Center for Women’s & Gender Studies

What: A place to constructively discuss a feminist approach to weddings

Where: FeministWedding.com

Why: The feminist movement has not offered the upcoming generations
enough advice or support on how to get married without folding to the
overwhelming consumerist pressure to have a white wedding based on
patriarchal customs and sexist traditions.

Who: All women and men interested in learning the history behind the
Western wedding traditions and perhaps challenging the status quo at
their weddings.

RSVP: Please check out the site, tell your students/friends, and feel
free to contact me with comments or questions – thank you!

-Casey

KUT Radio on Women’s History Month
The Month of March

All month long KUT is bringing you Texas Women’s History moments. Listen throughout the day for the stories of famous and not-so-famous women who made a difference in Texas. Here you will find interviews with the women who are keeping the stories of Texas woman alive through the Ruth Winegarten Foundation for Texas Women’s History. You will also find links to interesting information, trivia and you can download the podcasts and transcripts for all the Texas Women’s History moments.

Link or Email address to contact for more information. http://kut.org/texas-womens-history-month/

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).

The Margaret Sanger Papers Project is pleased to announce its summer
internship program for 2011. We seek applications from graduate or
undergraduate students to work with the editorial staff at the Project’s
offices in New York City. This is a wonderful opportunity for students to
become proficient in primary and secondary source research, the process of
editing historical documents for publication, and the application of
digital technologies to historical research.

BOOK EDITION INTERNSHIP: Interns will be working on Volume IV of the
Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, covering the years 1920-1966 and
focusing on Sanger’s efforts to create a global birth control movement.
Interns will conduct research under the supervision of editors on specific
topics, tracing people, places, events and issues covered in the
documents. The research will be used to produce annotation and
introductory material for the volume. Research will be conducted in the
Project’s offices, using the comprehensive microfilm edition and other
primary sources, as well as at local libraries and with resources
available on the Internet. Those with an interest in the histories of 20th
century China, India, Japan, Germany, and the Soviet Union are
particularly encouraged to apply.

DIGITAL INTERNSHIP: Interns will work on our digital edition of Sanger’s
speeches and articles, focusing on texts written by Margaret Sanger in the
late 1930s. Interns will proofread the texts, add XML encoding, and draft
subject index entries for the documents. Interns will conduct research as
needed to verify dates, titles, and publication information, or to
identify the names of people, organizations and books mentioned in the
documents.

WEB OUTREACH INTERNSHIP: Interns will work on strengthening the Project’s
growing web presence, our facebook page, website, and research blog, to
draw more attention to the project’s work and connect with our audiences.
For this internship, familiarity with both history and web-based
technologies is required.

More information and an application can be found at the project’s website,

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/aboutmspp/internships.html

The deadline for applications for summer internships is March 1, 2011.
Internships during the academic year can be arranged on a case by case
basis.

Cathy Moran Hajo, Ph.D.
Associate Editor/Assistant Director
The Margaret Sanger Papers Project
Department of History, New York University
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
(212) 998-8666
(212) 995-4017 (fax)
cathy.hajo@nyu.edu

Visit our website at: http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger

We are issuing a Call for Proposals for scholarly and creative
submissions for an International Interdisciplinary Graduate Student
Conference entitled “Collections and Collaborations” to be held at
Indiana University – Bloomington from March 24th – 26th, 2011 (hosted
by the graduate students of the IU Department of English).

New media—most notably Web 2.0 (and now 3.0)—have challenged us to
think about our artistic creations, social spaces, and most deeply
cherished beliefs along increasingly decentered, collectivist lines. Do
such technologies push our creative and critical work in more
collaborative directions? And given that ideas of collective fictions
and culture, collaborations, adaptations, and translations exist in
folk traditions, national legends, and the emergence of the bourgeois
public sphere, is there anything new about collectivity or
collaboration?

This conference seeks to investigate the notion of collections and
collaborations from a wide array of angles. We hope to receive papers
from a variety of disciplines, employing any number of methodologies
and considering any time period. Below are some suggestions for
possible topics. This list is by no means exhaustive; rather, we hope
these ideas might inspire some exciting new thoughts related to the
theme:
• Collaborative writing, storytelling, filmmaking, and performance
• Translation, adaptation, remediation
• Intertextuality, particularly across history or genre
• Museums, readings, performances, exhibitions
• The demise (or afterlife?) of the Romantic “genius”
• The death of the author and originality
• Voice and image: multiple voices/images; resonating voices and
mirroring images
• Mass audiences
• New media
• Web 2.0/3.0: “crowdsourcing,” “truthiness,” and “collaboratition”
• Digital possibilities for collaborative scholarship
• Collective aesthetics
• Genre studies
• Oral and folk traditions
• National legends and myths of “national character”
• The position of the individual in relation to the collective
• Subaltern, or other imposed collective identities
• Collaborative or collectives truths and faiths
• Utopianism and futurism
• The academy’s “collective fictions” (both its useful fictions and its
collective delusions)

We encourage proposals for individual papers as well as panel proposals
organized by topic. In the past, this conference has bridged the
“critical” and “creative,” and we intend to host both critical and
creative panels. Please submit (both as an attachment AND in the body
of the email) an abstract of no more than 250 words along with a few
personal details (name, institutional affiliation, degree level, email,
and phone number) by January 31, 2011 to .

Our keynote speakers at this year’s conference will be Jeremy Braddock
from Cornell University and Ellen MacKay from our home department.

Visit our website (http://www.indiana.edu/~engsac/conference/) for more
information!

Ridgewood: Ingenious Communication Strategies is a full service Digital Solutions and Strategic Communication Company.We primarily work with government agencies, school districts, non-profit organizations and many other small businesses in Tucson, Denver, Austin and across the nation. We do our best to make this world a better place to live for our clients and those who they serve. We are looking for a full time programmer who wants to join us in this mission to change and challenge the world. We offer excellent health and retirement benefits, a very cool South Austin office (located minutes from downtown and across from Uchi), and a relaxed work environment. We are the past recipients of ‘The Best Place to Work’ – Copper Cactus Award.

Responsibilities:

To work as part of a team to assist in the design and development of Web sites and other information systems to meet clients’ needs.
To program Web sites, including development of database applications and forms.
To test Web sites for usability, identify problems and develop solutions as necessary.
To maintain and secure information on client sites.
To solve problems related to existing client and agency sites.
To conduct research through Internet searches and other means.
To construct web pages/sites including incorporating graphic user interface (GUI) features and other techniques.
To maintain and provide ongoing changes of websites, adding promos, ad banners and seasonal content as needed.
To troubleshoot issues with existing or developed systems and work with the appropriate resources to resolve them.
To perform related duties as requested or as situations dictate.
Requirements:

This position requires a Bachelors degree in Computer Science. (Masters’ preferred)
Minimum two years related professional experience. Higher education could be substituted.
Proficiency with relational database development, especially SQL Server and MS Access.
Knowledge of computer networking principles and Web server maintenance.
Knowledge of designing algorithms to show information flow and component interaction.
Knowledge of information architecture principles and computer programming languages, such as ASP, .Net, HTML, Java, PHP and Joomla.
Ability to demonstrate proficiency in computer languages such as: ASP (versions 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 and 3.5) and .NET Framework.
Ability to organize time and work on multiple projects.
Assists in physical and logical database design.
Creates prototypes for client engagements.
Designs, codes and tests technical solutions.
Knowledge of written and spoken English, including proper grammar, spelling, punctuation and syntax.
Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
Ability to communicate clearly with a diverse group of clients, vendors, professionals and non-professionals.
Ability to adapt to, manage and facilitate change.
Ability to attend to details.
Start Date: Position Available Immediately

To Apply: Please forward your resume along with salary expectations to Sulochana Konur at skonur@ridgewoodpr.com or call at 520-318-0828 or 520-245-2432.

We are issuing a Call for Proposals for scholarly and creative
submissions for an International Interdisciplinary Graduate Student
Conference entitled “Collections and Collaborations” to be held at
Indiana University – Bloomington from March 24th – 26th, 2011 (hosted
by the graduate students of the IU Department of English).

New media—most notably Web 2.0 (and now 3.0)—have challenged us to
think about our artistic creations, social spaces, and most deeply
cherished beliefs along increasingly decentered, collectivist lines. Do
such technologies push our creative and critical work in more
collaborative directions? And given that ideas of collective fictions
and culture, collaborations, adaptations, and translations exist in
folk traditions, national legends, and the emergence of the bourgeois
public sphere, is there anything new about collectivity or
collaboration?

This conference seeks to investigate the notion of collections and
collaborations from a wide array of angles. We hope to receive papers
from a variety of disciplines, employing any number of methodologies
and considering any time period. Below are some suggestions for
possible topics. This list is by no means exhaustive; rather, we hope
these ideas might inspire some exciting new thoughts related to the
theme:

• Collaborative writing, storytelling, filmmaking, and performance
• Translation, adaptation, remediation
• Intertextuality, particularly across history or genre
• Museums, readings, performances, exhibitions
• The demise (or afterlife?) of the Romantic “genius”
• The death of the author and originality
• Voice and image: multiple voices/images; resonating voices and
mirroring images
• Mass audiences
• New media
• Web 2.0/3.0: “crowdsourcing,” “truthiness,” and “collaboratition”
• Digital possibilities for collaborative scholarship
• Collective aesthetics
• Genre studies
• Oral and folk traditions
• National legends and myths of “national character”
• The position of the individual in relation to the collective
• Subaltern, or other imposed collective identities
• Collaborative or collectives truths and faiths
• Utopianism and futurism
• The academy’s “collective fictions” (both its useful fictions and its
collective delusions)

We encourage proposals for individual papers as well as panel proposals
organized by topic. In the past, this conference has bridged the
“critical” and “creative,” and we intend to host both critical and
creative panels. Please submit (both as an attachment AND in the body
of the email) an abstract of no more than 250 words along with a few
personal details (name, institutional affiliation, degree level, email,
and phone number) by January 15th, 2011 to .

Visit our website (http://www.indiana.edu/~engsac/conference/) for more
information!

The Women’s Programming Alliance present “What Goods Are We Really Being Sold” on Tuesday, November 30, Jester A209A at 6:00 pm. This interactive and fun workshop examines popular advertising images and the underlying messages they convey. It promises to be a thought-provoking and entertaining examination of popular media. Space is limited, so please RSVP to this training by emailing us at gsc@austin.utexas.edu.

“From Beirut to Kabul: War, Occupation, and Resistance”
a talk by journalist Nir Rosen

Wednesday, November 17, 2010
7 p.m.
University of Texas at Austin
Thompson Conference Center auditorium (TCC 1.110)

http://www.utexas.edu/maps/main/buildings/tcc.html

TCC is next to the LBJ School at Red River and Dean Keeton.

There is free convenient parking for motorists in the large lots along Red River. http://www.utexas.edu/cee/tcc/img/maps/TCCparkingmMap.pdf
The conference center is on Bicycle Route 42; see http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/bicycle/downloads/bicycle%20map_07.pdf.
For bus routes, use the trip planner at http://www.capmetro.org/.

Independent journalist Nir Rosen will speak about his reporting in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan — sectarianism and civil war, occupation and resistance, terrorism and counterinsurgency. His most recent book, Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World, was just released last month by Nation Books.

Rosen, a Fellow at the Center on Law and Security at NYU School of Law, is also the author of The Triumph of the Martyrs: A Reporter’s Journey into Occupied Iraq. His work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and Rolling Stone, and his documentary film “No End in Sight” about the occupation of Iraq won a Special Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Rosen is a frequent guest on Democracy Now!, CNN, al Jazeera International, and various other television and radio shows in the United States and abroad.

Rosen has traveled extensively in the Middle East and Central Asia, including more than two years in Iraq reporting on the American occupation, the relationship between Americans and Iraqis, the development of postwar Iraqi religious and political movements, interethnic and sectarian relations, and the Iraqi civil war. His reporting on the origins and development of Islamist resistance, insurgency, and terrorist organizations has also taken him to Afghanistan, Somalia, Jordan, and Pakistan.

Articles, interviews, and information about Rosen’s book are online at:

http://aftermathbook.com/

http://harpers.org/archive/2010/10/hbc-90007749

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/09/nir-rosen-aftermath-afghanistan

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR35.6/rosen.php

The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Palestine Solidarity Committee, Third Coast Activist Resource Center, Department of Government, School of Journalism, and International Socialist Organization. For more information, go to http://www.utpalestine.org/.

Location: Texas
Date: 2011-04-20
Description: The Eros and Pornography division of the Popular
Culture Association is seeking abstracts for the April 20-23,
2011 annual conference in San Antonio, Texas. All substantive
areas and topics will be considered. Deadline for submissions
is Dec. 15, 2010. For more information on the conference go to
the website: http://www.pcaaca.org/conference/national.php
Contact: muirkb@appstate.edu

The Gender and Sexuality Center and the Women’s Programming Alliance present “What Goods Are We Really Being Sold” on Tuesday, November 30, Jester A209A at 6:00 pm. “What Goods Are We Really Being Sold” examines popular advertising images and many of the underlying (and overlying) sexist and homophobic themes that run throughout.

Ghada Abdel Aal, Egypt’s Best Selling Girl-Blogger and Author of “I Want to Get Married!”

Thu, October 28, 2010 • 3:30 PM • AT&T Executive Education Center Room 105
A public lecture by the author of the best-selling book I Want to Get Married!
The rules may differ from country to country, but the dating game is a universal constant.
After years of searching for Mr. Right in living-room meetings arranged by family or friends, Ghada Abdel Aal, a young Egyptian professional, decided to take to the blogosphere to share her experiences and vent her frustrations at being young, single, and female in Egypt. Her blog, I Want to Get Married!, quickly became a hit with both men and women in the Arab world. With a keen sense of humor and biting social commentary, Abdel Aal recounts in painful detail her adventures with failed proposals and unacceptable suitors. There’s Mr. Precious, who storms out during their first meeting when he feels his favorite athlete has been slighted, and another suitor who robs her in broad daylight, to name just a few of the characters she runs across in her pursuit of wedded bliss.
I Want to Get Married! has since become a best-selling book in Egypt and the inspiration for a television series. This witty look at dating challenges skewed representations of the Middle East and presents a realistic picture of what it means to be a single young woman in the Arab world, where, like elsewhere, a good man can be hard to find.
The talk will be followed by a book signing at 7:00 PM at Book Woman (5501 N. Lamar Avenue)
Sponsored by: The Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Arabic Flagship Program, and the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies

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.

The Politics of an Environmental Disaster
Thursday, October 21, 6:30-9:00 GEA 105

The floods in Pakistan have devastated some of the poorest rural communities in the world. Official estimates of destruction are so high that it’s hard to fathom a recovery any time soon. Yet twelve weeks after the floods it seems that the international community has moved on. This indifference to human suffering as well the lack of proper examination of this calamity echoes the troubling questions raised in the aftermath of recent environmental disasters like the earthquake in Haiti, Indian Ocean Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.

In the case of Pakistan’s floods, American and European media outlets failed to report on basic human suffering. The meager coverage of the floods was overshadowed by media speculation about Islamic extremists. Consequently the biggest humanitarian disaster in recent memory received disproportionately little aid. The Fighting the Flood coalition is organizing a teach-in forum to highlight the important questions that remain unasked by mainstream media outlets. Two months after a successful campus fund raising initiative on campus we want to shift our focus to a political campaign to raise issues of social justice and demand accountability for the victims of the Indus Floods of 2010.

· How did race and religion factor into the coverage of the Indus Floods? “Compassion Fatigue” or Orientalism in Disguise?
· The making of disasters. How “natural” are environmental disasters?
· What is the role of the World Bank and Asian Development Bank in this disaster?
· When the farmland became a lake… One student’s account of his village’s destruction
· Fighting the Flood- Spreads the Love- A report from UT student mobilization. What is to be Done?

Speakers: Prof. Snehal Shingavi, Raja Swamy, Mubbashir Rizvi, Hafeez Jamali, Noman and Elizabeth Baig. Interviews with Pakistani Academic/Activists Prof. Sadaf Aziz and Prof. Mushtaq Gaadi.