CALL FOR PAPERS OPEN 21st of March 2019 – 30th of April
Gender Studies 2019 Conference: On Violence
24th of October – 26th of October 2019
University of Helsinki, Finland
We welcome paper proposals for the Gender Studies 2019 Conference: On Violence. The Call is open until the 30th of April, 2019. We warmly invite scholars from a variety of locations in the Global North and South to participate in the discussions on violence.
We welcome paper proposals for the wide range of workshops featured on the program. We have 39 workshops that approach multiple aspects of violence and widely represent the multidisciplinary field of gender, sexuality, queer, trans, disability, postcolonial, and critical race studies. The full list of workshops is provided below.
How to submit a paper to Gender Studies 2019 Conference: On Violence
Please select a workshop that best suits your research interests from the list below.
We invite you to submit paper abstracts in English or Finnish. You will find the list of workshops in Finnish at the end of the page.
After selecting the appropriate workshop, proceed to submit your paper proposal using this e-form: https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/97041/lomake.html
On the e-form you are asked to provide:
- Your name and affiliation
- 250-word paper abstract including the title
- Select a workshop from the provided list
- Select category ‘other’ If you do not find a suitable workshop
Before submitting, please make sure to check the specific requirements of your chosen workshop and note that you should not submit the same abstract for more than one workshop.
The submitted paper proposals will be sent to the workshop organizers, who will select the papers to be presented in the workshops. Depending on the number of submissions, decisions of acceptance will be made towards the end of May.
The final submission deadline for paper proposals is the 30th of April.
Guidelines for abstracts:
In writing the abstract, please keep in mind the theme of the conference and the specific requirements of the workshop you wish to submit your paper for. Many workshops invite activist and artistic presentations in addition to academic papers.
All abstracts should clearly communicate; (1) how the proposal is related to the theme of the workshop and (2) the main ideas and key points of the proposed presentation. Abstracts should be no more than 250 words (2000 characters including spaces) in length.
Please include the main research question, outline methodology/methods, research materials/data and preliminary outcomes if the proposal is an academic research paper.
WORKSHOP ABSTRACTS
1. Anniina Jokinen
Challenges in studying THB and violence against (migrant) women & children
2. Rachel Alsop and Esme Madill
Gender Based Violence in New Migrant Communities
3. Juha Holma
Gender in treatment of intimate partner violence
4. Luisa Schneider
Experiences of violence without regular shelter or in supervised housing
5. Pam Alldred and Barbara Biglia
Approaches to Tackling Gender-Related Violence
7. Tiina Vaittinen and Catia C. Confortini
Gender, global health and violence: Feminist perspectives
9. Marianna Muravyeva and Alexander Kondakov
Gender, Sexuality, and Violent Spaces
13. Anna Avdeeva and Anna M. Heinonen
Violence on/by Matters
15. Eric Bergman
Deconstructing Narratives of Violence and Intersectionalism
16. José Loureiro
Anti-feminist Currents in Latin America
17. Sara Tafakori and Sabiha Allouche
Affect and Violence: Gendering the Middle East
18. Jonna Katto and Hinni Aarninsalo
Narrativizing Gendered Violence in African Contexts
21. Olga Jurasz and Kim Barker
Online violence against women: the antithesis of gender equality?
23. Louna Hakkarainen
Gendered Violence in a Digital Age
24. Antu Sorainen and Paul Boyce
Queer Grief, Death as Violence?
25. Stephen Kerry
Trans Violence and the Global South
27. Julian Honkasalo and Tuija Pulkkinen
On violence in the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt
29. Nelli Ruotsalainen
White feminists, Anti-Racism and Privilege
30. Katariina Kyrölä and Tuija Huuki
Indigeneity, gender, violence and activism
31. Linda Hart and Marjo Rantala
Legitimised and institutionalised violence, gender and sexuality
32. Marita Husso and Suvi Ronkainen
Naming and Experiencing Violence
33. Marita Husso, Sanna Karkulehto and Tuija Saresma
Violence and affect
37. Henri Hyvönen and Hanna Ojala
Miehiä ja maskuliinisuuksia
ENGLISH
1. Anniina Jokinen
Challenges in studying THB and violence against (migrant) women & children
This workshop discusses different methodological and conceptual challenges encountered when conducting action-oriented research on different forms of human trafficking and gender-based violence. The presenters discuss the topic in the context of the recent projects implemented at the European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control (HEUNI). Due to the hidden and cross-border nature of these crimes, the vulnerable position of the victims (e.g. migrants, children and youth), various ethical issues and the complex definition of human trafficking, studying these phenomena is challenging. To overcome such difficulties, various different data collection methods have been used and developed at HEUNI to collect multifaceted data from a variety of sources concentrating on finding information beyond existing data and official information. The research has e.g. focused on capturing the experiences of practitioners who have come into contact with these phenomena at the grass-root level and exploring their insights e.g. vis-à-vis definitional problems encountered and solutions developed. For example, in one project, inspired by the concept of co-creation, counsellors providing services to migrant women with experiences of gender-based violence were asked to keep weekly journals outlining their encounters with the women whom they assist.
2. Rachel Alsop and Esme Madill
Gender Based Violence in New Migrant Communities
The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners from a range of countries working on gender based violence in new migrant communities. While violence against women and girls (VAWG) cuts across all groups of women regardless of class, ethnicity, race, religion, sexuality and nationality, research indicates that migrant, asylum seeking and refugee women who are outside of their country of origin are especially at risk of gender-based violence (Rights of Women 2011: 5; see also Pillai 2001; Menjivar and Salcido 2002; Anitha 2010). Research suggests, for example, that asylum seeking and refugee women in the UK are more likely to be victims of rape and sexual assault and more prone to be subjected to domestic violence (Refugee Council 2009; Anitha 2011; Hubbard et al 2013). Current research focuses in the main on GBV in established migrant communities. What we are interested in here is exploring further the particular and varied issues facing women in newly arrived as opposed to established migrant communities. Our work with Albanian women in London suggests firstly that women in new migrant communities are particularly isolated and as a result have additional difficulties accessing mainstream GBV services; and secondly that there is a lack of research in this area. This workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners from the Global South and Global North working on gender based violence in new migrant communities to learn from each other’s research, and to share ideas as to how best tackle gender based violence in newly arrived migrant communities.
3. Juha Holma
Gender in treatment of intimate partner violence
This workshop focuses on how gender roles influence in treatment of intimate partner violence and how new kind of gender roles are constructed in treatment. The aim is to present research on how traditional masculine identity is linked to violent behavior. The workshop is for researchers as well as practitioners.
4. Luisa Schneider
Experiences of violence without regular shelter or in supervised housing
Much research has been done to expose how socioeconomically marginalised people and those with special needs are disproportionally affected by a continuum of violence. This workshop seeks to expand our limited understanding of how intimate partner violence and structural violence affects those without regular housing. In most countries, privacy and intimacy are basic rights. Privacy is defined spatially as the non-public sphere, the domestic arena, the family circle and private life, and the right to intimacy includes sexuality and sexual life. However, these notions of privacy and intimacy as well as the processes in place to protect persons from intimate partner violence are based on living circumstances wherein the private sphere is separated from the public sphere through one’s home. How is intimacy and privacy experienced among persons who live under conditions which do not allow for this spatial separation? How are privacy and intimate relationships experienced and lived without regular shelter and what role does violence and its response play in the intimate relationships of persons who live on the streets, in temporary accommodations, camps, shelters, care homes, prisons, mental health facilities etc? This workshop seeks contributions who analyse such violence in both theory and practice, who trace the experiences of persons or groups in such housing circumstances, their relationships with each other and/or with states, supervisors and law enforcement.
5. Pam Alldred and Barbara Biglia
Approaches to Tackling Gender-Related Violence
This call is for papers that share experiences of applying innovative methods to address problems that might be included under the term gender related violence. By gender related violence we mean sexist, sexualizing or norm driven bullying harassment and violence whoever is targeted (Alldred et al, 2014). We preferred this more political definition of violence than the WHO (2002)s intentional use of physical force or power & for its ability to problematise any forms of violence produced by the Gender Order, including structural or political violence, and including homophobic or transphobic violence, alongside violence against women or girls. However, the we in question here (four Partners on a European Union co-funded Project) discovered we had applied the definition differently in our different contexts. Alldred and Biglia worked together on the GAP Work Project (https://sites.brunel.ac.uk/gap), which developed and piloted training to support youth practitioners to tackle gender related violence – applying this definition in different locations (Catalunya and England) in 2014-15. Each have their own reflections on the value of the definition, for their analysis and for the youth practitioner trainees. We can also comment on the value for addressing LGBT+ equalities and encourage others to too. We invite participants to discuss the strategic value or limitations of such a broad definition. It is hoped that diverse projects, from differing contexts, will share reflections on their political and perhaps also methodological strategies. We will collectively consider definitions and wider strategies in their respective contexts.
6. Federica Castelli, Chiara Belingardi and Serena Olcuire
Gender-based violence and urban spaces. From security to self-determination
In the latest years feminist movements from all over the world have gathered in a shared struggle against violence against women, speaking out against patriarchal system precluding womens freedom and self-determination. Women have gathered in a huge wave of protests: sharing experiences, practices and reflections, and acting together. Violence has been identified in each factor that hampers freedom in women lives: patriarchal violence is not just physical, but structural, and today it is more pervasive than ever – due to neoliberal policies, austerity, precarity, and borders proliferation. This struggle against men violence against women lead us toward the urgency of a rethinking of forms of structural violence arising from urban space, and open up a collective debate between activists and scholars from different academic disciplines. The victimizing idea that confines women to play the only role of possible objects of violence, securitarian discourses and policies, populist rhetorics on urban decay and urban decency, dynamics of fragmentation and privatization marking neoliberal cities: all these factors produce expulsion from public space and confinement in the domestic, private, space. But cities are not, fortunately, a fait accompli: they are the result of different practices and uses of those who live it, re-shaping it according to their desires, re-inventing it with everyday actions; the city can be also a dispositif of re-appropriation, legitimization, and freedom. The workshop aim to to pinpoint and criticize the securitarian approaches to cities, that make the link among women, violence and cities, a victimizing and subjectivating paradigm, which is both oppressive and normative. We expect papers rooted in a critical approaches to urban policies, and focused on women self-determined practices in new, shared visions of the city.
7. Tiina Vaittinen and Catia C. Confortini
Gender, global health and violence: Feminist perspectives
This workshop seeks papers that examine different forms of violence in gendered global health. Violence in this context should be understood widely as both direct (physical, mental, or threatened), and indirect (e.g. structural, cultural, slow, symbolic, epistemic), including instances of injustice. We are particularly interested in papers that examine entanglements of violence in specific gendered phenomena in global health, and papers that utilise feminist understandings of violence as analytical tools to understand the complexities of injustice imbued in global health. The papers may explore the interconnection between global health and violence through a number of topics, including, but not limited to: non-communicable and infectious diseases; reproductive health; environment and climate change; global health governance; commodification and marketisation of health and social care; ageing and disability issues; war, armed conflict and militarism; weapons and weapon technology; humanitarian interventions and human rights; sports and sports medicine; gender and sexuality; migration and mobility; intimate violence; feminist science and technology; incarceration; ethics of care and care practices. We welcome both theoretical and empirical approaches from a variety of critical disciplinary and inter-disciplinary perspectives and methodologies.
8. Liiri Oja and Hedda Lippus
Mapping and measuring cultures of violence in sexual & reproductive health care
Our workshop facilitates an interdisciplinary exploration of violence in sexual and reproductive health care contexts through two underexplored themes. First, we are interested in research which instead of focusing on one single reproductive or sexual rights issue explores larger health, gender & violence narratives that impact the rules governing women’s sexuality and their bodies that in turn give way to obstetric and reproductive violence. How do harmful narratives become the building blocks of cultures of violence? What are the acceptable scripts for women: how portraying women as dangerous, misbehaving and with poor judgment makes medical paternalism acceptable, forced treatments excusable, violence inevitable? Further, how to create spaces of meaningful listening & transformative narratives in contexts of violence? Secondly, we hope to attract researchers who explore questions about knowledge production and methodology: what kind of human rights & public health research is needed to eliminate violence against women and girls? What are the weaknesses/strengths of the measuring tools currently used? Can countries be compared? How do politics impact data? How to measure reproductive violence without re-victimisation? How to carry out research in contexts of resistance and misogyny? Our workshop is open to all disciplines and backgrounds: we invite papers but also creative submissions that surprise us in their form. With our experience in the art of facilitation we aim to be unscholarly, disruptive, or mad (H. Charlesworth), unlock the potential in all projects and create some trouble on behalf of women (N. Ephron).
9. Marianna Muravyeva and Alexander Kondakov
Gender, Sexuality, and Violent Spaces
This workshop aims at exploration of space and gendered and sexual violence. Classical social science literature suggests that violence is related to spaces in many different aspects. The space of domestic violence against women, for example, is the privacy of human homes, while spaces of LGBTQI bashing are usually thought of as urban public sites. Various studies also explore urban spatiality in respect to commercial sex venues and the violence that occurs there. We invite contributions in these areas of enquiry domestic violence, crimes against queer people and sex workers that explore spatial dimensions of unfolding violent interactions. In this vein, we welcome anthropological (in a broad sense of the term) quests across known places of violence, criminological studies of crime scenes, and theoretical considerations of the interconnectedness between space, gender, sexuality, and violence. On the one hand, we propose to challenge once again the boundary between private and public spaces to further feminist critique of dichotomous spatiality of modern societies. On the other hand, we are also interested to learn from actual experiences that occur in those spaces of violence. In this conversation, theory will meet empirical research. Some particular questions of this wide topic include the following. How does the division in private and public spaces undermines the idea of privacy as a shelter, given frequency of gender violence in private settings? How public are actual experiences of LGBTQI bashing and does the strict spatial dichotomy adequately describe violence against queer populations? What kinds of spatial justice regimes are established in urban spaces that allow for violence against sex workers? These questions, among others, seek to advance our understanding of relations between sociality and spatiality that would offer new perspectives on gendered and sexual violence.
10. Laura Shepherd, Sarai Aharoni and Annick T. R. Wibben
Interrogating Violence in the Women, Peace and Security Agenda
The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, deriving from the sequence of UN Security Council resolutions adopted under the same title, includes violence prevention among its primary aims. How violence is understood within the WPS agenda, however, is not often interrogated, although the resolutions that form the policy architecture of the agenda describe many different forms of violence, and many different forms of violence are implicitly or explicitly discussed in the national policy documents that flow from the UN resolutions. This workshop offers the opportunity to explore and problematise the conceptualisation and representation of violence in the WPS agenda, extending beyond a focus on conflict-related sexual violence to include economic violence, structural violence, and the many ways in which violence spans temporal and spatial demarcations to persist across war and peace, affecting individuals and communities. Contributions to the workshop will also examine the kinds of violence made possible by the Women, Peace and Security agenda, linking WPS activities with governance and carceral feminisms that render permissible certain kinds of violence against certain subjects. The normalisation of violence against particular bodies, and the constitution of subject-positions through discourses of violence (including perpetrators, extremists, victims, protectors, and experts), will also be subjected to critical scrutiny.
11. Noemí Pérez Vásquez and Liiri Oja
Tracing violence in transitional justice: reproduction & gender narratives
Many (feminist) scholars have actively critiqued the lack of gender lens in transitional justice processes. Further, R. Vijeyarasa wrote in 2009, how reproductive rights and reproduction in general do not receive enough attention in post-conflict development agendas. Our workshop is fuelled by the same concern: where are reproductive rights, involving forced pregnancy, abortion, contraception, sexuality education, and reproductive violence in transitional justice conversations? We approach this question broadly, as we understand reproductive rights not just through lists of violations or services & specific entitlements, but through power relationships and gender narratives. Therefore, we aim to bring together different transitional justice experiences-examples, and analyse, how specific (contested) constructions of truth, violence, silencing and victimhood have shaped the reproduction and health narratives currently present in such societies. Furthermore, we would like to investigate how cultures of silencing and shame intersecting with legacies of colonialism, dictatorships and mass atrocities impact definitions of violence, women’s reproductive and sexual rights. We invite participants to make observations about the strength of feminist movements in countries that have applied transitional justice mechanisms, and to investigate how cultures & religions have shaped women’s experiences during and after a conflict, occupation or large scale of violence. What has happened to women’s bodies? Which roles are assigned to/enforced on women? We explore disconnects between legislation, implementation of law, and women’s lived experiences. We hope to attract participants working on transitional justice from different angles across disciplines (from human rights to collective memory studies; from the “usual suspects” such as Colombia to “unexpected” examples such as Estonia). With an interactive format we offer a space for collaborative working & creativity.
12. Kadri Aavik, Milla-Maria Joki and Saara Kupsala
Violence against non-human animals: intersectional perspectives
This workshop examines violence towards non-human animals. Examining and rethinking (violent) human-animal relations is especially pertinent in the Anthropocene an era where human beings are profoundly transforming the planet. Human-induced phenomena, such as climate change, have significant, and often damaging, consequences for the wellbeing of ecosystems, as well as for numerous humans and non-human animals living on Earth. The workshop invites to examine how violence in human-animal relations is manifested in its various forms. We particularly welcome papers that take an intersectional perspective to analyse how categories such as gender, race, class, and ability, are configured in violence towards non-human animals. We also encourage papers to engage with questions of how to end violence against non-human animals and positively transform human-animal relations. We invite papers from ecofeminist, posthumanist, critical animal studies, postcolonial and other critical perspectives to consider how violence towards animals figures in discourses as well as in material practices, such as food practices. The workshop is organised by the project Climate Sustainability in the Kitchen: Everyday Food Cultures in Transition at the University of Helsinki.
13. Anna Avdeeva and Anna M. Heinonen
Violence on/by Matters
Our workshop «Violence on/by Matters» invites scholars, artists, and activists dealing with issues of violence imposed by matters or on the matters. The workshop intends to provide a platform for multidisciplinary discussions over how violence is caused or could be brought into being by non-human and non-living agents and actors. We are also interested in elaborating on how these non-human and non-living inanimate actors influence, contribute to, or become a target of variegated forms of violence. Drawing on theoretical approaches and concepts developed in the fields of science and technology studies, actor-network theory, and new materialism we consider nonhuman and nonliving matters both as objects and subjects of action. As multiple studies of phenomena such as assisted reproductive technologies, climate change, and computational technologies have shown, social and societal realities are significantly influenced and constructed through human interactions with objects of the material world. These interactions require deliberate analysis and theoretical comprehension, especially in cases when they become tightly connected to different forms of violence. Within the framework of Violence on/by Matters workshop we would like to discuss violence in regard to the following subjects, phenomena and themes: body, nature, living landscapes and premises, hi-tech and everyday devices, climate, the anthropogenic factors. We are looking for the analytical comprehension of the contemporary challenges and specifics of violence over and by the non-human actors, its short-term and long-term consequences, and the possible ways of resisting it. We are especially interested in artistic works and research informed by feminist thought, gender studies and intersectional perspective. We welcome 15-minutes presentations on the discussed topics.
14. Suzy Ameen, Sepideh Rahaa and Milka Njoroge
Of Racialised Others: Intersectional Feminist Solidarity in A Room of Our Own
Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, this workshop is a literal and figurative room of our own where intersectionality and solidarity are possible. In this room, we create a safe space that welcomes uncensored self-expression and explores the ways feminist practices could be intersectional. In predominantly white feminist circles, violence is often discussed as an alien notion that happens “over there”. Yet many non-white bodies are experiencing discursive violence and discriminatory practices “over here”. Facing micro and macro aggressions on a daily basis takes its toll on bodies and minds that are further shamed for bringing race into feminist discussions. As Sara Ahmed points out in Living a Feminist Life; by talking about the problem, we become the problem. It is as though by seeing race, we see a ghost invisible to most white bodies. Mere mention of the ghost upsets and unsettles, it causes tears and breakdowns. In many rooms, emotions remain intimidating and undefined, suspended in a cloud of shame, silence and confusion. This confusion perhaps arises from the lack of a discursive space and an appropriate language to articulate what it is exactly that happens, and how it happens. Following in the footsteps of Woolf and Ahmed, we explore a different language not limited by linearity and predictability, pushing our creative capacities, engaging in affective interactions, and taking the specificity of our lived realties into consideration. This workshop is an invitation to all feminists fighting battles that intersect with race and othering. We invite you to share your experiences and engage in discussions on racialisation, epistemic violence, whiteness, intersectional and decolonial feminism, marginality, dissidence, agency, and solidarity. We invite artists, writers, scholars, and activists to participate. Presentations could take the form of poetry, prose, speech, performance, short video/film, paper, or any other medium of communication.
15. Eric Bergman
Deconstructing Narratives of Violence and Intersectionalism
This workshop will investigate violence in narratives: how it is created and represented, how it can be deconstructed, and what ends motivate the narrative depiction of violence. Of specific interest is how intersectionality is depicted and the nexus where violence meets issues of gender, race, ethnicity, class, religion, and more (Crenshaw 1989). In addition to deconstructing the issues at the crux of intersectionality, we wish to investigate the reconstruction of the narratological and social motivations, processes, possibilities, and problematics that result from that intersection. Narrative is someone telling someone else about something, in James Phelan’s succinct terms (2017). Narrative, in this sense, includes: books, films, TV shows, oral history, medical narratives, social media and the Internet generally, and conversations. Telling stories of lived life is fundamental to our understanding of ourselves and our relationship to culture, history, and society (Phelan 2005). Stories create our sense of selfsubjectivity in all its complexity. The central question is: what happens when violence is narrated? How might that process lead us to better understand the complexity of how subjectification relates to violence? What does narrative mean for processes of trauma? Where does the narrative process lead both narrator and recipient when dealing with violence? This workshop welcomes papers on violence in all forms of narrative. The aim is to better understand the possibilities, problematics, and processes of narratives and violence through an intersectionalist understanding of subjectification.
16. José Loureiro
Anti-feminist Currents in Latin America
Anti-feminist Currents in Latin America Feminisms have advanced in a strong, consistent and decisive way and we do not think of retreating nor giving up what has been achieved in terms of gender equality, despite its being shaken by the new waves of populism and re-traditionalization of gender and sexuality around the world. Feminism in Latin America has also been making broad steps forward despite the fierce attacks that it has been suffering since its beginnings. It suffered under military dictatorships for decades, and today it faces a strong revival of traditional values via policies proclaimed mainly by far right-wing governments which conflate religion, power, and ultraconservative policies. For example, in Brazil we can cite antifeminist currents such as gender ideology (gender theory), boycott of kit for anti-homophobia (Dilma Government), the attack on Judith Butler in São Paulo in 2017 (Correa 2019), the murder of Marielle Franco in Rio de Janeiro; persecution of the gay parliamentarian Jean Wyllis, high rate of femicide; in Argentina strong vote against abortion. The aim of this workshop is to discuss the explicit anti-feminist currents and the most insidious that pervades Latin America in this grim moment of hatred, persecution, and attempts to destroy the feminist achievements. Furthermore, the workshop seeks to provide the meeting between researchers in order to strengthen the bonds and researches of common interest. Your contributions are important and will make this workshop effective. Therefore, we would like to invite practitioners, activist, writers, scholars, students and feminists to present papers. We welcome abstracts about anti-feminist currents in Latin America on the themes below, but are not limited to:
- Attacks on feminist research in the humanities and social sciences
- Cutting funding for research on gender and sexuality
- The Delegitimisation of gender studies
- Essentialist view of gender and sexuality
- Machismo
17. Sara Tafakori and Sabiha Allouche
Affect and Violence: Gendering the Middle East
The aim of the proposed workshop is to explore the role of emotions and affect in (re)presenting, normalizing and shaping the contours of gender and violence in reference to the Middle East and North Africa in particular and the global south more broadly. There has been a good deal of scholarly attention in recent years to affects around conflict, disaster, vulnerability and trauma, but largely in relation to Euro-American perspectives and theorisations. This workshop aims instead to engage with the ways in which emotional framings of violence and gender in the MENA region are shaped by the co-constitution of local and global, West and non-West, and the historical and the everyday within transnational contexts. We encourage submissions which examine in what ways the geopolitics of nationalism, (in)security, conflict and crisis in the region reinforce or complicate gendered and racialised discourses, and how the tasks of solidarity are rendered more complex and layered as a result. These concerns may be shaped by attention to the broader context of the role of epistemic violence in constructions of the region, in the biopolitics and necropolitics of managing the life and death of populations.
We welcome papers which speak to these or related issues. Contributions may address the role of affect in, for example, orientalising and racialising regimes of grievability and vulnerability; emotional narratives of gendered violence in online and/or offline popular culture, including visual mediations of violence; banal and ordinary framings of violence and gender vis-à-vis singular moments of crisis and rupture; non-Western security imaginaries; violence in collective memory and narratives of trauma; diasporic and migratory geographies of affect, gender and violence.
18. Jonna Katto and Hinni Aarninsalo
Narrativizing Gendered Violence in African Contexts
The gendered aspects of war and violence in Africa have received considerable scholarly attention, especially in the field of peace and conflict studies, but also history and anthropology. Still, it is only recently that the body and its sensory experiences have started receiving more analytical attention. In this panel we are interested in exploring the relation between the embodied experience and the narrative construction of violence.
Elaine Scarry (1985) argues that pain ‘has no voice’ and is in its very nature unshareable. Yet in our research on violent topics, such as war, socio-economic marginalization and homophobia, our interviewees attempt, at least in some part, to narrativize these bodily sensations and emotions and thus bring this intimately felt violence into public space and knowledge.
This panel invites papers from across different disciplines to discuss narratives of gendered violence in Africa. We are especially interested in the ethics of representation. What does violence do in our research narratives? Importantly, are there ways that we can subvert and challenge this violence? We are also interested in the factors that shape or make particular kinds of narratives possible. For instance, how does the public image of violence in a particular context influence the narratives of it? Finally, we encourage papers that interrogate the relationship between violence, corporeality and narrative. Proposals may also address themes and questions beyond this list.
19. Misbah Malik, Ghulam Fatima and Abid Hussain
Institutional and Institutionalized Violence in Educational Context, i.e., Child
Violence affects happiness, competencies and innate abilities of an individual. In order to avoid the consequences of violence, it is imperative to identify and control it. The main purpose of this workshop is to explore the types, underlying causes and effects of violence being done in different educational contexts around the world. This workshop is a platform for teachers, parents, caretakers of children, researchers, scholars and administrators of educational institutions to share their experiences and research findings about different types of violence happened in child care centers and different educational institutions. Empirical studies, conceptual papers, doctoral research in progress, research reports, and monographs will be accepted for oral presentation. The major themes of the workshop will include but not confined to physical violence (students mutual fighting and corporal punishment), psychological violence (verbal abuse, facial expressions, body language, gestures and threat), sexual violence including rape and sexual harassment, gender based violence, status based violence, cultural and racial violence, digital violence, all forms of bullying including cyber bullying, carrying weapons in institutions and any other type of violence. Workshop will be comprised of total 90 minutes. For oral presentation 20 minutes will be allocated to each oral presentation including question answer. Discussion session of 20 minutes will be conducted in order to reach some workable solutions to the problem and devise future agenda to control violence in educational institutions. In the end of the workshop 10 minutes will be allocated for certificate and souvenir distribution.
20. Mira Karjalainen and Marjut Jyrkinen
Organizational Violence and Violations, Gender and Blurring Boundaries of Work
This workshop invites presentations that discuss and analyse organizational violations that can take place in explicit and open forms of violence(s), such as physical violence or bullying/mobbing; or, in (sometimes) more implicit and covert forms of violations, such as social exclusions and harassment. Working life and organizations are gendered, sexualized and racialized in many ways, and often the boundaries between the institutional and intimate, and the public and private are blurred and stepped over. We address gendered violence and violations at work and in organizations that comprise of different kind of breaches of professional behaviour and discriminations. The breaches of boundaries are an increasing phenomenon in intensifying working life. Research on boundaries has shown that they shift, blur and leak between the public and private spheres. Blurring boundaries of working life have been looked at between work and non-work; work and other spheres of life; work and leisure; and, as regards lifestyle, sociability, emotions, body, looks, fitness, and spiritual labor. These forms of blurring boundaries are informed by neoliberal society, neo-individualism, and gendered ideal worker and leader. Thus we call for papers that address organizational violence and violations, for instance, in the areas of working life, management and organization, leadership, and gender studies, and in the intersections of these and other relevant research fields.
21. Olga Jurasz and Kim Barker
Online violence against women: the antithesis of gender equality?
The Internet, and digital media generally offer enormous potential as spaces where engagement, activism, and contentious issues can be debated. The ideal of an all-inclusive participatory space which is genuinely open to all is one which poses a challenge for global feminism. Online spaces and platforms – notably social media platforms – are notoriously hostile places for women who dare to share opinions or speak out against the crowd. Spaces – like microblogging site Twitter – which are ideally suited to advocacy, campaigning, and political speech are increasingly spaces where women are being shut-down and excluded from public participation. Recent studies have shown that significant percentages of women and girls have faced abuse online, particularly prevalent in social media contexts – the vast majority of such abuse being motivated by sex and gender discriminations. Sadly, the existing socio-legal structures and systems are failing to deal with this phenomenon and are instead perpetuating the harassment and discrimination now occurring online. This workshop will critically explore the issue of OVAW, non-traditional online harms, women’s online activism, and strategies to combat gender inequality online. We welcome papers that explore these issues from a range of disciplinary perspectives (including – but not limited to – politics, law, media, criminology, sociology) and contexts (international, regional, national). In order to facilitate cross-disciplinary discussions between the workshop participants, the workshop will take form of a roundtable with short presentations (6-8 minutes max.)
22. Päivi Honkatukia, Jeff Hearn and Matthew Hall
Violation of (Sexual) Intimacy in the Era of Digitalisation
Context: Intimate violence is a complex phenomenon in which emotional and other forms of non-physical coercion intertwine with physical and sexual infringements of intimacy. This complex entanglement of different forms of violence is particularly harmful with regards to victims agency (Herman, 2015). In recent years, these matters have been further complicated by digitalisation and the appearance of new forms of online sexual violences and abuses (e.g. revenge pornography, sexual abuse online, grooming). The new digital environments and social media have triggered emotionally laden discussions on sexuality-related risks, especially for young girls (e.g. sexting, sextortion). On the other hand, non-proximate sexualities, sexual identities, sexual boundaries and sexual consent have been problematised also more broadly, most obviously around #MeToo and related campaigns. Focus: The workshop addresses sensitive dynamics related to sexual/intimate/bodily integrity, borders and violence in current social and societal situations, shaped by widespread concerns on the borders of sexual intimacy especially in new digital environments. Aim: The overall aim of the workshop is to inform attempts to curb (online) sexual violence and abuse at a time of rapid gender, aged, classed, ethnic/racialised social change. Scope and audience: We welcome empirical and theoretical contributions discussing these themes in the era of global changes, such as increased migration, technologization and mediatization of social relations.
23. Louna Hakkarainen
Gendered Violence in a Digital Age
In the digital age technologies are tools as well as a context of gender-based violence. The affordances of continuously evolving devices and applications – developed and designed by a very homogeneous and privileged group of people – enable continuously evolving set of abuse tactics. At the same time, technologies and online communities offer new ways to resist violence, come together, seek support and empower. In this workshop we address the role and relevance of digital technologies in the context of intimate partner violence and have an open discussion on how to find solutions to current challenges. For example, endless digital traces and advances in GPS technology, make it very difficult to escape a controlling partner or an unwanted pursuit. Also distributing intimate images over the internet can be used to extend the harm of sexual assault and to shame or blackmail women. The use of these technologies may be difficult to spot for both victims and service providers. However, the use of technology allows also for the abuse to become more traceable. In online spaces, women, racialized and marginalised groups, feminist and anti-racist activists have an increased risk of becoming targets of sexist and misogynistic abuse that seeks to silence voices that pose a threat to traditional power structures and hierarchies. The workshop aims to bring together scholars, advocates, policymakers, designers and other practitioners from different disciplines to discuss and explore various intersections of technology and gender-based violence; politics of technologies and design; questions related to democracy, freedom of speech and equal digital citizenship; privacy; legislation; the future of digital sexualised violence; and the possibility of political engagements, activism and resistance.
24. Antu Sorainen and Paul Boyce
Queer Grief, Death as Violence?
Death may be understood as a form of violence; not only if a death has occurred violently but also with respect to ruptures in worlds of those left behind. Grief might also be imagined as a container of violence. Queer life-worlds might be imaged similarly: vessels of many losses. These may be associated, for example, with legacies of HIV and AIDS for contemporary generations. Similarly, resurgent (re-) criminalization of queer subjects in many global contexts evoke hauntings of prior violations enacted anew. Against this background, we seek contributions that tell stories of vehemence toward queer subjects and bodies but which also open up the analytical device of queer violence to explore intimate political-economies of the contemporary. We ask: if queer subjects are imagined in respect of abjection, are queer life-worlds then always recursive with defilement and loss, via both state sanctioned actions and (their connected) micro-aggressions? In these terms, we also seek papers that might explore grief as queer necropolitical affect. Extending out of these concerns we seek to explore autobiographical narratives of queer grief. Yet we intend not only to give voice to such stories but to also explore the epistemological and transformative potential of their (re-)telling. By this we mean to evoke ways in which queer(y)ing accounts of grieving might open out new perspectives on the persistent presence of violence as an attribute of queer ways of being. Should sites such as families, childrens homes, schools, institutions of higher education, hospitals, military or prisons, where queer grief and loss inevitably occur, be newly empirically studied in order to (re)articulate violence? How might we revisit, through new theoretical tools, deaths that have been studied already but inconclusively, such as the enduring effects of the AIDS pandemic, queer suicide or inheritance? We plan to publish a special issue (targeted: Thanatos, SQS, NORA, Cultural Anthropology…)
25. Stephen Kerry
Trans Violence and the Global South
This workshop calls for papers to explore the impact of violence on Indigenous and First Nation trans and sex/gender diverse people. This includes, but is not limited to people who live in either the global south or in colonised countries. Papers are welcome which investigate either verbal, physical, or sexual violence inflicted upon Indigenous and First Nation trans and sex/gender diverse people from either mainstream communities, trans communities, LGBTQI communities, or traditional Indigenous and First Nation communities. Authors are encouraged to incorporate the lived experiences of Indigenous and First Nation trans and sex/gender diverse people with intersectional theories and studies of sex/gender, feminism, queer, race/ethnicity, and postcolonialism.
26. Lucie Drechselova and Begard Reza
Comparative perspectives on violence and agency in social movements
Subversion practices, adaptations, accommodations, individual and collective strategies, infrapolitics and what are the ways to deal with different forms of violence? In focusing on womens and queer activism, this workshop builds upon intersectional analysis of gender, sexuality, race, and class among other axes of power, to identify the forms of violence experienced by some bodies. Then it goes beyond an identification of mechanisms in which violence is embedded to focus on the agency of actors. We invite contributions from scholars and practitioners who put agency of actors at the core of their research. In this workshop we strive to dive into multiple case studies to dissect concrete strategies of women and queer activists and to engage a dialogue between cases as well as between scholars and activists. We encourage contributions dealing with the MENA region, but we will examine the proposals of all interested participants. To foster dialogue we introduce a collaborative element to our workshop: we will select 4 papers and pair the panellists into twos we will identify common axes of their papers and ask each tandem one common question on which they should reflect at the end of their presentation. In order to strengthen the comparative approach of the workshop, the time for discussion will equal the time devoted to paper presentations.
27. Julian Honkasalo and Tuija Pulkkinen
On violence in the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt
What is the political performativity of the concept of violence in Hannah Arendt’s political work? What work does the concept of violence do? How is Arendt’s theorization of political violence related to her theorization of nationhood, race and the State, or to civil disobedience and non-violent revolutions? In what ways might Arendt’s understanding of violence be relevant for understanding contemporary forms of authoritarianism, extreme right wing party formations, neo-fascism or anti-gender mobilization? This workshop discusses political violence in the context of Hannah Arendt’s works, such as The Origins of Totalitarianism, On Revolution, On Violence as well as in essays, such as Lying in Politics and Truth and Politics where Arendt discusses the relationship between organized lying and violence. We welcome papers discussing topics and themes such as the following:
- Hannah Arendt’s On Violence (almost) 50 years later
- Political violence and populism
- Political violence in relation to nation, race and statehood
- Anti-gender mobilizations
- Violence and biopolitics
- Feminist interpretations of Arendt’s notion of violence
- Natality, plurality and anti-violence
- Violence and human rights
- Organized lying and violence
- Arendt’s notion of violence in the context of the tradition of classics (eg. Walter Benjamin, Weber, Hobbes, Marx, Sorel)
- Law and violence
28. Elina Oinas, Afroja Khanam, Tiina Vaittinen and Tiina Seppälä
Against violent frames – Queer development, alternative practices and epistemic interruptions
Feminist and queer theory, development studies, and Indigenous studies share many aims in seeking to profoundly disrupt and radically re-think predominant epistemic frames of knowledge production. Yet, having to form their arguments within these epistemic realities, critical scholars sometimes end up speaking for and with power, instead of challenging it. Also the responsibility to engage in a meaningful dialogue and to be relevant to the general public, media, policy-makers – and the academic mainstream – tends to keep various violent frames at place. When seeking to contest violent frames that hold things at place, for example, through artistic and alternative forms of presentation, radical scholarship is often accused of unintelligibility, being too ‘difficult’ and not effective enough in advancing political struggles and social transformation. At risk here is often also the radical scholar’s academic career. The frames and discourses that hold things at place include dichotomies such as North/South, modern/Indigenous, developed/developing, academic/activist, which should be actively deconstructed and queered to reduce epistemic violence. Interruptions are, however, possible and take place all the time. Our panel welcomes papers and presentations that seek to make visible subversive and alternative practices, methodologies and articulations of how to cultivate epistemic interruptions – including ideas not yet fully formulated. We also invite discussions around the precarious conditions of academic life, which demands of a steady stream of publications and branding of one’s scholarly self.
29. Nelli Ruotsalainen
White feminists, Anti-Racism and Privilege
This workshop is an intentional space primarily for researchers who are white, and identify as feminist, to engage in (self)critical conversation about the roles of whiteness, racism, and anti-racism as they relate to our work in academia and beyond. The idea is to use this space for conversations that might otherwise take up undue space and (re)center whiteness in other anti-racist contexts. The conversation will depart from an understanding that white actors must move past what Adale Sholock (2012: 705) refers to as “the protracted navel-gazing and stagnating emotional turmoil, that can take up space, render inactive, and derail anti-racist goals under the guise of critical self-reflection, especially in feminist contexts”. The premise of the workshop is beholden to, and possible because of, the intellectual and emotional labor of feminists of color, in particular Black feminists, who, in their work, have led the effort to outline, pinpoint, articulate, and theorize the myriad of mechanisms by which racialized hierarchies operate to (re)produce themselves in, and through, white actors. Of interest to this workshop are theory informed papers, presentations, and creative expressions that investigate, but also seek to move beyond, the anger, fear, guilt, and shame associated with white actors and (self)critical conversations on race and white privilege. What kind of allies / accomplices /race traitors etc. in the anti-racist struggle can white feminists in academic [and activist] settings be?
30. Katariina Kyrölä and Tuija Huuki
Indigeneity, gender, violence and activism
Nordic nation states have long participated in settler colonialist practices, often systematically repressing Sámi language and culture, thus limiting the sovereignty of indigenous people. However, in current political debates about migration, mobility and borders, white non-indigenous bodies often problematically occupy the position of the native. Furthermore, gender and feminist studies as well as postcolonial theories have been relatively ignorant about questions of indigeneity, as pointed out by Sámi feminist scholar Rauna Kuokkanen (Knobblock & Kuokkanen, 2015). In response, there is a small but steadily growing body of scholarship of indigenous feminist and queer thought that has addressed issues such as violence and other forms of discrimination against indigenous women and Two-Spirit people, settler colonialist and capitalist exploitation of land and natural resources, indigenous non-binary understanding of gender, sexuality and kinship, as well as relationality between human and non-human actors. Indigenous feminist theorists (e.g. Arvin, Tuck & Morrill, 2013) have argued that binary and heteronormative understandings of gender and sexuality intimately intertwine with settler colonialism, and that indigenous philosophies offer alternative ways of imagining genders and sexualities. In this workshop, we welcome scholars, students, activists and artists interested in indigenous and decolonial feminist and queer thought. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: How to understand, consider, address and unravel violence and silences around and within indigenous communities, land, cultures and representations, especially as they intertwine with gender and sexuality? What challenges and possibilities do indigenous studies pose to other strands of feminist and queer theory? How are power relations at stake both in academic knowledge production practices as well as artistic and political discussions and activism?
31. Linda Hart and Marjo Rantala
Legitimised and institutionalised violence, gender and sexuality
Gender and sexuality divide subjects and affect agency, especially in practices related to violence. States, holding the monopoly of violence, train mainly male citizens to master techniques and technologies of violence as professionals working in security-related labour or as citizen-soldiers. Furthermore, violence relates either on an implicit or on an explicit level to political and legal subjectivity, producing gendered subjects, perpetrators, and victims of violence. Notwithstanding, institutional gender divisions may be challenged by ideals and political goals of gender equality, ensuing political and legal debates. For instance, is small states such as Finland, these debates concern male conscription, as well as the legal recognition of non-binary personhood and citizenship in different institutional contexts. In this workshop, we wish to address themes of legitimised and institutionalised violence. We welcome papers with sociological, anthropological, legal and cross-disciplinary perspectives. Topics may touch upon, for example, the (gendered) division of labour in societies, recognition of citizenship, or professions and education related to the use of violence in legitimised contexts. We look forward to active interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary dialogue.
32. Marita Husso and Suvi Ronkainen
Naming and Experiencing Violence
Naming and Experiencing Violence On an everyday level, violence as deeds and activities seems something that has clear boundaries. All of us are able to act in a way that respects these boundaries or are we? What kinds of boundaries and boundary crossings does violence involve? What are the attitudes towards gendered experiences of defencelessness and vulnerability, and how are they experienced? How is the relationship between gender and violence defined in a reality transformed by immigration and the refugee crisis? Whose emotions and ideas define violence and influence the drawing of boundaries? How are different cultures, commitment to social groups and intersectionality seen and felt when defining the boundaries of violence, naming something as violence, and experiencing violence? We invite researchers to the Naming and Experiencing Violence working group to analyse the definition and understanding of violence through peoples’ personal experiences, culture, as well as through crime and legislation. We welcome research with different perspectives and materials. The introductions in the working group can be given in Finnish or English.
33. Marita Husso, Sanna Karkulehto and Tuija Saresma
Violence and affect
Violence is a multidimensional phenomenon that involves violation, suffering, trauma and loss. It is manifested in human interaction, institutional and affective practices as well as in ideological structures of cultural discourses and representations. Violence does not only reflect social conditions, attitudes and conceptions but also involves a wide range of material, bodily and carnal ways of being, and affects and feelings. It arouses emotions, transits sensations and bears several kinds of passions and intensities, mostly negative ones such as anger, rage, fear, shame, humiliation, hopelessness, grief, distress, disappointment and disgust, sometimes even guilt. In people witnessing violence or withnessing, as Sara Ahmed (2004) proposes when talking about ethical responses to the grief and pain of others it also evokes secondary moral emotions such as empathy, compassion and care, although secondary social emotions, such as hate and frustration, may also be present. We call for contributions dealing with a wide range of affects, feelings and emotions related to physically and/or emotionally abusive forms of violence be it interpersonal, institutional, discursive, representational or ideological. We invite contributions either in English or in Finnish.
34. Hanna Etholén, Heta Rundgren and Shiau-Ting Hung
Reading, writing, theorizing with and against feminist and queer literary studies
Feminist and queer approaches have challenged the central concepts, corpus, norms, and ways of doing literary research, making visible the violence at work in hegemonic literary approaches. Verbalizing and naming violence is still a central task for feminist and queer literary studies. But how has this scholarship tackled multiple oppressions or transformed exclusive and hierarchical research practices? This workshop invites papers, performances, poetry, etc. that reflect on the question of violence in different approaches to text(ual) and context(ual matters), starting with two main themes. Verbalizing violence What is the power or empowering effect of (fictional and theoretical) literature to explore violent experience? Stories, representations, names help us verbalize and work through violence, creating a distance between lived experience and its narrated forms, but can they also reenact or trigger violent experiences? How do you make sense of depictions of violence that come close to or remain far from your own lived experience? How do you take care of yourself while immersing in depictions of violence? Violence in feminist and queer literary studies While some are out to queer the writer, Chicana feminist and queer theorist and writer Gloria Anzaldúa points out the existence of too queer writers (1991). How is the existence of hierarchies and multiple oppressions taken into account today in the field of feminist and queer literary studies? Or as Spivak would ask, can the subaltern speak (1988) in this field? For instance, in teaching feminist literary theory, do we still have to first read white theory, in order to be able to situate ourselves with regard to the center, and then and only then be able to engage with approaches and authors related to queer of color, decolonial or indigenous feminist literary approaches?
35. Astrid Joutseno and Koko Hubara
Telling about Myself Again: the Compulsory Self-Narration of Minorities as Violence
This workshop creates a space for presenting works about narratives of the self as violence. Those who are different from the norm are often required to tell stories about themselves to the public, online and offline media and institutions such as universities. In order to justify being there, those residing outside the norms, have to account for how they got somewhere, narrate their becoming over and over again. Yet, the response of institutions to these narratives is often one that focuses on evaluating the narratives as “too subjective”, non-scientific and self-obsessed therefore suggesting that the criticism voiced in the narratives are not to be given credentials. This response legitimates institutional “business as usual”. Nothing has to change in the conduct, regulations and thoughts of white heterosexual and able-bodied structures. Still, the personal narratives of minorities are popping up, they keep returning and finding new avenues. For example, the #metoo social media campaign and the #blacklivesmatter both continue to have a large impact on a structural level. They show that the personal (experience) is always already political; appearing only because of the world at large. This workshop is looking for all kinds of approaches from scholars and students in the academia, artists and researchers, performers and social media influencers. Presentations should in some way address themes of what is at stake when telling about the self in digital, social and other media, in institutions and the violence that this telling can inflict on the narrator.