Register to attend in person or online via Eventbrite
Talk: Join us for a roundtable focused on the provocative Black Trowel Collective Manifesto in tandem with select readings by Gender Studies specialists, including: Kathleen Lowery's "Gender Identity Ideology Conquers the World: Why Are Anthropologists Cheering?" (2022); Elisa Mandell's A New Analysis of the Gender Attribution of the ‘Great Goddess’ of Teotihuacan (2015); and "Providing a Past for 'Bodies That Matter': Judith Butler's Impact on the Archaeology of Gender" (2001) by Elizabeth Perry and Rosemary Joyce.
Title: MD and Americas Arch Session 1 (also in person in McDonald Seminar room)
Speakers/Talks: MD Team and Audience: 'A Roundtable Dialogue: Entanglements in current end gendered pasts discourse'
Term Series: En(d)gendered Extractions: Confronting the Ends and Means of Gender in the Americas
Description/Themes: Is it time to end the gendering of the past? This series tackles gender in the Social Sciences and Humanities at a critical moment in STEM and SHAPE studies when movements to disrupt and decolonise conceptual frameworks butt against prevailing wisdoms and status quo sentimentalities. Anchored in archaeological questions but pulling in the wider academic discourse, we will ask: how can continued Gender Studies reveal the multicultural past and affect new research outcomes? Organised into four sessions and featuring experts in current-wave Americas research, we will examine the triumphs and foibles of gendered binarity approaches, reductive modelling, social and ethnic inconsistencies, and transformative methodologies that have revealed the dynamic relationships among people, communities and objects. We begin with a round-table discussion in conversation with the provocative Black Trowel community, who are seeking to end misguided interpretations of gendered bodies and rituals. This will be followed by three focused sessions to deepen our comparative framing and lead to interdisciplinary approaches. The larger purpose is to enable and inspire collaboration among our invited specialists and the academic audience, and in so doing increase research network development and engagement. Comparative examples will showcase the topic’s significance and dataset sharing throughout will help foster publication and collaboration, furthering the discussion. As a constructive platform for deconstructing a variety of gender ideologies, diversifying perspectives and identifying meaning, we also hope to welcome dissident voices to check assumptions and the status quo, engendering further decolonial approaches to shape for Americas research.
See our Cambridge Americas Archaeology Group and Multidimensional Dialogues CRASSH sites for more details.
