Scholars! Researchers! Academic-Curious!
Intellectual Renegades! Policy Junkies!
Join us at the Desiree Alliance 2010 Conference for the Academic track. Network with established and developing scholars who are engaged with research, theory, and methods that impact the formation of policy and applied practices concerning sex work and sex workers.
Academics have the opportunity to give back to the communities they study (and create careers upon) by participating in this diverse, dynamic space of sex work scholar colleagues and sex worker activists. Share your empirically-based perspective regarding where sex work scholarship has been and where it should be going. The academic track encourages scholars and sex workers to dialogue in a safe space. Join us as we come together in a sex-worker-defined space designed to effectively and efficiently move scholarly research toward more enlightened theories, methods, and practices that will move social justice and human rights in a progressive direction.
For more information regarding this opportunity, please contact Elizabeth Nanas at enanas[at]wayne[dot]edu, through Skype at enanas72, or by phone at 313-915-4933. You may also contact the Desiree Alliance toll-free at 866-525-7967 or through email at desiree2010[at]desiree2010[at]desireealliance[dot]org
Presentations (list subject to change)
Emily van der Meulen, Elya Maria Durisin, Jessica Yee, and Kathryn Payne: Sex Work and Canadian Policy
Cheryl Auger: Criminalization by another name
Kathleen Bergquist: Victim(less) sex work
Ellen Foley: Surveillance or empowerment?
Vegan Vixen: Violence and Prostitution Policies
Tamara O’Doherty: Victimization in the off-street sex industry in Vancouver, BC
Joelle Ryan: Violence against transgender sex workers
Amanda Brooks: Police Treatment of Arrested Sex Workers and the law
Christine Milrod: The Internet Hobbyist
Rachel Schreiber: “Before Their Makers and Their Judges: Prostitutes and White Slaves in the Political Cartoons of the Masses”
Arthur: Violating sex workers
McCracken: Violence and policy
Radeloff: Having a seat at the table
Alexis Roth: Risk Negotiation
Tamara O’Doherty: Research with sex workers
Ron Weitzer: Prostitution Myths in Advocacy Research and Public Policy
Crystal Jackson & Barb Brents: Nevada’s legal brothels in historical perspective
Meredith Ralston: Selling sex: Passionate debates
Tamara Larter: More than a “whore”
Megan Morgenson: The Value of Sex Work
Laura Kane and Adrienne Telford: An exercise in hypocrisy
Tracey Sagar: Back to basics? Sex workers’ civil liberties and human rights and the importance of a ‘principled’ framework in the development of criminal law
Vegan Vixen: Sex work, classrooms, and Text books
Kim Matthews: Self Advocacy of Progressive Era Women in Sexualized Labor
Carol Leigh: Sex Worker Media Library
Penelope Saunders, Brenda Costley, and Peter Bailey: Voices not included: Challenging elements of organizing around “sex work”
Lee Harington: How Much an Hour?
Call for Proposals (Note- deadline has passed)
Working Sex and the Twilight of Liberation
What is the significance of academic research and theory when it comes to sex work practice and policy? Where should academic researchers stand at a time when sex workers are becoming increasingly vocal in both call and response for social justice?—and in this endeavor sex workers are challenging the Academy through interrogation, deconstruction, and reconstruction of academic methods, theory, and praxis. What is the relationship between research and activism? As human rights activists across the globe call for decriminalization, what should our goals be? How can we reevaluate the ways that we write, think, and apply research among diverse sex work communities, especially where questions of sex work policy are of material concern?
The 2010 meetings of the Desiree Alliance, July 25-30 in Las Vegas, Nevada, will provide a critical space to tackle these scholarly, theoretical, and political concerns head-on as we examine our academic and public roles in relation to the most pressing problems confronting sex work policies and sex workers today. We intentionally offer the double meaning of “twilight” (as both a state of promise and uncertainty) in order to focus attention upon academia’s changing relationship with sex workers and publics who remain concerned with a wide array of interrelated exchange networks and practices. An interrogation of our contemporary goals, contributions, and intellectual heritage must critically examine the relationship between social justice and decriminalization in this twilight of hazy anticipation. We hope to generate serious conversation about these issues as we continue to reinvent sex work as a space of study and activism for this new millennium. Themes we hope to explore include, but are not limited to, the following:
(1) Global Models and Cross-Cultural Comparison: Global models from Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Sweden, and the US are examples of places where an array of policies have been implemented to various degrees of success. But success for whom? We encourage papers that offer a critical engagement and cross-cultural comparison to tease out the intricate meanings of policy from macro-level politics to micro-level personal experiences. Furthermore, while decriminalization has been the primary call to action in terms of social justice for sex workers, it has been under direct attack because the rhetoric and realities of global human trafficking remains the most prominent point of discussion in contemporary public discourse. How can we balance our investment in decriminalization with an understanding of popular public discourse on trafficking? How might we continue to renegotiate (and defend) the fundamental call for decriminalization as a basic human right in such a hostile political environment? This theme seeks to illuminate the relationship between policy, practice, and publics.
(2) The Interrelations Between Violence Against Sex Workers and Legal Policy: Violence against sex workers, and those identified as sex workers by law enforcement authorities, continues to be an area that is under-examined and under-theorized. How do we re-think notions of violence over time, space, and identities as sex workers increasingly articulate experiences with violence from private military contractors, police, military personnel, and other government officials? How do we conceptualize the complex of engagements and negotiations that materialize where legal policy and violence against sex workers meet? How do we develop and disseminate research that effectively addresses such serious concerns? This theme aims to interrogate the interrelationship between violence against sex workers and legal policy.
(3) Health Education and Outreach: Contemporary sex work research has championed sex workers as active partners rather than static subjects in health education and outreach projects. However, we continue to struggle to make sense of complex relationships between identity and power. For example, involving sex workers as active partners may often be met with resistance from colleagues. Funding agencies may be reluctant to fund projects that involve sex workers when laws criminalize sex work. How can sex work researchers challenge these obstacles and continue to further develop and deploy research methods and applications that take seriously sex-worker-as-partner paradigms? This theme seeks to explore historic, contemporary, and envisioned projects that holistically address health education and outreach across diverse sex work populations.
We encourage submissions from all areas, genders, backgrounds and ethnicities.
A Proposal should include:
Title for your presentation
Affiliation with an organization or university you'd like to have listed (not required)
A short paragraph with your background and experience, or interest, in sex work, the adult entertainment industry, or the sex workers rights' movement
A bio which will appear in the program and on the website (approx. 200 words)
A detailed abstract (the description that will appear in the program and on the website- 500 words or fewer)
Technical support needs (e.g., projector, AV, Mac/PC, etc.)
Deadline:
Proposals must be submitted by March 1st, 2010 to be considered, and all submissions will be notified of acceptance by March 30th, 2010. Please let us know in advance if you need extra time or if you need to be notified of acceptance earlier. In some cases, panels will be suggested if more than one outstanding proposal on a specific topic is accepted.
Contact:
Please submit your proposal to Elizabeth Nanas at enanas[at]wayne[dot]edu and copy Desiree2010[at]desireealliance[dot]org, with the subject line, "Academic Proposal". Please also feel welcome to contact her through Skype at enanas72, or by phone at 313-915-4933. You may also contact the Desiree Alliance toll-free at 866-525-7967 or through email at Desiree2010[at]desireealliance[dot]org.