6th Annual Conference The Society for Educating Women (SEW) A Summer Studio

6th Annual Conference
The Society for Educating Women (SEW)
A Summer Studio

Resisting Amnesia and Creating Community:
Educating Women in Thought, Art, & Action

26-28 July 2013, St. Louis, MO.
Marriott Renaissance Grand Hotel

 “Historical responsibility has, after all, to do with action—where we
place the weight of our existences on the line, cast our lot with
others, move from an individual consciousness to a collective
one.”—Adrienne Rich, “Resisting Amnesia: History and the Personal
Life”

SEW invites educational women’s, gender, and sexuality studies
scholars and policy researchers, feminist pedagogues and curriculum
developers, other educators, administrators, artists, activists, and
all those who educate girls and women to participate in an ongoing,
international, inter-generational dialog about education, girls, and
women.   Proposals may include (1) book and film review roundtables,
(2) essay seminars in which participant-authors engage one another's
works-in-progress, and (3) sessions that feature the new work of
artists, activists, and practitioners engaged in/as educating women.
These roundtables, seminars, and sessions will aim to nurture all
participants’ and presenters’ further learning and inquiry within a
developing community devoted to educating women of historical
responsibility.

We will pursue questions related to educating girls and women in a
variety of time periods and settings, both nationally and
internationally. We invite you to raise your own questions in any way
related to these:

•       How may we advance women’s education, professional
opportunities, and political voices on behalf of culture and
intellectual liberty for all?

•       How may advancing educational interests of and for girls and
women help us to resist militaristic and imperialist mindsets that
perpetuate conditions of economic, psychological, social, and symbolic
violence, both at home and in the world?

Theme:
Feminist poet, theorist, and educator Adrienne Rich, who died this
past year, dedicated a lecture at Scripps College thirty years ago to
the memory of feminist historian, educator, activist, and curriculum
theorist Joan Kelly.  In “Resisting Amnesia,” she tells us that Kelly
“never lost her identification with those who, because of sex, race,
or class, have been written off, their lives obscured and distorted”
Through research, education, arts, and activist practices, it is
possible to name and to (re)claim contributions of and about educating
women that could otherwise be too-easily forgotten, obscured, or
distorted.

With SEW’s five-year history of creating space for trans-disciplinary,
intergenerational, and international dialog among scholars committed
to advancing girls’ and women’s education, and in light of 21st
century feminist scholarship’s concerns with questions of reproductive
justice and labor, identity and hybridity, intersectionality and
performativity, global accountability and ecological sustainability,
peace and collectivity, healing and survival, resistance and
transformation, this year’s theme asks us, as part of Rich’s legacy,
to explore, from our own diverse locations, specifically educational
“questions of historical process, of historical responsibility, [and]
questions of consciousness and ignorance and what these have to do
with power.”

Session Types and Descriptions:
Submissions are invited for one or more of any of the following sessions:

Book and Film Review Roundtables:
Authors of selected reviews will lead roundtables, 60 minutes each, to
discuss recent books and films of particular relevance to SEW’s
mission or the conference theme.  Wherever possible, review authors
will invite the reviewed works’ authors, editors, or directors to
participate as discussants in these roundtables.   A passage from the
book may be read aloud or a clip from the film may be shown to start
the discussion.  Participants in readers’ roundtables are encouraged
to read reviews published in the Proceedings beforehand and, if
possible, also the reviewed works to make the discussion vibrant and
meaningful for all.

Essay Seminars:
Authors of selected essays will meet together with one another in a
series of authors’ seminars, 150 minutes each for 5 authors. Assigned
session chairs will introduce each presenter, who will discuss her/his
working paper in some detail, expanding on the development of key
ideas, research problems, etc.  Each participant’s work receives equal
time (25 minutes) of concentrated attention. Authors will not read
aloud their essays, which will be published in the Proceedings, but
will expand upon them briefly in a conversational mode, with or
without media. This is an opportunity for presenters to share their
most significant challenges, field others’ questions of clarification
in a constructively collaborative environment, and highlight those
particular aspects of their own projects on which they want reflective
discussion, critical responses including queries, bibliographic
recommendations, or other constructive suggestions.  All participants
in the essay seminars will have the opportunity to read the
Proceedings (which will be downloadable from the SEW conference site
and made available in print copy to registered participants
beforehand) so as to prepare notes and questions in advance for all
these discussions.

 Artist, Activist, and Practitioner Sessions:
These are 60-minute sessions. Individuals and groups may submit
proposals.  Individual activists and education practitioners will be
assigned to panels of up to 3 persons (20 min. presentation time
each), and activist and practitioner group proposals (3 or more
presenters) will form a panel.   Artists may submit as individuals and
be grouped with other artists (up to 2) for sessions or may submit a
group proposal (2 or more persons).  These sessions will be
self-chaired by a member of the panel or presentation group.

Submission Information:
The SEW Program Committee is comprised of publishing educational
women’s and gender studies scholars from multiple disciplinary areas.
Drafts for review roundtables and essay seminars and proposals for
art, activist, and practitioner sessions should be submitted online by
March 31, 2013. If a draft is accepted for a review roundtable or
essay seminar, the participant will have the opportunity to submit a
final manuscript (up to 1500 words) to be published online in the SEW
2013 Proceedings of the Conference/Summer Studio. (Proceedings
guidelines will be sent to submitters whose drafts are approved by the
Program Review Committee.)  Final reviews and essays must be submitted
online by June 1, 2013 to be included in the Proceedings and listed on
the conference program. *Note:  The Proceedings is distinct from the
peer-reviewed SEW online journal Educating Women, which has a separate
submission and editorial process.

Special Events and Organization:
This 2013 conference/summer studio will feature a keynote colloquium
led by Madeline Grumet, a nationally renowned educator and scholarly
pioneer in feminist theory and curriculum theory (UNC Chapel Hill),
with two discussants responding to her lecture/essay, and the SEW
presidential address by Linda Hoeptner Poling, feminist art educator
and theorist (Kent State University).
The conference will open July 26 with an evening reception and arts
performance.  On July 27 and 28, morning and afternoon academic
breakout sessions are planned as seminar discussions of essays and as
roundtables reviewing books and films.  July 27, the first full
conference day, will open with arts, activist, and practitioner
sessions.  The annual business meeting will be held as a luncheon, and
the evening will be entirely open for rest, exercise, relaxation,
sociability, dining, or other urban adventures.  July 28, the final
conference day, will open with the president’s address and close with
the keynote colloquium, followed by the annual SEW dinner gathering.
Lunch on the 28th will be open for participants to explore the city.
Each morning prior to daily conference events, an hour of hatha yoga
practice (led by a teacher registered with Yoga Alliance) will be
offered.  Parents with infants are welcome in all conference sessions.
SEW's meeting spaces will include a quiet activity table/play area and
healthy snacks (with common food allergies taken into account) for
children attending conference sessions. When possible, conference room
play areas will be supervised by volunteers, but SEW cannot assume
legal responsibility for children’s supervision or care.

Submission Guidelines and Registration Information Available At:
http://educatingwomen.net/conferences/index.php/SEW2013/SEW2013
For more information, please contact Julie Davis, Julie@ou.edu