2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

This lightning session features “difficult conversations” that explore, expand, and critique the field of transnational feminist history.   It will explore the significance of empire, indigeneity, migration, and globalization in mobilizing feminist political projects that cross national borders.  Presenters will foreground feminist thinkers that center sovereignty as well as economic and racial justice as part of their gender praxis.

Laura Briggs will discuss how transnational history, particularly in the context of U.S.-Latin American relations and reproductive politics, constitute an intellectual space for rigorous analysis regarding empire.  Maylei Blackwell theorizes a critical Latinx Indigeneities framework that addresses the building of settler colonial structures on prior Spanish/Mexican colonial power and the roles of indigenous migrants in relation to multiple colonialities.  Robyn Spencer analyzes the feminist political and theoretical interventions of Angela Davis, particularly her internationalist and anti-imperialist politics regarding Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa.  Judy Wu discusses the transnational nature of Asian American feminism through the political career of Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first U.S. woman of color legislator.  And Karen Leong problematizes transnational framings of Asian American and U.S. women’s history that rely on a settler colonial definition of the transnational.

These comments emphasize difficult dialogues that emerge from transnational feminist analyses that acknowledge settler colonial structures that continue to haunt potential transnational feminist alliances.  This session will address the limitations, tensions, and possibilities of transnational feminist projects and histories to respond to imperialism, militarism, and globalization.