Gendered Responses to Crisis, Conflict, and Catastrophe
10 -13 October 2013
New Orleans
Nicola C. Pratt is seeking papers for a proposed panel. In line with one of the themes for the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, this panel aims to explore systematically the gendered dimensions of how governments, communities, households and nations or sub-national groupings respond to crisis, conflict and/or catastrophes. The panel invites inter-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives, covering any of the countries that make up the contemporary Middle East and in any period since the First World War. Examples of events to be compared include coups d’etat, political crises, inter-state wars, civil wars, forced uprooting, dispossession and dispersion, and natural disasters. Some examples of the types of questions that the panel may seek to answer include:
- How are gendered images and imaginings used to represent crisis, conflict and catastrophe?
- How does gender shape the responses of different groups to crisis, conflict and catastrophe?
- To what degree do crises/conflicts/catastrophe lead to a shift in gender roles, relations and/or ideologies?
- How do men and women differ in their responses to crisis, conflict and catastrophe?
- What role do international agendas with regards to gender mainstreaming/women’s rights play in the aftermath of crises/conflicts/catastrophes?
Gender here refers to masculinities as well as femininities, to symbolic/normative gender as well as the gendered allocation of resources and the actual gender roles adopted by men and women. It is hoped that the panel will present cases from different countries and across time in order to provide a comparative perspective.
Please send abstracts of between 300 and 400 words to Nicola Pratt (n.c.pratt@warwick.ac.uk) by 7 February 2013. The abstracts should ‘be scholarly, with a strong, focused statement of thesis or significance, clear goals and methodology, well-organized research data, specified sources, and convincing, coherent conclusions. These are the criteria by which the program committee will conduct its review. The name of the author cannot appear in any paper abstract. If it does, the proposal automatically will be disqualified’ (MESA guidelines).
N.B. Unfortunately, there are no funds available specifically for participation in this panel. Moreover, panel participants will have to be registered members of MESA for the coming year.
The 2013 meeting will be in New Orleans, 10-13 October.