Gendered Memories of War and Political Violence, Sabanci University, Istanbul, 22-23 May 2012‏

*Call for Papers*

Gendered Memories of War and Political Violence

22-23 May 2012 Istanbul

Gender and Women's Studies Forum

Sabancı University

Workshop organized in the framework of the
Central European University - Sabancı University Joint Academic Initiative

by Ayşe Gül Altınay and Andrea Petö

Opening Remarks by Cynthia Enloe

The 20th century has been a century of wars, genocides, and other forms of political violence. It has also been a century of feminist struggle and theorizing globally. At the peak of what is sometimes called the "memory boom," this conference seeks to explore the different ways in which wars, genocides, and other forms of political violence are remembered through a gender lens. Central questions include (but are not limited to):

* How have wars, genocides and other forms of political violence
been narrated and represented by men and women?
* How do women remember and narrate sexual violence in war?
* How do (written, oral or visual) testimonies challenge or
reinforce the hegemonic accounts of wars and genocides?
* How are wars memorialized and gendered through monuments,
museums, and other memory sites?
* What is the impact of the ethnicization/racialization of violence
on the making of gendered memories?
* How is the relationship between the "personal" and the
"public/national/political" (re)conceptualized in popular culture,
film, literature, and (auto)biographical texts dealing with war,
genocide, and other forms of political violence?
* How are "humanitarian interventions," post-conflict processes, and
transitional justice gendered?
* How do women's, feminist, and LGBTQ movements contribute to
critical memory work on wars?
* What kind of impact has feminist scholarship had on war and
militarism studies, genocide studies, and memory studies?
* What new concepts or theoretical frameworks (queer? postcolonial?
critical race studies?) promise new openings in feminist analyses of
memory work on wars and genocides?

*Applications:*

The working language of the conference will be English. Scholars of all levels and from all disciplines are encouraged to apply. Priority will be given to papers that deal with Europe (in the largest sense of the term) or Europe's connection to the discussed context, but other papers will also be considered.

Please submit an abstract (max. 500 words) outlining the relevance and novelty of your contribution, together with a 200 words resumé.

Presenters will be required to submit their presentation in writing prior to the workshop. With the participation of Cynthia Enloe and other prominent scholars from the field as discussants, we are hoping for close engagement and critical debate during the workshop. Presenters will be encouraged to submit their revised papers for the special issue of the /European Journal of Women's Studies/ on the same topic (to be edited by Altınay and Petö).

There are limited funds for those participants who do not have other sources of funding to attend the workshop. When submitting your abstract, please indicate your need for any financial assistance. There are no registration fees. Lunch, tea and coffee will be provided for all participants.

*The application deadline is 16 December 2011.*

To submit your paper and for more information: genderconf@sabanciuniv.edu
Workshop website: http://myweb.sabanciuniv.edu/genderconf/

Istanbul Biennal Residency at Caravanserai Location: Istanbul - Turley DL: 15 August 2011

live-work-see

Deadline for the Winter Residencies has passed, we currently have one open call:

Istanbul Biennal Residency : Sept 2011 (Aug 15th Deadline) more info

general information: liveworksee_info_2011.pdf
application form: liveworksee_application_2011.pdf

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
please read: how to download and fill out the application
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Our seasonal live/work program is open to artists, creators and researchers (over 26 years of age) interested in well... living and working in Istanbul for periods of a minimum of one month and up to 3 months. Residents are responsible for their own financial support.

The live-work-see Residency exists to provide individuals:

» comfortable and convenient living quarters equipped with private shared bathroom and full kitchen,
in a building dedicated to creative energy

» shared work space and/or studios in which residents can pursue their individual work

» local guidance and access to a wide network of resources and people in Istanbul by virtue of living
within an artistic meeting point

 

http://www.caravansarai.info/index.php?/activities/residencies/

EUROSPHERE PhD Summer School on Public Sphere, Sabanci University, Istanbul, 18-22 July 2011‏

Is Public Sphere Exclusively a Nation-State Phenomenon?
EUROSPHERE's next researcher training activity takes place between 18-22 July 2011, hosted in Istanbul by the Sabanci University. This is a PhD-level course on public sphere. The main target group is PhD students who are enrolled in a social science PhD programme. Persons seeking enrollment in a PhD-programme and advanced MA students are also encouraged to apply for admission.
This year's course consists of five thematic components:
The first component presents the ongoing research within the EUROSPHERE Project and introduces a discussion of theories of public sphere.
The second component offers lectures analyzing the status of everyday life and human imagination in people's understandings and experiences of the public sphere.
The third block elucidates the role of civil society and democratic institutions in public spheres, whereas the fourth conceives the public sphere with a focus on diversity and domination in public spheres.
The final component offers two philosophical analyses of ethics in public sphere.
The course lasts five days and offers lectures and student presentations each day. The overall course provides 20 hours of lectures and 10 hours of student presentations. The course programme, content, and curriculum have been devised to enable the participating PhD students to obtain ECTS
credits that can be used as part of their PhD-education.
There are two levels of participation, each of which qualifies for different levels of ECTS:
• Full course attendance and active participation in discussions for five days gives 5 ECTS
• Full course attendance and paper presentation qualifies the candidates for 10 ECTS credits.
PhD students who wish to obtain full ECTS credits from this course are expected to (1) attend the whole course, (2) present a paper during a student presentation session (see the programme below), (3) actively discuss other students' papers, and (4) submit the final version of their papers after the course, latest by 1 November 2011. All course participants, including MA students, can apply to present a
paper in a student session. However, only participants who are enrolled in a university PhDprogramme can submit a paper after the course to acquire the full 10 ECTS credits. Upon approval of full course attendance and curriculum knowledge, participants who are not enrolled PhD students receive an official certificate of participation specifying the acquired 5 ECTS credits. The enrolled PhD students whose papers pass the evaluation will receive an official course certificate specifying the 10 ECTS credits they have acquired.
Lecturers (in alphabetical order):
Geoff S. Bove, Thompson Rivers University, Canada
Andras Bozoki, Central European University, Hungary
Wanda Dressler, FMSH-Paris, France
Jostein Gripsrud, University of Bergen, Norway
Gürcan Kocan, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
Trond Kvamme, Norwegian Social Science Data Services, Norway
Yngve G. Lithman, University of Bergen, Norway
Ahmet Öncü, Sabanci University, Turkey
Hakan G. Sicakkan, University of Bergen, Norway
Slavko Splichal, University of Ljubliana, Slovenia
Travel Grants
The five PhD students who apply first will be awarded with a 400 euro travel grant. The grant will be paid after the course. The conditions for such payment are:
• Being an enrolled PhD student
• Attendance to the whole course
• Presenting own research paper
• Participation in discussions of other students' papers
Travel and accommodation
Sabanci University has reserved 20 rooms at its campus hotel for the EUROSPHERE PhD School participants. Please check the relevant box in the online application form if you want to stay at the Sabanci University campus during the course.
Curriculum
The course curriculum will be sent to all students whose applications are granted.
Registration
Online registration will be open on http://eurospheres.org between 16 May and 24 June 2011.

Cosmopolitanism- In Search of A Cosmos, Fred Dallmayr, Istanbul Sehir University, Monday, 23 May 2011, 13.30‏

The 3rd of the
Sehir Talks, Public Lecture Series, organized by Istanbul Sehir University,
will take place at the Conference Hall on Şehir’s Altunizade Campus at 1.30
p.m. on Monday May 23, 2011. The distinguished guest of this talk will be Prof.
Fred Dallmayr who is a well-known philosopher specialized in political thought.
Dallmayr, a renowned
intellectual-thinker, will speak about some steps in the direction of
clarification by differentiating between some possible meanings of the term, “cosmopolitanism”.
Noting the close connection between cosmopolitanism and
"globalization", he will first turn attention to the global extension
of markets and communications networks. Taken in this sense, cosmopolitanism
refers to ongoing, empirically observable processes of border-crossings and
hybridization. In a second
step, he will move from empirical description to the normative level, that is,
to cosmopolitanism as a moral vision - whether this vision is formulated as the
Kantian demand for global justice or the Habermasian stress on discursive
validity claims. Noting the
dilemma besetting Kantian and post-Kantian formulations - the antinomy between
"is" and "ought", between vision and practice - in a final
step, he will focus on the practice of cosmopolitanism, that is, the agenda of
a global pedagogy cultivating the search for a viable "cosmos"
reconciling the split between description and norm and also the gulf between
global and local dimensions of public life.
Previously in the “Şehir
Talks” Public Lecture Series, Prof. Ahmet Davutoğlu, acting Minister of Foreign
Affairs of Turkey, and Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr have extensively debated the
issues on “Şehir/the City”, civilization, knowledge production and the ideal of
the university in a globalized world.
Address: İstanbul
Şehir Üniversitesi Altunizade Yerleşkesi
Kuşbakışı Caddesi No: 27 Üsküdar, Istanbul
Time: Monday,
May 23, 2011// 1.30 p.m.
www.sehir.edu.tr

Turkey and Beyond: Alternative Approaches to International Relations Conferance, Istanbul, 24-25 November 2011‏

The International Relations discipline has been dominated by the realist approach and its preoccupation with the nation-state since the end of the Second World War. While nation-states and their respective governments occupied the center stage in realist writing, this conventional perspective also argued that the inter-state relationship is bound to be a conflictual one. Over the years, the realist paradigm has largely confined the study of international relations to the study of state behavior. This paradigm has shaped the discipline in the Turkish academia -- as well as in the whole world. Today, however, the international relations field is much more diversified due to the continuous challenges directed at this conventional wisdom from a number of alternative approaches. The non-exhaustive list of critical perspectives on foreign policy and international politics include political economy, Marxism, feminism, constructivism and post-structuralism. Due to these epistemological challenges and the constantly changing nature of world politics, the discipline has also witnessed the emergence of inter-disciplinary sub-fields such as new diplomacy, transnational studies and critical security studies -- among others. Because these new sub-fields are representative of the changing actors, issues and the practices in contemporary international politics, they constitute the major focus of the conference.
MURCIR's prospective conference, "Alternative Approaches to International Relations: Turkey and Beyond" aims to bring together scholars who employ non-state-centric perspectives in their analysis of international relations and its constitutive aspects such as security, diplomacy and foreign policy. Being one of the oldest research centers in the Turkish international relations academia and having pursued an interdisciplinary research agenda since its foundation, MURCIR aims to provide a venue for academic discussion with regard to these new perspectives and emerging topics. Due to its distinct geographical and cultural location which places the country in between Asia, Middle East and Europe, we believe that Turkey provides an excellent example for those who observe such transformations. The conference organizing committee particularly encourages scholars who focus on unconventional (non-state) agents of change in international relations, including sub-state, trans-national or non-governmental actors, social classes, religious communities, occupational groups, humanitarian agencies, migrant communities, identity groups (gender, ethnic, etc.) and individuals.
The conference welcomes studies from both Turkey and abroad. While there is no limitation with regard to the geographical scope of individual papers, scholars who have conducted theoretical or empirical studies concerning Turkey and the surrounding areas are particularly encouraged to apply. We consider the publication of individual papers in an edited conference volume or in a special issue in a journal of international relations.
THEMATIC SESSIONS
Session I: Transnational Social Actors and Processes
(Discussant: Prof. Ayhan Kaya, Istanbul Bilgi University)
This panel aims to stimulate discussion on the particular impact of transnational actors, organizations, networks and practices that limit/challenge the traditional role of the nation-state in the international arena. With its interdisciplinary agenda, the emerging field of transnational studies aims at mapping out social change in different contexts with a renewed focus on non-state agents. This perspective focuses on new social relations, spaces, networks and patterns that create and foster various forms of inter-relatedness and interdependencies across borders. Regarding nation-state as a historical construct and removing the boundaries between the "global" and the "local", the transnational perspective enables us to see how these two seemingly distinct spatial categories are constitutive of one another. This panel invites scholars and researchers from different disciplines to reflect upon the micro and macro-level transnational political processes which involve social groups with cross-border ties, e.g. civil society groups, religious communities, humanitarian agencies, migrant communities, identity groups (gender, ethnic communities, etc.).
Session II: New Themes and Perspectives in Security
(Discussant: Assoc. Prof. Pýnar Bilgin, Bilkent University)
The recent decades have witnessed a conceptual and empirical broadening of the security agenda in international relations. With the nation-state paradigm in decline, security is no longer confined to the study of defense strategies, inter-state conflict, territorial issues or armament. The new security agenda, by contrast, covers a wide range of phenomena including popular discourse, political identity, politics of religion, politics of migration, politics of anti-terrorism measures and geo-politics. While the previously neglected aspects of human or environmental security is now added to the security agenda, the field is further broadened with the emerging literature on new themes such as cyber-security or bio-security. This panel, therefore, aims to provide a forum for discussion on the critical studies focusing on new dimensions of security. Presenters are encouraged to explore new theoretical/methodological approaches in the international relations and security studies within inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary frameworks. Panel themes include the politics of environmental and human security, security dimensions of religious, ethnic, gender and political identities, popular discourse, anti-terrorism practices, visual security (securitization of symbols), eco-terrorism and securitization after the events of 9/11.
Session III: Beyond Traditional Diplomacy?
(Discussant: Prof. Chris Brown, London School of Economics)
In the age of globalization, the conceptual and practical challenges facing the nation-state had its parallels in diplomacy, which, in its conventional sense, refers to the activity of government designated diplomats on behalf of their countries. Given the levels of inter-connectedness in today's world, however, diplomatic activity is no longer confined to the acts undertaken by state representatives i.e., the delivery of official messages, conducting negotiations, symbolic representation of their countries vis-à-vis other governments, etc. This panel aims to discuss "new diplomacy", a term which emphasizes the new actors, issues and methods of exchange that lie beyond the boundaries of classical diplomacy. Shifting the focus away from official representatives towards citizens, groups and various non-state agents, whose particular interests do not necessarily overlap with that of the state, this term makes a significant detour from conventional understandings of diplomacy. "New diplomacy" also refers to the changing nature of diplomatic practices, including a more transparent diplomatic conduct as well as the network/coalition-based activities which rely on various media (TV, journals, internet). The Wikileaks phenomenon –albeit an extreme case- was the most recent manifestation of these new challenges in the diplomacy field. This panel, therefore, aims to cover new issue areas and theoretical approaches regarding "new diplomacy", with its particular focus on the diplomatic influence of various sub-state/non-state agents, including individuals, think tanks, political parties, dissident groups, NGO's, municipalities, religious or ethnic communities, etc.
PAPER PROPOSALS
MURCIR Conference on "Alternative Approaches to International Relations: Turkey and Beyond" invites individual paper abstracts for the thematic sessions specified above. The paper abstract (not exceeding 400 words) should include the title and the main findings of the article. The full application package should include the paper abstract, the applicant's short biography (not a detailed résumé) and contact info. All paper proposals should be submitted electronically to murcir@marmara.edu.tr by June 15, 2011 .
CONFERENCE TIMETABLE
Deadline for submitting paper abstracts: June 15, 2011
Notification of the applicants: July 10, 2011
Deadline for full paper submissions: October 10, 2011
Conference: November 24-25, 2011
TRAVEL AND ACCOMMODATION
MURCIR is unable to provide any travel or accommodation funding for individual presenters. We kindly remind that the invited session participants need to cover their own expenses in Istanbul for the duration of the conference (2 days).
Keynote Speaker:
Prof. Ken Booth
Director of the David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies at the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University
Discussants:
Prof. Ayhan Kaya
Department of Political Science and International Relations, Istanbul Bilgi University
Prof. Chris Brown
Department of International Relations, London School of Economics
Assoc. Prof. Pýnar Bilgin
Department of International Relations, Bilkent University

CONTACT INFORMATION
Marmara University Research Center for International Relations (MURCIR) Marmara University Department of Political Science and International Relations Anadolu Hisarý, Beykoz, Istanbul Turkey
Tel: +90 (216) 460 09
55 or +90 (216) 308 22 26 Ext: 1219
Fax: +90 (216) 308 22
26 / 1205 e-mail: murcir@marmara.edu.tr
CONFERENCE WEBSITE
http://murcir.marmara.edu.tr/conference2011/