The editors of the invite proposals for a workshop to be held at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. The History Department at Queen’s University is currently the home of the Journal of the History of Sexuality, and participants will have the opportunity to discuss their submissions as well as the publication process with the editorial team (Ishita Pande, Nick Syrett, Steven Maynard, Margaret Ross), and to have their work considered for publication in the journal.
What does the history of sexuality have to offer during a time of crisis and suffering? How will the field respond to a world increasingly scarred by climate change, the rise of the global right, the erosion of gender, trans and queer rights, healthcare inequalities, migrant crises, wealth gaps, racial discrimination, caste violence, political misinformation, and war? Can our methodologies and tools be deployed to reimagine calamities, obstructions, and setbacks as sites of resistance and opportunity?
Can the history of sexuality speak to the challenges we face today, from climate change to the reverberations of colonialism? Elizabeth Povinelli reformulates Foucault’s four figures of sexuality in theorizing the Anthropocene, demonstrating both the salience and limitations of biopolitics for understanding climate and liberalism. Anjali Arondekar challenges a historiographical stalemate between loss and recovery in calling us to reapproach subaltern sexual pasts through abundance, in the process “unravel[ling] a set of archives that are fertile ground for producing and contesting attachments to history-writing.” Following these innovations and others, how might we write sexuality’s history against the backdrop of crisis? Can our histories cut through deep pessimism to illuminate a diverse future?
We invite presenters to consider how their work is mobilized by and speaks to contemporary issues around us. Topics may include, but are not limited to, historiographies of sexuality, critical methodological interventions and reassessments, trans and gender-nonconforming histories, colonial and postcolonial violence, reproductive histories, sex work and labour, migration and borderlands, the sexual sciences, environmental histories, and more. Participants are encouraged to consider how our global presents and futures drive, complicate, and enrich the field. How do ongoing hardships, from the defunding of liberal education to attacks on democracy, impact our ability to think and write sexuality’s history?
This event is open to graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, early career researchers, and established scholars. All are encouraged to apply, particularly those working on parts of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and South America. The workshop, will be held on Nov. 8-9, 2024 at Queen’s University, Canada. Please send 300-word abstracts and a one-page C.V. to jhseditor@queensu.ca with the subject “Sexuality History Workshop” by March 10, 2024. Selected participants will be notified by March 25, and invited to submit complete drafts of their papers (8000 words) for pre-circulation by October 11, 2024.
