Feminist Research Seminar: Reverberations
A defining characteristic of IRWG’s Feminist Research Seminar program is the absence of a requirement for participants to generate a final product or publication. In fact, an organizer from a 2017 seminar enthused, “The low-stakes commitment allowed us to recruit scholars whose expertise and perspectives were invaluable -- but who are so committed to other projects that they would not have attended were we to have required an original paper from all participants.” And yet, when asked, organizers and participants from many past Feminist Research Seminars reported an abundance of publications, presentations, and scholarship that emerged from their time together in Ann Arbor!
Read more about the scholarship from some recent seminars*.
Spring 2016: Talmud Interrupted: Queering the Study of an Ancient Jewish “Classic”
“The following publications emerged from the work of the seminar: ‘The Reproduction of Species: Humans, Animals and Species Nonconformity in Early Rabbinic Science,’ Jewish Studies Quarterly, Volume 24, Number 4, December 2017, and ‘When Species Meet in the Mishnah,’ Ancient Jew Review, May 2018. Another thing that has emerged is the Open Access Rabbinics Project. This project seeks to render sources and resources for the study of rabbinics (scholarly, textual, electronic, philological, and linguistic) accessible via an online platform which will serve as a hub for rabbinic research.” - Rachel Rafael Neis, University of Michigan
“I’m very happy to report that my book, Rabbinic Tales of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Disability in the Ruins of Jerusalem, was published by Oxford University Press in 2018. My work on the book was shaped by our conversations at the 'Talmud Interrupted' Feminist Research Seminar, and I shared a portion of one of the chapters in progress with the seminar members." - Julia Watts Belser, Georgetown University
Fall 2016: Black Feminist Think Tank
Roundtable at 2017 NWSA Conference - "B.F.F.T.: The Thinking We Must Do in the Era of Black Lives Matter"
Signs Symposium, Spring 2017: “The Metalanguage Of Race”: A Commemoration,” edited by Sherie M. Randolph, with contributions from seminar participants:
- “Difference, Power, and Lived Experiences: Revisiting the Metalanguage of Race," by Dayo F. Gore
- “Antiblack Racism and the Metalanguage of Sexuality,” by Marlon M. Bailey and LaMonda Horton-Stallings
- “Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, the Metalanguage of Race, and the Genealogy of Black Feminist Legal Theory,” by Sherie M. Randolph
Spring 2017: Meat: A Transnational Exploration
“We have worked over the last year to complete an anthology on the papers from the Meat seminar. We are happy to report that we did complete the manuscript and it is currently out for review with Duke University Press. The IRWG seminar was such a wonderful space that helped all our thinking, and the emerging anthology we believe shows the many interdisciplinary, and generative conversations we had.” - Banu Subramaniam, University of Massachusetts - Amherst, and Sushmita Chatterjee, Appalachian State University
Spring 2017 Seminar: Radical Transnationalism: Reimagining Solidarities, Violence, Empire
“Some of the same collaborators at the U-M seminar successfully proposed and held a quarter-long research residency group on “Rethinking Transnational Feminisms” at the University of California Humanities Research Institute in Fall 2017. I’ve also authored some pieces inspired by these conversations, including ‘The U.S. 1968: Third-Worldism, Feminisms, and Liberalism,’ AHR Reflections, American Historical Review (June 2018), and ‘Defining Asian American Feminisms: Intersectional Theorizations of Transnationalism,’ Konan University Research Institute (February 2018).” - Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, University of California, Irvine
“We are currently working on a special issue of Meridians (Fall 2019). It will include nearly all of us.” - Laura Briggs, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
Fall 2017: Beyoncé’s Lemonade Lexicon: Black Feminism and Spirituality in Theory & Praxis
Beyoncé, Black Feminism, and Spirituality: The Lemonade Reader is officially under contract with Routledge! We would like to thank the Institute for Research on Women and Gender for helping this piece come to fruition.” - Kinitra D. Brooks, Michigan State University and Kameelah L. Martin, College of Charleston
Fall 2017: Opposition to the Political Participation of Women and Gender Justice Advocates: Building a Feminist Research Agenda
“The editorial team at Signs approved a symposium for their Winter 2020 (January) issue, based on our FRS, titled ‘Backlash and the Future of Feminism’.’” - Jennifer M. Piscopo, Occidental College
Performing Representation: Women Parliamentarians of India by seminar participant Shirin M. Rai, Professor, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick was published by Oxford University Press in 2018.
Coming summer 2019: Feminist Data Studies
Organizers: Patricia Garcia (University of Michigan) and Marika Cifor (Indiana University-Bloomington)
*Please note the publications and resulting scholarship in this article were self-reported by seminar organizers in summer 2018, and may not represent a fully-comprehensive listing of all seminar outcomes.
The next call for proposals will be announced in summer 2019, for seminars to be held in spring/summer 2020. Click here for more information.
