Although I usually schedule my trips to conferences pretty tight with going to panels, meetings, etc, for my trip to Ecuador I wanted to spend time in the city. I was especially motivated to schedule time to explore the area because Margaret joined me! It was our first international trip and although we had to come home to take care of a sick kitty before we could go on our Colombia portion of the trip, we managed to have a fantastic time all the same.
As far as the July 2018 ISA-FLACSO conference goes, I was a participant on the "Queer International Relations: Cynthia Weber's Work in Global South/Transnational Context” roundtable. I was invited to participate by Amy Lind, and it was a fantastic opportunity to talk about a book that really influenced my understanding of international relations and how it can engage with queer theory. Here I am pictured with the rest of the roundtable participants including (in order to my right) Amy Lind, Maria Amelia Viteri Burbano and Pascha Bueno Hansen.
I had a chance to check out a couple other panels at the conference, including one with Jane Parpart and Laura Sjoberg, "The Gender Factor: analyzing peace, conflict & representaion". It was really wonderful to be able to spend time with so many feminist scholars while traveling in Ecuador! I love how traveling to new places always means meeting up with old friends when you're traveling to academic conferences.
After the day of the conference many of us queer and feminist scholars met for an elaborate meal at the restaurant Quitu. The meal must've been about 15 courses! Margaret, me and Jesse Crane-Seeber hung out at one end of the massive table learning about all sorts of new foods, some of which I posted pictures of on my No Freakin' Whey Tumblr here.
