http://www.peacejusticestudies.org/ 

http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/index.php 

Call for Papers
Signs Special Issue
War and Terror: Raced-Gendered Logics and Effects 

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society invites submissions for a special issue titled ?War and Terror: Raced-Gendered Logics and Effects,? slated for publication in Summer 2007.

        ?In war time, only men matter,? claimed Mary Sargent Florence and C.K. Ogden, two British antiwar suffragists during World War I 1. Writing in Jus Suffragii, the newsletter of the International Woman Suffrage Association, they noted that hostility to feminism was a deliberate, sustained, and central project of nations involved in war-making. More recent studies of women and war, as well as feminist studies of war suggest the intensification of deep-seated cultural, racial, and gender stereotypes during war time. Peace is commonly associated with ?feminine virtues? and war with regimes of masculinity. Rape in war seems to reinscibe violent subjection as a ?normal? facet of racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender relations. The logic of ?feminization? appears to structure practices of terror deployed to induce helplessness, dependence, fear, and compliance. As ?the enemy? is feminized, the ?warrior-hero? mythos reestablishes linkages between citizenship and military service!
 , as well as leadership and presumed male superiority in managing national security, remasculinizing the domestic politics of warring nations.
        Although proponents of democratization optimistically predict the elimination of war, the specter of war continues to haunt the global community. Depending on the definition of war, there are between sixty-five and two thousand sustained armed conflicts on-going in the twenty-first century. The once inviolable boundaries of the nationstate have become permeable to terrorism, transnational policing, and international peacekeeping forces, as state and anti-state terror refigure space, hierarchies, and freedoms. Taking on the mantle of the national security state, some liberal democracies have joined their authoritarian counterparts in violating the rule of law. 
        How do contemporary armed conflicts and terrorist engagements challenge received views about the dynamics of race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and sexuality in violent conflicts? Are feminism and feminist scholarship becoming casualties of growing militarism? Do feminist analyses of war and terror offer unique insights into these phenomena?
        For this special issue, we invite submissions that address the complex dynamics of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in war, war-making, and in the uses of terror against and by states in the prosecution of civil wars, ethnic conflicts, nationalist and imperialist military interventions. We welcome innovative analyses of women?s involvement in war and terror (as combatants, military and political decision-makers, interrogators of military captives, providers of logistical support, medical personnel, sex workers, hostages, political prisoners, UN peacekeepers and peacebuilders, human rights workers, NGO activists, and activists in resistance to occupying forces); the impact of war on women (as direct casualties, as mothers, as war refugees, as victims of sexual violence by militants, combatants, and domestic partners, women?s experiences of loss in relation to families, communities, nations); factors that contribute to women?s support for and resistance against s!
 pecific wars and terrorist campaigns; particular racial and gendered processes and effects associated with specific kinds of war (civil, ethnic, nationalist, imperialist); the gendered and racialized logics and rhetorics of war; the production and reproduction of gender, race, and sexuality in and through war and terror; unintended racial and gendered consequences of war and of terrorism; cultural representations and cultural productions of and about race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in war and in terror, historical approaches to these complex questions. Analyses that encompass transnational and comparative perspectives are particularly welcome.

Please send submissions to Signs between March 1 and July 1, 2006. Guidelines for submission are available at http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/Signs/instruct.html.

Coexistence Initiative
Search for Common Ground
Institute for Multitrack diplomacy
World University Services
European Peace University
Institute for Conflict Analysis
Bradford University
Alliance for Conflict Transformation
Women Waging Peace
Inernational Alert

"Postcolonialism and International Relations:
Race, Gender and Class" by Geeta Chowdhry and Sheila Nair

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0607-03.htm

http://www.sit.edu/studyabroad/advisors/index.html

I Have Arrived: I Am Home By Cindy Sheehan 

Monday 10 October 2005
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101005B.shtml

I was honored and humbled to be in the presence of
holy man, Thich Nhat Hahn, today at MacArthur Park
in a very Hispanic neighborhood in Los Angeles.

Thay (teacher), as he is known, is a Buddhist monk
who was active during the Vietnam War years,
bringing peace and reconciliation to the countries
of North and South Vietnam. He was nominated for
the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King Jr. He
walks with an aura of peace and acceptance
radiating from him.

Every day we do things, we are things that have to
do with peace. If we are aware of our life, our way
of looking at things, we will know how to make
peace right in the moment we are alive. - Thich
Nhat Hahn.

In a speech I delivered at the Riverside Church in
NYC on the one year anniversary of Casey's death,
which was also the 37th anniversary of MLK Jr's
death, I said: we must all do one thing for peace
each day. I now know that is not enough. We must
live peace and embody peace if we want peace on
earth. Our entire lives must be for peace. Not just
one activity a day.

Every step is peace.

That was the theme for today's walk in MacArthur
Park. Thay reminded us to be in the "present" and
take every step in peace and know that we are
walking on the earth in peace. He lovingly
admonished the hundreds of people who came to hear
his witness to do everything in peace: eat, walk,
talk, breathe, sleep, work, play, etc. No yelling,
no angry words, no harsh statements. This
admonishment struck me to the bone, because I have
been so "strident" in my criticism of the Bushies
in their quest for power, greed, and destruction.
There must be a better way now if we truly want our
country to live in eternal peace and not eternal
war.

I have arrived. I am home.

This was the first sign we passed as we started on
our walk. Thay told us we should say those phrases
with every other step. I have arrived. Every second
we live is a new arriving in the present. I see so
much conflict and struggle in our world because we
don't live in this second. We are worried about the
next second and mourning the past second. Camp
Casey taught me to live each moment in the arrival
moment. One of the reasons I have been able to
remain so calm in the face of an onslaught of
troubles and evil is because I realized in Camp
Casey that I could not struggle against the current
of my life and change my destiny any more than I
could bring my son back from the land of the dead.
Each second of each day is our precious arrival and
we should honor each moment. Another holy man,
Jesus Christ said: Why worry about tomorrow? Today
has enough worries of its own.

I am home.

I met a new friend today named Jewel whose son was
a medic on the front lines in Iraq and has tried to
commit suicide three times since he returned from
the desert of pain. The distraught mother, who is
beside herself with worry, said if something isn't
done about it and if her boy doesn't get help ...
he is dying. His superiors will not allow him to be
diagnosed for PTSD so he can't get the treatment he
so desperately needs. Jewel is Buddhist and I told
her: "You realize your son died in Iraq." She
replied to me: "We have all died because of this
war." She is right. On April 04, 2004, Cindy
Sheehan died, but Cindy Sheehan was born. The dead
Cindy Sheehan lived for her home and family. She
kept a neat and tidy house, often cooked meals, did
everyone's laundry, entertained friends, laughed
more than she cried, worked at various jobs, and
her family meant the entire world to her. She lived
an insulated life filled with Thanksgivings and
Christmases and Birthdays and other celebrations.
The Cindy who was born on 04/04/04 still adores her
family above all things but now knows that the
human family is worth struggling for too. The
lifelong cause of peace with justice is worth
leaving her home (which is just another shell to
keep your soul's shell warm and dry) and travel
around from home to home and being there and being
home wherever she is. I pray for Jewel and
especially for her son, that he realizes that he
died in Iraq but he can be a much better "he" than
left his loving home and mother. Unfortunately, and
tragically, Jewel and her son's story is not
uncommon.

In order to rally people, governments need enemies.
They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will
rally behind them. And if they do not have a real
enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize
us. - Thich Nhat Hahn

While looking up sayings by my new friend, I came
upon the above. This has been one of my feelings
and themes for months. I know during the terrible
war that Thay fought against the enemy was
"Communism." Now, in this evil war that we are
struggling against, the enemy is "Terrorism." I
just saw a poll that said only 13 percent of
Americans fear a terrorist attack. The war machine
and the people who serve it in our government are
getting a little afraid themselves of not being
able to keep the industrial military complex
rolling in the bloody dough, so George and friends
have come up with a new enemy whose atrocities also
can't be contained to borders and that doesn't wear
a national uniform: The Bird Flu. What kind of
person who doesn't bow before the warmongers and
war profiteers calls the military as his first plan
of action when a health threat is supposedly
brewing? Instead of calling out the National Guard
(who by the way are still fighting, killing, and
dying in Iraq), do you think his first call should
have been to the CDC? Or to his Surgeon General,
and not his military Generals? These people do not
walk on this earth anywhere near reality or peace.
Our new enemy of the state will be Birds who may be
ill and we shall be very afraid every time we
sneeze and pray that our government saves us from
more imaginary threats. While we are praying, the
war profiteers are laughing at us on our knees as
they are counting their stacks of wicked and
immorally-gotten gains.

Last week, George Bush got in front of the nation
and said things were going to be far worse in Iraq
in the next few months. Why do we let him get away
with it? The other night George Bush likened Iraq
with WWII. Why do we let him get away with that?
Why do we allow our "leaders" to sacrifice our
young to the war machine? War will stop when we as
parents, educators, religious leaders, brothers,
sisters, husbands and wives refuse to allow our
loved ones to be taken to a war of choice and
killed. I wish I had refused to allow Casey to go
to Iraq. I wish I had knocked him out and taken him
to Canada ... or anywhere far enough away from the
war monster. It is too late for us, but not for
you.

Some people think it's a miracle to walk on water.
I think it is a miracle to walk on the earth in
peace. - Thich Nhat Hahn.

If we don't learn how to do this, we as a people
are, well, screwed. We have done a good job of
identifying the problem of the criminally insane
war in Iraq. Now how do we as a people who want to
walk on our earth in peace go forward? I am
committing my life and Casey's life to peace. We
don't need an exit strategy from Iraq. We just need
to get out. We need to realize that Iraq is not the
51st state of the Union and let them live in peace.

How do we do that? Let's walk each step away from
the killing, eternal wars and walk each step in
peace towards the answer. Join us in working always
for peace, in peace: be peace.

==

I thought this list might be interested in these resources from the 
Women's Studies List...

MJ Aagerstoun


'Theory and Event' (available online at <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ 
theory_and_event/>) has a special issue (5.4) on terrorism and 9/11. I 
don't think that any of the article deals specifically with the 
experience of and/or impact on women, but there is a lot of great 
material in this issue, especially the article by Judith Butler on 'what 
we can say/hear' about terrorism since 9/11.

Also, Krista Hunt's arcticles “The Strategic Co-optation of Women's 
Rights Discourse in the War on Terrorism”, International Feminist 
Journal of Politics, (Volume 4, Number 1, 2002); and “Challenging and 
Reinforcing Dominant Myths: Transnational Feminists Use the Internet to 
Contest the War on Terrorism” in Beyond Global Arrogance: Charting 
Transnational Democracy, eds. Janie Leatherman and Julie Webber 
(Palgrave MacMillan, 2005).

Philippa Winkler, "(Feminist) Activist Post 11 September: Protesting 
Black Hawk Down" in International Feminist Journal of Politics, Volume 
4, Number 3, December 2002, pp. 415-430.

"The Event of 11 September 2001 and Beyond" in International Feminist 
Journal of Politics, Volume 4, Number 1, April 2002.

Haideh Moghissi. 2003. "September 11 and Middle Eastern Women: Shrinking 
Space for Critical Thinking and Oppositional Politics". Signs: Journal 
of Women in Culture and Society 29: 594 -597. (Available online 
<http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/Signs/>).