Touching War at Lancaster University‏

TOUCHING WAR: MARCH EVENTS The Touching War activities I am directing at Lancaster University withthe Politics/IR department, under IAS and LU Film Society sponsorship,continue. March's theme is Women: Armed and Dangerous? Join a newgeneration of feminists in international relations to reconsider issuesof war and masculinity and the war question for feminists. Events areopen to all. For the schedule through April 2009, see the Touching War website:http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/events/touchingwar/ Professor Christine Sylvester, Politics/IR I. ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION AND DEBATE: RECONSIDERING WAR AND MASCULINITY Thursday 19 March, 4:00-6:00, IAS room 2/3. Wine reception following.Sponsored by IAS War has long been viewed by feminists as the ultimate masculine arena ofinternational relations, one that involves women and children mostly asvictims of violence, sometimes as combatants, rarely as perpetrators.This roundtable introduces the theme of Women: Armed and Dangerous? byfeaturing a mostly new generation of leading international relationsanalysts interested in probing, challenging, enlarging, and reframingthe war and masculinity equation in ways that bring in "women's" agencyand politics. Participants: Megan MacKenzie (Women in Public Policy, Harvard). Has interviewed womensoldiers in Sierra Leone about their war and post-war experiences.Author of "Securitization and De-securitization: Female Soldiers and theConstruction of the Family," Security Studies (2009), "De-SecuritizingSex: War Rape and the 'Radicalization' of Development in Sierra Leone,"Feminist Journal of International Politics (forthcoming), and co-authorof "Silent Identities: Children Born of War in Sierra Leone" in CharliCarpenter ed. Born of War: Protecting Children Born to Sexual ViolenceSurvivors in Conflict Zones. (2007). Cristina Masters (Politics, Manchester). Interested in feminism,masculinity and practices of (in)security in international politics,with special attention to the US military and the role of technology inwar and security practices. Author of several articles related to thismonth's theme, including Femina Sacra and the War on Terror," SecurityDialogue, 2009), and "Bodies of Technology II: Cyborg Soldiers andMilitarised Masculinities," in Rethinking The 'Man Question' inInternational Relations: Sex, Gender, and Violence in InternationalRelations, eds. Jane Parpart and Marysia Zalewski (2008). Elina Penttinen (Tampere Peace Research Institute). Interested inexperiences of war, security, and insecurity as dailiness in women'slives, and feminist theory about the body and subjectivity. Author ofGlobalization, Prostitution, and Sex-Trafficking: Corporeal Politics(2007), "Providing Security: White Western Feminists Protecting "Other"Women," in Mark Haugaard and Howard Lentner, eds, Hegemony and Power:Consensus and Coercion in Contemporary Politics (2006), and "WhoseVoices Matter: Feminists Stretch the Boundaries of the InternationalRelations Discipline," in Subhash Durlabhji, ed., Power in focus:Perspectives from Multiple Disciplines (2004). Laura Sjoberg (Political Science, Virginia Tech). With both a PhD and aJD, she is interested in gender justice in wars, violent women, andgender and international security. Authored Gender, Justice, and theWars in Iraq (2006) and co-authored Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women'sViolence in Global Politics (2007). General editor of the Gender andPolitical Violence book series from New York University Press, andauthor of "The Gendered Realities of the Immunity Principle: Why GenderAnalysis Needs Feminism," International Studies Quarterly (2006) and"Gendered Torture? Feminist Insights into Abu Ghraib and Gender in the21st Century," International Feminist Journal of Politics (2007). Professor Christine Sylvester (Politics/IR), Seen as raising the warquestion for feminism and pursuing it in "The Art of War/the WarQuestion in Feminist IR, Millennium: Journal of International Studies(2005). Author of two theory books in the Cambridge series onInternational Relations, two books on the political economy of Zimbabwe,and lately Art/Museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It(2009). Author of War, Feminism, and International Relations and editorof Major Works in Feminist International Relations (four volumes), bothforthcoming with Routledge. II. WORKSHOP: THE WAR QUESTION FOR FEMINISM Friday, March 20, 9:30-5:30, IAS room 2/3. Sponsored by IAS Many feminists have been disinclined to study the social institution ofwar, because to study war has seemed to mean accepting it or evenendorsing it over feminist goals of peace and war protest. The neglectof war studies even in feminist international relations is changingrapidly with the advent of a new generation of feminists researching warwithout necessarily supporting it. This workshop showcases theirthinking about the war question for feminism and enables us to seerealms of politics, agency, emotion and physical violence that have beenwhispered about in the past, or sensationalized in the media, more oftenthan researched. 9:30-10:00 Christine Sylvester, "Introducing The War Question forFeminism: What Are The Issues?" 10:00-10:30 Elina Penttinen, "The Possibilities of Finding Joy ThroughFeminist Research on War" What happens to us as feminist IR writers and researchers when we chooseto focus on life, joy and empowerment in places usually seen throughfeminist lenses as victimizing for women, such as war? I will talk aboutwhat I call hopeless feminist problem-making in regard to the warquestion and look for solutions. 10:30 Break for coffee 10:45-11:15 Discussion led by Megan MacKenzie 11:15- 11:45 Laura Sjoberg "Women's Sex Crimes in War" Addresses questions of women's participation in sexual violence inwartime, particularly their participation in and instigation ofgenocidal rape. It looks at theoretical and legal implications ofwomen's sexual violence as well as media and scholarly reactions tothose acts. 11:45-12:15 Cristina Masters "Does Homo Sacer have a Sex? Women, theFeminine and War" An attempt to provoke critical feminist inquiry into the figure of homosacer in Giorgio Agamben's philosophy, and reveal how the category mayserve to obscure the modalities through which practices of war renderwomen as bare life in particular ways. 12:15-1:00 Discussion led by Christine Sylvester 1:00-2:15 Lunch 2:15-2:45 Corinna Peniston-Bird (History, Lancaster), Co-author ofContesting Home Defence: Men, Women and the Home Guard in the SecondWorld War (2007), and co-editor of A Soldier and a Woman; SexualIntegration in the Military (2000). '"I'll be Part and Parcel of the Great British Army": Women'sConstructions of Service in the 'Good' War."Takes as its starting place women's retrospective personal testimony onserving in the British Armed Forces in the Second World War, aperiodisation which permits examples to be drawn from the experiences offemale conscripts and volunteers, but as construed from a contemporaryperspective. 2:45-3:15 Megan MacKenzie, "Women: Armed and Dangerous in Sierra Leone" Insights and stories of over fifty female soldiers in Sierra Leone arethe foundations of this presentation, which challenges fundamentalassumptions about what women "do" during and after conflict. 3:15-3:45 Swati Parashar (Politics/IR Lancaster), Author of "FeministInternational Relations and Women Militants: Case Studies from Sri Lankaand Kashmir," Cambridge Review of International Affairs (2009) andco-author with Christine Sylvester of "The Contemporary 'Mahabharata'and the Many 'Draupadis': Bringing Gender to Critical Terrorism Studies,in Critical Terrorism Studies: A New Research Agenda (2009), eds.Richard Jackson, Marie Breen Smyth, and Jeroen Gunning. She editedMaritime Counter Terrorism: A Pan Asian Perspective(2007) and co-editedTerrorism in South East Asia-Implications for South Asia (2006). "Militant Women in South Asia: Case Studies from Sri Lanka and Kashmir"Women as perpetrators, planners and patrons of violent militantactivities in the conflicts in Sri Lanka and Kashmir. 3:45-4:00 Break 4:15-4:30 Discussion led by Laura Sjoberg 4:30-5:30 Theorizing the War Question for Feminism -Sylvester, Sjoberg,MacKenzie, Penttinen, Masters For information on these and future Touching War events, contactProfessor Christine Sylvester: c.sylvester@lancaster.ac.uk