New Book: China's American Daughter (CUP)

Forthcoming in April 2006 ISBN: 962-996-057-5 website: http://www.chineseupress.com/english/e_front_page.htm
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ABOUT THE BOOK:
This book is a chronicle of a bicultural woman, Ida Pruitt, who was born in the 19th century of American missionaries, raised in a small Chinese village and lived in her adopted country for fifty years. She brought an almost unique perspective to her notable oral history, __A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman__ and to other writings and translations. Her work with the Chinese poor at the Peking Union Medical College established social casework in China. Ida Pruitt became an organizer of the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives in Nationalist and Communist regions and early advocated U.S. diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic of China.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr Marjorie King is Visiting Scholar in the Department of East Asian Studies Department, University of Arizona. Her research interests are in American religious and secular reform in late 19th-20th century China, and the revived Chinese Industrial Cooperatives. She has published on American missionary women, the Rockefeller Foundation's Peking Union Medical College, and the American Committee for the Promotion of the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives.

Age and the Body SAMLA convention

Age and the Body: Special Session 2006 SAMLA Convention: 10-12 November; Charlotte, NC
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Topic: Informed by recent developments in critical age studies, literary scholars have begun to reconsider how age operates through and on the body within texts. We invite submissions from all periods and genres, with topics including but not limited to:

childhood adolescence
widowhood
death and dying
the prime of life
old age
youth
babyhood
middle-age
pregnancy/fertility
plastic surgery
Viagra and other efforts to defy aging
weight loss / weight gain
the fountain of youth
impotence
pedophilia
sexuality
performances of age.

Submission deadline: April 1, 2006

Send inquiries or submissions to Esther Godfrey at egodfrey@utk.edu .

Per SAMLA guidelines, please include the following information with your submission.
1. Panelist Name and Institution as this information should appear in the convention program.
2. Panelist Address: street, city, state, zip
3. Panelist Phone Number: area code and number
4. Panelist Email address
5. AV Equipment Request: Due to the high cost of AV equipment and the miscommunication between panelist and chair and the SAMLA office, all AV requests must be made in writing by the panelist and included with each panelist proposal to the session chair. If a panelist does not wish to have any AV equipment, this information must also be included. No completed program listing submitted by the chair will be accepted without these written AV requests by the panelists.
6. Panelist proposal, Session Title, Name

From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
CFP@english.upenn.edu
Full Information at http://cfp.english.upenn.edu or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj@english.upenn.edu

"The Body in Feminist Theory and Practice"

In April, the Netherlands Research School of Women's Studies (NOV) organises the PhD course entitled "The Body in Feminist Theory and Practice".

Dates: April 13, 18, 20, 21, 2006 (full days)
Location:Utrecht University
Teacher: Prof. dr. Rosi Braidotti
Language: English
Credits: 7,5 ECTS - only awarded after an accepted written paper. (Students not requiring any credits will receive a certificate of attendance.)
Details: Tuition fee for external PhD students

The idea for this course emerged in the wake of the recent upsurge of interest in the body in society at large, in public/political debates, and within contemporary feminist scholarship. It has two aims. The first is to explore some of the ways in which the body can become a subject of feminist inquiry, as well as to address the possibilities and problems involved in doing research on the body from a feminist perspective. The second aim is to discuss and interrogate the ways in which our own embodiment as researchers impinges on the work we do. None of us -whether feminists or not- are the idealized disembodied subjects of Enlightenment mythology or disinterested rational agents in search of objective/neutral knowledge about the bodies of others. Learning to take our own bodies - bodies which are marked by sex, sexuality, ethnicity, age, and more - into account is not only 'politically correct'. It is integral to producing embodied and passionate knowledge -the cornerstone of any feminist inquiry. In this course, scholars from different disciplinary and theoretical backgrounds will describe how they approached the body as research object in their own inquiry, discussing some of the methodological 'ins' and 'outs' of doing research on the body from a feminist and/or critical perspective. They will also address the effects of their own 'embodiedness' on their actual research practices. Special emphasis will be given to poststructuralist theories of embodiment and to psychoanalytic notions of the body. Participants will be required to interrogate their own research along similar lines: how can they treat the body as an object of critical (feminist) inquiry and how can they situate themselves as embodied researchers.

Deadline for registration: March 24, 2006.

For more information on fees and registration: nov@let.uu.nl or 030-2536001 (mention the name of your promotor and institute and your mailing address).

Nederlandse Onderzoekschool Vrouwenstudies/Netherlands Research School of Women's Studies
Muntstraat 2A,
3512 EV UTRECHT
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 (0) 30 - 253 6001
Fax: +31 (0) 30 - 253 6134
nov@let.uu.nl --- www.let.uu.nl/nov

Call for Abstracts: Women and Faith-based development

FIRST CALL for Abstracts for a Workshop on
WOMEN AND ‘FAITH-BASED DEVELOPMENT’:
MIXING MORALITY AND MONEY
International Gender Studies Centre Workshop
Queen Elizabeth House, Dept of International Development, Oxford University
[proposed date: September 2007]

Recent geo-political events have placed religious issues centre stage. This has led faith based-organizations and issues to feature prominently in development debates. There is, nevertheless, inadequate understanding of the complex inter-relationship between religion and development at the state, agency and community level. What is clear is that assumptions about gender identity and roles underline much of the debate about the moral and material meaning of development goals. This workshop is devoted to exploring the intersection between faith-based development organizations, donor recipients, and gender relations.
What are the implications of faith-based development projects for the agency of women as opposed to men in a given local community? How does faith-based development work contrast with secular development in terms of the implicit or explicit gender roles accorded to donor and recipient? How is development work related to religious activism and what implications does this have for local, gendered power hierarchies? How do local community-based projects’ gender agendas relate to those of the state? What are the gender implications of transnational development projects within specific religious traditions? These are some of the questions to be addressed via three proposed panels in this multi-disciplinary workshop. We welcome papers with a theoretical-conceptual bias as well as those which favour a more empirical and/or ethnographic approach.

If you are interested in participating in this workshop please send us an abstract of no more than 250 words by June 30th2006 to the relevant panel coordinator or post to her at: IGS/Conference-QEH, 3 Mansfield Rd, Oxford OX1 3TB, UK.

THEME 1 – Maria Jaschok, email: Maria.Jaschok@qeh.ox.ac.uk
Indigenising Religions, Postcolonial Sentiment and Women Driving Alternative Development
The growing membership of religious organizations, the prominence of women in all of them, the privatisation of the welfare state and more liberal state policies concerning international funding raises crucial questions in many countries. Could gendered, religious notions of development be seen as ’alternative‘, or even ’subversive‘, to state sponsored development ideology? Is there a clash of objectives between the ’development for women‘, and the ’development of religion‘? To what extent are transnational religious organizations becoming more influential in religious-based development projects and what is the impact on gender relations locally? These questions will be explored through case studies of local women’s initiatives and international feminist networks as well as NGOs and international donor agencies in various countries.

THEME 2 – Josephine Reynell, email: Josephine.Reynell@lmh.ox.ac.uk
Gender and the Organization of Aid in Diasporic Religious Communities
Recent humanitarian disasters across the world, caused by war and environmental factors have revealed how diasporic religious communities, and particularly informal organizations of women, mobilise to collect both money and goods to help populations who often, but not invariably, share the same religious faith or country of origin. This panel will examine the gendered consequences of such projects for both recipient and donor communities, and the impact of the resultant trans-national links on the nation state in both the donor and recipient countries.

THEME 3 – Deborah Bryceson, email: dfbryceson@bryceson.net
Compassion and Moral Righteousness: Faith- based Donor Assistance for AIDS-affected Communities
The devastating impact of AIDS in local communities has encouraged people to seek solace in religion. Faith based organizations of virtually every major religious denomination as well as numerous Pentecostal and other religious sects have offered spiritual and material support, assisting AIDS orphans, and instructing their followings on sexual morality, gender relations and the role of women in society. This panel will examine the range and nature of various faith-based interventions, consider their impact on local communities and ask how such interventions have influenced gender hierarchies.

THEME 4 – Anne Coles, email: JohnandAnneColes@compuserve.com
GENERAL PANEL
For those who feel their paper does not fit into any of the above themes.