Surviving and Thriving: Gender, Justice, Power, and Place Making

Rural Women’s Studies Association Triennial Conference

Hosted by Ohio University, Athens, Ohio

May 17-19, 2018

The theme, “Surviving and Thriving: Gender, Justice, Power, and Place Making,” emphasizes the role of gender in rural community formation and survival. It allows for exploration of the ways that gendered identity (as women, men, or bi- and trans-) and raced identity (within separatist communities, segregated neighborhoods, or integrated spaces) affected personal power, individual choice, and community development. These subjects lend themselves to exploration of rural activism, business development, cultural expression, self-governance, and collective experiences—both historical and contemporary—locally, regionally, nationally, and globally.

RWSA is an international association founded in 1997 to promote and advance farm and rural women’s/gender studies in a historical perspective by encouraging research, promoting scholarship, and establishing and maintaining links with organizations that share these goals. RWSA welcomes academic scholars, public historians and archivists, graduate students, and representatives of rural organizations and communities as conference participants and members.

Presentations take many forms at RWSA conferences, including workshops, panel sessions, tours, interactive sessions, roundtable discussions, poster presentations, open-mic discussions, performances, readings, and audiovisual presentations. The RWSA encourages inter-, trans- or multi-disciplinary approaches that connect rural women’s/gender history and present-day political, ecological, or social and economic concerns, worldwide. The RWSA seeks to integrate creative work with the conference theme, and we encourage artists working in visual, film, performative, and literary genres to submit their ideas to make the conference most dynamic.

The theme: Surviving and Thriving encourages exploration of several sub-themes:

• coping with change using creative and alternative strategies
• ecofeminism; natural resources; environmental legacies, livelihoods and politics
• sustainable development, feminism, activism and social justice
• rural economics; gendered and spatial analysis of poverty, economic inequality, and wealth
• folkways, tangible and intangible cultural heritage, and cultural identities

Please submit the following information by 31 May 2017.

1. Title of paper/panel/poster/workshop/performance (working title is acceptable).
2. 200 word description/abstract of paper, panel, poster, workshop, performance, etc.
3. Brief vita/bio of presenter or panel participants and complete contact information for all.

Please indicate if your proposal does not fit in the regular session time of 1.5 hour with three presentations and discussion. We will contact you if your proposal has been accepted.

Submissions should be sent electronically (as a single word document) to:

RW******@gm***.com

If it is not possible to send your proposal electronically, please send by regular mail to:

Cherisse Jones-Branch
Professor of History
Department of History
P.O. Box 1690
Arkansas State University, AR 72467
USA
870-972-3291


cr*****@as****.edu

Program Committee Co-chairs: Cherisse Jones-Branch, Arkansas State University, and Debra A. Reid, The Henry Ford (Dearborn, Michigan)

Program Committee Members: Mary Larson, President of the Oral History Association and Oklahoma State University; Maggie Weber, Iowa State University; Suzie Acord, Athens County Rural Action; Amy McKinney, Northwest College; Rebecca Montgomery, Texas State University; Catherine Wilson, University of Guelph, ex officio member.

For information on travel grants and letters of invitation, contact Katherine Jellison at

je******@oh**.edu











. For additional information on the RWSA, please go to the organization website.