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WGS | Sustaining Hope: Feminisms, Freedom, and the Future
April 13 - April 15
Sustaining Hope: Feminisms, Freedom, and the Future
Co-Convened by UW System Women’s and Gender Studies Consortium
and
UW System Office of the Gender and Women’s Studies Librarian
April 13-15, 2023
Fully Virtual Event
This year’s theme invites participants to occupy spaces of hope alongside uncertainty as we shift our collective gaze towards an unknowable and improvable future. Drawing on the foundational work of feminist abolitionist Mariame Kaba and other proponents of radical hope, we investigate how grief and sadness hold the seeds to our own survival and freedom. We position hope as intersectional concept grounded in solutions we have yet to fully understand and map out. We invite proposals which foreground an intersectional-feminist lens to map out inclusive societal structures, equitable institutional frameworks, cross-movement solidarities, and collective approaches to social change. We ask scholars, students, activists, artists, civil society leaders, and all members of the community to reflect on strategies for harnessing joy and hope in tandem with anger, frustration, and rage. How do we support a society that offers improved conditions for all, particularly Black, Indigenous, and people of color? How do we retain hope and remain joyful in the face of ongoing inequities, injustice, and the pandemic? What does it mean to chart a future that is difficult to discern? How do we slowly and systematically develop new solutions to systemic change? What does it mean to utilize hope as a strategy for change?
