The Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University is proud to host SEWSA 2015: “Trafficking in Gender: Feminist Dialogues on Embodiment.” The 2015 Southeastern Women’s Studies Association conference will be held at the Wyndham Hotel in Boca Raton on March 26-29, 2015. Caucus submissions are due by October 15 and general admissions will be accepted through November 1, 2014.

Description: The conference topic is inspired by our Center’s current initiative to raise awareness about sex trafficking, particularly in South Florida. The National Human Trafficking Resource Center found that the state of Florida ranked 3rd in the number of phone calls amassed by their human trafficking hotline in 2011. Our keynote speaker, Carrie N. Baker, an Associate Professor in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College, has published The Women’s Movement Against Sexual Harassment (Cambridge UP, 2004), and her current research is on sex trafficking.

We invite paper abstracts and complete panel, workshop, and roundtable proposals on all aspects of gender and embodiment. We especially encourage those that engage the conference theme to discuss feminism in relation to the themes of (im)mobility, trafficking, and movement. Gayle Rubin’s landmark essay, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex,” provides a touchstone for SEWSA 2015 conference theme.

Suggested topics/approaches for proposals are: theories of sex and gender and “modes of reproduction”; sexual subcultures and sexual minorities; routes of transnational feminist politics; sex and profit (prostitution, domestic labor, etc.); body trafficking, displaced and misplaced bodies; various forms of illicit trafficking (organs, cultural objects, drugs); anti-trafficking movements and activism; kinship systems, gift exchange, the politics of marriage, and the relationship of social systems to political and economic arrangements; engendering health; narratives of activism; pedagogical meditations on teaching gender and embodiment; and circulations of cultural production (music, film, literature, visual arts).

Guidelines: We invite you to submit individual proposals of 250 words in a Word document for this general call for papers and ask that you also review the LGBTQ, People of Color, and Student caucus CFPs for their submission requirements. Caucus submissions are due by October 15th and general admissions will be accepted through November 1st. Submissions should detail requests for specific audiovisual equipment, if needed. We also ask that a proposal for a complete panel, roundtable, or workshop include a short description of the central topic, supplemented by brief abstracts of individual speakers’ contributions.

Please e-mail abstracts to: SEWSA2015@fau.edu

All presenters, chairs, and respondents must be members of SEWSA. Membership information can be found on: http://sewsaonline.org/membership/

For more information on the conference, including lodging, etc., see http://www.fau.edu/womensstudies/sewsa2015/index.php

[Many thanks to Mary Ann Gosser Esquilín for bringing this item to our attention.]