About the Conference

Conference Overview

The National Women's Studies Association 28th annual conference will open with three pre-conferences hosted by the Program Administration and Development and the Women’s Centers Standing Committees.  These daylong events offer networking and professional development opportunities for women’s and gender studies and women’s center administrators on Thursday, June 28.

As part of its 30th anniversary celebration, NWSA is also pleased to announce plans for a Student pre-conference that aims to expand student services, membership, and involvement in the organization. 

The General Conference begins on Thursday evening and concludes Sunday afternoon; it will feature concurrent breakout sessions, new member events, and professional development sessions for graduate students and junior faculty.  Special events will include a Creative Writers Series, an art exhibition, a film series, a book exhibition, Critical Issues sessions, and area excursions. 

"Past Debates, Present Possibilities, Future Feminisms"
The 2007 conference marks the National Women's Studies Association 30th anniversary celebration.  Established in 1977 at a conference funded by the Ford Foundation, NWSA has survived and thrived in the context of fundamental shifts in higher education, an increasingly complex understandings of gender, and the transformative challenges of globalizing women’s movements. 

Feminist inquiry within women’s and gender studies has broken new ground in the past three decades, while facing key social, political, and scholarly challenges. 

NWSA 2007 will provide opportunities both to revisit past debates in light of today’s priorities and to chart possible futures for feminisms in the academy and beyond.

In particular, the conference will examine three sub-themes, each related to the past, present, and future of women’s and gender studies:

The Girls’ Studies and Activism Institute will consider historical and ongoing conversations about education, science, technology, activism, and culture by, for, and about girls of various identities, experiences and locations. 

It will offer girls, their parents, their teachers, and other conference-goers opportunities to encounter girl-centered spaces and projects in the Chicago area.

Illinois secondary educators will have the opportunity to earn Continuing Professional Development Units by attending the NWSA conference and a Thursday tour.

Performing Feminisms will consider and demonstrate all kinds of feminist performance and gender presentation, with a special emphasis on theater and performance as education and social justice activism as well as conference entertainment.

Im/Migration and Mobility will include discussions of globalization, personal mobility and ability, technologies of movement and surveillance, immigration and diasporas, and women in community leadership.

NWSA is pleased to announce two new session formats this year: we will inaugurate Engaging Scholarship, four simultaneous sessions on Friday intended to address the conference theme and sub-themes and provide opportunities for networking. 

Invited scholars will explain how their work articulates, engages with, and theorizes issues key issues in the field of women's and gender studies and in today's world. 

Session participants will then break out in discussion sections to explore the various themes and issues in more detail. 

NWSA is also delighted to introduce the Tribute Panel, a session format intended to honor past scholarship that has set new directions for the field. 

2007 will feature a tribute to This Bridge Called My Back titled Bridge Inscriptions: Radical Women of Color Envision—Pasts, Presents, Futures.

The National Women's Studies Association 2007 annual meeting and book exhibition will be held at Pheasant Run, a unionized resort hotel in St. Charles, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, from June 28-July 1, 2007.

Illinois secondary educators will have the opportunity to earn Continuing Professional Development Units by attending the NWSA conference and a Thursday tour.