CFP: 4th Global Conference: Evil, Women and the Feminine

Sunday 6th May – Tuesday 8th May 2012

Prague, Czech Republic

Call for Papers:

This inter-disciplinary conference seeks to examine issues surrounding the conjunction between evil and the feminine. In many cultures women have been long suspected as the source of sundry human miseries, however basic to society they may be. At the same time as ideals of purity and dedication to family have been exalted and feminine beauty lauded, women have been viewed as embodying sinister forces of evil. Mistrusted as seductive and beguiling, women are also often thought of as vengeful, manipulative and even malevolent. In grappling with our understanding of what it is to be ‘evil’, the project aims to shine a spotlight on this dark area of the human condition and explore the possible sources of the fear and resentment of women.

Papers, reports, work-in-progress and workshops are invited on issues related to the following themes:

~ Evil Women and Feminine Evil
~ Representing and Misrepresenting the Female
~ Motherhood; Monstrous Motherhood
~ Monstrous Births and Infanticide
~ Matriarchy / Matricide
~ Devious Sexuality and Feminine Perversions
~ Women and the Abject
~ Menstruation, Castration
~ Fears and Myths: Feminine Blood
~ Anthropological Perspectives
~ Historical Perspectives
~ The Evil Woman in Literature
~ Psychoanalytic perspectives: “Vagina Dentata” etc
~ Sexualizing the Female or Evil Objectification
~ Jezebel, Delilah, Lilith, Harpies and the Femme Fatale
~ The Bitch
~ Women and Power
~ Beauty as threatening or evil
~ Portrayals of Evil Women
~ Fantasy
~ Mythology
~ Vampires, Witches and Sirens
~ Case Studies

The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. Papers will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 4th November 2011 If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 9th March 2012.

300 word abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords.

E-mails should be entitled: EWF4 Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs:

Natalia Kaloh Vid
University of Maribor, Slovenia

Stephen Morris
Hub Leader, Independent Scholar, New York USA

Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Leader,Inter-Disciplinary.Net,Freeland,
Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

The conference is part of the At the Interface programme of research projects. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s).

For further details of the project, please click here.

For further details of the conference, please click here.

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.