Center for Women’s & Gender Studies

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!

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

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.

Lucia, John, and Melissa Gilbert Teaching Excellence Award in Women’s and Gender Studies
10-11 CALL FOR NOMINATIONS FOR NON-TENURED FACULTY

The Lucia, John, and Melissa Gilbert Teaching Excellence Award honors faculty members with an outstanding record of undergraduate and/or graduate teaching in Women’s and Gender Studies courses. One award is given each year, alternating between non-tenured faculty members (Assistant Professor or Lecturer) and tenured faculty members (Associate or Full Professor).

The Center for Women’s Studies will accept names of worthy faculty from all affiliates through March 7, 2011. Send nominations to Alma Jackie Salcedo .
CWGS will then contact the individuals to inform them that they have been nominated and solicit from them the materials required for consideration as well as names of individuals who might write a letter of recommendation on their behalf. Individuals may also self-nominate.

Application requirements and more information can be found on our website:

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/cwgs/awards/Faculty/Gilbert-Award.php

Supporting Materials will be due in the CWGS offices by 5pm on April 4, 2011.

Competitive Benefits Rally!
Monday, February 14, 2011
12-1:30pm
West Mall

What better way to show your love for equality than on Valentine’s Day? Join PEFSA and student allies for a rally on the West Mall, followed by a march to UT Human Resources to symbolically enroll our partners for insurance benefits. We hope you will join us in showing the campus that equal benefits for all UT families is the best policy. We will have speakers, t-shirts, and signs on the West Mall at noon. If you would like to submit insurance paperwork for your partner, please contact Lindsey Schell (schell@mail.utexas.edu) by Feb. 1. HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY TO ALL!

Siva Vaidhyanathan, Professor, University of Virginia, Department of Media Studies & School of Law

Friday, February 4th at noon in Burdine 116

A guest lecture sponsored by the American Studies Department and the Radio-Television-Film Department

As the academy endures financial and political pressure of unprecedented gravity, many scholars are struggling with the need to make intellectual work seem relevant with the fears of being labelled shallow and market-oriented. In addition, scholars who step into public debates risk harassment from critics on cable news and talk radio. This talk will explore the pros and cons of new, untenured scholars asserting themselves into public debates and attempting to generate a public voice. It will consider the potential risks and costs to the quality of one’s prospects for employment and tenure. And it will consider the rewards that can come from doing high-profile work.

Siva Vaidhyanathan received his BA in History and his Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas. He is a professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia. Vaidhyanathan is a frequent contributor on media and cultural issues in various periodicals including The Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Dissent, MSNBC.Com , andSalon.com , and he maintains a blog, www.googlizationofeverything.com . He is a frequent contributor to National Public Radio and has appeared in a segment of “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart. Vaidhyanathan is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities and the Institute for the Future of the Book. In March 2002, Library Journal cited Vaidhyanathan among its “Movers & Shakers” in the library field. In the feature story, Vaidhyanathan lauded librarians for being “on the front lines of copyright battles” and for being “the custodians of our information and cultural commons.” In November 2004 the Chronicle of Higher Education called Vaidhyanathan “one of academe’s best-known scholars of intellectual property and its role in contemporary culture.” He has testified as an expert before the U.S. Copyright Office on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Vaidhyanathan is the author of three books: The Googlization of Everything — and Why We Should Worry (University of California Press, 2011); The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (Basic Books, 2004); and Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity (New York University Press, 2001). He also is the co-editor of Rewiring the Nation: The Place of Technology in American Studies (editor with Carolyn de la Peña) (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).

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.

I’m working on the information issues in intimate partner violence, specifically those inherent in community interactions, social media, and agency services.

What sources are trusted? What inhibits effective information decision making? How are required documents managed for personal and official purposes? How is safety maintained on the Internet?

These are just a handful of the information issues that need to be addressed. If you are interested in talking through any of these questions and/or working with me on a research or service project, then please let me know. I could use help — anything from a conversation to a short volunteer stint on a project to an Individual Study on a full scale study. Thanks!

Lynn Westbrook,
Associate Professor, 232-7831, School of Information,
lynnwest@ischool.utexas.edu

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.

AUSTIN, Texas — University of Texas at Austin sociologist Pamela Paxton has been awarded a $148,000 grant from the Science of Generosity Initiative at the University of Notre Dame to study how social, economic and political structures affect individuals’ generosity towards one another.

Paxton’s study is one of 13 research projects to receive funding from the initiative, which promotes research on generosity, altruism, philanthropy and related issues and shares those findings with corporate, civic, religious and philanthropic communities.

“We are hoping to identify not only the individual characteristics associated with generosity but also the larger social forces that shape generosity,” says Paxton, the Centennial Commission Professor in the Liberal Arts who is also on faculty at the university’s Population Research Center.

She will examine data from two cross-national surveys to study generosity from an intercultural perspective. She will be among the first social scientists to look at both the personal factors and larger societal forces that drive generosity.

Among other things, Paxton will examine how the social, economic and political structures of nations affect generosity — for example, whether welfare states “crowd out” individual generosity or promote it by modeling generous behavior.

The year-old Science of Generosity Initiative is distributing $1.4 million to nine projects in this round of grants. Four other projects were funded earlier this year.

“In two rounds of competition, we received almost 700 research proposals, and these 13 projects gradually emerged as the most scientifically rigorous and promising we have seen,” said Christian Smith, the William R. Kenan Professor of Sociology at Notre Dame and director of the generosity initiative. “They are led by top-notch researchers and address a variety of important questions from diverse perspectives.”

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)

Dear PPP Community,

As many of you know, I am organizing a Queer Performance Reading Group for faculty and grad students at U.T.  After an organizational meeting yesterday, I am pleased to announce our reading for the fall semester. Some of our books focus on both queerness and performance; others address one or the other–but we will read all the books through the lenses of queerness, performance, and race.  All UT faculty and grad students are cordially invited to attend any or all of the following meetings.  You are welcome to drop in and out of the group, and you are also welcome whether or not you have read every word of the book we are discussing.

Our meetings (each will convene at Sao Paolo on San Jacinto):

Monday, September 27, 4pm: E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson, eds., Black Queer Studies <http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780822336181-1>

Monday, October 11, 4pm: David Roman, Performance in America: Contemporary U.S. Culture and the Performing Arts <http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9780822336631-1>

Monday, October 25, 4pm: Heather Love, Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History <http://www.powells.com/biblio?show=TRADE%20PAPER%3ANEW%3A9780674032392%3A17.25>

Monday, November 15, 4pm: David M. Halperin, ed., Gay Shame

<http://www.powells.com/biblio/71-9780226314389-0>

AND work by Leo Bersani  (selections TBD)

Wednesday, December 1, 4:30pm: Dana Luciano, Arranging Grief: Sacred Time and the Body in Nineteenth-Century America <http://www.powells.com/biblio/72-9780814752234-0>

In the spring semester (dates TBA), we plan to read:

Tavia Nyong’o, The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory <http://www.powells.com/biblio/72-9780816656134-0>

Jose Munoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity <http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780814757284-0>

Judith Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives <http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780814735855-2>

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity <http://www.powells.com/biblio/72-9780822330158-0>

Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions. I hope to see you on September 27 and beyond!

Best wishes,

Robin Bernstein

Assistant Professor in Queer Studies

Department of English, The Ohio State University

The Department of English at The Ohio State University invites applications for a tenure-eligible assistant professor position in queer studies.  We will consider candidates in any field of literary, ethnic, and/or cultural studies with expertise in GLBTQ theory and criticism.  The successful candidate will teach courses in English and Sexuality Studies at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Ohio State’s thriving interdisciplinary Sexuality Studies Program, to which the Department of English contributes, offers undergraduate and graduate degrees, and includes faculty and courses from across the university.  Ph.D. in hand required at time of appointment. Preliminary interviews at the MLA Convention.  The Ohio State University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. GLBT people, women, minorities, Vietnam-era veterans, disabled veterans, and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply.  Send cover letter and c.v. only by Nov. 1 to Englishjobs@osu.edu, or mail to Professor Debra Moddelmog, Chair of Sexuality Studies Search Committee, Department of English, Ohio State University, 421 Denney Hall, 164 W. 17th Ave., Columbus, OH 43210.

Here is some additional information about the vibrant field of Sexuality Studies at OSU:

(1) The English Department at Ohio State has an area group in Gender and Sexuality Studies, and two permanent courses in the field: 282: Introduction to Queer Studies and 580: GLBTQ Studies in Literature and Culture. We also have other courses that are sometimes taught with a sexuality focus, including film and theory courses at both the undergrad and graduate levels.

(2) Ohio State offers an interdisciplinary undergraduate minor and a interdisciplinary graduate specialization in Sexuality Studies, and by the time the person starts the job, we should also have a free-standing interdisciplinary undergraduate major (we’ll be one of the few schools in the country to have all three of these degrees). Over 30 faculty members in six colleges and 14 departments are affiliated with the Sexuality Studies Program, and we offer approximately 20 permanent courses in the area.  The Sexuality Studies minor is the 2nd-highest enrolling interdisciplinary minor at OSU, with approximately 300 students enrolling since it began in 2002, and the graduate specialization has been selected by 30 students in its four years of existence.  http://sexualitystudies.osu.edu/

(3) Sexuality Studies is closely partnered with other identity/culture-based programs via the formation known as DISCO (Diversity and Identity Studies Collective at OSU), which is composed of African American and African Studies, American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Comparative Ethnic and American Studies, Disability Studies, Latino/a Studies, Sexuality Studies, and the newly named Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.  http://disco.osu.edu/

Dr. David Quinto-Pozos

Department of Linguistics

The University of Texas at Austin

CWGS New Faculty Series

April 14, 2010

4:45 – 6:00 PM
GAR 2.112
Reported speech and constructed action considering language modality and speaker gender: A look at signed versus spoken language

How do signers quote the words of someone else?  Are there ways to portray masculinity and femininity with the body?  How do male signers depict what females said?

Despite obvious differences of production and reception, signed and spoken languages are quite similar in structure.  However, there are some differences that arise from the ability of signers to capitalize on visual iconicity, or ways in which the body is made to resemble aspects of a referent.  Some signs are iconic, but non-manual parts of the body can also be used in mimetic ways.  In this presentation, I will discuss common ways in which signers portray reported speech, or what was said by someone else.  In sign, this not only involves the depiction of aspects of someone’s words, but also their actions.  The ways in which these depictions interact with portrayals of masculinity and femininity—as stereotypical representations of character sex—are of particular interest as we continue to explore ways in which signed and spoken languages are similar to each other.

3:30 PM – 5:00 PM in the Texas Union, Lone Star Room, 3.208
This year’s Promotion and Tenure Panel will include:
Dr. Steven Leslie (Executive Vice President and Provost)
Dr. Victoria Rodriguez (Vice President and Dean of Graduate Studies)
Dr. Faegheh Shirazi (Promoted to Full Professor, Deparment of Middle Eastern Studies)
Dr. Wendy Domjan (Promoted to Distinguished Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology and Assistant Director, Plan II)
Dr. Laura Stein (Assiciate Professor, Radio, Television, and Film)
Moderated by Dr. Carol MacKay (Professor, Department of English)

OPEN TO ALL FACULTY
Sponsored by: The Faculty Women’s Organization and the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies