October 10, 2002

Dear Sexual Worlds, Political Cultures Conference Participants:

Welcome Aboard! A year from now (October 2 – October 5, 2003) we will gather in Washington D.C. to commemorate 20 years of scholarship since the publication of John D’Emilio’s Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities and to enjoy a weekend of focused engagement on the intersections of sexuality and political culture in our own work. The conference will highlight scholarship which examines how sexuality has influenced constructions of citizenship, nation, and the state across time; shaped and been shaped by the distribution of political and economic power; and functioned in the political arena in connection to race, class, and gender.

We will provide you with a complete schedule and other information (by email) as the conference date approaches. In the meantime, some preliminary logistics: The conference will begin Thursday night, October 2, and conclude Sunday, October 5, at noon. The conference will be held at the Social Science Research Council’s conference room in Washington D.C., 2040 S Street, NW (a few blocks North of Dupont Circle). The hotel for the conference will be the Jury’s Normandy Inn, at Wyoming and Connecticut, a short walk from the conference. The rate for the room is $110/ night. We have put a number of rooms on hold and you can reserve one by contacting the hotel at 1-800-423-6953. When you make your reservation, please identify yourself as part of the "Sexual Worlds, Political Cultures" conference. You must make your reservation by September 2, 2003. (Don’t worry, we’ll remind you again.) We are including a complete list of conference participants below in case any of you want to make housing or other arrangements with one another.

Those of you who are presenting papers at the conference need to provide us with an abstract by November 1, 2002. The abstract can be very short and informal, but should give us enough of a sense of what you are planning to write that we can assign you to a panel. Please submit your abstract by email to canad002@umn.edu and/or phollowa@mtsu.edu.

Individuals presenting papers at the conference will be asked to submit a paper prior to the conference so that we can circulate the papers among all participants. Thus, all attending the conference will have the opportunity to read the full-length papers ahead of time. At the conference, panelists will give a 10 minute summary of the written paper. Suggested page length for the written papers is 20-35 pages, but we also want you to be able to use this workshop to present work in a format this is useful to you. So if that means you need to submit something that is somewhat shorter or longer than the suggested page length, then that will be acceptable. Papers will be due to conference organizers by August 15, 2003.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with questions, and we will be in touch with more information as the conference date approaches.

A copy of this letter and the attached list of participants is also available on-line at http://www.mtsu.edu/~phollowa/conf.html. We will continue to post conference information on this site.

Best,

Margot Canaday & Pippa Holloway

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