Call for Papers

1st Global Conference: Controlling Sexuality and Reproduction, Past and Present
Venue: University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada (About the Venue)
Date: August 12-14, 2015 Please note the Call for Papers is now closed.
Sexuality and its effects, as Michel Foucault once claimed, operate as dense transfer points of power relations. As such, states, institutions and citizen groups have been and continue to be deeply concerned with producing an ideal, normative citizenry by controlling sex, sexuality and reproduction.

Certain kinds of sexuality and certain kinds of sexual actors are more likely than others to be policed and contained. In the past and in the current context, marginalized people and practices have been subject to containment, harassment, prosecution or ‘correction’ in terms of their sexual and reproductive lives.
These practices have included the classification or sorting of peoples in the following ways:

  • as disabled,
  • as gender or sexually deviant
  • as Aboriginal or members of a racialized group
  • as members of non-normative family forms,
  • as inmates, in prisons, asylums and other institutional sites,
  • as dependent on the welfare state,
  • as engaging in non-heteronormative sexual practices
  • as involved in sex work and/or sex surrogacy

Historical and current-context efforts at containment of those classified accordingly have included:

  • eugenics, or the involuntary sterilization of disabled people, imprisoned people and members of indigenous and other racialized groups;
  • policing and prosecuting polygynous and polygamous family forms
  • heteronormative surveillance, policing and regulation of queer and trans* people
  • the protectionism, infantilization or demonization of disabled or mad people
  • limiting support and access to disabled people’s sexual and familial lives
  • regulation and prosecution of sex workers and sex surrogates
  • chemical and medical interventions in prisons, institutions, hospitals, and asylums
  • segregation through residential schools and other institutions
  • segregation and containment embedded in community practice, and in immigration policy

The conference seeks to explore and challenge the seeming naturalness of historical and current efforts to control and marginalize certain kinds of sex and reproduction, and to illuminate commonalities and differences amongst these various efforts to police sexual, reproductive and family lives. We ask why and how particular sets of behaviours or peoples are targets of control, and thus seek to examine what kinds of ‘normal’ values are being upheld. We encourage presentations that illuminate the productions of ableism, heteronormativity, Whiteness, gender, and ideal citizenship.

In addition to academic papers, we are interested in opening up a platform for the discussion of personal experiences of sexual and reproductive control, experiences of resistance, and the engagement of community and self-advocacy groups in working toward inclusive and positive sexual and reproductive models. We welcome proposals from community members, activists and advocates.
Non-traditional presentations are encouraged, including performances, oral history presentations, and roundtable discussions.