It’s a little early to be thinking about the coming school year, but the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWAG) is holding a conference September 19^th and 20^th that may be of interest to many of you. Famed writers on sexuality, BDSM and queer issues Pat Califia and Dorothy Allison, among many others, will be speaking at the conference on various issues of feminism.

The conference will explore:

• The changing meanings of feminism, and its goals (intellectual, social and political) in a global context: to examine whether these meanings can any longer be contained within the rubric of common social agendas.
• Emerging social movements within the United States and beyond, including those that foster the collective interests of women across national, class, religious, and racial borders; the common interests of women and men; and those that call for greater individual autonomy.
• Questions about how women within the post-industrial west can effectively relate to, and remain engaged with, issues that arise from diverse locations and affect differently situated women in different ways.

Visit the IRWAG website for more information on the conference itself and how to register.

Conversio Virium is currently looking for submissions of papers, articles, and essays on all topics related to sexuality, including but not limited to BDSM and kink. This will be an academic journal in line with CV’s goals of educating people about different ideas and practices of sexuality as well as providing a space for discussion about these ideas in an academic, peer-reviewed format, and is thus not the place to submit erotica. CV hopes to launch the first edition online sometime in the upcoming Fall semester of 2008.

The deadline for inclusions in this first edition is October 10^th 2008, but papers may be sent at any time. Currently there is no set word or page limit for the submissions. Once the papers are received, they will be reviewed and edited by the current Secretary for CV and Editor of the Journal, Courtney. Submissions for the Journal should be emailed directly to Courtney as plain text within an email or as a file attachment in PDF format.

If you have any questions about the Journal, please direct them to Conversio Virium. We look forward to reading your submissions.

Come join us for a presentation on the art of erotic hypnotism.

Update: We now have some of the Erotic Hypnotism notes available for download in case you missed the meeting!