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2016, vol. 70

Crossing the Line: Women of Anabaptist Traditions Encounter Borders and Boundaries

June 22-25, 2017, Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA

Proposals due September 1, 2016.

It has been twenty years since the watershed conference The Quiet in the Land? Women of Anabaptist Traditions in Historical Perspective took place in 1995. New topics, approaches, and viewpoints invite further examination of the constructions of gendered experience within groups in the Anabaptist tradition. Crossing boundaries and borders can and should encompass a wide range of disciplines, approaches and topics, and we seek submissions from scholars, students, activists, and literary, performing and visual artists.

Crossing might entail traversing the lines between…

…public and private spaces
…church/community and the world
…quietism and activism
…expected decorum/silence and speaking out
…gender constructions
…sexualities and gender self-identities
…race, ethnicity and class
…religious and theological belief systems
…nation states in the making of transnationalism
…disciplinary expression.

Conference participants are encouraged to think creatively about how Anabaptists, Mennonites, Amish and related groups have crossed and continue to cross lines, borders and boundaries.

Please submit a one-page CV and a 250-word abstract for a paper, a creative performance or presentation, or a complete panel/workshop session (with presenters indicated).

Proposals should be submitted to awcrossingtheline@gmail.com.

The deadline for submitting proposals is September 1, 2016. The program committee will send out its decisions of acceptance by January 15, 2017.

Program Committee: Rachel Epp Buller, Bethel College; Marlene Epp, Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo; Kerry Fast, Independent Scholar; Luann Good Gingrich, York University; Rachel Waltner Goossen,Washburn University; Julia Spicher Kasdorf, Pennsylvania State University; Kimberly Schmidt, Eastern Mennonite University; Jan Bender Shetler, Goshen College; Mary Sprunger, Eastern Mennonite University.