“Freeing yourself was one thing. Claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
Toni Morrison
“Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground.”
Sara Ahmed
“Ours is a transformation of seeping, directed subsumption rather than a rapid overthrow; it is a transformation of deliberate construction seeking to submerge the white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy in a sea of procedures that soften its shell and dismantle its defences , so as to build a new world from the scraps.”
The Xenofeminist Manifesto
Sharing Feminist Research, Methods and Practice Event
The CHASE Feminist Network was borne of discussions wishing to provide spaces of resistance in what continues to be a patriarchal higher education sector, with ongoing and intersectional discrimination happening at all levels. We seek to create a community of inspirational people inside and outside of CHASE who are challenging this environment, provide spaces for discussion, and offer support for innovative projects and events. The network is transpositive and intersectional, and places a strong emphasis on the importance of interdisciplinary commitments to feminist research and practice and welcomes a wide variety of creative, artistic, historical, literary, theoretical, and experimental contributions.
We would like to invite proposals for contributions to our two-day event from staff and students. We welcome proposals for a variety of formats, including individual or collaborative papers (20 minutes), workshop suggestions, themed topic roundtables, creative workshops, and performances, which aim to demonstrate the plurality and the breadth of feminist expression across CHASE. We are particularly interested in submissions from trans* and BAME applicants, and from applicants outside the academy.
This event wishes to address how discrimination within the academy, the unequal distribution of emotional labour, and embedded cultures of privilege, can be troubled, disrupted and overturned through feminist approaches in academia. Taking feminist methodologies and pedagogies as its central focus, the event aims to address the complexities and nuances of working in a feminist way whether feminism is a focus of the research or not.
We value and respect the contributions of all the members of our network, including trans women, trans men and nonbinary and gender diverse people. We also recognise and respect the intersectionality of feminism and the various levels of oppression experienced by women and nonbinary individuals across class and racial lines, and especially the vulnerability of transgender women of colour. We demand that people of all gender identities are treated with dignity and respect, and will not tolerate the harassment or bullying of anyone based on their gender identity or expression.
We welcome submissions that consider queer and feminist ways of doing research, cultural analysis, teaching, and artistic practice. How can this operate through activism? How can a feminist approach become an act of resistance in itself in spaces of intersectional oppression? How can feminism be an everyday practice of resistance to hierarchies in the academy and beyond, as a way of creating and recreating our own academic identities in a hostile system? We are particularly interested in submissions that address, but are not limited to:
- Trans rights and visibility
- Race, legacies of empire and decolonising the curriculum
- The whiteness of the academy, and self-critique of its organisations
- Mental wellbeing and self care
- Motherhood, childcare and caring responsibilities
- Feminism and (dis)ability
- Precarious employment and the pay gap
- Gender, austerity and class
- Youth engagement and age(ism)
The event will include a workshop on identifying the relevance of feminism in your research.
Please complete the form below with an abstract no more than 300 outlining your submission idea with a short bio by 12th December (updated deadline due to strike action). We are also pleased to announce that we have a childcare fund available for this event.
Please submit your abstract and bio here: https://forms.gle/xp75xfEgqD6ATgnU9
For any queries, please do not hesitate to contact us at chase.feminist@gmail.com
We try our best to use inclusive and welcoming language, however, we recognise that we don’t always get things right. Likewise, we understand that our network embodies a diverse range of feminisms and levels of experience. Please get in touch with any questions or suggestions.
CHASE Feminist Network 