Dangerous Places, Potential Spaces

Dangerous Places, Potential Spaces:
Emerging Feminist Connections and Activisms in Local and Global Contexts

University of Maryland-College Park,
May 24-26, 2006

Sponsored by the College of Arts and Humanities, the Department of Women's Studies, the Center for Teaching Excellence, and the Women's Studies Graduate Student Organization at University of Maryland 

Featuring plenary addresses and workshops led by feminist educator Dr. Peggy McIntosh, feminist postcolonial theorist Dr. Sangeeta Ray, and Black feminist scholar Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, and feminist sociologist Dr. Karen Rosenblum.


Conference Description

Interdisciplinary scholars are courageous risk-takers; they often conduct their research and teaching in “dangerous places” in which their work is undervalued, misunderstood and/or not supported. Young scholars are particularly vulnerable to the ramifications that can result from pushing boundaries and working at the margins of their academic locations. In response to this ongoing challenge to our scholarship and/or research) and teaching endeavors, this conference will highlight and celebrate the scholarship of graduate students working in the areas of women’s, gender and/or feminist studies, sexuality studies, cultural studies, and other interdisciplinary academic locations having as their central locus progressive politics and intersectional theoretical and methodological approaches.

As signaled by its title, the conference identifies and will provide a forum for discussing compelling intellectual issues currently driving feminist/critical politics and will bring together graduate students in related interdisciplinary academic locations who are working to transcend divides, dichotomies and boundaries of all sorts in their activisms, research, and teaching.