Discourses of gender have ceased to be mere counter-narratives that question established categories of thought. They are no longer responses to the oppositional praxis of various disciplines that entrench sex/gender binaries, but constitute the self-reflexive nature of various domains by problematizing the constantly shifting questions of knowing and being and underlining the adrift-ness of objective, humanistic knowledge. Gender studies have gathered fire and brimstone from literary and feminist criticism and moved on from being frames of reference to reconstituting theoretical frameworks for rigorous polemical integrations of the sub/versive and transgressive into inter-textual and inter-subjective processes.

 

Gender questions the complicity of purported integral and systemic categories of identity and the institutionalization of such categories through naturalized narratives of being. Over the past two decades, much of scientific knowledge is narrativised by gender studies, which for instance reveal the incantatory constitution of the human body through constant assignment of gender to gender-neutral aspects. On the other hand, both masculinities and feminist queer studies continue to push the frontiers of feminist studies that inadvertently continue to grapple with accusations of male-oriented theory or the implied paradox of sectarian gynocriticism.

 

What we read as texts and how we read them are debates that we take to Law and Philosophy alike, for example, and in doing so we understand that gender is both a narrative and a narrativisation of the structure and hegemony of the traditionally established and over-determined nature of discourse itself.Gender discourses demonstrate how the hegemonic nature of language gives rise to epistemologies of fragmentation and division that privilege certain groups over others and how inequalities, articulated and practised on the basis of assumed difference, essentially that of fixity and opposition of both sex and gender, are institutionalized in terms of structures, both semantic and socio-political. Gender studies have consistently examined inter-sectionalities of race, ethnicity, class and caste and the politics of inclusion/exclusion based on age, dis/ability and accepted norms of mental, physical and social well-being within dominant narratives, thereby addressing political, socio-economic and cultural essentialisms in their wake.

 

Proposed Themes & Sub-themes for the Conference (Papers/ articles/ presentations can address a combination of these themes)

 

‘Media’ted Bodies: Gender and the Politics of Representation

• Literary Narratives

• Visual Media

• Art & Aesthetics

• New Media

Initiation W/rite: Language & Gender Identity

• Linguistics

• Narratology

• Translation

Focal Drift : Gender & Gentrification, Space &Social Mobility

• Gender & the City

• Kinesthetics& Body Language

• Performative Spaces

• Gentrification and Social Inclusion/Exclusion

Tactical Apparatus: Science and the Body

• Biological Sciences

• Technology

• Digital Bodies

Beyond Speech-acts: Gender & Social Intervention

• Law

• Public Policy

• Activism & Social Change