagements with community organizers and institutions outside of the academy

• Feminist responses to the militarization of immigration enforcement

• Survivance strategies for migrant and refugee communities in the US and Global South(s)

• Abolitionist and anticolonial feminisms

• Histories and presents of queer and trans survival under authoritarianism

• Transnational approaches to feminist fugitivity

• Queer and feminist approaches to climate crisis 

• Approaches to reproductive justice work after Dobbs

• Feminist fugitivity and the internet

• The limits of feminist fugitivity - strategies for getting loud

We welcome individual paper proposals, panel proposals, workshops, author-meets-readers sessions, performances, and other creative formats that engage with the conference theme. Particularly for those working in visual formats, we are open to proposals for creative uses of our virtual space, including digital galleries or other modes of sharing audio or visual works. Submissions from scholars at all career stages, activists, community organizers, and artists are encouraged.

All submissions are due to the conference submission form by December 1, 2026. We are also offering a Priority Funding Deadline for participants who may require earlier notification of acceptance to apply for conference funds; those interested in this option should submit materials by November 15.

Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words for individual papers, along with a brief bio (100 words). Panel proposals should include a 600-word abstract describing the panel's theme and objectives, as well as individual abstracts and bios for each panelist. The submissions form will include the option to be considered for one of our Caucus-sponsored sessions. Caucus CFPs to be released October 15th, 2026.