The Women and Gender Studies Program is pleased to announce that the annual Seton Hall University Conference on Women and Gender will be held on our South Orange, NJ, campus on Friday, April 10, 2026.
This conference will offer a collection of exciting, in-person sessions that reflect the dynamic, productive diversity of perspectives and approaches characterizing current discussions about women and gender. We invite presenters exploring any topic related to women and gender from all fields—including the humanities, diplomacy, social sciences, mathematics, and experimental sciences—and all professions, including but not limited to business, law, health care, education, and non-profit administration.
Consistent with the principles and methodology of Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, and related fields, papers should be academic in nature, based on foundational concepts including the constructedness of gender, and joining critically in conversation with reliable, scholarly or edited sources. Papers should also be accessible to a general audience of undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, staff, and members of the community. We strongly welcome the participation of students, faculty, and staff. We will accept both panels and individual paper presentations, with the proviso that graduate and undergraduate panels must have a faculty discussant and individual undergraduate papers must note a faculty sponsor who is cc’d on the submission email. Selected presenters will have about 15 minutes for individual paper presentations.
The deadline for abstracts is February 6, 2026. Please email single paper or panel abstracts of up to 300 words to Dr. Denise Vigani (denise.vigani@shu.edu). Please be sure to include names and affiliations of each presenter as you’d like them to appear on the program as well as paper and/or panel titles. All accepted conference presentations are expected to be delivered in person. Notification of acceptance will be made by February 20, 2026.
This year we are pleased to welcome Brittney Cooper, Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University, as our keynote speaker. She is the author of The New York Times bestseller, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower, and Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women, which won the 2018 Merle Curti Prize for Best Book in U.S. Intellectual History from the Organization of American Historians. Professor Cooper is also co-author with Susana Morris and Chanel Craft Tanner of Feminist AF: A Guide to Crushing Girlhood, a Kirkus top Young Adult Book of 2021 and nominee for the Garden State Teen Book Award from the New Jersey Library Association.