Feminist Critical Analysis: Be/longing and Citizenship,  Dubrovnik, 23-27.5.2005


Feminist Critical Analysis: Be/longing and Citizenship
Postgraduate course

INTER-UNIVERSITY CENTER
DUBROVNIK, CROATIA

May 23-27th, 2005

Belgrade Women's Studies Center, The Centre for Women's Studies,
Zagreb, and Rutgers (State University of New Jersey) Women's and
Gender Studies Department are pleased to announce the 6th annual
postgraduate course in Feminist Critical Analysis--Be/longing
and Citizenship.  The course will be held at the Inter-
University Centre, Dubrovnik (www.hr/iuc/) on May 23-27,2005.
This course will be co-directed by Rada Boric, Center for
Women´s Studies Zagreb, Croatia; Dasa Duhacek, Women´s Studies
Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro; and Joanna Regulska Women's and
Gender Studies Deparment, Rutgers University.


TOPIC:
As new forms of global and supranational governance emerged, and
where the transnational flows of people, goods, and capital
intensified, citizenship, in which each citizen was given
certain rights and obligations under the nation-state, has lost
its power.  Thus the focus on democratic, flexible, insurgent,
cosmopolitan, post-national or multilayered aspects of
citizenship are just few of the current discourses that attempt
to determine citizenships' meaning, content and location. In
recent decades, women's demands for full political participation
have mobilized their legitimate legal and political inclusion in
the category of Citizen.  Current aspirations toward
participation have laid claim to citizenship.  However, feminist
theorists and activists have criticized the conceptual
assumption around the notion of Citizenship, arguing that it
reproduces the boundary of public/private thereby
reproducing/reinforcing patriarchal formations.

This course will explore the problematics of citizenship as
be/longing and the ways in which the desire for citizenship is
interpolated in and through be/longing.  In keeping with the
rigor of feminist theory, the course will not lose sight of the
issues of accountability and responsibility which have,
precisely through feminist insights, been brought to bear on the
contemporary framework of citizenship.  It will provide a
framework for an in depth critical engagement with both the
implicit and explicit assumptions of Citizenship.  In
particular, participants will have the opportunity to think
critically about the broad sexual, gendered, national (etc.)
implications of the rhetorics of Citizenship. Participants will
rethink citizenship (as well as be/longing) in terms of the
construction of gender difference, state practices that exclude
particular groups of women, and women's symbolic role in
national and local discourses.

Eligibility
The IUC courses are conducted at a postgraduate level.  All
postgraduate students interested in the topic may apply for
attendance.  The course will be limited to twenty attendees.
The attendees should seek funds from their own institutions to
cover the travel costs and accommodation.  Limited competitive
funding is available from the UIC for  scholars from Albania,
Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova,
Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia.

Application Procedure
A short narrative explaining your interest in the topic and your
CV (please include your current contact information at the top
of the CV) should be submitted by e-mail to
jlmorgan@rci.rutgers.edu, with IUC Dubrovnik 2005 in the subject
heading. Or by fax to + 1 732 932 1335.  The application
deadline is December 1, 2005.