Points of exit :: Centre for Gender and Diversity

10-year anniversary conference

Points of exit: (Un)conventional Representations of Age, Parenting, and Sexuality

March 19 and 20, 2009

Introduction

The Centre for Gender and Diversity at the University of Maastricht existed for 10 years on September 1, 2008. We marked this occasion with a two-day conference on Thursday and Friday March 19 and 20, 2009. The conference focussed explicitly on the specific research interests of the different researchers working at the Centre.

Points of exit: (Un)conventional Representations of Age, Parenting, and Sexuality

Wie schön os Limburg is When analyzing representations of different life phases, when writing a biography, when interpreting processes of cultural remembrance, one quite soon encounters the rather rigid moulds of narrative conventions that usually accompany depictions of Youth and Old Age, of Parenting, of Sexuality. Certain representational forms are so often repeated that they appear to be natural. Think for example of conventions of chronology, of development and progress, of the autonomous individual, of the overvaluation of the masculine vis-à-vis the feminine. Perhaps above all, think of the convention to make visible and problematize the non-normative (femininity, homosexuality, lower class, color), while leaving unmarked the normative (masculinity, heterosexuality, middle class, whiteness). Pointing out and analyzing these conventions is of importance, but also raises the question: Can we represent age, parenting, and sexuality outside of these conventions, and if so, how?

The researchers working at the Center share an interest in analyzing and criticizing cultural conventions that shape representations, thereby starting from the political perspective of gender and diversity. We are not only fascinated by the ways in which these conventions work, but also by the possibilities of deviating from these conventions. At which point does a life-story break away from the predictable modes that are culturally available? Can we ever escape such modes? Should we want to? What strategies can be employed to recognize existing cultural scripts, to deconstruct them, and perhaps even to interchange them for others? What “other” stories about parenting, aging, and childhood are available? Where do we find these “other” scripts, or how can we develop them? Are these “new” scripts fully understandable in terms of the life-stories we usually tell? Can we escape certain conventions without immediately taking on new conventions?

We wanted to organize a conference in which all speakers try to locate the “point of exit” from cultural conventions and scripts as precisely as possible, be it the point of exit created in the work of other scientists, authors, or artists, or perhaps as created in their own academic work.

The different sessions were chaired and organized by the researchers working at the Center and were formulated around their specific research interests. Each session was preceded by a keynote lecture, after which there were one or two panels of each three speakers.

Program

See the program.

Conference sessions on the following topics:

Biographies on the move [moderated by Maaike Meijer]
Gothic Escapes? [moderated by Agnes Andeweg]
(Un)conventional parenthood [moderated by Josje Weusten]
New Directions in Age Studies [moderated by Aagje Swinnen]
Queering Queer Texts [moderated by Roel van den Oever]

Conference Proceedings:

A selection of papers will be considered for inclusion in a peer-reviewed journal. The language of the conference is English.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

For the panel New Directions in Age Studies: Exploring Exits from the Narrative of Decline, keynote speaker: Margaret Morganroth Gullette.

Margaret Morganroth Gullette is a cultural critic and prize-winning writer of nonfiction, an internationally known age critic, essayist, and activist. Her latest book, Aged by Culture, was chosen as a "Noteworthy Book of the Year" by the Christian Science Monitor. Declining to Decline: Cultural Combat and the Politics of the Midlife won the Emily Toth Award as the best feminist book on American popular culture. Margaret's focus on the midlife (the Midlife Fictions series) has expanded to become Age Studies. Age studies from childhood on can be as powerful as studies of gender or race in empowering people to challenge American age culture.

For the panel Queering Queer Texts, keynote speaker: Professor Henry Abelove, the Wilbur Fisk Osborne Professor of English at Wesleyan University. He is both an eighteenth-century Anglo-American culture specialist and a leading figure in the field of Queer Studies. Professor Abelove is the author of The Evangelist of Desire: John Wesley and the Methodists and of Deep Gossip; he is co-editor of The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader.

For the panel (Un)conventional Parenthood, keynote speaker: Deborah Chambers. She is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Newcastle University. Her research in the sociology of culture and media focuses on gender, identities, the family and cultural theory. Representing the Family (2001) examines official, media, and domestic discourses of family values. Women & Journalism (2004 with Steiner and Fleming) provides a comparative analysis of women in journalism in USA and Britain. New Social Ties (2006) explores contemporary debates in social and cultural theory concerning the impact of new communication technologies on social networks. Professor Chambers is currently writing a book on the Sociology of Families (Polity).

For the panel Gothic Escapes?, keynote speaker: Professor Sue Zlosnik, Head of the English Department of Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research focuses on prose fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Gothic, and women's writing. With Professor Avril Horner she has written three books: Landscapes of Desire: Metaphors in Modern Women's Fiction (1990); Daphne du Maurier: Writing, Identity and the Gothic Imagination (1998) and Gothic and the Comic Turn (2005), as well as numerous articles and essays. They have edited a collection of essays on international influences and appropriations in the Gothic, entitled Le Gothic (Palgrave, 2008), and are completing an edition of The Heroine, an 1813 novel by E.S. Barrett. Forthcoming are essays in collections on Female Gothic and Iris Murdoch. As a solo scholar, Zlosnik has recently written on Hilary Mantel for the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Fiction and is completing a monograph on the contemporary novelist, Patrick McGrath. She is Co-President of the International Gothic Association.

For the panel Biographies on the Move, keynote speaker: Dr. Caitríona Ní Dhúill of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography.
A life is usually told as a linear story, beginning with one’s birth, ending with one’s death. That is a narrative convention, which forces every life in a similar mould. This mould itself should be critically questioned. Which life-writings (or films) break with traditional narrative conventions? How and to what effect? And is there something rotten in the narrative conventions themselves, which are commonly deployed in life-writing?

Click here to see Bio and Abstracts (pdf)

Click here to see the list of participants (pdf)

Accommodation

Maastricht Conference hotel Vaeshartelt Castle.

When traveling to Maastricht from abroad, you can best fly to either Brussels airport (Belgium) or Amsterdam airport (Netherlands).
From Brussels airport, it takes a little under two hours to travel by train to Maastricht (see here for schedules). From Amsterdam airport, it takes a little under three hours to travel by train to Maastricht (see here for schedules).
At Maastricht station, take a taxi to Hotel Vaeshartelt (a 10-minutes ride).
or 'go Dutch' and rent a bike at the station Maastricht