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A two-day conference to be held at Queen Mary, University of London, 21-22 February 2024
Keynote by Professor Raewyn Connell
Deadline for abstracts: Monday 4 September 2023
Masculinity needs changing. As a manifestation of patriarchy, a predictor of violence, and a straight-jacket of identity, masculinity is widely identified as a culprit and symptom: problematic, traditional, ‘hyper’ and toxic. In response a loose network of feminists and allies, public health professionals, scholar-activists, social workers, civil society groups, international organisations and military and police forces have sought to reform masculinity for the better. Their efforts range from positive fatherhood campaigns to counter-terrorism measures, and from religious role models to queer theory. ‘Masculinity’ as a concept and configuration of practices is at the same time undergoing another round of crisis and change, split along axes of class, nation, racialisation, sexuality, gender identity and culture, torn between projects of restoration and abolition.
This two-day conference will gather academics, practitioners and activists to critically interrogate contemporary masculinity interventions in local, national and transnational layers. What new governance arrangements and sciences of public health are being formed? What power relations are at work, especially across shifting boundaries of global north and south? What is the role of specific political, economic and cultural institutions in propagating new varieties of good masculinity? How are these new masculine subjectivities being produced? And with what effects, whether generative, perilous or ambivalent? We hope that the conference will address these questions in relation to the production and/or policing of masculinity in its many variants, including (but not limited to) its traditional, trans, Black, ally, alt-right, postcolonial, hegemonic, survivor, migrant, postconflict, inclusive, violent, and toxic forms.
We invite contributions in three formats:
The conference will take place at Queen Mary, University of London on Wednesday 21 and Thursday 22 February 2024. We are able to support a small number of international participants with flights, accommodation and visa costs, and to provide accommodation and travel support for a larger number of UK participants. Applicants are asked to indicate if they require flight, accommodation and/or visa support (if from abroad) or travel and/or accommodation support (if within the UK). For UK participants, priority will be given to early career and precariously employed participants.
Please submit abstracts by Monday 4 September 2023 to Paul Kirby ([email protected]) and/or Chloé Lewis ([email protected]). Inquiries in advance are welcome.
This call is also available as a PDF document.
This conference is an event of the UKRI GCRF Gender, Justice and Security Hub (http://thegenderhub.com / https://twitter.com/TheGenderHub).
thepamphleteer
As part of ALT’s 30th celebrations, there are some posts looking back to ALT-C’s of the past. I’ve chosen 2018, although it was not a great conference for me personally, an alternative title for this post might be “when life gets in the way of conferencing”.
It was a memorable conference for ALT, as it was their 25th anniversary. As a special conference it was chaired by the then President (me!) and Chair (Sheila MacNeill), and with Maren as one of the keynotes. It took place at the University of Manchester, which is a great venue, but, and this will become relevant, not particularly easy to access from Cardiff where I live. Leading up to the conference I had used the idea of celebrating 25 years of learning technology to do my 25 Years of Ed Tech blog series. I started this just for fun, but the idea came later to develop it into a book (we await the film rights being optioned). Without the conference I wouldn’t have thought of the blog series, and without the blog series I wouldn’t have written the book, and without the 25 Years book, I probably wouldn’t have written the Metaphors book. So I have a lot to thank that conference for (you might wish to blame it).
We had a great keynote lineup with Maren, Amber Thomas, and just before she went superstar, Tressie MacMillan Cottom. I had invited Tressie as we knew each other a bit from a previous conference and hanging around with Audrey Watters. I didn’t think we’d get her, so was delighted when she said yes, and I got to introduce her. We also had a fantastic gasta session hosted with gusto by Tom Farrelly as always, with Clint Lalonde’s presentation “When I grow up I want to be a learning technologist” talk a personal favourite.
To celebrate the 25 Years angle I had created a 1993 playlist (which was open to others to add to), which was played during the gala dinner. Sadly though, I was not present to witness this spotified triumph, which brings me onto my personal tale of “life getting in the way”. At the time I had a dog called Bruno, a 14 year old Staffie. He had survived two strokes, was largely blind, deaf and going senile. Although I mostly worked at home he was accustomed to me going away and always seemed to cope with it fine. Because ALT-C takes place in early September, I probably hadn’t put him with a dog minder since June and hadn’t really noticed an increased decline over the past few months.
The conference started on Tuesday and on Monday I dropped him off at the regular dog minders to head up to Manchester. As I was stepping onto the train I got a call from the dig minder saying Bruno was just howling in distress. I abandoned the journey and went to pick him up. Bless him, he was just walking round in circles, weeing and moaning. The result was that I got my dog walker to come in twice a day to sit with him (he was perfectly happy at home whether I was there or not, as he was familiar with the smells). I commuted from Cardiff to Manchester and back on the Tuesday to do the opening and again on the Wednesday to do the AGM, so I could be at home during the evening and night. I do not recommend Cardiff-Manchester as a daily commute.
Luckily Maren and Sheila took up the slack and covered for me, but it’s an example of how face to face conferences require a complex support system (earlier in my life it had been child care). When that fragile system goes wrong it can go wobbly. In some ways you could see this small example as a forerunner of issues that arose when the pandemic hit and we couldn’t meet physically. It was also an indication that Bruno was in rapid decline and he passed away a few weeks later.
So ALT-C 2018, a great celebration of everything the Association had achieved, an excellent line-up, but a personally tricky one to negotiate. This macro and micro perspective was a good reminder of this duality for all conferences and all attendees.
sportsethicist
Back to SXSW this year! Hear about the conference, the speakers, and the themes. Tell us what resonates with you the most!
The post SXSW Interactive: Slow Down To Speed Up appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:
I am curious what the norms/conventions are for reporting your affiliation when changing jobs. For example, I currently work at institution A but am starting a new job in the fall at institution B. When writing down my affiliation—e.g., when submitting to journals or conferences, or filling out a form about how my affiliation on a conference programme—should I write down A, B, A/B (as I’ve sometimes seen), etc.?
Another reader had the same question ("I have the same question as A/B. Should I write down my future affiliation in my current submission?"). I'm not exactly sure what the conventions are, but I guess I'm inclined to say that it might depend on which institution you'll be at when the event rolls around. Will you still be at School A if/when you attend the conference? If not, then it might be a bit confusing to other participants. And I guess I think the same thing probably applies to journals. Maybe list A when submitting, but if the paper is accepted and will be published when you're at B, update your proofs to list B instead?
Anyway, these are just my thoughts. What are yours?
A graduate student in philosophy has the responsibility of organizing a graduate student conference hosted by their department, and has some questions, starting with:
1. “Why put on a graduate student conference? What should the purpose of a graduate conference be?“
(modification of a photo by Simon C. May)
They write, “One possible answer is that it provides a low stakes opportunity for grad students to practice presenting and commenting. And the student presenters can get valuable feedback on their work.” But the student hase questions about how to address various issues:
2. “I don’t quite know how I should balance the needs and interests of the two main stakeholders: student presenters from other schools and the grad students at our school.”
3. “Which papers should we accept for the conference? The obvious answer is to accept the best papers. But there are competing goals. For example, I want the presenters to benefit from the conference. Our conference will have a (faculty) keynote speaker. So it seems there’s a reason to prioritize papers by graduate students that suggest they’d benefit the most from the keynote speaker’s presence.”
4. “I want to be inclusive of the diverse interests the audience (i.e. grad students at our department) might have. Not everyone is interested in the main theme of the conference, and I’d feel bad having them sit through the whole conference feeling bored. How many of the accepted papers should be ‘off-theme’?”
5. “Should location be taken in the consideration, by preferring students closer to our department since the travel cost would be lower?”
6. “Which parts of the conference do presenters and keynote speaker find the most value in?”
7. “How should I pick the conference theme? How narrow or broad should it be?”
8. “How can I get the grad students in my own department to be more invested in helping with the conference and making it good?”
They add: “In general, I want to hear from people who have attended and/or organized grad conferences. I want to know what they like and dislike about grad conferences, and how such conferences can be made better.”
Readers?
On behalf of the Society for U. S. Intellectual History (S-USIH) and the editors of Modern Intellectual History, we are pleased to announce the recipient of the MIH/S-USIH Graduate Student Read more
The post MIH-USIH Graduate Prize Announcement first appeared on Society for US Intellectual History.
In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:
I'm a PhD candidate working in early modern philosophy who has recently received about a dozen rejections from early modern conferences and no acceptances. Several of the CfPs were exclusively for graduate students, although others were also open to early career academics. I'm trying to figure out where I went wrong and why I've been having so much trouble getting into conferences. My main thoughts are that I'm not working on very trendy topics, that I'm not engaging with enough very recent secondary literature, or that I'm just not doing enough of a good job on the abstracts. Any suggestions for how to diagnose the issue?
I guess I think it's probably hard to say without knowing more, but I guess I would advise the OP to give the papers/abstracts they've submitted to a few people in their subfield who are successful at getting into conferences. They might see something that the OP is missing.
But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?
In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a PhD student asks:
I'm a graduate student and I've submitted my paper to many conferences, including the graduate conference. I'm wondering if there is any chance that my ideas will be stolen and published before I publish them. I have this question because I've heard that many referees for graduate conferences are students, and I've heard that students have stolen other people's ideas from conference papers. Also, sometimes I come up with an idea and I think I've read it before, but I can't find it. But I'm not sure if it's from a draft I've read before.
I have all kinds of thoughts about this, and will probably weigh in down in the comments section. But, before I do, I'm curious to hear from other readers.
What do you all think? Have you ever run into problems presenting unpublished work at conferences or colloquia (viz. sketchy shenanigans that made you think someone took and published your ideas)? In line with this blog's safe and supportive mission, please don't make explicit or implicit allegations directed toward identifiable individuals. Instead, I'm just looking for a general sense of whether people have run into problems that have led them to think that presenting at conferences (and such) is risky for junior people for the kinds of reasons the OP mentions.
Emoni Bates played one season at Eastern Michigan, in his hometown, Ypsilanti, but is expected to enter the upcoming N.B.A. draft.
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Aaron Wendland (KCL, Massey College), the organizer of the philosophy conference being put on to raise funds to establish a Centre for Civic Engagement at Kyiv Mohyla Academy in Ukraine (previously), has asked me to pass on his request for volunteers for the conference.
He writes:
‘What Good Is Philosophy? – A Benefit Conference for Ukraine’ is designed to provide individual academics, members of the public, colleges and universities, professional associations, charitable foundations, and private companies with a way to support students, scholars, and civic institutions in Ukraine.
To ensure that the conference raises the funding required to establish the Centre for Civic Engagement at Kyiv Mohyla Academy, I am currently looking for volunteers from the philosophical community around the world to help me promote and disseminate information about this benefit event in their respective region, state, or country.
If you are interested in volunteering a few hours of your time to support students, scholars, and publicly engaged academics in Ukraine, please email me at [email protected] for further details.
You can learn more about the conference here.
In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:
I've searched TPC archives but didn't find a thread on "Tips for Writing Conference Paper Abstracts." Replies to this as a thread would be helpful. I was recommended this source years ago, but it's not philosophy-specific [https://history.ncsu.edu/grad/conference_abstracts.php]
We actually had a thread on this several months ago, but didn't get many replies. Any additional tips anyone is willing to share?
Author Margaret Atwood, historian Timothy Snyder (Yale), two of Ukraine’s preeminent public intellectuals, Mychailo Wynnyckyj and Volodymyr Yermolenko, will join a slate of well-known philosophers at an online benefit conference for Ukraine taking place next month.
The conference, “What Good Is Philosophy? The Role of the Academy in a Time of Crisis,” is intended to raise funds to establish a Centre for Civic Engagement at Kyiv Mohyla Academy, which in turn will provide support for academic and civic institutions in Ukraine to counteract the destabilizing impact that Russia’s invasion has had on Ukrainian higher education and civilian life.
The conference is being organized by Aaron Wendland (KCL, Massey College). He spent the past summer covering civilian life in Ukraine for The Toronto Star. He says, “My desire to generate support for the Ukrainian academy emerged when I started working on a story about the state of education in Ukraine and when I realized how much maintaining a functioning civil society meant for Ukraine’s morale.” He provides the following background:
According to the latest report from the Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science, seven thousand scholars have fled Ukraine and thousands more have been displaced within the country since Russia launched a full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022. To date, over 170 Ukrainian institutions of higher education have been damaged and more than 20 have been completely destroyed. And the academics who stayed in Ukraine now conduct their research, teaching, and public service in very challenging circumstances.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, universities around the world began helping Ukrainian academics in exile through a mix of publicly and privately funded ‘scholars at risk’ initiatives. These initiatives have done much to help Ukrainian refugees. But the loss of faculty combined with the destruction of basic infrastructure means that the Ukrainian academy is in dire need of international assistance. That said, the Centre for Civic Engagement will begin addressing the needs of the Ukrainian academy by offering institutional, intellectual, and financial support for students, scholars, and publicly engaged academics in Ukraine.
The conference will be produced by the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, and it will be broadcast on their YouTube channel March 17th through 19th, 2023.
The philosophers speaking at the conference include Peter Adamson, Elizabeth Anderson, Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Agnes Callard, Quassim Cassam, Tim Crane, Simon Critchley, David Enoch, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Sally Haslanger, Angie Hobbs, Barry Lam, Melissa Lane, Dominic Lopes, Kate Manne, Jeff McMahan, Jennifer Nagel, Philip Pettit, Kieran Setiya, Jason Stanley, Timothy Williamson, and Jonathan Wolff.
If you are interested in contributing to the fundraising effort, you can make a donation here.
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A reader writes in:
Just in case you have not seen this already, I wanted to call your attention to a conference aimed at “PhD professional development and careers outside of academia" that begins next Thursday, February 23—the “Beyond Academia Conference” at UC-Berkeley. Here is the link to the event site: https://beyondacademia.berkeley.edu/. My understanding is that one can attend this conference virtually, and that it is free. There is at least one speaker with a philosophy background, past member of the APA non-academic careers committee Shane Wilkins, who will be speaking about employment in the government sector.
Sounds like a cool opportunity!
John Warren and his students (MPS in Publishing, George Washington University) share perspectives on attending Digital Book World 2023 and the trends and highlights relevant for scholarly publishers.
The post Guest Post — Entering a New Age of Digital Publishing: Dispatch from Digital Book World 2023 appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
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