Gender, Feminisms, and Queer Panel (Wren Radford and Alison Jasper)

This panel offers space for engagements with feminist, womanist, Latina/o/x feminist and mujerista, Asian feminist, African feminist, global majority feminist, queer and trans approaches, recognising that these all hold different histories, aims, and complexities.  

What needs to be disrupted for feminist, womanist, queer and related approaches, in order for solidarity to be enacted, and alternative futures to be made? What ideals, norms, and practices need to be disrupted in order for us to imagine otherwise? To imagine the world otherwise? To imagine feminist, womanist, and queer approaches otherwise? To imagine gender otherwise? And to imagine all our entanglements with the human and more than human otherwise? To practice solidarity otherwise? 

Dis-ruptures at personal, communal, global, and ecological levels have come to be at the forefront of our daily lives, and we still live with the consequences and present realities of colonial conquest, genocide, and environmental devastation, as well as active resistance to these projects. Approaches in gender studies, feminist, womanist, and queer approaches have long articulated the need to understand the interrelatedness of personal, political, communal, ecological, and global ruptures, and as such the interrelatedness of struggles and the need for solidarity.

The gender, feminisms, and queer panel welcome proposals for short papers and creative responses to the conference theme on dis-ruptures, entanglement, solidarity, and imagining otherwise in religion, theology, literature, arts, and culture.

Some further prompts may include:

·       Imaginative explorations and images of dis-rupture in art, culture, literature, and theory

·       What are the futures for feminist, womanist, queer and trans approaches in religion, theology, literature and culture? – imagining pasts, presents, and futures otherwise

·       The failures of theories, theologies, and arts to respond to global crises and alternative paths forward 

·       The dis-ruptures and reconfigurations of assemblages/entanglements of sexuality, gender, race, religion, class, and disability in response to global forces

·       Practices of solidarity and entanglement

·       Gendering and/or queering the ending of worlds (and survival afterwards)

·       Dis-ruptures and entanglements in embodiment

·       Strange or fantastic or uncanny dis-ruptures around gender, ecology, and sexuality

Short papers are typically 15-20 minutes. Creative responses can include a short film, autoethnographic and creative writing, discussions of creative practice, depending on timing and space; other ideas for a response can be discussed with the panel convenors.

Queries and abstract proposals of no more than 350 words should be sent to Wren Radford (University of Manchester) at wren.radford@manchester.ac.uk no later than 31st January, 2026.