conference information

[Peto Andrea]

THE FEMALE PRINCIPLE

UTA Conference on the Suppressions and Reassertions of
The Female Principle in Human Cultures.

University of Texas at Arlington, March 30-April 1, 2000.

Keynotes: Martha Nussbaum, March 30;
Drucilla Cornell, March 31; and
Eva Keuls and Nancy Tuana, April 1

This conference recognizes the suppression
 of femaleness as a primary meaning
of Western and other cultures over a long period, and
opens this issue to renewed scrutiny.
 It seeks to identify, document, account for, and
 interpret the suppression of femaleness via the
specific forms it takes from early periods to the
 present, and to identify and describe newly developing
practices that counter it. Exposures, descriptions,
 and theorizations of this suppression are essential
 to projecting a future for femaleness in human
societies.

We invite proposals from all fields of the humanities
 and the social and behavioral sciences. Papers may
deal exclusively with forms of suppression (and their
 counterforms)--many of them clandestine, unrecognized,
 underexplored; with the figures or contents suppressed;
 with examples of femaleness that elude suppression or
 otherwise counter it; or with re-emergences; or with
 combinations of the foregoing, and may draw on the
following as a possible framework:

Bearing a positive social value in an advanced Asian
 society as late as the seventh century, the female principle
 sinks into general anathema in the West by the time of
classical civilization, and into near oblivion by the time of
 the early church. There it remains, under powerful forms
 of social repression, into the twentieth century. Then, via
 numerous separate discourses, pluralist thought creates a
climate of opinion in which femaleness can re-emerge in
 literary, philosophical, religious, and other languages
 under a positive sign.

Papers may be descriptive, and/or interpretive or
theoretical accounts of specific forms of suppression,
 such as the sexual; of forms taken by coverups of
suppression; of cultural contexts mandating
suppression; and of femaleness eluding suppression or
 otherwise countering it--all these in discourses and social
practices worldwide. Cross-disciplinary and new theoretical
approaches are encouraged.

Submission Information:
See the following page or send inquiries to:
lfrank at uta.edu

Postal mail:
Conference on the Female Principle
Department of English 19035
University of Texas at Arlington
Arlington, Texas 760l9