GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN/AND THE ROMANCE LANGUAGES
Call for proposals for a conference to be held at the University of Chicago on February 21-22, 2025
What does it mean to think or write critically about gender and sexuality in languages that are themselves grammatically gendered? What ambiguities, instabilities, or possibilities can arise from playing with grammatical gender? What limitations or distinctions does grammatical gender (nominally) impose? At a glance grammatical gender would seem to be repressive in its operations, forcing all subjects to conform to a linguistic binary. Yet, grammatical gender also can introduce opportunities for non-normative alignment of bodies signified, and the terms used to signify them. For instance the tale that in English has become a heteronormative Disney fantasy – Beauty and the Beast – in the French original posits a relationship between two beings designated in grammatically feminine terms – la belle and la bête. Moreover, users of romance languages are finding ways to creatively adapt and transform languages to meet new needs.
We invite contributions that explore the specificities of gender and sexuality as articulated in cultural and critical works produced in or engaging with romance languages (in the broadest sense, including, for instance, all creoles connected to romance languages) and in all the places and contexts where these are spoken. Possible contributions might focus upon literature, performance, translation, pedagogy, or theory, and may approach their objects of study from a wide variety of vantage points and using diverse methodologies.
Conference threads include (but are not limited to):
- Inclusive language and foreign language pedagogy and research: what strategies and solutions have been developed in various languages and locations to account for and respect diverse identities? How can instructors enact these in the classroom? In our scholarly work?
- Practices and politics of translation, including feminist translation studies; the impact of translation of scholarly work (into or out of English) on further scholarship; scholarship related to gender and sexuality produced in languages outside of English and its paths of circulation.
- Cultural and critical production: what distinctive ideas about / approaches to gender and sexuality have emerged in non-anglophone sites and contexts? What has been their circulation or influence? How are non-binary and trans identities articulated and made legible (or not) in romance languages and their cultural/critical contexts? How are activists/artists and scholars working to queer and subvert grammatical gender binaries?
- Migration and movement: what is the role of gender and sexuality in shaping the dynamics of migration, diaspora, and multilingualism in romance-language contexts? How do gendered and sexualized bodies navigate multiple linguistic and cultural frameworks as they cross borders and forge transnational ties?
- Gender and performance: how do performance practices, embodied and/or linguistic, shape thinking about gender and sexuality? What kinds of artistic practices go beyond the textual or linguistic to include visual art, music, film, digital media, etc., and how do those forms negotiate gender/sexuality through and alongside language?
The conference is designed to accommodate a variety of formats for sharing ideas and insights, including:
- a 20-minute paper (to be organized into 3-person panels)
- a 8-10 minute paper (to be organized into flash sessions of c. 5 papers each)
- a performance of 20-minutes or less
- a mini-lesson of 20 minutes or less
- a poster presentation
Please send queries or proposals by October 1, 2024 to rllgssconf@uchicago.edu and include the following information:
- Your name, institutional affiliation (if any), email address
- an abstract (250 words max)
- a bio (100 words max)
- the format of your intervention
Graduate students and early career scholars are particularly encouraged to apply. Limited funding will be available to help defray the costs of travel and lodging.