Keynote Speakers

Call for Papers:

It has been over four decades since second-wave feminism and Gay Liberation. 2018 is the 40^th anniversary of the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives. In bringing together the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives and the Australian Women’s and Gender Studies Association for the first time, this conference aims to reflect on collective histories and explore what kinds of solidarities can take us into the future. In the context of the marriage debate and its aftermath and renewed debates about patriarchy and misogyny, the activist and intellectual work of the 1970s is being revisited in a variety of ways. Similarly, activist campaigns across a range of issues including indigenous sovereignty, the detention of refugees, disability rights and cuts to welfare programmes have renewed a focus on practices of solidarity and coalitionist politics associated with the 1970s. As a conference that invites people who are both inside and outside of universities, it is an exciting opportunity to reflect on ways for doing work in sex, gender and sexuality across university and community settings.

This conference will focus on queer and gendered legacies and how we work with such legacies to build future worlds and solidarities. Since second-wave feminism and Gay Liberation, and the rise of women’s studies and lesbian and gay studies nurtured by these developments, understandings, activism, scholarship and pedagogies in relation to gender and sexuality have developed and grown in complex and often unforeseen ways. A key factor has been attending to how a sense of “we” is culturally framed, contingent, a site of struggle, and often fragile. This conference invites people to reflect on how collective histories (both cultural and pedagogic) are traced and articulated, how they inform our work and being in the present moment, and the role of solidarities in envisioning the future. What themes, methods and tendencies characterise contemporary research, teaching and activism in relation to gender and sexuality and in what ways can we think about this contemporary work in relation to its historical antecedents? How has gender and sexuality studies been reshaped by debates about decolonisation, globalisation, ecological crisis and disability studies? In a context of resurgent moral panics over sex, gender and sexuality, this conference encourages reflections on the material and discursive conditions enabling research, teaching and community collaborations within gender and sexuality studies. As experiences and understandings of sex, gender and sexuality shift, in some cases pluralising and in other cases narrowing, how might “we” develop research, teaching and activism which is attentive to the denigration of difference (e.g. racism, poverty, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia etc.)? What have we learned about new ways of assembling collectives around expanding recognitions of difference? What types of solidarities are now possible or might be required?

This conference invites presentations and panels on a wide variety of historical and contemporary topics, from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds, related to sex, gender and sexuality, including work on masculinity and heterosexuality. In particular, we encourage feminist, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer work. We invite critical and creative contributions, presented individually or collectively.

“Queer Legacies, New Solidarities” is supported by Deakin Gender and Sexuality Studies and it brings together, for the first time, the Australian Women’s and Gender Studies Association & the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives. It is the 18^th conference in ALGA’s HomoHistories conference series and is the 2018 conference within AWGSA’s bi-annual national conference series. ALGA celebrates its 40th anniversary this year and the conference is part of its anniversary celebrations marking four decades of collecting and preserving Australian queer history.