December 14, 2010
A PDF version of our semi-annual published newsletter is now online:
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/cwgs/_files/pdf/newsletterfall2010.pdf
November 3, 2010
JOIN US FOR THE LAUNCH PARTY OF THE FALL 2010 ISSUE GENDER & HEALTH
Friday, November 5th
1:00- 2:00 pm
Texas Union
Sinclair Suite (3.128)
Refreshments will be provided.
Contributors will give a brief overview of their works.
FREE JOURNAL COPIES WILL BE AVAILABLE.
Intersections: Women’s and Gender Studies in Review across Disciplines, a University of Texas feminist graduate student journal, is hosting a launch party for the newly released 2010 edition. This student run journal and launch party are made possible through the generous donations of the following organizations: The University Co-op, the Gender and Sexuality Center and the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies.
November 3, 2010
Call for Participation!
Emerging Scholarship in Women’s and Gender Studies: The 18th Annual Graduate Student Conference
April 8, 2011
The Texas Union
New!
The CWGS is proud to announce a change in format for the 2011 annual graduate student-run conference. In order to foster communication and conversation about a variety of important gender-based issues, we will structure the panels in the style of round-table discussions. We hope that this new format provides students, faculty affiliates, and community leaders the opportunity to share a diverse range of current research and engage with invested audiences.
Call for responses: NOVEMBER 2010
The conference planning committee is in the process of seeking guiding questions from WGS faculty affiliates for panels which best address current women’s and gender concerns and promote conversation. The Center’s theme for 2010-11 is “Gender and Justice,” but topics on any aspect of women’s studies, gender, or sexuality are welcome.
The final list of guiding questions will be distributed with a Call for Responses in November. Graduate students, faculty, and community activists will be encouraged to participate by responding to a panel topic with a 2 page response paper. Please note that presenting and participating in the student conference is on the of the requirements of the Women’s and Gender Studies Portfolio Program. WGS graduate students are highly encouraged to participate.
We look forward to the potential created by this new conference structure. More information on submitting to present will be included with the Call for Responses in November. We appreciate your interest and participation.
Questions can be directed to Virginia Hernandez at virginiarh22@gmail.com
October 22, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010 • 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM • CPE 2.212
Professor Lucy Atkinson (Advertising)
Consumer choices are increasingly inflected with political and civic concerns. Buying organic coffee and fair trade chocolate introduces prosocial aspects into an otherwise private consumption choice. Past research demonstrates how consumer choices are motivated by love for others, such as children, but very little empirical evidence investigates how consumers are motivated to account for generalized, unknown others, such as workers in foreign countries. Based on depth interviews with ethical consumers, I argue that contemporary consumers are motivated to consider distant, generalized others through attention to their own concerns. By enacting a postmodern variant of the American Adam, contemporary ethical consumers fulfill their private concerns while also safeguarding the well-being of others and in so doing, embody the ideals and values of republican citizenship.
October 22, 2010
Hello All!
We will have our first meeting (finally) next Tuesday, on October 26th at 5:15 in CBA 4.324.This meeting is mandatory, so please be there.
Also a reminder to join the Facebook group (Texas Triota) and to fill out the survey about Triota. Here is the link for that: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NSTKFWH
October 18, 2010
Darcy Kues, Sociology Honors/WGS Senior, Undergraduate Representative (2010-11)
Rebecca Wise, WGS 1st-year cohort, MA Program Representative (2010-11)
Katherine Kapurch, Communication Studies Ph.D. student, Portfolio Representative (2010-11)
October 18, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010 • 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM • CPE 2.212
Professor Paola Bonifazio (French and Italian)
This lecture will focus on the intertwining discourses of work and womanhood in the documentary films that publicized Italy’s modernization in the 1950s. Italian and American governmental agencies, as well as national industries such as Fiat (autos) and Olivetti (typewriters), commissioned film productions that, while showing aesthetic continuities, also propagated the same model of woman, combining traditional values of the Fascist massaia (housewife) with the sexual appeal and modern features (efficiency and economy) of her American counterpart. In these films, women participate in the country’s industrialization by means of their work; however, above all they contribute to the rebirth of the nation as mothers and spouses. This discourse contrasts with the one produced both by commercial cinema, particularly melodramas, and Neorealist films, which exposed the conflicts between traditional social arrangements and a modernizing world, as well as male anxieties towards the increased confidence and demands of women. Relying on the bond between documentary and reality, I argue that the films under study functioned as a tool to control and contain the subversive potential of modernization, by naturalizing women’s subaltern role in society and advertising a sexual division of labor.
October 11, 2010
The Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, in partnership with the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, invites faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and staff—from all disciplines and interdisciplinary units—to participate in a new research cluster: the CWGS/Rapoport Center Research Cluster on Women, Gender, and Human Rights. The new research cluster will create a space to network, to support critical thinking and teaching practices, and to organize events and advocacy projects.
We envision the new research cluster as a vibrant interdisciplinary dialogue connecting arts, performance, design, education, narrative, policy, and other approaches to issues of women, gender, and human rights. Work in every field that supports advocacy for women, gender identity, and gender justice is women, gender, and human rights work. Everyone welcome.
The CWGS/Rapoport Center Research Cluster on Women, Gender, and Human Rights will hold its first meeting on Thursday, October 21. T-Kay Sangwand, the Human Rights Archivist at the Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI), will talk briefly with us about archival materials relating to women, gender, and human rights that faculty members and students may incorporate into their teaching, research, and activism. At the first meeting, we also hope to gain an understanding from participants about how the research cluster might best serve your interests and to begin a conversation about your varied approaches to teaching, researching, or advocating for women, gender, and human rights.
Date: Thursday, October 21, 2010
Time: 4pm to 6pm
Location: Gebauer Hall, 4th Floor Conference Space (left out of the elevators)
Refreshments will be provided
For more information on the CWGS/Rapoport Center Research Cluster on Women, Gender and Human Rights, please contact Lydia Putnam at crafts.lydia@gmail.com.
The Research Cluster evolved from the CWGS Women’s Human Rights Initiative. The Embrey Family Foundation funded CWGS Women’s Human Rights Initiative supports multiple strategies for imagining and creating gender justice by training university and high school students in interdisciplinary human rights practices including arts, design, education, law, narrative, and policy. Through innovative learning spaces including vibrant collaborations with community organizations, the Women’s Human Rights Initiative sustains research, teaching, and activism as human rights strategies in resistance to oppressions along narrative borders of ability, class, ethnicity, indigeneity, and nationality. To learn more about the Women’s Rights Initiative, please visit our website at www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/cwgs/womens-rights/Womens-Rights-Initiative.php. To learn more about the Rapoport Center and its interdisciplinary projects, please visit: http://www.utexas.edu/law/centers/humanrights/ .
October 5, 2010
CALL FOR PAPERS Fall Issue 2011: Gender & Social Justice
Intersections: Women’s and Gender Studies in Review Across Disciplines is an interdisciplinary graduate student publication welcoming work from current graduate students. We are committed to the interdisciplinary research of women’s and gender issues and are affiliated with the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at UT Austin. The journal encourages scholars in every field to contribute book reviews, scholarly essays, creative writing, and artwork relating to this issue’s theme, “Gender & Social Justice.” We expect that this theme will inspire submissions that put gender and sexuality in conversation with interlocking identities of race, economic class, disability, nationality, and indigeneity.
Submissions might address, but are not limited to, the following topics:
• LGBTQ activism in local and transnational contexts
• Colonialism, occupation, displacement, and decolonization
• Processes of and resistance to state violence
• Legislative and policy activism
• Movement, migration and diasporas
• Feminist human rights advocacy
• Border work
• Environmental and ecological activism
• Technology, media, and social justice
Submit a 200 – 300 word abstract to intersections.journal@gmail.com by November 10, 2010. Completed papers and artwork are due by January 15, 2011. All submissions should include the author’s name, institution and department, contact information, title of submission, and word count. Scholarly essays and creative writing should be less than 5000 words. Papers should conform to APA style.
For book reviews, please email intersections.journal@gmail.com for a list of possible titles. Book reviews should be between 750 –1250 words and include publication information about books reviewed.
Artwork will be accepted for the cover and for the inside of the journal. Artwork for the cover should be in color and in .jpg format, 600 dpi. All artwork should be no smaller than 8 ½ x 11.
Questions should be sent to the editors at: intersections.journal@gmail.com. For more information about the journal, visit the website at http://intersectionsjournal.com.
October 1, 2010
You’re invited to:
Monday, October 4, 2010 • 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM • CPE 2.212
CWGS New Faculty Colloquium
The Urban Ecosystem and Affordability: A New Calculus for Planning in Austin
Professor Sarah Dooling (School of Architecture and the Environmental Science Institute )
Calls to plan sustainable cities have emerged in response to the mounting evidence linking settlement patterns, human behavior and environmental impacts (Ewing, Bartholomew, Winkelman, Walters and Chen, 2008). Most sustainable development plans focus on increasing density and promoting greater mixes of land uses to support higher transit use (and less driving) by residents. They often include urban and landscape design strategies that increase the neighborhood’s ability to sequester carbon and mitigate urban heat island effects. Cities around the US are concentrating redevelopment efforts in central city neighborhoods along core transit corridors in order to achieve these goals. Environmental rationales for mixed-use, transit-oriented development plans are also attractive to developers and to city elected officials for their economic benefits. More compact urban growth, by increasing land values, provides opportunities for redevelopment that will enable land owners and real estate developers to realize higher returns on their property. For city officials, higher land values generate higher property tax values and, potentially, sales tax revenue from the retail and service components of mixed use development.
The basic environmental and economic rationales both implicitly focus on the benefits brought by future residents of redeveloped neighborhoods. An alternative assessment of transit oriented, mixed use redevelopment plans focuses on the lives of current residents, and asks how the proposed redevelopment will impact existing individuals and families while achieving broader goals. This question is especially salient given that many of the neighborhoods targeted for dense, mixed-use development are composed of predominantly minority, low-income households. Current settlement patterns are built upon past patterns of urban growth that generated spatial segregation, codified by plans and solidified through underwriting standards attached to federal mortgage insurance (Massey and Denton 1993; Jackson 1985). Low property values in central core neighborhoods, produced through years of under- and disinvestment, make these neighborhoods prime locations for redevelopment efforts framed within the new transit-oriented sustainability planning framework.
The challenge: bringing equity into sustainability planning
In this paper, we argue that sustainability plans currently framed around shaping the housing choices and travel behavior of future residents must be grounded in an assessment of the current conditions and existing populations in these neighborhoods. Drawing on the disaster management literature, we explore the concept of vulnerability to propose an alternative framework for assessing redevelopment proposals. Our proposed framework rests on two premises: First, we see ecological and social problems as interrelated, and thus inseparable as objects of study. Second, we understand social-ecological problems as neither static nor discrete, but as part of larger dynamic systems that extend spatially beyond administrative planning units and also extend back in time to reflect historical origins. Through a case study of the planning process for a transit-oriented redevelopment plan, for a central neighborhood in Austin, Texas, we illustrate the difference between current approaches and an alternative approach.
Sponsored by: Center for Women’s and Gender Studies (CWGS)
October 1, 2010
The Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at UT Austin
invites you to a screening of the documentary film
The Coat Hanger Project
Monday, October 4, 2010
7:00 PM
Parlin Hall, Room 203
http://www.utexas.edu/maps/main/buildings/par.html
Open to the public, and free of charge
Please pass this on to anyone you think may be interested in attending
Feminist filmmaker and director of this film, Angie Young, will be at the screening to answer questions and discuss the film
The Coat Hanger Project is a documentary film about abortion and the current state of the reproductive justice/pro-choice movement.
Before the legalization of abortion in 1973 in the United States, thousands of women died from complications resulting from botched illegal abortions. Currently, the Guttmacher Institute estimates that 60,000 – 80,000 women worldwide die annually from unsafe abortions. An additional 5,000,000 women suffer permanent or temporary injury.
September 23, 2010
Film Screening
September 23, 2010
6:30 PM in CAL 100
Sexual Abuse on College Campus.
95% of college rapes go unreported—and those who do report, specifically to campus authorities, get little to no justice. Approximately one-third of victims are first year students between 17-19 years old.
Join the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies and Austin’s SafePlace in a discussion on this topic. Through some movie clips, testimonies, news briefs and statistics, an assembled panel of experts will lead a discussion on the issues of sexual assault on college campuses.
More information on the RAINN Day Campaign is included below -
===========
On Thursday, September 23rd you can Make a Difference and participate in RAINN Day, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network’s annual campaign to end sexual assault on college campuses.
Did you know college-age women are 4 times more likely to be sexually assaulted?
SafePlace is driving the campaign this year in the Austin/Travis County area and we plan to reach over 3,000 people this year. But we need your help – we need your help to Make a Difference and reach out to your friends about RAINN Day.
How you can help:
Visit out webpage to learn more about SafePlace, our services and RAINN Day.
On these pages you will find opportunities to participate in the movement to end sexual assault through awareness events or by downloading a pdf version of the RAINN Day card.
This card, which will be distributed at local colleges and universities, includes information on how to stay safe on campus, what to do if you or a friend is sexually assaulted and the number for the national hotline.
www.SafePlace.org/RAINN
We hope you will participate by visiting our website and sharing this link and the RAINN Day card with other students, faculty and staff. If you are interested in our upcoming event or in organizing your community to help end sexual violence, please sign up for the SafePlace newsletter or contact me.
Jessie Beal, Community Organizer:
CommunityEducation@SafePlace.org
About SafePlace:
SafePlace exists to end sexual and domestic violence through safety, healing, prevention and social change. Nationally recognized for its innovative and effective programs, we have been providing women, children and men a place of safety, compassion and empowerment in Austin, Texas since 1974. We offer programs to help recent and past survivors of rape or sexual assault. All programs can be accessed by calling the 24-hour Hotline.
Hospital Accompaniment An advocate will meet a recent rape or sexual assault survivor 24-hours a day at a local hospital for support and information.
Counseling Individual, group and phone counseling for women, children or men who have experienced recent or past sexual violence or abuse. Services are free of charge.
Legal Advocacy Advocates help survivors obtain a protective order and provide support as survivors seek justice and protection through the court and legal systems.
Emergency Shelter Our shelter provides safety to women, children and men. It includes a private area for those who have safety concerns following a rape or other sexually abusive situations.
24-hour Hotline 512.267.SAFE (7233) or 512.927.9616 TTY for the Deaf community. We can provide assistance with safety planning, information or accessing services.
August 31, 2010
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.
August 31, 2010
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
August 31, 2010
Participate in an introduction to the CWGS Guide to Research and Teaching for Women’s Human Rights:
Brownbag with Kristen Hogan, designer of the CWGS Guide
Wed, September 15, 2010 • 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM • WWH 202
The new CWGS Guide may be useful to you in selecting courses, developing a degree plan in women’s human rights, designing your own courses, and connecting with faculty. Please see below for a brief introduction of the resource, and I look forward to talking with you further about the Guide at the brown bag or independently.
CWGS Guide to Research and Teaching for Women’s Human Rights
What kinds of research and teaching are CWGS faculty conducting in relationship to women’s human rights? If we put this research and teaching in conversation with each other, what framework would this collective work provide for women’s human rights advocacy and analysis?
The CWGS Guide to Research and Teaching for Women’s Human Rights begins to answer these questions to support faculty developing courses in women’s human rights and to support students developing degree plans in women’s human rights.
Participate in an introduction to the CWGS Guide:
Brown bag with Kristen Hogan, designer of the CWGS Guide
Wednesday, September 15, 11:00am, WWH 202
At the brown bag, I will offer a brief overview of the site, facilitate an informal discussion about possible uses for and your impressions of the CWGS Guide. Please bring your lunch and enjoy our conversation.
Visit & use the CWGS Guide: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/cwgs/womens-rights/CWGS-Guide.php
The CWGS Guide is a website which provides:
* Visibility for interdisciplinary CWGS faculty research and teaching on women’s human rights analysis and advocacy;
* An introduction to key issues in women’s human rights by assigning keywords to faculty records and arranging them into keyword clusters called Identities, Literacies, Place, and Representations (for example, the “Identities” cluster combines attention to multiple individual and collective identities in order to challenge a Western individualistic construction of rights); and
* Support for CWGS Women’s Rights Initiative projects including curriculum development and the CWGS/Rapoport Center Research Cluster on Women, Gender, and Human Rights.
I hope you will use the CWGS Guide as a text in your courses, as a tool for making connections, and as a template for developing a women’s human rights degree plan. I look forward to talking with you about your uses for and feedback about the CWGS Guide.
If you have questions or want more information, please contact Kristen Hogan at hogank@mail.utexas.edu
