News & Events
Care & Joy in Precarious Times Conference
Care and Joy in Precarious Times: The 3rd Annual WGSS Interdisciplinary Conference
Call for Submissions
The USF Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty members of the USF community for the Care and Joy in Precarious Times Conference to be held on February 21, 2025, at the USF Tampa campus.
As Audre Lorde once wrote, Lorde was writing about living with breast and liver cancers and about her life and work as a queer Black woman. Honoring Lorde’s legacy in the contemporary moment asks us to rethink the possibilities of care and joy that emerge from authenticity, community, accountability, resistance, and resilience.
Care & Joy in Precarious Times asks us to rethink questions such as: What does it mean to care for the self? How can we care for ourselves and one another responsibly? In what ways does joy show up in times of precarity? What kinds of self-reflection and responsibility do these uncertain times call for? In what ways are care and joy acts of resistance or preservation? In what ways are acts of care and joy mutually constituted? In what ways can acts/outcomes of care and joy transcend embodied labor? In what ways might care and joy be politicized?
We encourage collaboration between and among faculty and students, and we welcome multi- and interdisciplinary research from the sciences, social sciences, humanities, arts, and applied/professional disciplines. Submissions may include creative projects, full panels, single papers/presentations, and posters on varieties of care, broadly defined. Proposals for performances, readings, and other non-traditional presentations are welcome.
Topics could include but are not limited to self-care; drag and other performance as forms of care or joy; care or joy in families of choice; Black, queer, and other forms of care or joy; cultures of care; strategies for practicing care or producing joy in the university or other setting; the politics or/and labor of care; pedagogies of care or joy; healthcare and other professions of care; media representations of care or joy; and critiques of care and joy as frameworks for individual or collective action.
Important Dates
- Submissions deadline: December 19, 2024
- Notifications of submission acceptance: January 21, 2025
- Conference registration deadline: February 3, 2025
- Conference: February 21, 2025
Conference Location & Time
The Care & Joy in Precarious Times Conference will take place in TECO Hall, located in the David C. Anchin Center on the USF Tampa campus. The conference day will be from 9:00am-6:00pm.
Registration
for the conference.
Disability Accommodations
If you require a reasonable accommodation to participate in a WGSS event, please contact us at 813-974-5520 at least five (5) working days prior to the event.