SfAA 2012 Gender-Bas​ed Violence Sessions

The Society for Applied Anthropology’s Gender-Based Violence Topical Interest Group invites participants for three themed panels for the 2012 SfAA meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, March 28-31.  We welcome submissions from scholars from all sub-fields of anthropology, across scholarly disciplines, and from professionals working within and/or outside of academia.

We propose three sessions to be delivered over three meeting days according to the following themes and are soliciting abstracts for these sessions.  If you are interested in being considered for one of these sessions, please submit your name, affiliation, title, and a 100-word abstract in the body of an e-mail to jennifer.wies@eku.edu by Tuesday, October 4th.  Selections will be completed by Friday, October 7th and registration and membership must be completed by October 15th if selected.

Bays, Boundaries, and Borders: The Anthropology of Gender-Based Violence

[Bays]
Gender-based violence is an important research topic across disciplines. The range of studies includes the neurobiology of aggressive behavior, the psychological effectiveness of violence prevention programs, and the impact of legislation on social service provision to abused women.  Taking the idea of “bay” as a place where two landscapes meet, this session explores the intersections of anthropology with other disciplines to study, respond to, and prevent gender-based violence.  We invite papers where transdisciplinary efforts have yielded success in unique ways, as well as papers that bring to the fore potential challenges to collaboration across disciplines.

[Boundaries]
Anthropologists are expanding the theoretical and methodological approaches to examining gender-based violence through time and across cultures.  Archaeological investigations challenge our previous assumptions about the rate and nature of gender-based violence, sociocultural anthropologists create models to identify co-factors in gender-based violence, and biological and physical anthropologists help us understand how bodies respond to gender-based violence.  This session brings together scholars from all disciplines of anthropology to showcase the ways that scholars and practitioners are expanding the geographical and temporal boundaries of our understanding gender-based violence.

[Borders]
This session invites papers from geographic locations previously understudied and studies of populations undertheorized, such as prisoners, children, same sex intimate partners, and other special populations.  Additionally, we welcome papers that explore the borders of the term “gender-based violence” and enhance our understanding of the similarities and differences found within the forms of violence that are categorized as gender-based. Could/should the same theories apply to genital cutting as to domestic violence, sexual assault as to elder abuse?