Sunday June 22, 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.

Sign up by April 15, to be listed as a participant in the Conference Program book.

You can sign up through the registration process.

Academic Publishing in Women’s Studies
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.

Session Leaders
Becky Ropers-Huilman, NWSAJournal Editor
Ilene Kalish, New York University Press

Promoting Racial Diversity and Inclusion
Session Format: Workshop
This session will examine programs and initiatives to promote racial diversity in organizations, curricula, and staffing, among others.  Session leaders will discuss efforts underway as they relate to curriculum development, a National Council for Research on Women project titled “Diversifying the Leadership of Women’s Research, Policy & Advocacy Centers,” and NWSA anti-racism projects.  Diversifying the Leadership of Women’s Research, Policy, and Advocacy Centers is a Ford Foundation-funded project aimed at promoting the leadership of women of color from historically underrepresented groups in the United States within NCRW and its affiliated research, policy and advocacy member centers.

Session Leaders
Aimee Carrillo Rowe, NWSA Women of Color Caucus Co-Chair
Yamuna Sangarasivam, Anthropology Dept., Nazareth College (Rochester, NY)
Delores Walters, Director of Research for Institutional Diversity, National Council for Research on Women
Pat Washington, NWSA Women of Color Caucus Co-Chair

Queer Pedagogies
Our session approaches queer pedagogy from the assumption that it represents an intersection between queer theory and critical pedagogy. At the same time, we are leery of certain strands of queer scholarship which seem to position queer pedagogy as a kind of afterthought to academically-hip queer theory. As William Spurlin reminds us, “teaching does matter as a form of queer inquiry and social intervention to the extent that it remains dedicated to deeper understandings of cultural literacy, resistance to discursive and intellectual colonization in a (hetero)normative academy and social order, credible social change, and more democratic spheres of classroom and public deliberation” (15). Building on this belief, we examine the issue of feminist collaboration from a queer theoretical perspective. Focusing particularly on our collaboration as authors of Finding Out: LGBT history, politics, and culture (to be published by SAGE Press in 2008), we describe our collaborative process and theorize about the dynamics of that process. We also relate the issues of collaboration and the producing of textbooks to a discussion of queer pedagogy, including their perceived positioning in the academic hierarchy.

Session Leaders
Deborah Meem, Dept. of Women's Studies, University of Cincinnati
Michelle Gibson, Dept. of Women's Studies, University of Cincinnati
Jonathan Alexander, Director of Distance Learning, University of California- Irvine

Regionalizing Women's Studies
Session Format: Seminar
Through the lens of a faculty and student exchange and book project that focuses on women's human rights, citizenships and identities in a North American context among women's and gender studies programs in Mexico, Canada, and the US, this session will engage participants in the question of the meanings, prospects, and problematics for regionalizing women's studies in response to regionalizing economic, political, and social forces (forming such entites as NAFTA, the European Union, etc)  as part of globalization and in the spirit of feminisms, if not without then beyond, borders to counter negative forms of un- and re-borderings that undermine social justice.

Session Leaders
Anne Sisson Runyan, Dept. of Women's Studies, University of Cincinnati
Katherine Side, Dept. of Women's Studies, Mount St. Vincent Unviersity, Halifax, Canada
Marianne Marchand, Dept. of Political Science and History, Universidad de las Americas-Puebla, Mexico