Decolonizing Gender and Sexuality Graduate Conference

FGSS will celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the founding of its PhD minor by convening a conference that places graduate student research in conversation with key concepts and scholars in the field. Since the late 20th century, the fields of postcolonial and decolonial criticism have enabled new ways of analyzing gender and sexuality. In conceptualizing colonialism as both material and epistemological (constituting both a mode of domination and extraction as well as a mindset, a mode of being and becoming), (de)colonialism and (de) coloniality could serve as generative sites for interdisciplinary scholarly inquiry. 

This conference explores the slippery linkages between (de)colonialism/(de)coloniality and investigation in the construction, experience, and understanding of gender, sex, and sexuality.  How do these concepts and debates vary in varied temporal contexts and global regions? What insights can analysis of historical or current colonial and anti-colonial thought, politics, and activism offer for contemporary decolonial politics of gender and sexuality?  What are the innovations as well as limitations of these shifting conceptual, theoretical, and methodological frameworks? 

This call solicits research on these themes from Stanford PhD students. Interested graduate students should write an abstract (up to 500 words) of the paper they wish to present or workshop and fill out this application form for consideration by March 15, 2025. Notification of those selected to present will be sent by March 21, 2025. Presenters should submit their final paper of no more than 10,000 words by April 15, 2025. Each panel will be moderated by faculty member respondents.

We are open to other themes for papers/ presentations and can put together subgroups based on other themes students have submitted abstracts about. Please submit your abstract and we will see how we can cluster papers/ presentations. The goal of the conference is to support grad students.

There will be an opening and closing keynote talk.  Inaugural FGSS PhD Minor Alum talk delivered by Elizabeth Jacob, Assistant Professor of History at University of Massachusetts Amherst (Stanford PhD 2023). Additional talk by C. Riley Snorton, Professor of English and Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies at University of Chicago. 

More details and conference agenda will be shared by mid April.

Please contact Dr. Halima Kazem (hkazem [at] stanford.edu (hkazem[at]stanford[dot]edu)) if you have any questions.