Special Sessions: Critical Issues in Women's Studies

Sunday will feature a three-hour session format that will provide opportunities for small groups of conference participants to exchange ideas on theoretical, political, or strategic matters of interest to women’s studies practitioners. 

These sessions are designed as occasions for information and/or intellectual exchange and may entail the exchange of short papers between session participants before the general conference. 

Most sessions will require pre-registration to participate and each participant will be listed in the conference program.  A limited number of spaces will be available in these Critical Issues seminars.

1) Leadership and Campus Activism

To address the advancement of women's leadership on campus, many universities have created innovative programs that embed a single-sex experience in a coeducational setting or that aim to support and advance women in leadership positions. Leadership educators in the past decade have also increasingly emphasized the importance of social activism as a tool for leadership development.

In many ways, this link between leadership and social change is nothing new for women's centers. Students involved in women's centers have been learning leadership through activism for many years. But consciously and intentionally using activism as a tool for teaching leadership can present its own challenges. This session will discuss women's leadership programs and centers on campus, as well as the ways such programs/centers use social activism as a means of leadership education.

Participants will share the research that led to the creation of their program or center; describe the process of proposing, justifying, and designing it; share data on the program's/center's impact on campus culture; and discuss the rewards and challenges of integrating leadership and activism into their programs.

Session Leaders

Brenda Bethman, University of Missouri-Kansas City	Jane Goettsch Miami University of Ohio	Crystal Lander, Feminist Majority Leadership Foundation	Donna Lisker, Duke University	Amy Jacobson, Alfred University	Shannon Doran, Public Leadership Education Network

2) Publishing in Women's Studies - Public Voice

Session Format: Workshop

Women's studies scholars and students write about topics central to public debate. Yet too often our work fails to reach an audience outside of the academy. At the same time, to write a book in today's competitive publishing climate, scholars must appeal to a broader audience than was necessary in the past. This session brings together the people who can help facilitate these translations-literary agents and editors-with scholars who are currently negotiating the traverse. Panelists will discuss the components of a successful book proposal, the writerly and professional payoffs of "crossing over," and the scholarly challenges of writing "pop" while pursuing tenure.
Session Leaders

Deborah Siegel, Author and Editorial Strategist
Jean Casella, Editor
Nancy Crossman, Crossman Literary Agency

3) Academic Publishing in Women's Studies

Session Leaders
Brenda Daly, current NWSAJournal Editor	Becky Ropers-Huilman, incoming NWSA Journal Editor

Session Format: Workshop

This session will offer practical advice about how to get published in women's studies, from women's studies journals to books and edited collections.

Get tips on selecting chapters for journal publication versus developing a full academic book proposal. Understand how the journal submission process and timeline works, and gain insight into interpreting reviewer reports.

Learn the best strategies for identifying a press, approaching an editor, developing a proposal, and understanding the publishing market.

4) Collaborative Research: A Practical Introduction
to Participatory Action Research

Session Leader

Alaka Wali, The Center for Cultural Understanding and Change, The Field Museum

Session Format: Workshop

This session will delve into how to create effective Participatory Action Research (PAR) projects, how to represent distinct voices in engaged research, and how to deepen research collaborations.

Participatory Action Research is a way for professional researchers and community residents to collaborate on investigations into issues-such as housing, healthcare, and environmental conservation-with the goal of achieving positive social change.

PAR values both scholarly and community-based perspectives to address questions related to living conditions, services, and policy, in order to make life better for people living in a given community, as defined by that community.