Care Ethics Otherwise: A Conference

Sarah Clark Miller, Hil Malatino, and I are excited to share the following CFP and conference announcement:  

Call for Papers

Care Ethics Otherwise: A Conference

June 9–10, 2023 at Penn State University Park  

This conference is an invitation to deeply consider previously underexplored approaches to examining and practicing care ethics and care theory. It is organized around a call to actively decenter understandings of care rooted in white, bourgeois, heteronormative domestic/kinship norms and practices – in other words, a call to think care and do care ethics otherwise. By this the organizers mean (at least) two things. First, we are looking to the margins, to the underground, to unconventional domains to invite reflections on care from those who are regularly othered or experience themselves as “the other.” Second, we are motivated to create space with a focus on reimagining and remaking care ethics otherwise we risk neglecting important opportunities to grow care ethics in new, more inclusive directions. Thinking on care has followed multiple genealogies and flourished across, between, and beyond academic disciplines; accordingly, this conference will be interdisciplinary and open to participants working both within the academy and beyond it.  

The conference will take place in State College, Pennsylvania, on Penn State’s University Park campus, June 9–10, 2023. We plan to run only one panel at a time, starting at 1pm the first day and 10am the second, and ending by 6:30 p.m. each evening. There will be 20–30 minute breaks between sessions and an extended break for lunch. Our hope is that such pacing encourages participants to attend the bulk of the conference sessions, and that it will be an intimate, convivial, and generative space to push the boundaries of one another’s engagement with questions of care. We will emphasize accessibility, provide a quiet space, and have ASL interpreters for the keynotes. Attendees will mask while indoors (unless eating, drinking, or presenting) and test for Covid before entering the conference space.  

KEYNOTES: Martin Manalansan, Sami Schalk, Jina Kim, and Jess Waggoner   

Conference organizers plan to put together an edited volume of new original contributions, drawn in part from papers presented at the conference.  

Possible paper topics include but are not limited to:  

racialization, anti-Blackness, and care labor

perspectives on care ethics developed from Black feminist scholarship

care ethics and decolonization

approaches to care ethics focused on addressing structural and institutional oppression

care, vulnerability, precarity, and state abandonment

biomedicalization, wellness, medical access, and care, especially for LGBTQIA+ folks

care ethics and trauma-informed care

decoupling care and love

the relationship between care and contempt, anger, and indignation

friendship, queer kinship, and care beyond the nuclear family

care, polyamory, and non-monogamy, including the relationship between care, jealousy, and compersion

care, sex work, and marriage/family abolition

care ethics, prison abolition, and transformative justice

anthropocenic catastrophe, grief, ecology, and care

geographies and geopolitics of care care, dependency, and disability justice

care beyond human worlds anonymity, proximity, and questions of responsibility in care ethics

global care chains and marginalized care workers care and mutual aid

tech, care, and technologies of care

Indigenous approaches to care ethics

the relationship between care, non-violence, violence, and self and community defense  

Please send 350 – 400 word abstracts (including title) by April 1, 2023. We will notify folks by April 15, 2023.  

https://rockethics.psu.edu/care-ethics-otherwise-a-conference/  

Please feel most welcome to help us spread the word to anyone you think may be interested!  

Thank you so much,  

Amy McKiernan