Mixed Race Studies

Critical Whiteness Studies Symposium: Call for Papers

Critical Whiteness Studies Symposium
University of Iowa
2010-09-23 through 2010-09-24
Abstract Deadline: 2010-03-12

Keynote Speakers:

David Roediger, Kendrick C. Babcock Professor of History
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Karyn McKinney, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Education, Human Development, & Social Sciences
Penn State University, Altoona

Abstract deadline March 12, 2010.

This two-day symposium examines the social, cultural and historical production of whiteness, particularly in the age of Obama. The symposium takes up a critical race theory paradigm to engage whiteness and whiteness studies in conversation with the humanities and social sciences. Questions of importance include: How can we interrogate and employ whiteness studies in ways that do not re-center or reify whiteness? Should whiteness studies take an increasingly critical stand in the wake of an Obama Presidency? In other words, how do we maintain a focus on social justice in the face of complacency around institutionalized oppression? We are particularly interested in engaging these and other questions about whiteness in an historical context, thinking through the particular shapes of whiteness, privilege and oppression in the contemporary moment while debunking the ideological lure of a “postracial” America.

We seek abstract submissions that address but are not limited to:

• Whiteness and sexualities
• Whiteness, class and labor struggle
• Whiteness, Orientalism and the Occidental Gaze
• Social movements
• Postracism, postfeminism and post-identity formations
• Homonormativity
• American exceptionalism and Homonationalism
• Mixed race whiteness and white ethnicity
• Whiteness, food culture and “eating the Other”
• Whiteness and regionalism; Midwestern critical whiteness
• Neoliberalism, whiteness and global capitalism
• Representing and consuming whiteness (e.g., visually, aurally, performatively)
• Whiteness and digital culture
• Whiteness, critical pedagogies and the classroom

Panel submissions, as well as submissions of individual papers and creative performances are welcome.

Critical Whiteness Studies is organized by the Project On Rhetoric of Inquiry (POROI) at the University of Iowa. The symposium will consist of two public lectures featuring David Roediger and Karyn McKinney, performances, visual installations and scholarly panels that critically examine whiteness. POROI is an interdisciplinary program dedicated to the exploration of how scholarship and professional discourses are conducted through argument, how paradigms of knowledge are sensitive to social-political contexts, and how the presentation of scholarly and professional findings involve the recognition and negotiation of audiences.

Please submit abstracts for papers, panels, or roundtables, accompanied by one-page vitas. Include any AV needs you may have. Submit materials by March 12, 2010.