As an interdisciplinary field, Women's Studies has long been in critical conversation with a variety of disciplines, such that its languages of analysis, methodological priorities, and histories of research and writing are often recognizably situated in relation to the disciplinary identities of its practitioners. In recent years however, with the international growth of PhD programs, there has been much discussion and speculation about the extent to which Women's Studies has (or should have) its own post-disciplinary or transdisciplinary mode of inquiry. Posed as a question, the field asks itself: does Women's Studies have a distinctive tradition of inquiry of its own? The answer of course is nothing if not debatable, but the chief candidate for affirmation is the seemingly amorphormous entity, feminist theory. It is typically the name of the one course that students in every undergraduate and graduate curriculum are required to take, and it serves as an acknowledged critical domain for debates that cross both disciplinary and national lines.

We call our planned event for March 2010 a workshop to foreground our interest in feminist theory as a scholarly domain of inquiry. Therefore, in keeping with the interdisciplinary impulse central to Women's Studies as a field, we will resist consolidating feminist theory into a canon of great works or privileged authors, or prioritizing it as a specific kind of methodological project. The Workshop will be organized pedagogically to promote intense study, featuring both keynote lectures by internationally known scholars and small working seminars for participants.

The workshop organizers this year will pick a significant article by each keynote speaker, and participants will be expected to read the articles prior to the workshop.  The readings will be available on the Workshop website (http://web.duke.edu/womstud/theory2010.html).  The seminars will include discussion of the keynote talks as well as the articles circulated.

We are trying something different for the seminars this year.  We are holding one long seminar after all the talks, and each seminar will be led by two people.  We ask conference participants to sign up for a seminar so we can distribute numbers evenly and we will assign leaders to each.  As always, we will be having an interesting mix of Duke faculty and visitors.  All seminar leaders will have made a significant contribution to the development and sustaining of feminist theory over the years, and most will have participated in the workshops at Duke previously.