Women Studies: Departmental News and Events
In September, two long-term supporters of Women Studies, Michael Ann Herring and Jim Phelps, fully funded a $25,000.00 new endowment to support our students. Their initial plan was to pay this off over five years but decided the need was too important to delay.
The purpose of this endowment is to provide support for Women Studies’ undergraduate students. It is the donors’ intent that distributions from the endowment will be used at the discretion of the Chair of Women Studies to provide support for student participation in programs and initiatives designed to empower young women, especially those programs and initiatives targeted toward under-represented groups –such as ‘Rural Girls in Science’ and ‘student partnerships with organizations serving women of color’.
This is an amazing act of generosity and political commitment that Mikey and Jim have said they will continue to build over the years.
The Brown Bag Event for Winter quarter is: Indigenous Feminisms, featuring Rachel Chapman and Deana Dartt-Newton. We'll be in EEB 403 at noon on December 4th.
For more information please contact Elaine Haig-Widner at elaineh@u.washington.edu
Women Studies Spring quarter Brown Bag Event will be held on May 13, in the Electrical Engineering Building room 303, from noon - 1:00. The topic will be Feminist Methodologies and the panelists are:
Kavita Philip
Women's Studies, UC-Irvine
Kavita Philip is author of Civilizing Natures (2003 and 2004), and co-editor of the volumes Constructing Human Rights in the Age of Globalization (with Monshipouri, Englehart, and Nathan, 2003), Multiple Contentions (with Skotnes, 2003), Homeland Securities (with Reilly and Serlin, 2005), and Tactical Biopolitics (with da Costa, 2008). Her research interests are in transnational histories of science and technology; feminist technocultures; gender, race, globalization and postcolonialism; environmental history; and new media theory. Her work in progress includes a monograph entitled Proper Knowledge, and a co-authored book with Terry Harpold entitled Going Native: Cyberculture and Postcolonialism.
Naomi Murakawa
Political Science, UW
Naomi Murakawa specializes in American politics with an emphasis on racial and gender politics, public policy, and American political development. She is currently completing a manuscript entitled Electing to Punish: Congress, Race, and the American Criminal Justice State, which investigates the development of America's racially distinctive punishment expansion. Her teaching interests include American racial formation, feminist politics, and the politics of crime and punishment.
Alison Wylie
Philosophy & Anthropology, UW
Alison Wylie is a philosopher of science who works on philosophical issues raised by archaeological practice and by feminist research in the social sciences: ideals of objectivity, the role of contextual values in research practice, and models of evidential reasoning. Her publications include Thinking from Things: Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology (2002); edited collections and special issues on Value-free Science? (2007, with Kincaid and Dupré), Doing Archaeology as a Feminist (Archaeological Method and Theory 2007, with Conkey), Epistemic Diversity and Dissent (Episteme 2006), and Feminist Science Studies (Hypatia, 2004); as well as essays that appear in Agnatology (2008), Evaluating Multiple Narratives (Springer 2007), the Sage Handbook of Feminist Research (2007), Theoretical Empiricism (2006), Embedding Ethics (Berg, 2005), and Science and other Cultures (2003). She is currently working on a monograph, Standpoint Matters, in Feminist Philosophy of Science.
The Women Studies Department is proud to co-sponsor a Movie Screening and Panel Discussion of the film: Nina Quebrada on Thursday March 12, 2009 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. in the HUB Auditorium. The movie, Niña Quebrada, is the story of Lucena, a teenage girl who runs away from her family in Mexico for the love of a boyfriend who promises her a better life in Los Angeles. The reality, unbeknownst to her, is that she has been sold into sex slavery. Against the backdrop of an illegal cockfighting ring, Lucena must fight for her life to escape the horrors of this nightmarish world of child prostitution and human trafficking.
The producer/writer and a panel of expert guests are available for Q&A after the screening.
Please see the attached event flyer for more information.
There are two Brown Bag topics this quarter. On February 6th Rebecca Aanerud will moderate a Round Table discussion on the topic of Feminist Theory. Featured participants are Carolyn Allen, Ph.D.; Christine Di Stefano, Ph.D.; Eva Cherniavsky, Ph.D.; and Jennifer Bean, Ph.D. Please join us at noon on 2/6 in the Women Studies Conference Room in Padelford Hall (B110-G).
On February 25th our second Brown Bag event will focus on Feminist Academic Administration. Women Studies Chair, David Allen, will moderate the discussion. Featured participants are Ana-Mari Cauce, Ph.D.; Judith Howard, Ph.D.; and Susan Jeffords, Ph.D. Please join us at 3:30 on 2/25 in room 303 of the Electrical Engineering Building.
Click either picture for a full size PDF of the flyer.
January brings the publication of a new work: The Modern Girl around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization". This amazing, interdisciplinary project exemplifies the significance of transnational feminist scholarship. This project's home base is UW Women Studies thanks to Priti Ramamurthy and Tani Barlow and Women Studies adjunct faculty Alys Weinbaum, Lynn Thomas, Madeleine Dong and Uta Poiger. An article about the project can be found at the Harvard University Gazette website: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/03.22/14-girl.html
The Women Studies Department is proud to host Afsaneh Najmabadi for the 2009 Stice Memorial Lecture. Dr. Najmbadi is the Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. Her lecture "Sex in Change: Configurations of Sexuality and Gender in Contemporary Iran" will be held in Johnson 102 at 7:00 P.M. on January 21st. A dessert reception follows the talk.
This talk focuses on current contours of transexuality in Iran and considers the particular mapping of trans-identities and lives. How do legality of transexuality and condemnation of same-sex desires and practices shape sexual subjectivities in Iran? How do state-codified notions of proper public manhood and womanhood affect sexualities? The talk will look at how the confluence of classical Islamic discourse on the "true sex" of every human body with the psycho-medicalized notion of "truth of sex" -- that a natural biological sex determines one's gender behavior and sexual desire — has given a powerful impetus to acceptability of "curing" transexuality through sex-change medical interventions.
Click the image above for a PDF of the event flyer.
The Winter Quarter Brown Bag topic is "Feminism and History". There will be a moderated discussion and Q&A session. Panelists are Susan Glenn (History) and Nancy Beadie (College of Education), and the moderator is Shirley Yee from Women Studies. The Brown Bag Event will be held on Thursday November 13th, from 12:30 - 2:00 p.m. in the Electrical Engineering Building, Room 403. Click on the image for a PDF of the flyer.
3/08 Study Abroad with Women Studies:
Come join the UW Women Studies Department for its first ever study abroad program this fall in Denmark! More information can be found on our courses page and at: http://depts.washington.edu/chid/showprogram.php?id=63
1/08 Simpson Center Awards:
The Women Studies Department was extraordinarily well represented in this last round of Simpson Center awards. Assistant Professor Sasha Su-Ling Welland received a research fellowship with a two-course release for her project entitled Experimental Beijing: Contemporary Art Worlds in China's Capital.
Graduate student Dipika Nath received a summer dissertation fellowship for her dissertation on Feral Disorders and Colonial Exclusions.
A group of graduate students, Women Studies faculty at SPU and SU and Chair David Allen received a small award to support a spring conference on religions and feminisms.
Congratulations all!
8/07 Crimmigration: People, Security and Resistance
Over 70 people attended the panel discussion on the criminalization of immigrants on July 18th, making this one of the most well-attended Women Studies events ever! Discussants included Shankar Narayan, Policy Director at Hate Free Zone; Maria Rivera, a local immigrant activist; Many Uch, an immigrant featured in the documentary "Sentenced Home"; and Maru Villalpando, a community organizer with Washington Community Action Network. Last year's Ph.D. graduate and current instructor Serena Maurer organized the panel and served as moderater.
Emeritus faculty Sue-Ellen Jacobs will receive the first ever UW Mellon fellowship for retired faculty. The support she received was for "Finishing the Ohkay Owingeh Multimedia Dictionary and Cultural Research Project."
Dr. Jacobs is currently the Co-Director of the Northern Pueblos Institute in the American Indian Center at Northern New Mexico College.
The event was the second in a series of community outreach events hosted by the Women Studies Department. The next, schedule for fall, will be an event centered around the work of new faculty member Michelle Habell-Pallan.
Practice of Autonomy in the Age of Neoliberalism: Strategies from the Indigenous Women's Movement in Mexico
Thurs. Jan. 29, 5:30pm, Thomson 101
Maylei Blackwell critically reflects on the ways indigenous women activists in Mexico create a practice of autonomy as a vital strategy that moves beyond rights discourse and challenges how neoliberal states have selectively co-opted social movement demands. Indigenous women activists shift the concept of autonomy as a right granted by the state to a practice of decolonization. Bridging the ways scholars have looked at both the co-option of gender and cultural rights through neo-liberal governance in Latin America, Blackwell examines how gender has been utilized by the state as a discourse of governmentality to regulate indigenous subjects and how organized indigenous women respond. Maylei Blackwell is Assistant Professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies and affiliated faculty in the Women's Studies Program at UCLA. An activist scholar, Blackwell's research examines how racial and sexual differences shape the challenges and possibilities of organizing by transnational women in the Americas. She has published numerous scholarly articles on transnational and indigenous women's social movements and is completing a book on the contested history of early Chicana feminism. She serves as a board member of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Sponsored by Women Studies, Latin American Studies, Comparative History of Ideas, American Indian Studies, and DVRI.(Insert section information here.)
Last modified: 11/25/2009 10:11 AM