Eastern Mediterranean Feminism / CfP

Call for Papers for an upcoming conference at Bogazici University, Istanbul Turkey June 7-9, 2013. The conference is entitled: Changing Feminist Paradigms and Cultural Encounters: Women’s Experiencesin Eastern Mediterranean History in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Changing feminist paradigms refers to a shift from a Turkish-oriented historiography of women’s experiences to an emphasis on diversity in both the late Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. Scholarship has come a long way in producing “women’s histories,” but feminist critiques of national historiography and challenges to the conventional periodization of Ottoman-Turkish historical narrative are tasks yet to be undertaken. With this conference, we encourage scholars to tackle these tasks and, in the process, to reconsider and reformulate key terms and concepts introduced by feminist scholars in North America. In addition, we hope this conference will rethink interactions between feminist activism and scholarship with the purpose of bringing new perspectives to women’s and gender history in the Middle East and around the world. We welcome papers on such topics as: efforts to canonize the field // challenges to existing chronologies of nationalist historiographies // links between and legacies of the Ottoman and post-Ottoman worlds // sources for researching women’s and gender history //the impact of emergent nation-states on diverse women’s // experiences in the region // binaries between public and private, state and society, tradition and modern, etc., and the ways these binaries are reproduced or challenged by "emancipatory projects" // the interaction between women’s activism and scholarship on women’s history // historical patterns of women’s activism in the region // the potential of activism to bring new perspectives to women’s studies and vice versa // different forms of feminism in the history of the modern Middle East // rethinking women's “agency” in the realms of crime, health, sexuality, and urban life// . Because we are planning for discussions on the relationship between scholarship and activism, we also look forward to submissions from feminist activists in the wider region of the Middle East. If you would like to present at this conference, we ask that you submit a short summary of your proposed paper, or contribution, of around 1,000 words, along with an updated curriculum vitae by January 15, 2013. Submissions should be sent to the conference coordinator, Professor Gulhan Balsoy, via email at gerkaya@gmail.com.We will be able to defray some travel and hotel expenses for conference participants but ask that each person chosen to participate seek other funding. Scholars with college or university appointments should, for example, request funds from their home institutions. We hope to publish select papers in a special issue of the Journal of Women’s History. Both the conference and the potential special issue represent a unique and pioneering collaboration between an American-based journal (one devoted to publishing the best work in the international field of women's history) and women's historians in the Middle East. //Gulhan Balsoy, Independent Scholar // Elisa Camiscioli, Binghamton University, New York, Book Review Editor, JWH // Arzu Ozturkmen, Boğaziçi University // Jean Quataert, Binghamton University, New York, co-editor, JWH // Benita Roth, Binghamton University, New York, Associate Editor, JWH // Basak Tug, Istanbul Bilgi University //Leigh Ann Wheeler, Binghamton University, New York, co-editor, JWH //