$lutty $luts Who $lut: Sexuality and Promiscuity through the Ages
Call for Papers: Women in German 2020 Conference Session: $lutty $luts Who $lut: Sexuality and Promiscuity through the Ages
Annual Conference of the Coalition of Women in German
The Sewanee Inn, The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee
Conference dates: October 15-18, 2020
Abstract submission deadline: Feb. 15, 2020
Organizers: Amy Lynne Hill (Vanderbilt University) & Faye Stewart (Georgia State University)
“I was like, am I gay? Am I straight? And I realized… I’m just $lutty. Where’s my parade?”
–Margaret Cho, I’m the One That I Want
This panel seeks to interrogate the entwinement of erotic practices, sexual morality, and gendered subjectivity in any century, in any medium, and with subjects of any age. We wish to radically reimagine the category of the “$lut,” what it means to be read as “$lutty,” and which practices are labeled, denigrated, or celebrated as “$lutting.” Through a critical engagement with the term “$lut/ty,” we hope to trouble its past and present, and perhaps even investigate what future paths of resistance or reclaiming could be opened through this confrontation. We invite presentations that explore a range of sexual positionalities and gender embodiments, while complicating classic depictions of purity and/or promiscuity.
There is a wide spectrum of possible topics, including the following:
- from free love to Feuchtgebiete: sexual morality and erotic liberation
- from vagina dentata to Kondom des Grauens: embodying pleasure, pain, and punishment
- from polyamory to plushies: erotic practices across the pleasure spectrum
- from coming of age to aging orgasmically: sexual maturity and silver sexuality
- free love through the ages: liberté amoureuse, bohemian lifestyles, utopian socialism
- $lut shaming and $lut pride: gendered behavior expectations, sexual agency, psychological effects of sexual mores, sexual activism, using sexuality as a weapon
- b*tches and $luts in popular culture: from Maria Braun and Katharina Blum to Lady B*tch Ray and Schwesta Eva
- intersections between sexuality and other categories of analysis, including ability, race, class, religion, gender, age, and ethnicity
- sexuality and spirituality: mysticism, metaphysics, and sacred eroticism
- lyrical eroticism: Minnesang, Mädchenlieder, pornographic prose and poetry
- the pathologization of sexuality: nymphomania, masochism, sadism, exhibitionism, voyeurism; ideas about “perversion” and “deviance”
- the criminalization of sexuality: prostitution, menstrual rage, lust murders and other crimes of passion
- erotic gratification, fluids, and notions of “excess”: masturbation, multiple orgasms, gender and ejaculation
- sexual citizenship: heteronormativity, homonationalism, queer and trans belonging
- from prostitution to sex work: neoliberalism, capitalism, and the sex industry
Please send a 250-word abstract and 100-word bio to both organizers, Amy Lynne Hill (amy.l.hill@vanderbilt.edu) & Faye Stewart (fayestewart@gsu.edu), by Feb. 15, 2020. Panelists will be notified by March 1, 2020. In order to participate in the conference, all panelists must be members of the Coalition of Women in German (join WiG here or renew your membership here).