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Narratives about Place/Stories about Gender
Description:
Narratives can be used to evocatively portray the relationships people have with places. They provide a way for us to explore and express identity in relational ways that define self and communities. Narratives provide a way also for us to explore relationships to environment, history, and geography, and can serve to identify how places are contested, challenged and (re)created over time and across culture. Narratives about place can also be used to provide insights into gender.
At the crux of this session, lies one underlying question:
What stories do we tell about gender when we examine the narratives we have about places?
The following are a few examples of questions that can be used to stimulate ideas for session presentations:
How do narratives tell stories about gender and place?
How do these stories intersect with ideas about culture and categories such as race/ethnicity/class and sexuality?
Do places influence how we see ourselves and tell our stories as gendered persons? As Masculine or feminine? Neither? Both?
Do people respond to places in ways that provide insights about gender?
Do places empower/challenge ideas held about gender?
How are gender(ed) narratives affected/used by tourism promotion? By environmental campaigns? Others…
What methodologies, theories, or epistemologies have assisted us to examine narratives, gender and place?
How can/does gender-focused and feminist-oriented (Pritchard et al., 2007) research provide insight into the connections between people and place?
While an emphasis can be placed on narratives as a means to ask/answer research questions explored in this session, other research approaches may also be appropriate and relevant. Presentations that document the innovative use of methods or that introduce new methods are welcome. International and multidisciplinary themes/approaches are strongly encouraged.
Please send a 250-300 word abstract and contact details to:
Suzanne de la Barre, PhD and Madeleine Eriksson, PhD Department of Social and Economic Geography, Umeå University suzanne.delabarre@geography.umu.se and madeleine.eriksson@geography.umu.se
Deadline for abstract submission: March 7, 2011 (notification of results by April 11, 2011).
Please note: If enough quality abstracts are submitted, a special issue journal publication or edited book collection could be pursued by the session organizers.
About the Places, People, Stories Conference
This conference investigates the relations between people and places, focusing on the role of stories in constructing meaning and affecting human emotions. Both rural and urban landscapes contain numerous locations that become meaningful places through their association with stories.
The main aims of the conference are:
1) to explore the relations between people, places, and stories in the context of notable trends in the Experience Society such as the role of affect, emotion, and sensual stimulation.
2) to investigate how the visual and performative arts can complement academic research by generating both new questions and new kinds of responses to topics at the interface between places, people and stories.
Keynote Presentations (confirmed)
Mike Robinson, Professor of Tourism and Cultural Change, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK: Tales of a Tourist: Weather, Food and Foreign Places.
Valdimar Hafstein, Assoc. Professor in Folkloristics, University of Iceland, Reykjavik: Storytelling as heritage / Heritage as storytelling.
For more information about the Places, People, Stories conference, Linnaeus University and Kalmar, Sweden, please visit this homepage.