Welcome to the FTGSS blog!

The FTGSS (Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section) of the International Studies Association (ISA) has become convinced that its website should not be a place for sterile updates and content, but an interactive home for the furtherance of Feminist scholarship in international politics and global governance. We envision researchers using this site to post and learn about academic opportunities, to form research cooperatives, to announce conferences, and to discuss issues of importance to their research programmes. It is to that end that we have established the "FTGSS blog." For those of you who are not familiar with "blogging" - it is the new generation of "message boards" and "bulletin boards" - internet interactive communication.

This is a [self-promoting] paragraph from Blogger describing what a "blog" is - I post it because we envision ours achieving all of Blogger's communicative hopes.

A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world. Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules. In simple terms, a blog is a web site, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what's new. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. Or not. Since Blogger was launched, almost five years ago, blogs have reshaped the web, impacted politics, shaken up journalism, and enabled millions of people to have a voice and connect with others. And we're pretty sure the whole deal is just getting started.

So, here's how it works - we will post updates on issues of FTGSS interest, including conferences, research, accomplishments, questions, international events, etc. You can respond to to posts, suggest topics, and dialogue on important issues to the FTGSS community. If we all take a few minutes a week to let the rest of the community know what is going on in our lives and our research, we will be able to communicate effectively. We hope that, through this blog and other tools, we will be able to make FTGSS a truly interactive community supporting feminist scholarship.

If you arrived here through the ISA website, the FTGSS website, or the FTGSS mailing list, welcome, you must have come on purpose! If you did not come on purpose, do not worry, you are still welcome. For more about our organization, see www.isanet.org/sections/ftgs/ for more information about our organization. With that, let the "blogging" begin!

Call for papers

Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section
Call for Papers for the 2006 ISA Annual Conference, San Diego, USA. March 2006

2006 Conference Theme: The North-South Divide and International Studies
Deadline for Panel Submissions: June 1^st , 2005

While the North-South divide may be a new area of inquiry for many of our colleagues, feminists have been concerned with it for a long time and we bring to the 2006 ISA conference theme our gendered sensitivities to race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic inequalities.

What can we learn about the questions of international relations and global politics by being attentive to the South-North divide? What can feminist theory and gender studies provide us for problematizing, understanding, bridging, or breaking down that divide? What theoretical, methodological, and empirical challenges have we faced? How have we addressed these and what new viewpoints can we bring to this discussion? What does awareness of the divides between the Global North and Global South bring to our understandings of divides within the North and within the South.

We invite panels and individual papers from the full range of current issue-areas in international studies; globalization, democratization, human rights, security, gender mainstreaming, disciplinary and physical borders, indigenous issues, nationalism, terrorism, interstate and intrastate conflict, and post-conflict societies. Questions that can be addressed include:

• How and where is further study of such issue-areas enriched by various forms of feminist approaches (empirical, (post-)structuralist, post-positivist, postmodern) that are attentive to the gendered, race/ethnic, class/socioeconomic differences in power relations within, between, and among more affluent and lesser developed parts of the world? How can these questions be reframed by paying attention to locating the ''South" within the North?

• What advantages or disadvantages are there by framing our inquiries in terms of a North-South divide? Is this a geographical divide? Does a focus on North and South require a focus on a macro-level IR questions? How is the divide evidenced or allayed in everyday life, the workplace, in intergovernmental institutions? Does the dichotomy constrain our thinking and research? Various streams of Feminist and Gender Studies have consistently sought to challenge the reification of such dichotomies. How can we study the divides between North and South without contributing to further polarizations and more 'othering' ? What sorts of heuristics, models, interpretations and respective empirical research methods can be further developed for dealing with these concerns in IR?

• How do South-North relationships reveal themselves in research scenarios? Where can feminist theory and gender studies continue to develop inclusive research programs, new knowledge about silenced others, or enhance knowledge through reflexive forms of knowledge?

• How does a focus on this "North-South Divide" contribute to feminist IR as both a distinct field and an interdisciplinary undertaking in IR more broadly?

• How can FTGS panels address the ongoing issue of voice, positionality, race, ethnicity and demographic under-representation; both in policy-making and academic circles?
  

Continuing the trend of previous years, we are also interested in panels that create productive conversations across ISA sections, and the IR discipline across the board. For example, interdisciplinary panels that engage questions of security, environment, and gender; global development, international political economy, and gender; Information and Communications Technologies and gender; panels which address an issue-area from differing research traditions; panels that create conversations across different approaches within FTGS.

Finally, we are interested in encouraging participation from scholars and practitioners who work from areas beyond the North American and/or European academes. We are particularly interested in papers by authors who are co-authoring across these geographies. Scholars new to ISA or to the Feminist Theory Gender Studies section are particularly encouraged to apply.

Any more questions? Please feel free to contact the FTGS Program Chair: Brooke Ackerly at (brooke.ackerly@vanderbilt.edu) or the FTGS Chair, Marianne Franklin at (M.I.Franklin@uvh.nl).

Anyone wishing to serve as discussant and chair can contact program co-chair: Laura Parisi (lparisi@uvic.ca) with their areas of expertise and current interests.

Finally, travel grants are available and the funds for these have been increased. It is strongly advised that you to apply now for travel support and not wait for acceptance on the program. Details are available at www.isanet.org.

The deadline for submissions is June 1. A link to the online submission form will be posted at http://www.isanet.org/sandiego/.