Care Feminisms, Crip Futures 

University of South Carolina Upstate - Spartanburg, SC

Thursday, March 28 – Saturday, March 30, 2024 

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In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Dobbs decision, and recent legislation banning gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth in a significant majority of states in the southeastern region, analyses of public health disparities and the socio-economics of caregiving require our urgent attention as feminist theorists, educators, and activists. To attend to these matters, the role of feminist disability studies, crip theory, and care feminisms in the field of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies is arguably more important than ever. With a broad interest in the work of cripping WGS, we invite proposals for individual papers, panels, and roundtables with a focus on care feminisms and crip futures. While this topic is a major focus of the conference, proposals are welcome on all aspects of work in WGS.

As you develop your proposals, some guiding questions might include the following: What does care work in the service of social transformation look like? How has care operated as a nexus of oppression integral to the reproduction of injustice, and how has it been mobilized as part of the ongoing work of liberation? What can feminist thought learn from disability justice, crip studies, mad studies, neuroqueer theory–and vice versa? What transformations does care work undergo in the wake of ongoing state abandonment and intensifying precarity? What political and conceptual tools do crip studies and care feminism offer us as we participate in transformative worldmaking? 

Topics may include, but are certainly not limited to:

  • Care, vulnerability, precarity, gendered ableism, state abandonment, rurality, community organizing, mutual aid, unexpected alliances

  • Biomedicalization, wellness, medical access, and healthcare, especially for BIPOC, disabled, chronically ill, mad, neuroqueer, birthgiving, and LGBTQIA+ folks

  • Geographies and geopolitics of care, dependency, disability justice, reproductive (in)justice, ecofeminism, climate change, anthropocenic catastrophe, grief, crip ecologies

  • Intersections of care feminism and crip theory with critical race theory, critical trauma studies, critical addiction studies, critical trans studies, queer feminisms, critical migration studies, new materialisms, critical affect studies, transnational feminisms, or critical animal studies

  • Transformative world-building through friendship, queer kinship, and care beyond the nuclear family, including polyamory, non-monogamy, and the relationship between care, jealousy, and compersion

  • Crip creativity, disabled life-hacks, new self-representations in first-person narratives by disabled feminists; new cultural representations of non-normative or anomalous bodies, minds, and lives in literature, television, film, art, or digital media

  • Reflections on conceptual innovations from foundational and emerging scholars of feminist disability studies, care feminisms, mad feminisms, and crip theory; the role of BIPOC feminists in (re)shaping feminist disability studies; the role of disability in BIPOC feminist theory; or engagements with the legacy of the late Dr. Drue Barker, a feminist economist whose work addressed caregiving as a labor issue.

  • Feminist cripistemologies (or disabled ways of knowing) in the classroom; i.e., cripping WGS through curriculum, pedagogy, accessible learning environments, service-learning projects, and community partnerships

  • Caring about WGS:

    • Strategies for developing majors, minors, and certificates in WGS and recruiting students to enroll in them – to care about feminist theories, methods, and movements – as we mark the 50th anniversary of the WGS program at USC and the 25th anniversary of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at USC Upstate.

    • Addressing the needs and well-being of students, faculty, and administrators in WGS, beyond neoliberal imperatives of self-care and campus wellness

    • Institutional histories of WGS program-building in the southeastern region

    • Reflections on the future of the field, crip or otherwise

Early Bird Deadline: November 19th, 2023

Deadline Extended to December 31st, 2023

Notifications: by January 16th, 2024

Conference Information

Program and Registration:

While we’re still working on the complete program and will make that available within the next few weeks, now is the time to register and re-up your membership in WGS South. Note – all presenters must be both registered and current members of WGS South. You can easily bundle registration and membership at our Eventbrite registration site.


We ask that you make sure you’re registered and that your membership is current by Sunday, March 17th, or else you will be dropped from the program. If you have any questions about individual or institutional membership, please contact our director of membership and outreach, Jordan Keesler, at jkeesler@umd.edu.

 

Hotel Information:

We have a block of conference rooms available at the beautiful AC Hotel in downtown Spartanburg - click here to get our conference rate.

 

Make sure to book ASAP, as this rate is only good until February 27th or until the block is booked up. There are several other good places to stay in Spartanburg at various price points. We’d recommend the Spartanburg Marriott or, for less pricey place closer to campus, the Best Western Spartanburg Northwest.

 Note: Most Spartanburg hotels are a drive away from the USC-Upstate campus. Folks attending should plan on driving to and from campus, or utilizing a rideshare service like Lyft or Uber.

Transportation:

For folks flying in, you have two options: the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport or the much larger Charlotte International Airport, which is a bit over an hour away from Spartanburg. We suspect most folks will be driving in, though – one of the great perks of having this year’s conference in Spartanburg is that it’s super central for the broader Southeastern region.

Parking:

There is abundant parking on the USC-Upstate Campus. Attendees may park in any of the commuter lots, which are marked with yellow signage.

Tech:

All four breakout rooms will be equipped with A/V technology, but the tech specialists advise presenters to bring your own laptop devices. Most breakout rooms will not have a laptop, but will have technology to project slides from your device to a screen. These rooms will also have clickers for those who prefer to advance slides in that way. You will be able to log on to the university wifi, but my advice to you is to minimize reliance on wifi during your presentations. If you plan to show a clip of something, try to download it to your computer if possible to avoid time lags that may occur when streaming directly from the internet.

Food:

Coffee - A modest offering of coffee and pastries will be provided all three mornings of the conference in the Campus Life Center Ballroom. This will be on a first come first serve basis.

Campus Cafeteria/Deli/Coffee – The cafeteria is on the first floor of the Campus Life Center where much of the conference will take place. This is a good option for breakfast, lunch, and/or early dinner. One breakout room will be in the Health Ed Complex, and there is a Boar's Head Deli on that hallway. We have a Starbucks on campus in the Library.

Off Campus Food: There is an independent coffee shop in town (Little River Coffee Bar and Hub City Bookshop are directly across the road from the AC Hotel). For those who want to take their meals off campus, a brief list of suggestions will be made available. Most restaurants will be downtown, so expect meals off campus to take enough time to account for 15 minutes of car travel each way. Some highlights for me are the two Thai food spots: Lime Leaf and Lemongrass. There are a few spots closer to campus, including Wade's, a beloved southern home cooking spot on North Pine Street. As the list of suggestions will indicate, you may also want to consider a trip to the Beacon, which I think of as Spartanburg's answer to The Varsity in Atlanta.

Catered Meal: The only meal that will be catered for the full conference group is the business luncheon on Friday, March 29. A local BBQ spot will cater that lunch (Carolina BBQ, voted best barbeque in SC by Southern Living Magazine). Boxed lunches with veggie wraps and sides will be provided by Sodexo catering for vegan and vegetarian participants.

Caucus Receptions: During the lunch breaks on the other two days, I have scheduled caucus receptions: BIPOC Caucus (Thurs), LGBTQ Caucus (Sat). The catering will be savory finger foods and may be sufficient for lunch. The Student Caucus takes place on Saturday afternoon, and the catering for that one will be fruits and sweets.

Facilities:

Quiet Room – Media 243: This is the Center for Women's and Gender Studies. You'll find dimmable lights and tables to sit and read or close your eyes. It is tucked away on a quiet hallway with almost no foot traffic.

All Gender Bathrooms - This is an issue I have worked on for a long time, and progress has been slow. We have two gender neutral bathrooms that I know of. One is in the Library and one is in the Campus Life Center, behind the ballroom and near the breakout room CLC 317. We will have signs on the walls to remind you of this location. I am exploring the question of whether there is a private bathroom (single stall) in the other building where we have a breakout room. More to come on that.

Exercise – HEC: Your conference badge gives you access to the Spartan Rec Fitness Center in the Health Ed Complex. You'll find an indoor track for walking, as well as an indoor pool, exercise equipment, and any group exercise classes being offered across those three days. Download the USC Upstate Spartan Rec app from your app store to view the schedule. I may also be able to add yoga sessions in a few spots on the schedule. They are marked as tentative in the program draft.

Panel Run-of-Show Information:

Each panel/roundtable will be one hour and fifteen minutes in length. If you are presenting a paper on a panel, we ask that you cap your presentation at 15 minutes to enable a substantial q-and-a period following the presentations. We are also asking for folks to plan on (briefly!) introducing themselves prior to presenting and moving in the order listed on the program (unless the panelists decide otherwise on the fly).

Accessibility Notes

We are asking participants to help us make the conference a fragrance-free space. Please refrain from wearing any perfume, using fragranced laundry detergent/dryer sheets, and applying any personal care products that contain fragrances—such as lotion, deodorant, and hair products.

We are also asking that attendees mask (unless presenting or eating) and test negative for Covid-19 prior to attending to the conference.

There will be a quiet space with low/non-flourescent lighting available for participants.

Sensory Needs: Fidget devices will be available in all four breakout rooms. We will also have lamps available to keep those spaces dim and cozy (or at least cozy-adjacent!). Please engage collaboratively by letting people know if you need a room to feel different from the state you find it in and work together to problem-solve in the event of an accommodations conflict. At this conference, my hope is that no one will silently endure something without enlisting me, other conference guides, or other conference participants in exploring possible changes that will make your experience more enjoyable and more possible.

Disability Accommodations: I am working with our Disability Services office on setting up captioning and ASL translators for the three keynotes and the plenary session. One breakout room is equipped with mics and a sound system that will support the use of handheld microphones by audience members, but we are DIYing the other breakout rooms by bringing our personal karaoke machines! Please use microphones to pose questions or make comments as presenters and audience members. This amplification helps everyone's voices travel more effectively and precisely so that people with hearing impairments (and people in general) can pick up all the details of what's being said, especially important when the acoustics are tricky.

Disability Caucus Launch: There will be signup sheets at the conference for those who want to be founding members of the new caucus. Nominations (including self-nominations) for the Disability Caucus President can be sent to Hil Malatino at hmalatino@psu.edu.

Call for Papers by Caucus

  • Trans and Queer Existence in a Time of Rising Authoritarianism

    Trans and queer existence is under attack in the United States and in many places around the globe, particularly in the Southern US and the global south. In 2023 alone, more than 566 anti-trans and anti-queer bills have been introduced in 49 states. 80 have passed, and 358 are actively moving forward today, driven by conservative legislatures and non-profit groups. These bills banned gender-affirming care for minors (and even some adults) in some states. These same bills provide an exception for the performance of medically unnecessary, non-consensual “normalizing” surgeries and hormone treatments on intersex infants and youth. Additionally, these bills bar trans people from participating in k-12 and collegiate athletics. They subject parents to investigation by child protective services and can potentially remove children from their parents if they provide gender-affirming care. They mandate that trans people only use the restroom that corresponds with their sex assigned at birth. They also ban the teaching of gender and sexuality in k-12 education and bar teachers from using a student’s preferred pronouns and nickname if it differs from the name listed on their birth certificate. Taken together, these coordinated attacks on trans and queer kids and adult’s rights to healthcare, education, bodily autonomy, and self- determination exemplify the authoritarian turn in contemporary conservative politics. This turn is grounded in an unscientific, strictly dimorphic sex binary which understands male and female differences as absolute and unchangeable, and is in turn based on colonial, eugenic, and sexological assumptions about the nature of human bodies that have been proven not only inaccurate but also harmful in trans and queer studies time and time again. This political moment calls for renewed interdisciplinary analytical attention to the stakes and outcomes of efforts to legislate trans and queer folks out of existence. At the same time, the moment is ripe for thinking critically about strategies of resistance, solidarity, and social transformation.

    This year’s LGBTQ Caucus welcomes creative and critical papers that provide new perspectives on the growing momentum of anti-trans and anti-queer political energies, as well as the resistance movements minoritized communities are building to counter them. What lessons do trans studies and queer theory offer for reconceptualizing the political climate and political economy of LGBTQ life under an increasingly authoritarian state? How is anti-trans and anti-queer sentiment shaped by racial capitalism, white nationalism,. the unequal distribution of life chances and health outcomes under neoliberalism, environmental devastation, and misinformation and disinformation? How can trans studies and queer theory help us to craft: new models of care and communal resistance to administrative and other forms of violence; new strategies of organizing and opposition; new forms of mutual aid and coalition across our many differences; and new articulations of the affects and politics that might be useful for intervening in what otherwise feels like an utterly depressing state of affairs?

    The WGS South LGBTQ Caucus invites papers that address these or related questions.

    Please submit paper proposals using the button below.

    Please submit questions to WGS South Caucus Chair David A. Rubin at davidarubin@usf.edu.

  • BIPOC + QTPOC Care Practice

    In the Womanist Reader edited by Layli Maparyan, Vanessa Sheared and Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant express the ethics of care and the maternal form of caring that is essential within education. They both contend in their essays the ways educational researchers and theorists focus on care, and what that means for educational practitioners. Both authors take a Womanist perspective to education, articulating how it is essential to employ methods of care within the classroom that connects to Black culture. Vanessa Sheared points to the ethics of caring that focuses on dialogue, or a call and response reality that many Black folks are familiar with. Beauboeuf-Lafontant uncovers the ways othermothering assists with promoting an ethic of care, particularly when employed by Black women. BIPOC and QTPOC persons have and continue to carry on the tradition of caring and othermothering in their prospective communities. The question becomes, what additional elements of caring and othermothering do BIPOC and QTPOC employ to address the societal obstacles BIPOC and QTPOC persons face? In what ways do BIPOC folks reconceptualize what care means for their communities? How do BIPOC persons contribute to care, mothering, disability and ability studies?

    As we continue on the discussion of care and crip feminisms for the WGS South conference in 2024, the BIPOC caucus is looking for papers and discussions that uncover the ways BIPOC and QTPOC persons engage in care and discussions of ability. With the remnants of COVID-19, limitation of abortion rights, and high cost of living, how are BIPOC and QTPOC persons engaging in discussions of care and ability/disabilities to combat these societal obstacles. Topics include but not limited to the following areas and questions:

    What additional methods of care and mothering do BIPOC and QTPOC persons employ to liberate their prospective communities?

    In what ways do BIPOC and QTPOC incorporate specific cultural elements (racial, ethnic, geographic, religious, etc) when engaging in care and ability/disability studies?

    In what ways do BIPOC and QTPOC persons use care and discussions of ability/disability as a method of activism?

    In what ways do BIPOC and QTPOC persons adopt care and ability/disability within discussions of reproductive freedom?

    In what ways do BIPOC and QTPOC persons expose ethics of care within disability studies?

    In what ways do Black feminist/womanist studies provide new frameworks related to ethics of care and ability/disability studies?

    In what ways does mothering and othermothering manifest in BIPOC and QTPOC communities?

    In what ways do BIPOC persons challenge what is traditionally understood as ability and disability?

    The WGS South BIPOC Caucus invites papers that address these or other related questions. Please submit paper proposals using the button below.

    Please submit any questions to WGS South BIPOC Caucus Chair Jayme Canty at cantyj@vcu.edu

  • Discovering & Utilizing Disability Studies

    In his influential book simply entitled Disability Theory, Tobin Siebers argues that disability studies can help us overcome the negative effects of the ideology of ability. According to Siebers, the ideology of ability is, at its simplest, “the preference for able-bodiedness” and, at its most radical, capable of defining the “baseline by which humanness is determined.” This ideology often negatively depicts disability as a “physical or mental defect.” Meanwhile, disability studies scholars like Siebers endeavor to reframe disability as an identity which is not shameful or automatically negative. Siebers believes that disability studies can counter the negative connotations produced by the ideology of ability by transforming critical and cultural theorists’ assumptions about identity, ideology, politics, meaning, social injustice, and the body. One way disability studies can radically reframe traditional ways of thinking is by highlighting the importance of embodiment, which is often overlooked. Scholars may also consider how disability and embodiment figure in identity politics by viewing disability as a “minority identity” akin to race and gender. As the WGS South 2024 conference highlights crip futures, gendered ableism, disability justice, and feminist cripistemologies in the classroom, we find ourselves asking: What theories about ableism and disability are students discussing in their classes? Or incorporating into their research? And how are students engaging with questions of disabled, gendered, and/or racialized embodiment?

    WGS South wants to cultivate student work on these topics, even if a student has only just begun thinking about these questions. As a result, the 2024 student caucus will be structured as a seminar. This seminar invites undergraduate students, graduate students, and professors who are newly interested in disability studies and theory, to submit “work in progress” proposals. These works in progress must be research related to the ideology of ability, disability theory, and/or questions of embodiment. As works in progress, applicants are encouraged to submit work that is partially complete or recently “finished.” We hope the seminar will be a space for useful feedback and conversation to help students develop their research ideas as they relate to disability studies. We are especially interested in applicants who research media representations of disability, how animals influence embodiment, and the role of disabled identity within activism. Accepted participants will be asked to circulate short papers (3-6 pages) that highlight their early research findings, methodology, and/or ideas to other seminar participants. Prior to the conference, all seminar participants will review these short papers so we can best utilize the seminar time to discuss the ideas presented.

    Please submit paper proposals using the button below.

    Please submit any questions to WGS South Student Caucus Chair Gabrielle McCoy at gmccoy@email.sc.edu

Register!

 

Questions? Visit www.wgssouth.org