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From:    Iris Fleßenkämper &#60;irisfle@uni-muenster.de&#62;Date:    09.07.2014------------------------------------------------------------------------Dr. Jyoti Atwal, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal NehruUniversity, New Delhi, India;Dr. Iris Fleßenkämper, Cluster ofExcellence 'Religion and Politics', Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität,Münster, Germany22.09.2015-24.09.2015, New Delhi, Convention Hall, Jawaharlal NehruUniversityDeadline: 30.11.2014This call for papers on cross cultural research has been triggered by aseries of developments across the globe. The rise in the level ofviolence against women in both public and private sphere has broughtfeminists outside their national boundaries. The relationship betweengender and violence is being understood very differently in the presenttimes. Violence against women does not simply involve physical pain; itis rather a multifaceted phenomenon. Thirty-five per cent of women worldwide have experienced either physicaland/or sexual violence from either intimate partners or non-partners,with some national violence studies showing that up to seventy per centof women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence in theirlifetime from an intimate partner. Violence against women exists inevery society, and encompasses different forms of socio-structural,physical, sexual and psychological abuse. Statistics from Europe andAsia show a sharp rise in domestic violence, yet it still remains verydifficult for many women to report violence within the domestic sphere.Furthermore, female victims are discouraged from taking legal action asthe pressure to reconcile with perpetrators takes over. These are thespaces that this conference seeks to uncover. These spaces arereconstituted by the production of new definitions of tradition,religion, law, family and nation. Notions of honor, shame, andattachment to cultural, traditional symbolism and relationships need tobe decoded in the context of modern day gender relations.    Contemporary feminist scholarship encompasses questions ofcolonial/postcolonial boundaries of women's histories. Women'soppression cannot simply be understood in terms of exploitation. AsSpivak has articulated "the subject of exploitation cannot know andspeak the text of female exploitation, even if the absurdity of thenonrepresenting intellectual making space for her to speak is achieved"(Spivak: 1988). Our conference therefore will have a strong focus onexperience-based life histories of women from excluded and often rarelyvisible sections of society (including, for example, identities ofdalits, tribals, Blacks, and minorities in a more general perspective).A further aim of the conference will be to explore the historical rootsof modern day violence against women across Asia and Europe in order toelucidate continuities, transitions, and changes in the patterns andnarratives of gender-based violence from the 16th to the 20th centuriesagainst the background of postcolonial history. We aim to compareintersecting processes of repression and social control, as well as toexplore the agencies and circumstances that enabled women to negotiateboundaries of patriarchal power.The conference will focus on the following issues:Gender, Violence, and Religion: in terms of the influences of religiousbeliefs, and the practices and institutions on gender arrangements andtheir affinities for gender-based violence;Gender, Violence, and Law: in terms of the impact of legal norms andpractices on the social legitimation of both gender hierarchies andphysical violence against women; and the scope and limitations of law asa political means of controlling and disciplining gender relationships;Gender, Violence, and Cultural Representations: in terms of genderrepresentations in the media, such as in the literary, visual andcinematic arts, and the influences of such representations on thereproduction or change of attitudes towards gender-based violence.Although the conference primarily aims to recover the shared past acrossIndia and Germany, papers in general contexts of Europe and Asia willalso be considered. The objective of the conference is to gatherresearchers from different disciplines in order to exchange and discussnew perspectives and theories of gender violence. The conference isdesigned as a start-up event for a long-term interdisciplinarycooperation addressing the multifaceted relations between gender andviolence in a historical perspective. We therefore hope to publish theselected papers.The call for papers is now open for this conference. Proposals must bein English and should include an abstract of no more than 500 words.Please submit your proposal together with a brief curriculum vitae andyour contact details to the organizers -- Dr. Jyoti Atwal(jyoti_atwal@mail.jnu.ac.in) and Dr. Iris Fleßenkämper(irisfle@uni-muenster.de) -- on or before 30th of November 2014.Please note that there is no registration fee for session chairs,speakers and selected participants and for those who wish to onlyattend. However, you are required to have an email confirmation from usbefore attending. Limited guest house rooms at low rates are available at JNU Campus(http://www.jnu.ac.in/Facilities/GuestHouses.asp). Subject toavailability, these rooms can be booked by requesting the conferenceorganizers. Limited air/train fare is available for selectedparticipants from India.    ------------------------------------------------------------------------Dr. Jyoti AtwalAssistant ProfessorModern Indian HistoryCentre for Historical Studies/ School of Social SciencesJawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi 110067 Indiajyoti_atwal@mail.jnu.ac.inDr. Iris FleßenkämperCluster of Excellence 'Religion and Politics in Pre-Modern and ModernCultures'University of Münster (WWU)Johannisstr. 148143 MünsterGermanyirisfle@uni-muenster.de