Connection: The Fifth Annual Critical Femininities Conference

Connection: joining, uniting, fastening, bringing together. Audre Lorde highlighted how when we “make connection with our similarities and our differences” (53), we remind ourselves of our own and others’ affective capacity. Femininity can be a rich and creative site of connectivity that expands beyond colonial imaginaries of womanhood and gender.

This conference marks half a decade of cultivating digital community dialogue around critical femininities, opening up intentional digital space for expanding normative definitions of connection. There are also possibilities in the ways we disconnect. As Alyson K. Spurgas (2021) writes, “there is promise in embracing a fracturing, in falling apart—as antidote to the normative and neoliberal logic of keeping it together.” There is value in interrogating the connective void left when white supremacy, colonization, ableism, transphobia, misogyny, and other violent structures disconnect us from our femininities. The potential inherent in diving into disconnection also leaves room for exploring unexpected or idiosyncratic instances of re-connection to femininity.

This year's conference program includes 9 panels with interdisciplinary and international scholars, artists, and activists, a keynote address, and a creative workshop.

Find out more about the cluster and past conferences at this link: https://www.yorku.ca/cfr/critical-femininities/

Contact us at: critfemininities@gmail.com

Ticket Information

The Critical Femininities conference has always been a space that centres graduate students, early career researchers, arts workers, and others working outside/beyond the academy. To continue creating this supportive space, this year we are experimenting with a sliding scale conference registration fee. You can pay any amount (including $0) that works with your budget. Please note the currency is Canadian dollars (CAD).

Suggested Donation:

$0-$30: For conference presenters, students, arts workers, un- or under-waged

$30-$50: For those with a living wage

$50+: For those with access to institutional funding

Please email us if you would like an itemized receipt or have any questions.