"Feminists Face the Future: New Feminist Perspectives on Biotechnology and Bioethics" is the title of the thirteenth annual Berkeley Boundaries in Question conference, Thursday, March 11 through Sunday, March 13, 2004 at the University of California at Berkeley. It will address issues raised by biotechnology from a feminist perspective. The conference will bring together a diverse assortment of disciplines to talk about the intersection of feminist thought and new developments in biotech. The agenda for the conference is still shaping up, and the deadline for submissions is Monday, January 12, 2004. Contact information for potential participants can be found on the conference website.

Possible themes include:

How might the politics of Choice be changing in response to newly emerging reproductive technologies, and might a pro-choice sensibility inform our understanding of morphological freedoms promised by genetic, prosthetic, and cognitive modification?

Does the copyrighting of genetic information, the selling of gametes over the Internet, the multiplication of surrogate mothering services, and the existence of markets for human organs alter or expand the feminist critique of the traffic in women?

How is technological development differently articulated across nations, regions, races, sexes, cultures, generations?

Is the body of biotechnology more a promise of empowerment, a site of struggle, a recipe for market exchange and exploitation, a text for experts to read, or a poem we recite against the grain?

Should ecofeminism find in biotechnology more a threat to nature, an expression of nature, or, possibly, nature's proliferation?

Do we see in queer politics an anticipation of post-biological affiliation, or an intensification of medical subjection?

How does feminism shape perspectives on cloning, genetically-modified crops, genetic medicine?

How are and how should these developments be shaping feminist strategies, and feminism's sense of itself?

The organizer of the event, Dale Carrico, is one of the contributors to one of my favorite group blogs, CyborgDemocracy (where I found the link to this event).