CFP: Interdisciplinary Conference on Intimate Labors

Interdisciplinary Conference on Intimate Labors
October 4-6, 2007

University of California, Santa Barbara

INVITED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Viviana Zelizer (Princeton) and Rose Ann DeMoro
(California Nurses’ Association)

INVITED CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS: Eileen Boris (UCSB), Laura Briggs
(Arizona), Amalia Cabezas (UCR), Grace Chang (UCSB), Dorothy Sue Cobble
(Rutgers), Evelyn Nakano Glenn (UCB), Steven Gregory (Columbia), Luz Maria
Ibarra (SDSU), Jennifer Klein (Yale), Cameron McDonald (Wisconsin),
Premilla Nadasen (CUNY-Brooklyn), Rhacel Parreñas (UCD), Raka Ray (UCB),
Ellen Reese (UCR), Becki Ross (British Columbia).

Hull Professor of Women’s Studies Eileen Boris of UCSB and Asian American
Studies Professor Rhacel Parreñas of UC Davis invite single paper proposals
from graduate students and junior faculty members that advance critical and
innovative ways of thinking about how intimate labor could be a useful
category of analysis for understanding not just current economic
transformations and strategies for social change, but also for the social
meanings of money and love; constructions of race, gender, and sexuality;
and relations of power and authority in the global economy. We encourage
diverse methods and approaches from the humanities as well as social
sciences, including but not limited to ethnography, microhistory, political
economy, critical race theory, and cultural studies. Papers will be “work
shopped” in breakout sessions not only to provide an opportunity for
graduate students and junior faculty to present their work but also to
receive extensive comments from invited commentators and the assembled
audience.

We hope this conference creates a venue for intellectual exchange and
collaboration between junior and senior scholars to discuss care work, sex
work, and domestic work around the themes of the political economy of
intimate labor, globalization “from below” through intimate labor
practices, work process and the culture of intimacy, and the politics of
space and labor organizing. Princeton sociologist Viviana Zelizer, the
author of The Purchase of Intimacy, will give the academic keynote on
October 5 and we have invited Rose Ann DeMoro, Executive Director of the
innovative California Nurses’ Association, for a kick-off keynote on
October 4.

Funding (transportation and 2 nights in hotel shared accommodations) is
available for conference participants connected to the UC system and
partial funding may be available for other selected participants.
The conference organizers ask that all proposals be sent to Ellie Shermer
(ellie@umail.ucsb.edu). Submissions should include a one-page abstract,
one-page curriculum vitae, and a mailing address, phone, and email address.

Proposals are due April 15th, 2007. Decisions will be made and participants
notified by May 15th, 2007. Papers due September 1. They will be
pre-circulated through the password protected conference webpage.