AAA 2012 CFP: Women on Frontiers

[Leila Monaghan]

*Call for papers*

*American Anthropological Association 2012*

*(San Francisco, November 14-18, 2012)*



*Indigenous Women's Words and Actions on Frontiers*



“Did the men ever tell you anything about a woman who fought…on the
Rosebud?"

"No," I replied, wondering.

"Ahh, they do not like to tell of it," she chuckled (Pretty Shield, Crow
[1932] 1972)



A frontier can be defined as  “territory or zone of interpenetration
between two previously distinct societies” (Thomas & Lamar 1981). This
panel focuses on the lives of indigenous women on frontiers around the
world—those who taught and learned, those who fought and were sometimes
killed, those who maintained tradition and adapted to new ways. One feature
of frontiers is that women often get left out of official accounts of both
sides of conflicts.  For example, in the accounts of the frontiers of 19th
century western United States, neither the accounts of predominately
Euro-American invading force nor most of those of the Natives of the Great
Plains focus much on the women and yet women were present at and fought in
most of the battles of the wars. In Judith Irvine and Susan Gal's terms,
the stories of women have been erased.   This panel seeks to present these
forgotten stories and explore cross-cultural commonalities and  differences
between women on contemporary and historical frontiers including the
American West, Palestine and Ireland including roles as aggressors,
negotiators and peacemakers.  We are looking for few more papers to round
out our panel.





If you are interested, please contact Leila at
Leila.Monaghan at gmail.comasap.  I am late starting to put this together
so speed is of the essence.
 Will need submissions by April 10 at the latest.



*Possible literature of interest:*



Linderman, Frank (1972 [1932]) *Pretty Shield: Medicine Woman of the Crows.
*Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press,



Sally Sargeson and Yu Song, “Land Expropriation and the Gender Politics of
Citizenship in the Urban Frontier,” *The China Journal* 64 (2010): 19-45;



Debra McDonald, “To Be Black and Female in the Spanish Southwest,” in
Quintard Taylor and Shirley Ann Wilson Moore, *African American Women
Confront the West, 1600-2000*. (Norman: Univ. Oklahoma Press, 2003), pp.
31-52;



Kyoko Kusakabe and Zin Mar Oo, “Relational Places of Ethnic Burman Women
Migrants in the Borderland Town of Tachilek, Myanmar,” *Singapore Journal
of Tropical Geography* 28.3 (2007): 300-313;



Sheila McManus, “Mapping the Alberta-Montana Borderlands: Race, Ethnicity
and Gender in the late Nineteenth Century,” *Journal of American Ethnic
History* 20.3 (2001): 71-87.



Thompson, Leonard and Howard Lamar (1981) Comparative Frontier History. In
L. Thompson and H. Lamar (eds) *The Frontier in History: North America and
Southern Africa Compared.* New Haven and London



I.W. Zartman, ed., *Understanding Life in the Borderlands: Boundaries in
Depth and in Motion. *Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press





-- 
Leila Monaghan, PhD
Department of Anthropology
University of Wyoming
Laramie, Wyoming