Center for Women’s & Gender Studies

Registration for (Dis)locating Justice, the 2012 CWGS Graduate Student Conference is now open! This year’s conference will be held on March 29-30, 2012 at the Student Activity Center. The conference is free and open to the public but seating is limited. Lunch will be provided for those attendees who RSVP by Monday, March 26, 2012.

We have a dynamic program of events designed to energize and inspire the UT community with new knowledge and productive tools to augment their current and future projects. The CWGS student-run conference provides graduate students and select undergraduates at the University of Texas at Austin and other universities the opportunity to share their research highlighting issues in women’s, gender, and/or sexuality studies with the UT-Austin community at large and CWGS community partners. This year’s theme is “Gender and Justice.” Given the multiple meanings of justice, we have especially designed this year’s conference to engage in dialogs across disciplines and colleges.

We have invited Dr. Radhika Balakrishnan, current Executive Director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, to deliver our keynote address on Friday evening.  She will share anecdotes of her research and advocacy experiences on examining economic, social and women’s human rights. She will also share how this experience has been productive in generating collaborative research between disciplines, the academy, and the community. If you would like to only attend the keynote and closing reception, please select the ticket designated “Balakrishnan Keynote & Reception.”

The planning committee has worked hard to create a dynamic event for the entire UT community and we hope to see you there.

Register online today at http://utwgsconference.eventbrite.com.

CWGS Embrey Women’s Human Rights Initiative invites you to learn about a new tutorial for faculty to support students in archival research on women’s human rights.

View a New Teaching Tool for Archival Research on Women’s Human Rights
Tuesday, April 26, 11:30am – 12:30pm, Gebauer 4th Floor Conference Room (GEB 4.200, left off of the elevators)

Finding aids, folders, reading rooms, and card catalogs – archival research can be confusing for students and difficult to teach effectively. Amelia Koford, a master’s student in the School of Information and the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, has created an online tutorial about conducting archival research on women’s human rights at UT-Austin. The tutorial guides students through five steps: finding an archival collection, preparing for research, viewing the collection, conducting research, and considering emotions and ethics. It focuses on archives on the UT campus, including the Benson Latin American Collection, Briscoe Center for American History, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, and Human Rights Documentation Initiative. The tutorial supports the Embrey Women’s Human Rights Initiative: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/cwgs/womens-rights/Womens-Rights-Initiative.php

Please join us to learn how you might incorporate this tool for primary source research into your teaching. Bring a brown bag lunch and join our conversation. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Amelia Koford at akoford@ischool.utexas.edu. Hope to see you there!

Join us for the 18th Annual CWGS Emerging Scholarship Conference next Friday, April 8th at the Texas Union!

- Registration begins at 8 am in the Santa Rita Suite – breakfast will be served.
- Admission is FREE and non-UT attendees are welcome.

**Our keynote speaker will be Professor Sherri Greenberg, Interim Director of the Center for Politics and Governance at the LBJ School. The keynote will begin at 12:30 pm in the Santa Rita Suite and lunch will be served. **

Panel topics include:
• Feminism across Cultures: Immigration, Neoliberalism, and “Western Eyes”
• Higher Education and Women’s Human Rights Discourse
• Feminism and Popular Cultural Forms
• The Students Speak: Responses to Liberal Arts Centers Budget Cuts and Reflections on Feminist Organizing
• Queer Theory and Feminism
• Scholarly Inquiries by Inspire: Empowering Texas Women Leaders Program
• Women, Children, and the United States Affordable Care Act (2010)
• Feminism and Body Politics: Cultural Embodiments and Sites of Resistance

For more information, feel free to contact me.
Virginia Hernandez
virginiarh22@gmail.com

Dear CWGS MA & Portfolio Students,

We invite you to participate in a planning discussion for the October 2012 International Conference on Women’s Human Rights with a focus on women’s human rights organizing in the Americas. This conference is part of the Embrey Women’s Human Rights Initiative, the Center for Women’s & Gender Studies grant-funded project to develop education for women, gender, and human rights. The upcoming meeting builds on an initial pre-planning discussion held in February, and we encourage new faculty, students, and organizers to join the conversation; please see below for details on the initial discussion.

This conference should support the work of faculty, students, and community organizers in Austin, and we need your participation to ensure that the conference will speak to you!

Please join us for a discussion
Monday, April 4, 11:00-12:30
Gebauer (GEB) 4th Floor Conference Room (to the left off of the elevators): http://www.utexas.edu/maps/main/buildings/geb.html
Bring your lunch, and we will provide cookies and coffee.

At this meeting, we will develop:
1. Conference topic and title
2. Conference concept (what it will look like)
3. Plans for community/university and cross-university partnerships for which we may partner with other centers and institutes to provide new project seed money

We also hope to have time to discuss:
4. Goals for the conference
5. Possible keynote or plenary speakers
6. Possible performers or films for the evening event
7. Strategies for circulating the conference announcement and call for proposals.

Please share this announcement with faculty, students, and organizers who may be interested. If you would like more information, please contact Kristen Hogan at hogank@mail.utexas.edu

This meeting will build on an initial shape developed by faculty and staff at a pre-planning meeting in February. Here’s some of what that group contributed:

Conference Goals:
The assembled group described their hopes that such a conference would:
1. Unsettle thinking about gender & human rights,
2. Contribute to ongoing flows of research & conversations,
3. Connect UT faculty with visiting presenters (don’t overlook the work our faculty are doing),
4. Feed back into the EWHRI by supporting new courses or course content, and
5. Involve faculty, community organizers, and students in planning stages and conference.

What will the presentations at the conference look like?
1. Conference organizers will create a call now for partnerships of university and community organizers to collaborate on a project; Centers/Institutes will collaborate to provide seed money to co-researchers in exchange for their report on the work at the conference.
2. Organizers may solicit papers in collaboration between faculty at two different institutions.
3. Organizers will create time and space for networking and project building at the conference.
4. Sessions may consist of results presentation or works in progress.

We are pleased to invite faculty to a series of workshops on teaching critical approaches to women’s human rights. We welcome you to attend any or both of the two remaining workshops scheduled for this semester as part of the Embrey Women’s Human Rights Initiative. Each of the workshops will address readings available prior to the workshop; please email Kristen Hogan (hogank@mail.utexas.edu) if you would like to receive the readings in preparation for the workshop. The workshops will take place on: April 6, 4-5:15, Walter Webb Hall 202 • April 21, 4-5:15, Gebauer 3rd Floor Conference Room

The John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies, with support from the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies and the African Diaspora Studies Department present The Diaspora Talk Series: Poetics of Relation-Thinking, Caribbean, Diaspora.

“Pan-Africanism, Feminism and the Black Radical Intellectual Tradition”
Dr. Carole Boyce Davies, Professor of English & Africana Studies
Research Center, Cornell University

Friday, February 25th
3:00 pm
ISESE Gallery/Warfield Center
201 East 21st, Jester Center A232A

Dr. Carole Boyce Davies has held distinguished professorships at a number of institutions, including the Herskovits Professor of African Studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject (Routledge, 1994) and the LEft of Karl Marx. Claudia Jones, Black/Communist/Woman (Duke University Press, 2007). In addition to numerous scholarly articles, Boyce-Davies has also published several critical anthologies.

Dear Faculty:

We are pleased to invite you to a series of workshops on teaching critical approaches to women’s human rights. We welcome you to attend any or all of the three workshops scheduled for this semester as part of the Embrey Women’s Human Rights Initiative.

Each of the workshops will address readings available prior to the workshop; *please email Kristen Hogan (hogank@mail.utexas.edu) if you would like to receive the readings in preparation for the workshop.

We also welcome you to forward this announcement to any interested faculty.
Sincerely,
Kristen Hogan

Teaching Women’s Human Rights
Workshops for Faculty

Workshops for and by faculty on teaching women’s human rights material in the undergraduate classroom. All faculty welcome. For each workshop we invite attendees to read selected material in advance. To receive the readings, or for more information, email Kristen Hogan at hogank@mail.utexas.edu.

I. Using Service-Learning and Archival Materials in Support of Women’s Human Rights Course Objectives
Wednesday, February 23, 4-5:15, Gebauer 4th Floor Conference Room
Lisa L. Moore (English/CWGS) &
Kristen Hogan (CWGS)
Help students develop a reflective approach to service learning and archival research that will avoid the pitfalls of volunteerism in the community and appropriation in the archives. Share strategies to prepare students for ethical engagement with community-based service-learning; consider how the responsibility to mutually engage with others extends to understanding archival materials.

II. Teaching a Critical Human Rights Framework for Women’s Human Rights
Wednesday, April 6, 4-5:15, Walter Webb Hall 202
Karen Engle (Law/CWGS/Rapoport Center) &
Neville Hoad (English/CWGS/Rapoport Center)
Embrace your students’ energy for human rights while engaging them in a critical reading of the contexts in which international actors shape human rights discourse. Discuss readings and strategies for replacing a benevolent western human rights world view with a self-aware and mutually engaged practice.

III. Thursday, April 21, 4-5:15, Gebauer 3rd Floor Conference Room
Teaching Women’s Human Rights Material in Support of Course Objectives
Barbara Harlow (English/CWGS/Rapoport Center) &
Sharmila Rudrappa (Sociology/CWGS)
Explore how human rights texts may support courses you’re already teaching. Engage with example pedagogical strategies from the co-facilitators’ classes to understand how discussions about human rights can strengthen students’ critical thinking skills and other course objectives.

Workshops sponsored by the Embrey Women’s Human Rights Initiative at the Center for Women’s & Gender Studies.

Retranslating The Second Sex for the 21st Century: Sex, Gender, and Philosophy

Friday, February 18th
2:00-4:00 pm
Prothro Theatre
Harry Ransom Center

Was Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist classic lost in translation? Has it been rediscovered?

Scholars Sheila Malovany- Chevallier and Constance Borde discuss their new translation of Beauvoir’s influential work.

The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe, 1949) was one of the most important texts of the twentieth century: brilliant, bold (scandalous, to some) complex, and interdisciplinary, ranging across philosophy, literature, history, and anthropology. The first English translation, attempted in the 1950s by a male zoologist from Smith College, edited out whole sections and misrepresented Beauvoir’s philosophical stance. Scholars Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier have just completed a second English translation, this one unabridged. Their work has generated a new wave of discussion about translation and feminism. Borde and Malovany-Chevallier will discuss the unique challenges of Beauvoir’s text, the history of its translation, and their attempt to capture its philosophical complexity.

Sheila Malovany-Chevallier and Constance Borde attended Rutgers University in the 1960s and have been working together ever since. They have lived in France for over 40 years, where they have earned degrees in linguistics (one from Vincennes and one from Nanterre), taught at Sciences Po, and published extensively in a variety of fields. All along, they have been translating work in social science, social theory, feminism, and art from French to English.

The Harry Ransom Center
The Humanities Institute
The Institute for Historical Studies
Department of French and Italian
Center for Women’s and Gender Studies
Center for European Studies
The Symposium on Gender, History, and Sexuality
Department of History

18th Annual Emerging Scholarship in Women’s & Gender Studies Conference, Call for Papers
The 18th Annual Emerging Scholarship in Women’s & Gender Studies Conference
Conference Date: April 8th, 2011

CALL FOR RESPONSES
Submission Deadline: February 11th, 2011

The CWGS graduate student-run conference provides an opportunity for undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty from all departments to engage in round-table panels which address a diverse array of women’s and gender studies topics posed by CWGS faculty affiliates. Graduate students, faculty, and community activists from outside the University are also welcomed to attend. The Center’s annual theme for 2010-2011 is “Gender and Justice” but research on any aspect of gender and/or sexuality is welcome.

Please visit the Conference Website for a listing of panels and submission instructions:

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/cwgs/events/conferences/Student.php

Please join the CWGS/Rapoport Center Research Cluster on Women, Gender, and Human Rights for its first meeting of the Spring semester. We are pleased to welcome Dr. Jennifer Suchland of Ohio State University to begin our semester series. Please share this announcement.

“Sex Trafficking and the Making of a Feminist Category of Analysis”
Dr. Jennifer Suchland, Ohio State University
Tuesday, February 8, 4:30 -6pm, GEB 4th Floor Conference Room

What is at stake in how we define and combat sex trafficking? Since the end of the Cold War, the issue of sex trafficking has been dominated by debates regarding agency and violence against women. My talk will discuss why this is the case looking specifically at how a “violence against women” approach to anti-trafficking can privilege particular understandings of trafficking that obscure the role of the state and transnational flows of capital in sustaining the informal and formal economies that make up sex trafficking. I ask how we can advance a human rights approach to anti-trafficking that links economic and sexual rights.

Dr. Jennifer Suchland is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Ohio State University. Her research is on comparative gender studies and issues of culture, law and political discourse. Her most recent essay, “Is Postsocialism Transnational?”, is forthcoming Summer 2011 in “Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society.” She will be discussing research from her current book project which includes work on the evolution of global anti-sex trafficking discourse and its impact on postsocialist Russia.

For more details on the event, please contact Lydia Crafts Putnam at crafts.lydia@gmail.com.

Was Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist classic lost in translation? Has it been rediscovered? The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe, 1949) was one of the most important texts of the twentieth century: brilliant, bold (scandalous, to some) complex, and interdisciplinary, ranging across philosophy, literature, history, and anthropology. The first English translation, attempted in the 1950s by a male zoologist from Smith College, edited out whole sections and misrepresented Beauvoir’s philosophical stance. (That edition was published by Alfred A. Knopf, and correspondence about it is in the Harry Ransom Center at UT.) Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier have just completed a second English translation, this one unabridged. Their work has generated a new wave of discussion about translation and feminism. Borde and Malovany-Chevallier will discuss the unique challenges of Beauvoir’s text, the history of its translation, and their attempt to capture its philosophical complexity.

Sheila Malovany-Chevallier and Constance Borde attended Rutgers University in the 1960s and have been working together ever since. They have lived in France for over 40 years, where they have earned degrees in linguistics (one from Vincennes and one from Nanterre), taught at Sciences Po, and published extensively in a variety of fields. All along, they have been translating work in social science, social theory, feminism, and art from French to English.

Friday, February 18
2 pm
Protro Theatre, Harry Ransom Center

Sponsored by:
The Harry Ransom Center
The Humanities Institute
The Institute for Historical Studies
Department of French and Italian
Center for Women and Gender Studies
Center for European Studies
The Symposium on Gender, History, and Sexuality, Department of History

Greetings from the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas School of Law.

We are pleased to invite you to register for our seventh annual conference. Entitled “Aftershocks: Legacies of Conflict,” this year’s conference is designed to coincide with performances of The National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch at the University of Texas, an award-winning play written by Scottish playwright Gregory Burke and based on actual interviews with Scottish soldiers from the Black Watch regiment who were deployed to fight in Iraq in 2003. The conference will convene an interdisciplinary group of scholars to explore some of the same intersections of violence, the colonial past, memory, and trauma that Black Watch invokes, as well as the unique role that performance might play in the analysis. It will consider these issues in a variety of geographic spaces and places, with a special emphasis on the legal and political regimes that are meant to preserve memory while also transitioning into post-conflict.
Lawrence Wright, journalist, playwright, and New Yorker Magazine staff writer, will deliver the keynote address on Thursday, February 17, to be followed by a pre-show panel with the playwright and a performance of Black Watch at Bass Concert Hall. The conference proceedings will continue throughout the day on Friday at the UT School of Law. The schedule is pasted at the bottom of this email.

This event is co-sponsored by Texas Performing Arts, the Humanities Institute, the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, UT Libraries, the South Asia Institute, the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, Performance as Public Practice, British Studies, and the Kozmetsky Center of Excellence in Global Finance (at St. Edward’s University).

You can learn more about the participants and register by visiting the conference website. This event is free and open to the public. Because space is limited at parts of the conference, we would appreciate your registration as soon as possible. Early registrants will be eligible for a 15% discount on tickets to Black Watch.

http://www.utexas.edu/law/conferences/aftershocks/index.php

We hope that you will be able to join us for what we are sure will be an exciting and thought-provoking event!

Best wishes,

Karen Engle

Cecil D. Redford Professor in Law & Director
Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice
University of Texas School of Law
727 East Dean Keeton
Austin, Texas 78705

http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/centers/humanrights/

Schedule
Thursday, February 17, 2011 — UT School of Law
4:00 p.m.
Conference Opening: Lawrence Wright, Journalist, Playwright, New Yorker Magazine staff writer
Keynote Lecture sponsored by the UT Humanities Institute
5:15–6:30 p.m.
Pre-Show Panel: “Performance and Human Rights”
Chair: Charlotte Canning, University of Texas at Austin
Gregory Burke, Playwright of Black Watch
Nicholas Cull, University of Southern California
6:45-7:45 p.m.
Reception in Bass Concert Hall
8:00 p.m.
Attend performance of Black Watch by the National Theatre of Scotland at Texas Performing Arts’ Bass Concert Hall.
Friday, February 18, 2011 — UT School of Law
9:00-9:30 a.m.
Continental Breakfast
9:30–11:00 a.m.
“Colonial Legacies”
Panelists:
Chair: Benjamin Brower, University of Texas at Austin
Michael Rothberg, University of Illinois
Priya Satia, Stanford University
Ralph Wilde, University College London, University of London
11:00–11:15 a.m.
Break
11:15 a.m. –12:45 p.m.
“Traumatic Legacies”
Panelists:
Chair: Barbara Harlow
Neloufer de Mel, Colombo University, Sri Lanka
Laura Edmondson, Dartmouth University
Jeffrey Helsing, United States Institute of Peace
1:00–2:15 p.m.
Lunch
2:15–4:00 p.m.
“Institutional and Legal Legacies ”
Panelists:
Chair: Karen Engle, University of Texas at Austin
Kate Doyle, The National Security Archive
Paul Gready, University of York
Helen Kinsella, University of Wisconsin/Madison
Fionnuala D. Ni Aolain, University of Minnesota, University of Ulster, Belfast
4:00–4:15 p.m.
Break
4:15–5:30 p.m.
Closing Panel
Invited participants from each of the previous panels

The College Women’s Political Caucus (CWPC) is in its earliest stages, so now is your chance to help shape this national organization! CWPC will be a campus affiliate of the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC), which exists to help elect pro-choice women candidates to political office on the city, state, and national level.

The goals and possible projects of CWPC include, but are not limited to:
Volunteering on political campaigns for local women political candidates.
Putting on and participating in trainings on a variety of topics related to political leadership and political campaigns.
Mentoring under-served middle & high school girls to help develop their leadership abilities.
Working to get the ERA ratified.
Networking with women political leaders.
Finally, the president of NWPC also sees the CWPC as THE place to start identifying, and training future political leaders. If you see yourself as a future politician, press secretary, communications director, or campaign manager (or other West Wing character of your choice…), this is the place to start garnering experience, connections, and support!
If you are interested in being an officer in CWPC, please email Harmony Eichsteadt at harmonyeverafter@gmail.com.

With the exciting beginnings of our Women’s Rights Initiative underway, we have added a new, part-time position to support our and your development of women’s human rights curricula in connection with interdisciplinary and community collaborations. This month, Kristen Hogan has joined CWGS as the Project Director for the Women’s Rights Initiative.

Kristen has experience as a literary activist organizing and teaching classes as well as workshops with non-profits, foundations, and academic programs. She has served as co-manager and book buyer at the Toronto Women’s Bookstore, then a board-run nonprofit bookstore with a feminist antiracist vision; she has taught Women’s and Gender Studies and English at LSU Baton Rouge, where she co-founded a community and academy collaboration around queer antiracist performance; on her return to Austin, she taught for CWGS and fostered feminist information systems by collaborating on the development of the Black Queer Studies Collection and creating the CWGS Guide to Research and Teaching for Women’s Human Rights (more on this to follow shortly). She earned her PhD in English with a Graduate Portfolio in Women’s and Gender Studies here at UT Austin in 2006; this month she receives her MS in Information Studies.

Fri, September 17, 2010 • 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM • Utopia Theater, SSW 2.106

Sat, September 18, 2010 • 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM • Utopia Theater, SSW 2.106

A Play by Azure Osborne-Lee
CROOKED PARTS is the coming of age story of a 12 year old girl named Winifred. As wildly imaginative Winifred starts the school year off at a brand new school, she begins to explore how her hair affects the way that her peers see her and she sees herself. In the process Winifred must decide what she’s willing to give up in order to fit in.
Sponsored by: Co-sponsored by the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, Gender and Sexuality Center, and the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies