Advancing Feminist Poetics and Activism: A Gathering

Belladonna* Announces: Advancing Feminist Poetics and Activism: A Gathering

CUNY Graduate Center, September 24-25, 2009

In celebration of its tenth year, Belladonna* will join with The CUNY Graduate Center’s Women’s Studies Certificate Program, Center for Research on Women and Society, Center for Humanities, English Department, and Poetics Group to present a conference aimed at advancing and broadcasting the life of Feminist Avant-Garde Poetics and Activism Today. The conference will take place at the CUNY Graduate Center on September 24 and 25, 2009.

Our goals for this conference are the following:

• To support the study of the Feminist Avant-Garde
• To encourage collaboration between radical feminist artists/thinkers/activists.
• To provide a space to think about relevant activism in these times, in this place.

We at Belladonna* are particularly interested in what’s immediate, present, and happening now. We would like this call to encourage conversations and new designs for work between genres, into activist communities, and among academic and non-academic discourse. We are looking for evolving modes of knowing, acting, and resisting.

Papers and presentations might focus on (but are not limited to) the following topics:

Collaborations between poets and artists, poets and dancers, poetry theater, poets and scientists (or science), teachers and students, poets and community activists.

Critical consideration of women writers who for whatever reason have not yet received it—we welcome non-traditional and cross-genre approaches.

Race, gender, class: working within and across affinities.
AgitProp that incorporates poetic thinking and expression.
Calls for Action. Organizing sessions.

Send panel proposals and/or paper abstracts (350 words maximum, or send a dvd of performance/visual /sound work) to belladonnaseries@gmail.com by December 1, 2008.