An essay using a critical feminist and/or postcolonial frame to discuss a timely development issue/theme and make the case for 1) historicizing our contemporary development practice, as many (feminist postcolonial scholars do) and 2) to pay attention to the ways multiple forms of power shape international development practice (as postcolonial feminists and critical feminist scholars do). These papers will build upon the insights and research conducted through the “why it matters” essay (book discussion). The guidelines for the papers are the following:
Research papers must link past and present. This means historicizing a contemporary development issue. This is one of the contributions of postcolonial and postcolonial feminist scholarship, linking past and present. Historical sources can include newspaper articles (colonial and early 19th, 20th and 21st centuries); visual materials such as ads, public announcements, signage, travel narratives/novels and historiographies); (1-2 examples only)
Papers may also examine past development related laws, policies, programming in International Development or Nation-Building and place in conversation with current policies on a variety of topics (not limited to these): women’s land rights, poverty, reproductive rights, water access, gender and health, Indigenous women and livelihoods, gender and conflict, natural disasters, biodiversity conservation, migrants and refugees, Afro-descendants and Development, Human Rights, food security, sanitation, micro-finance, universal basic income and cash transfers etc…
The largest components of the paper will be drawn from secondary research: this includes multiple disciplines and a transdisciplinary array of scholarship including women and gender studies, critical development studies, feminist geography, Indigenous feminisms, feminist political ecology, Black feminism, Political Science, and History.
Each research paper should have the following sections: Abstract, Introduction, literature review/conceptual framework, three body/evidence sections (within each an analytical discussion or separate discussion section right before conclusion) and conclusion, references (Chicago style).