2016 Graduate Research Conference

Geographies of Interruption: Body, Location, and Experience

The 23rd Annual Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies International Graduate Conference featuring Keynote Speaker Jasbir Puar, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University will be held on April 8, 2016 at the University of Rochester.

Read the Conference Program or check out the Call for Papers for more information.

Flyer for Graduate Conference - Long line of individuals with digital location tags above heads

Each year, a diverse group of participants gather in Rochester, NY for a graduate conference held by the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies. This conference aims to foster an environment of interdisciplinary communication, knowledge exchange, and collaboration. We take geography to be the practice and process of mapping bodies, spaces, and experiences. In particular, we hope to inspire questions concerning the interruptions of such geographies, especially those relating to gender and sexuality. Such questions might include, but are not limited to:

  • How does social, bodily, and geographical mobility complicate the mapping of spaces and bodies?
  • How do media forms constitute counter­geographies?
  • Does sharing a photo of a fallen Syrian refugee on one’s Facebook timeline intervene in a meaningful way?
  • In what ways are sexed and/or sexualized bodies mapped into conceptions of (trans)nationality?
  • How might race and class interrupt and problematize feminist and queer geography?
  • What are the affective ramifications of contemporary or historical forms of segregation?
  • How do gendered perceptions of bodies in pain affect medical treatment or scales of pain?
  • How does web mapping (e.g. Google Maps) reproduce or resist the gendered, classed, and racial power dynamics of prior methods of mapping?
  • What are the gendered biases of computer coding languages?