Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Call for Papers - Foundation for Male Studies Conference

The Foundation for Male Studies is planning a conference in October, 2010, and they have issued a call for papers. I'm torn about these folks - very essentialist in their approach, seeming to reject any constructionist/postmodern perspectives. Also, they seem very antagonistic toward all feminisms, not just the misandry oriented versions.

Here is their FAQ.

Male Studies - Call for Papers

Interdisciplinary

Male Studies: First Annual Conference (New York City, October 2010)

Proposals for papers are being accepted on any aspect of male studies, including the deep biology of the male, anthropological perspectives on the experience of being male, psychoanalytic study of boys and older males, history of the male, literacy and boyhood, boys' and men's well-being, depiction of males in literature and the media, males in a changing economy, global perspectives on the experience of being male, themes in the sociology of being male, public policy and health care explicitly devoted to boys and older males, the male experience in higher education.

Papers are welcomed from non-Anglophone countries.

Papers are welcomed from Independent Scholars.

This is not a gender studies conference. It is not a men's studies conference in the generally accepted sense.

This is the more detail-oriented email that went out to friends of male studies (thanks to Durwin Foster for forwarding this to me).

Wagner College will host the first annual Conference on Male Studies, on Friday and Saturday, October 1-2, 2010. Six themes representing several disciplines will be addressed by panels and individual presenters:

▪ The deep biology of the experience of being male (genetics, biology, psychoneuroendocrinology, paleoanthropology);

▪ Literacy and education of boys and college males (pedagogy, sociology);

▪ Socioeconomic factors leading to males' over-involvement in the criminal justice system, underemployment and limited opportunities as fathers, resulting from changes in child custody law (economics, forensics, law, public policy);

▪ Misandric representations of boys and mature males in the media and advertising (media studies including cinema, television and internet, and advertising);

▪ Accounts of the experience of being male (history, literature, autobiography);

▪ Pressing issues related to the emotional well-being of boys and older males, most notably depression and suicide (clinical psychology, medicine and psychiatry, social work).

Specialists in all of the above disciplines as well as related areas of research will present position papers or engage in carefully organized panel discussions of the themes. We expect participants to include scholars from more than 12 countries who participated in the April 7, 2010 inaugural teleconference and webinar broadcast.

Proceedings of the conference will be published in the first issue of a new journal, Male Studies, in 2011.

Please submit your proposal as a (1) single authored paper, (2) panel (naming colleagues who would be willing to participate with you), or (3) a workshop. The two-day conference will be interdisciplinary and international in scope.

In your proposal, indicate the specific discipline(s) your proposal represents. Include current contact information.

As a reminder, as mentioned on the Call for Papers, please send your documents to mgroth@wagner.edu.

Also, please forward this message to other scholars with whom you work or have worked.

Proposals will be accepted until August 31.

All Best,
Miles Groth, PhD, Convener

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

With all respect, your assessment isn't completely fair.

These people are not unfriendly to all feminists, and did differentiate between misandric and other feminism in their first conference (Nathanson). But they do recognize that as things stands now, feminism has become more destructive than constructive. They make some very sound arguments to that end, too.

Also, the approach is not essentialist, but simple scholarship. Part of the problem in the modern study of men is that too many political influences insist on postmodern ideological compliance before one fact is in the door.

It is activism over academic integrity. I don't think it makes the male studies people hostile to desire a different and ideologically unencumbered path.

william harryman said...

I hear what you're saying, and I'd like to believe they have good intentions - but they also have an agenda and a political mission. They feel strongly enough about their own agenda to reject all others - that says a lot.