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American Studies Group of the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies is organizing the international conference "Women and the Arts: Dialogues in Female Creativity in the U.S. and Beyond" (15-17 June 2011). The three-day gathering will promote a reflection on women's artistic production, contrasting the U.S. context with other cultures. The conference will cover multiple areas, including writing, the visual arts, music, and the performance arts. We will debate women's aesthetic expression in the U.S. and elsewhere in these diversified fields, from modernity to the contemporary age, and reflect on the specific conditions of production, circulation, and reception of their works.We aim to engage scholars from a wide range of areas, as well as artists, critics, and curators in order to foster interdisciplinary debate. Among our invited participants are Professor Sandra M.Gilbert,  groundbreaking critic, theorist, and poet, who will give a plenary lecture, and renowned storyteller Laura Simms, who will be mentoring a workshop.The list of suggested topics for research and discussion includes: The U.S. and Beyond - Comparative Approaches: The influence of American gender theory and politics Women's Art and American Regionalism  Criteria for the definition of a specifically feminine cultural and artistic production Critical revisions towards representative literary and art histories Canonical dynamics and the transatlantic debate  Women artists' perspectives on traditions, categories, and the politics of art institutions  GLBT subjectivities and the arts  The outlook for women's art at the onset of the 21st century 250-word abstracts and 250-word bios should be sent in the body of the message to womenartslisbon@gmail.com, before 31 January 2011.