*rumble grumble* Anybody wanna present on kink at the Popular Culture Association (Boston, April)?
You may recall that my main excuse for going to the States in April was to present a paper at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association national meeting in San Antonio and that I presented in the Romance area because one of the area chairs specifically recruited me because she's been looking for fellow kinky/kink scholars. I'm glad that I did because the trip was great overall (I haven't written up highlights because I've been too busy since then being broke and breaking up and I don't want to think about how much money I spent buying presents for a man who whined at me the entire time I was gone and for weeks leading up to cancel/come back/never leave again, and then spent a bunch of my money on alcohol and lied to my face about it) and all the people I met (mostly romance scholars) were marvellous, but presenting in that area was hella awkward because I don't know squat about romance genre or scholarship. I found out after submitting that there were other areas I that might have been a more "logical" fit, depending whose logic you use, like "Eros, Pornography, and Popular Culture" or "Gender and Sexual Identity", but after attending their panels I'm not sure that would have been a huge improvement.
After this year's conference, Sarah (Romance chair) suggested to me and another grad student I didn't meet in Texas that we put together a CFP and submit it to the area master, asking for a couple of kink/BDSM panels in the new "New and Special Interests" stream (a testing ground for nascent research areas, to save them for creating new areas that don't draw crowds or last more than a year). We haven't got as far as a CFP yet, because the other student contacted the area master to ask for timeline clarification and got summarily brushed off: "he pretty much flat out told me that kink/bdsm belongs in queer" ( = "Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Studies" area)--which is just fucking wrong. I know so many people on each side of the "kink = queer" equation who not only disprove it but who would be shocked and furious to hear it so stated (I happen to be both kinky and queer, the same way I happen to be both Canadian and mad--there's some correlation there, but it's not really as strong as some people claim).
I'm pretty incensed about this and want to do everything I can to push for a dedicated kink studies panel, as well as encouraging more kink-related presentations in other areas (Sarah wants enough presenters for a BDSM romance panel, for example, and the Gay, Lesbian, and Queer area chair is quite willing to take in strays as well) both in general and as a fall-back if we can't get a panel all for us (demonstrating demand by widespread infiltration!). I therefore humbly ask everyone reading this to consider presenting on kink (or on any other topic--I'm specifically fishing for kink presenters but it's a big fun geeky nerdfest/nerdy geekfest with dedicated streams for all sorts of media and popular culture interests) at the next PCA/ACA national meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, April 11-14, 2012 (actually a week earlier than usual, or at least than last year; the website is wrong), or pass the word along to people you think might be interested! The deadline for submissions won't be until December 15, 2011, and you do not need to be an academic formally studying whatever you're presenting on to present on it; scholars presenting on hobby projects/personal interests, professionals (especially writers), and "educated laypeople" were all thick on the ground in San Antonio. Boston! Nerds! Springtime! Activism! Kink! Fun!
I'll be back with a CFP for kink studies soon, I hope, or if not with links to other shiny and potentially relevant subject area calls. In the meantime, it would help if any of y'all who might be even just a little tempted could let me know so I can use that interest to leverage the area chair into reconsidering his misinformed flippancy.
Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, where there are currently
comments. Please comment there using OpenID.
After this year's conference, Sarah (Romance chair) suggested to me and another grad student I didn't meet in Texas that we put together a CFP and submit it to the area master, asking for a couple of kink/BDSM panels in the new "New and Special Interests" stream (a testing ground for nascent research areas, to save them for creating new areas that don't draw crowds or last more than a year). We haven't got as far as a CFP yet, because the other student contacted the area master to ask for timeline clarification and got summarily brushed off: "he pretty much flat out told me that kink/bdsm belongs in queer" ( = "Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Studies" area)--which is just fucking wrong. I know so many people on each side of the "kink = queer" equation who not only disprove it but who would be shocked and furious to hear it so stated (I happen to be both kinky and queer, the same way I happen to be both Canadian and mad--there's some correlation there, but it's not really as strong as some people claim).
I'm pretty incensed about this and want to do everything I can to push for a dedicated kink studies panel, as well as encouraging more kink-related presentations in other areas (Sarah wants enough presenters for a BDSM romance panel, for example, and the Gay, Lesbian, and Queer area chair is quite willing to take in strays as well) both in general and as a fall-back if we can't get a panel all for us (demonstrating demand by widespread infiltration!). I therefore humbly ask everyone reading this to consider presenting on kink (or on any other topic--I'm specifically fishing for kink presenters but it's a big fun geeky nerdfest/nerdy geekfest with dedicated streams for all sorts of media and popular culture interests) at the next PCA/ACA national meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, April 11-14, 2012 (actually a week earlier than usual, or at least than last year; the website is wrong), or pass the word along to people you think might be interested! The deadline for submissions won't be until December 15, 2011, and you do not need to be an academic formally studying whatever you're presenting on to present on it; scholars presenting on hobby projects/personal interests, professionals (especially writers), and "educated laypeople" were all thick on the ground in San Antonio. Boston! Nerds! Springtime! Activism! Kink! Fun!
I'll be back with a CFP for kink studies soon, I hope, or if not with links to other shiny and potentially relevant subject area calls. In the meantime, it would help if any of y'all who might be even just a little tempted could let me know so I can use that interest to leverage the area chair into reconsidering his misinformed flippancy.
Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, where there are currently
comments. Please comment there using OpenID.