Critical Femininities is an emerging field of study that seeks to examine femininity unhinged from “woman” (Dahl, 2012). In addition to elucidating and theorizing feminine and femme identities, Critical Femininities scholars follow traditions in non-academic femme writing and feminist and queer scholarship to understand femininity as subversive (Hoskin & Taylor, 2019), understand femme-ininity as a theoretical framework and a mode of knowledge production (Hoskin, 2017; Schwartz, 2018, 2020a), and understand femininity beyond identity as affective, assemblage, and lineage (Brightwell & Taylor, 2019; Dahl, 2017; McCann, 2018; Schwartz, 2020b).
If you would like to get involved in the Critical Femininities research network at York University, please get in touch with Dr. Andi Schwartz or fill in this form.
Current Opportunities
Call for Papers | Irreverence: The Third Annual Critical Femininities Conference, August 17-20 2023
The Centre for Feminist Research at York University invites abstracts for the third annual Critical Femininities Conference on the theme of “Irreverence.” The conference will take place virtually on August 17-20, 2023. Abstracts are due May 10, 2023.
To be irreverent is to show disrespect where respect is demanded, to be flippant in the face of serious situations, and to satirize what others hold sacred. In western culture, the mother, the virgin, and the queen are figures of femininity that are often held sacred, exemplifying the entrenchment of idealized feminine characteristics such as domesticity, piety, and (hetero)sexual or moral purity. But for decades, irreverence has been woven into camp and poststructuralist approaches to femme theory, which insist that femme is an intentionally ironic performance of this idealized white, cis-heterosexual femininity (Albrecht-Samarasinha 1997; Case 1988; Duggan & McHugh 1996). Irreverent attitudes toward femininity—especially white, heterosexual, and colonial femininities—are also integral to other queer cultures and modes of critique: in recent years, hypersexual and outrageous impersonations of the sacred feminine figures the Virgin Mary and Queen Elizabeth (I and II) have been presented on the mainstage of TV’s Rupaul’s Drag Race. In this way, irreverence has wrought countercultural styles of femininities that relate to punk, drag, sex work, working-class, Indigenous, and racialized sensibilities (Bailey 2014; Chepp 2015; McCann 2016; Padaan 2023).
See the full CFP here. If you have any questions, please contact us at criticalfemininities@yorku.ca
