The focus for the 2023 Feminist Decolonial Politics Workshop is the writing of Angela Davis!
The workshop takes place over the course of 4 days, specifically May 23rd to May 26th, 2023. It will take place between 9AM and 5PM each day, Eastern Standard Time. There will be some variation, but most workshops will take place during these dates/times.
The workshop will take place in person (in Charlotte, North Carolina) and online.
Applications are due February 1st 2023.
We are very pleased to announce that this year there will be 2 workshops: extended and intensive. Folks can apply for one or both workshops. Information for each is provided below.
Extended Workshop [February 10th – March 10th]
Through this workshop, we are interested in challenging what counts as knowledge, and who counts as those who hold and produce knowledge. We are also interested in challenging the idea that knowledge is individual, or can be done alone. To do this, we hope you will join us in reading Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s first book, Borderlands / La Frontera (1987). Anzaldúa is a Chicana artist, poet, theorist and teacher, and she writes from her own experiences growing up on the U.S. Southern border with Mexico. Borderlands / La Frontera, is part autobiography, talks about issues that continue to concern Chicanx folks today, and weaves together different dialects of Spanish and English.
This workshop will take place every Thursday from 6PM – 7:30PM EST (1.5 hours), starting on Thursday, February 10th and ending Thursday, March 10th on Zoom. We invite folks who are already familiar with Anzaldúa’s work, and those who are just starting out thinking about her ideas. Anyone can apply to the workshop. In order to apply, please complete this Google poll, where we’ll ask for the following: (i) statement of interest (about 200 words); (ii) name, pronouns; (iii) accessibility requests. Feel free to reach out to Ash Williams with questions or concerns: ashwilliamsclt@gmail.com.
Please submit your application by January 20th, 2022.
Intensive Workshop [May 19th – 24th]
The focus of the 2022 Feminist Decolonial Politics Workshop will be the writings of Gloria E. Anzaldúa (1942-2004). Anzaldúa was a poet, activist, educator, and scholar of Chicana feminist theory and queer of color critique. She authored a number of texts, including Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), and was the co-editor of This Bridge Called my Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981), a foundational text by and for women of color on numerous topics, including race, gender, sexuality, class, and Indigeneity.
The workshop will take place on May 19th-20th and May 23-24th 2022, from approximately 9:30AM – 4PM EST each day. Participants are expected to participate in all sessions of the workshop, which will take place via Zoom.
The workshop will culminate in an hour-long discussion with Dr. Mariana Ortega.
Applications are due February 20th, 2022. See Apply Now for more information. Feel free to reach out to Elisabeth Paquette at epaquet1@uncc.edu if you have any questions or concerns.
The 2021 Feminist Decolonial Politics Workshop will take place Tuesday, May 25th – Friday, May 28th from 11AM – 3PM EST over Zoom. All participants from the cancelled 2020 workshop are welcome to participate in the 2021 workshop. We will be reading Christina Sharpe’s two books — In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016) and Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects (2010) — as well as a couple of articles.
I’m very happy to announce that the focus of the 2020 Feminist Decolonial Politics Workshop is Dr. Christina Sharpe! The workshop is scheduled to take place Wednesday, May 20th to Saturday, May 23rd 2020 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The Feminist Decolonial Politics Workshop seeks to create a space for junior scholars and graduate students to engage in rigorous discussions of seldom-read figures in feminist decolonial theory. This 4-day intensive workshop provides an opportunity to enrich participant’s research and pedagogy through sustained engagement with the work of a given author. In the past, we have read the works of Audra Simpson, Saidiya Hartman, Sara Ahmed, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Sylvia Wynter.
Applications are due February 17th, 2020, and should include (a) a CV, and (b) a statement of interest. Travel funding is available on a first come, first serve basis. To be considered for a travel grant, in addition to the materials above, submit (a) a statement of need, and (b) a travel budget. Late applications will not be considered for the travel grant.
All documents should be attached to the email, in either word or pdf format, and should be saved with the applicants last name (for example: Paquette, CV).
We are very happy to announce that the focus of the 2019 Feminist Decolonial Politics Workshop is Dr. Audra Simpson.
Dr. Simpson is Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University in New York. She is the author of Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States (Duke University Press, 2014). She describes her research as “energized by the problem of recognition, by its passage beyond (and below) the aegis of the state into the grounded field of political self-designation, self-description and subjectivity. This work is motivated by the struggle of Kahnawake Mohawks to find the proper way to afford political recognition to each other, their struggle to do this in different places and spaces and the challenges of formulating membership against a history of colonial impositions.”
The workshop seeks to create a space for junior scholars and graduate students to engage in rigorous discussions of seldom read figures in feminist decolonial theory. This 4-day intensive workshop provides an opportunity to enrich participants’ research and pedagogy through sustained engagement with the work of a given author. In the past, we have read the works of Saidiya Hartman, Sara Ahmed, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Sylvia Wynter.
Applications are due February 1st, 2019 and should include (a) a CV, and (b) a statement of interest. Travel funding is available on a first come, first serve, basis. To be considered for the travel grant, submit (a) a statement of need, and (b) a travel budget. Late applications will not be considered for the travel grant.
Villanova University || March 15-16, 2019
Featuring a keynote address by José Medina (Northwestern University)
The systems of domination shaping our world, including classism, coloniality, and norms of embodiment, are deeply entangled. Because of this, pulling at a single thread cannot untie the knotted network of oppressions and may even tighten tensions between the other threads. A singular focus on one axis of oppression is, in Angela Davis’ words, an “ideological snare” — a trap meant to derail liberatory projects. Theories ensnared by this trap neglect the complexity of the social and political relations they seek to transform. This shortcoming is compounded by the specialization and professionalization systematically encouraged in contemporary academic institutions and the divisions of labor internal to it. As groups and as individuals, within and without the academy, hegemonic epistemologies leave their mark on us all. Epistemology, understood this way, is always political.
Developing alternatives to an oppressive socio-political order while experiencing domination and subjugation within that order is a central concern, not just for theorists of political struggle, but for theories of knowledge in general. Critical approaches to political epistemology require collective work toward the transformation of knowledge production and its material practices. With this task in mind, our conference seeks to embrace a variety of methodologies, disciplines and perspectives, and to facilitate their engagement. Our conference will bring together scholars in disciplines such as social epistemology, decolonial theory, feminisms, Marxist political economy and social theory, Latin American philosophy, critical philosophy of race, queer theory and disability studies. Topics to be discussed include, but are not limited to:
* Epistemic disobedience, activism, and/or organizing
* The Marxist tradition of ideology critique
* Coloniality and decolonizing epistemologies
* Genres of the human and the geopolitics of knowledge
* Epistemologies of ignorance and meta-ignorance
* The history of resistance movements and their processes of political education
* Liberation theologies and the religious dimensions of political struggle
* Collective social imaginations
We will be accepting abstracts/summaries up to 800 words, full papers, and panel proposals for review. Presentations should not exceed 20 mins. For panel proposals, please submit an abstract for the whole panel along with separate abstracts for each of the papers. Please prepare submissions for anonymous review and email them, or any questions, to vuconference2019@gmail.com.
Submission deadline: December 15th, 2018.
The Feminist Decolonial Politics Workshop is an annual event that took place this year at UNC Charlotte’s main campus in May 22-25, 2018. The workshop is designed to help participants develop methods for incorporating decolonial feminist theory into their research and teaching. In this vein, the workshop aims to assist faculty and graduate students in diversifying the philosophical canon, thereby strengthening engaged learning in the classroom. These goals enhance student success, and importantly attempt to create culturally-rich classroom environments that encourage students from underrepresented group to participate and succeed in their studies.
With this in mind, workshop participants study one theorist during the course of the workshop in an effort to ensure a rich and thorough understanding of a given theorist and that theorist’s historical context. The chosen theorist for the 2018 workshop was Dr. Saidiya Hartman, who works in the areas of African American and American literature and cultural history, slavery, law and literature, and performance studies. One participant described their experience of the 2018 workshop in the following way: “I knew of Hartman’s work and knew it was powerful. However, I haven’t had the time to set aside to read it. The workshop allowed me to read Hartman’s work and dig deeply into its complexity. I love that I was able to read multiple works and unpack them with other scholars in this way. I am more confident about drawing on Hartman’s work in my research and teaching.” In previous years, we have focused on the works of Sylvia Wynter, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Sara Ahmed. Overall, participants “really appreciated having the opportunity to attend the workshop. The intellectual stimulation was of the highest caliber. I also felt the assembled members [were] particularly diverse and highly capable.”
We have benefited from the support of the Chancellor’s Diversity Challenge Fund as well as various organizations at UNC Charlotte including the Center for Professional and Applied Ethics, the Department of Philosophy, the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, and the Center for Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Studies. In light of such support, in 2018 we were able to provide travel funding for eight workshop participants, as well as modest incentives for session organizers and graduate students.
The author chosen for the 2019 Feminist Decolonial Politics Workshop will be Audra Simpson [Mohawk]. More information for the May 2019 workshop will be posted on the website by January 1st 2019, with applications due February 1st. UNC Charlotte students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to apply. If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Elisabeth Paquette at epaquet1@uncc.edu.
The 2018 Feminist Decolonial Politics Workshop is no longer accepting applications. Workshop participants are encouraged to use the website to stay on top of current information for the upcoming workshop. Anyone who is interested in applying for the 2019 workshop can expect a CFP posted on this website in January 2019. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or concerns.
This is the fourth annual Feminist Decolonial Politics Workshop, and we are looking forward to being able to engage this year with the work of Dr. Saidiya Hartman, including Lose Your Mother (2007) and Scenes of Subjection (1997). Dr. Hartman describes her major fields of interest as “African American and American literature and cultural history, slavery, law and literature, and performance studies.”
Anyone interested in participating in the workshop should submit an application that includes (a) a CV and (b) a cover letter stating why they are interested in the workshop. A rolling review of applications will begin on February 1st, 2018. This workshop is intended primarily for graduate students, junior scholars, untenured faculty, or independent scholars, but we encourage all to apply. Applications should be sent directly to epaquet1@uncc.edu.
In an attempt to ensure that those who are underfunded or lack adequate financial support are able to participate, travel funding is available. Anyone who is in need of travel funding is asked to submit a statement of need along with their application, as well as a budget detailing how they would use the funds. For full consideration for travel funds, please apply by February 1st, 2018.
We are very pleased to announce that the focus of the 2018 Feminist Decolonial Politics workshop is the work of Dr. Saidiya Hartman.
Dr. Hartman is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. She is the author of Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America (Oxford University Press, 1997) and Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007). She describes her major fields of interest as “African American and American literature and cultural history, slavery, law and literature, and performance studies.” This is the fourth annual Feminist Decolonial Politics workshop, and we are looking forward to being able to engage this year with Dr. Hartman’s books and a number of her articles.
The workshop will take place in Charlotte, NC, from Tuesday, May 22nd until Friday, May 25th, 2018. Information about applying to the workshop will be available on the website by December 1st 2017. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at epaquet1@uncc.edu.
Feminist Decolonial Politics 