Thinking Gender 2022: Call for Abstracts

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Thinking Gender 2022

32nd Annual Graduate Student Research Conference

“Transgender Studies at the Intersections”

April 6-8, 2022

Graphic for TG22 "Call for Abstracts"

We are no longer accepting abstract submissions.

All applications were due Sunday, November 21, 2021, at 11:59 PM (PDT)

Call for Abstracts

The UCLA Center for the Study of Women invites graduate student scholars and artists to submit abstracts or synopses of in-progress scholarly papers, dissertation or thesis chapters, article drafts, or in-progress film/mixed media works to workshop at our 32nd annual and second virtual Thinking Gender Graduate Student Research Conference. We also invite undergraduate students to submit proposals for digital poster presentations. Participation is free.

This year’s conference theme, “Transgender Studies at the Intersections” will highlight work in transgender studies that engages substantively with race, Indigeneity, Blackness, settler colonialism, and/or empire.

This year’s Thinking Gender prioritizes the kinds of trans studies scholarship and analysis that put race, Indigeneity, Blackness, settler colonialism, and/or empire(s) at the center, and vice versa. We welcome approaches that identify anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperial critiques of gender binarism, gender essentialism, and trans and/or intersex pathologization. We also welcome approaches that expand and break open trans as an analytic. For example, we are interested in work that tackles how ways of being, knowing, and relating to gender—itself a historically embedded concept and term—transform when indigenous and non-US-centric histories, genealogies, epistemologies, geographies, and geopolitics are engaged. 

We invite a wide range of scholarship including but not limited to social movement histories; studies related to medicalization and de/pathologization; examinations of joy, resistance, resilience, and collective care; disability studies; research ethics; conceptualizations and mobilizations of political rights; as well as inquiry into how  transness or trans people are understood or represented within ideological and institutional systems, including medicine, public health, law, the prison-military-industrial complex, art, the university, border regimes, media, tourism, etc.

Building on such traditions of thought, some questions for engagement include:

  • How do trans analytics and/or trans activisms provide crucial sites for thinking about racialization, empire(s), political economy, dispossession, and materiality?
  • What are the potentials, meanings, and pitfalls of claims for transgender visibility and inclusion? 
  • How does trans critique envision research methods and ethics and their implementation? In scientific study? In the humanities? Beyond?
  • What are the alliances and/or disjunctures between trans-exclusionary feminisms and the rise of global authoritarianisms?
  • How does gender normativity cohere through biopolitical and necropolitical control of medicine, reproduction, exceptionalisms of empires, settler imaginaries, and racial hierarchies?
  • Following scholars like Mel Chen and Jules Gill-Petersen, how might we imagine “trans across scales” or otherwise explore how bodies are regulated across scales and contexts, from, for example, the molecular to transnational patterns of migration? 
  • Insofar as Black communities, communities of color, Indigenous peoples, and trans/queer communities have experienced the state as the source of violence and privation, how have they developed alternative modes of knowledge production, social reproduction and kinship, and organization? How might we draw on these alternative traditions to foster new relations of care, joy, and resistance today?
  • What connections, conversations and directions emerge in trans studies if we provincialize the United States?
  • How have arts and culture been sites for trans-of-color worldmaking through resisting/transforming gender binarism and race, indigeneity, and empire?
  • How have histories of war, militarization, and genocide impacted the theories and politics of gendered subjectivites and embodiments in ways that might speak to trans studies and liberation?

Topics may include but are not limited to transgender studies at the intersections in the context of:

  • Historical and contemporary activism and organizing, social movements
  • Empire, colonialism, and neo-colonialism
  • Incarceration, punishment, and abolition
  • Social institutions of control (i.e., education, foster care, mental health, housing, health care, elder care, workplaces)
  • Research ethics within and outside the university
  • Medicalization, health, illness, and wellness
  • Disability
  • Cultural production and artistic or creative practice
  • Displacement, dispossession, and gentrification
  • Kinship, belonging, and collective care
  • Social reproduction
  • Domestic labor, “care chain”
  • Sex work
  • Reproductive justice
  • Housing and the unhoused
  • Citizenship, migration, asylum, and deportation
  • Climate crisis, environment, and sustainability
  • Technology, new media, and digital culture
  • White supremacy and white nationalism
  • Political repression, fascism, and global authoritarianism

We invite abstracts or synopses of in-progress scholarly papers, dissertation or thesis chapters, article drafts, or in-progress film/mixed media works from graduate students and poster proposals from undergraduate students.

This conference is interdisciplinary, and we encourage submissions from all fields of study. Successful submissions will center feminist, anti-racist, intersectional frameworks for understanding and engaging with transgender studies.

Please note that because this year’s Thinking Gender will be virtual, graduate student panels will be held as closed workshops rather than as public presentations. All participants of a workshop will be asked to read or view each other’s submissions in advance. Participants will then convene in a Zoom session with a moderator who will offer constructive feedback and facilitate discussion around each submission. The workshops will provide opportunities for thoughtful engagement with each participant’s submission under an ethos of generosity in intellectual engagement. This format was a tremendous success for TG21 and received strong support from workshop participants.

Undergraduate poster presentations will also take place in a virtual session closed to the public with a faculty moderator facilitating discussion.

Thinking Gender will feature one public event, a closing keynote panel, on Friday April 8, 2022.

 

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Eligibility

Registered graduate students from any institution are eligible to submit abstracts or synopses of scholarly papers, dissertation or thesis chapters, article drafts, or film/mixed media works to workshop (e.g., a dissertation chapter, course paper, article draft, short film, or documentary that you would like to develop).

Graduate students may submit an application for consideration in both categories but will only be accepted for one (either scholarly paper, dissertation or thesis chapter, or article draft OR film/mixed media submission). 

Registered undergraduate students from any institution are eligible to submit proposals for digital poster presentations only. 

Submissions of works that are collaborative or co-authored with other students are permitted. Unpublished submissions are preferred. Recently published and forthcoming articles will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Submissions that are not directly related to the theme, “Transgender Studies at the Intersections” will not be considered.

Deadline for Abstract/Synopsis/Proposal Submissions

Deadline for Abstract/Synopsis/Proposal Submissions: Sunday, November 21, 2021, at 11:59PM PDT

Applicants whose submissions are accepted will be notified by February 2, 2022.

All accepted graduate student participants will be required to submit the final version of their work-in-progress by March 2, 2022, for pre-circulation among their co-participants and faculty moderator. Please decide on submission proposals in anticipation of having final drafts that can be circulated ready by this date.

All accepted undergraduate student participants will be required to submit their final digital posters by March 2, 2022. Please note that posters will need to be completed, not in-progress, by this date.

Online Application Form

All proposals must be submitted using the online application form. 

APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS

Graduate Student Applicants

Each workshop will include four graduate students, a faculty moderator, and up to three observers from other workshops, who will read and provide detailed feedback and questions for each submission. Panelists will be required to submit the final version of their work-in-progress (not to exceed 20–25 double-spaced pages) by March 2, 2022, for pre-circulation among their co-participants and faculty moderator.

Scholarly Paper, Dissertation or Thesis Chapter, or Article Draft Application Requirements:

  1. Abstract or description (2–3 double-spaced pages maximum) of work to be workshopped that includes: (1) a thesis/research question, (2) discussion of methodology and theoretical framework, (3) explanation of your argument and supporting data, and (4) conclusions or anticipated conclusions. If your piece is co-authored with other students, please make this clear.
  2. Works Cited or References List (1 page maximum)
  3. CV (2 pages maximum)
  4. Online application form

Film/Mixed Media Application Requirements:

  1. Film/Media Synopsis (2 pages maximum)
  2. CV (2 pages maximum)
  3. Link (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) where Film or Mixed Media can be viewed. Total run-time should not exceed 20 minutes. Note: while links are preferred, smaller files may also be uploaded in jpg, png, pdf, or mp3/mp4 format on the application platform. If your piece is co-created with other students, please make this clear.
  4. Online application form

Undergraduate Student Applicants

Undergraduate students will present visually compelling research posters. Undergraduate poster presentations will also take place in a virtual session closed to the public with a faculty moderator facilitating discussion. Poster presentations must be digital. We welcome a variety of formats, such as PowerPoint slides, a Prezi video presentation, etc. The presentation of the poster should take 3–5 minutes. Accepted submitters will receive a link to upload their presentation or a request for their URL address if hosted online (i.e., Prezi, YouTube video, etc.). Presenters will be required to submit their completed digital posters by March 2, 2022. 

Poster Session application requirements:

  1. Poster proposal (1–2 double-spaced pages maximum) that includes (1) a thesis/research question, (2) discussion of methodology and theoretical framework, (3) explanation of your argument and supporting data, and (4) conclusions or anticipated conclusions. If your poster presentation is co-authored with other students, please make this clear.
  2. Works Cited or Reference List (1 page maximum)
  3. CV (2 pages maximum)
  4. Online application form

All materials must be submitted using the online application form.

Deadline for Abstract/Synopsis/Proposal Submissions: Sunday, November 21, 2021, at 11:59PM PDT

Only complete submissions received by the deadline will be considered.

Questions?

Contact CSW at thinkinggender@women.ucla.edu.