Contemporary Global Feminisms – Solidarity Across Differences
13 June 2023, Birkbeck University and online

Deadline for CfP: 24th April 2023, 9:00 AM

Since its initiation in 2016, the CHASE Feminist Network has been in conversation with many of the transitions that took place within academia and the world at large. During this period, the attitudes towards and within feminism have also experienced vast shifts, where intersectionality has permeated the mainstream just as dividing lines have been erected between the feminisms of varying kinds. Yet at its core, there remains the reverberation of solidarity against patriarchal oppression, which is ever-present in our contemporary moment.

Far from being moribund or simply riven with division, we in the CHASE Feminist Network contend that feminism is as urgently relevant in the 21st century as it ever has been. Open to expansive ideas of identity and community, contemporary global feminisms engage with the gendered inequalities across class, race, and national cultures and are thus, by nature, intersectional in both theory and practice. This plurality of feminisms is therefore intrinsically interconnected with efforts to combat queerphobia, transphobia, racism, Islamophobia, and classism. Rekindling feminism not only as a set of theoretical or academic debates but also as an everyday practice of resistance is central to the mission of the CHASE Feminist Network, which encourages listening to feminism’s own dynamic histories while looking to its future.

For the CHASE Feminist Network’s relaunch, we want to celebrate the plurality of feminisms that encapsulate the subversive pulse which informs our varied practices and areas of research. We’re curious about ways to recognise and address the approaches through which patriarchy threads itself across distinct power structures, how planetary forms of solidarity are grounded in the realpolitik of gendered violence, and how resistance can be activated in unexpected spaces, whatever mode of resistance that may be.

To this end, we invite proposals for presentations, performances, artist talks and contributions across all disciplines to interpret what solidarity means across global feminisms today. A non-exhaustive list of what we’re interested in includes:

Methods and moments of intersectional feminist refusal
Art as activism in feminist spaces
Reproductive labour and policy
Femtech realities/digitalities
Algorithmic gendered divisions
Psychoanalytic readings of violence in response to othered identities
Feminist modes of care in a global context
Gendered hierarchies of knowledge authority
Indigeneity and land through a feminist lens
Intersectional methods for collaboration
Climate justice as feminist practice
Policing of marginalised bodies
Gendered labour and platform studies
Please send an abstract of up to 250 words to chase.feminist@gmail.com along with a bio of up to 50 words and whether you’d be able to attend in person or online. We can offer a small amount of travel bursaries for those located in the UK. If you intend on attending in person, please indicate in your submission whether you’d like to apply for the travel bursary.

We especially encourage post-graduate and early career researchers to apply. This event is generously supported by CHASE DTP. If you have any questions, please get in touch at chase.feminist@gmail.com.