Call for Proposals: Indigenous Feminism Edited Collection

Call for Proposals: Indigenous Feminism Edited Collection

Intergenerational Indigenous Feminisms

Editors: Erica Violet Lee, Sarah Nickel, Amanda Fehr

University of Manitoba Press (UMP)

The editors are seeking proposals for article-length scholarly contributions and creative pieces (poetry, art, personal narratives, and anything that can be shared in print) to be considered for inclusion in an edited collection on Indigenous feminisms. This book will be published by UMP.

Over the past 30 years, a strong canon of Indigenous feminist literature has addressed how Indigenous women are uniquely and dually affected by colonialism and patriarchy. Indigenous women have long recognized that their intersectional realities were not represented in mainstream feminism, which was principally white, middle-class and often openly ignored realities of colonialism. As Indigenous feminist ideals grew, they became increasingly multivocal with multiple and oppositional understandings of what constituted Indigenous feminism and whether or not it was a useful concept. Emerging from these established dialogues are conversations from a new generation of scholars, activists, artists, and storytellers who accept the usefulness of Indigenous feminism, and seek to broaden the concept.

This collection will capture this transition and make sense of Indigenous feminist voices that do not necessarily find representation in existing scholarship. There is a need to further Indigenize our understandings of feminism and to take the scholarship beyond a focus on motherhood, life history, or legal status (in Canada) to consider the connections between Indigenous feminisms, Indigenous philosophies, the environment, kinship, violence, and Indigenous Queer Studies. Organized around the notion of “generations,” this collection will bring into conversation new voices of Indigenous feminist theory, knowledge, and experience. Taking a broad and critical interpretation of Indigenous feminism, we ask how an emerging generation of artists, activists, and scholars are envisioning and activating this theory/framework/experience.

To fully capture more inclusive expressions of Indigenous feminisms, we seek content from broad geographical areas (beyond North America) and disciplines (History, Indigenous Studies, Philosophy, Law), and from diverse contributors with different backgrounds (activists, artists, scholars) and positionalities (gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, age).

This collection will present critical interventions into history, politics, and theory by outlining the limitations and transformative potential of Indigenous feminisms. The collection is anchored around five themes:

Broadening Indigenous feminisms. We take an inclusive interpretation of both politics and feminism to broaden the focus beyond Indigenous women’s activism in the late 20^th century and Bill C-31. We invite works that consider Indigenous women’s early political formations, and include women not typically considered as political or feminists.
Environmental issues, land, and sovereignty. We are interested in how gender theory informs understandings of historical and contemporary land and environmental issues. We invite works that consider the relationships between the environment, land, governance, gender, and feminism.
Queer, Two-Spirit, Transgender identities/sexuality. We seek to disrupt the association between Indigenous feminisms, the women’s movement, and heteronormativity. We welcome contributions that explore the intersections between Indigenous feminism and the growing field of Indigenous Queer Studies.
Kinship. We resituate discussions focusing on Indigenous motherhood to broader considerations of how feminism relates to Indigenous philosophies and kinship system. We invite contributions on adoption, reproductive justice, and reimagining/complicating ideas of Indigenous motherhood and fatherhood.
Feminism, Violence, & Law. We are interested in relationships between Indigenous feminisms and violence – including structural violence/state imposed violence, Indigenous feminism and the law, and resilience.

We are also open to considering other themes that fit within the overall goals of this collection.

Please submit 500-word proposals to IndigenousFeminismAnthology@gmail.com by June 15, 2016. Proposals should be accompanied by a short biography or CV. Notification of acceptance will be given by August 1, 2016. Completed submissions are due November 31, 2016. Final chapters will be a maximum of 30 pages (7,500) including footnotes and bibliography.

The Editors:

The editors are early career academics, community-engaged scholars, and activists.

Erica Violet Lee is a Nehiyaw undergraduate student at the University of Saskatchewan in her final year of a philosophy and political studies degree. She is an activist and organizer with Idle No More, the #ReadTheTRCReport project, and was part of the Canadian Youth Delegation to the COP 21 meeting in Paris. She writes about her experiences as a young student navigating the worlds of academia on her Moontime Warrior blog.

Sarah Nickel is a Tk’emlúpsemc (Kamloops Secwépemc) Assistant Professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. Nickel’s work is focused on community-engaged ethnohistorical work on Indigenous politics in British Columbia between the 1960s and 1980s. She has published on Indigenous oral history methodologies, Indigenous sovereignty, Indigenous feminism, and Indigenous politics.

Amanda Fehr is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan. Her community-engaged work focuses on boundary maintenance, historical consciousness, memory, representation, and the relationship between political identities and personal experiences- most recently in her dissertation work with the Metis community of Ile-a-la-Crosse and the neighboring English River First Nation. She has published articles on place-making amongst the Stó:lõ in British Columbia, and the role of the Virgin Mary in northwestern Saskatchewan.