Center for Women’s & Gender Studies

Are you looking for enjoyable feminist courses for your summer sessions? Consider these first and second session options and share them with others who might be interested! If you would like more information about the courses, send any questions to the instructor, Kristen Hogan, at hogank@mail.utexas.edu

#89482, MTWTHF 230 to 400p
What does feminist, antiracist, queer research look like? How does such meaningful research practice affect our relationships and alliances with each other? Come participate in a discussion of these questions in WGS356: Introduction to Feminist Research Methods. In this course you will imagine and create your identity as a feminist researcher, whether you currently work or plan to work as an academic, activist, artist, citizen critic, or independent scholar. We will hold conversations with guest feminist researchers, visit an art exhibition, explore UT archives, and learn the basics of feminist multiple methods research including archival, oral history, textual analysis, participatory action, and ethnographic research. At the end of this course, you will have developed an in-depth research proposal that will prepare you for graduate-level work, an advanced undergraduate project, or other creative and narrative undertakings.

Are you looking for enjoyable feminist courses for your summer sessions? Consider these first and second session options and share them with others who might be interested! If you would like more information about the courses, send any questions to the instructor, Kristen Hogan, at hogank@mail.utexas.edu

WGS f322: Feminist Theory
#89343, MTWTHF 230 to 400p
Feminist theory grows out of and in connection with feminist activism and visions for a just world. In this class we will build a life practice of reading feminist theories to inform our alliances and actions. You will read key authors and become familiar with groundbreaking concepts from Gloria Anzaldúa’s nepantla to Katherine McKittrick’s demonic grounds, from Audre Lorde’s erotic as power to Jasbir Puar’s queer assemblages. You will also learn to follow developments in feminist theory by understanding how to research trends in feminist theory and by mapping the connections between feminist theory and other critical theories including disability studies and queer theory. This course will focus on U.S. feminisms with particular attention to women of color feminisms.

The goal of the Healthy Sexuality Peer Educator program is to empower UT students to make healthy sexual choices that are right for them.

Healthy Sexuality Peer Educators carry out the program’s goal by conducting outreach and education activities such as presenting workshops to student groups, distributing information at tabling events, conducting individual consultations, and instructing the Methods of Contraception class. Healthy sexuality peer educators cover a variety of topics related to sexuality including sexual decision making, STIs, HIV/AIDS, condoms, methods of contraception, anatomy and physiology, safer sex, men’s health, women’s health, and safer sex communication.

Students receive 5 hours of upper division Kinesiology credit for their participation.
The application can be found here.

Members of the “Peers for Pride” program are required to take one class in the fall semester and one in the spring semester. During the fall semester course, “Confronting LGBTQ Oppression: Exploring the Issues and Learning the Skills to Communicate Them,” students learn basic facilitation skills while taking an in-depth look at some issues facing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer individuals. They will write a monologue that they will perform on campus during the spring semester.
During the spring semester course, “Facilitating Dialogues on LGBTQ Oppression: Peers for Pride in Action,” peer facilitators have the opportunity to perform their monologue and fine-tune their facilitation skills and lead workshops across campus.
Participants are required to make a two-semester commitment to the program. Interested students must complete an application and an interview with the program’s director and course instructor, Shane Whalley, LMSW. For more information, contact Shane at swhalley@austin.utexas.edu.

Would you like to assist the GSC staff with this year’s Lavender Graduation ceremony on May 18th? We could really use some volunteers and would love to hear from you. Shifts generally last an hour but you’re more than welcome to volunteer for more time. Shifts will are available before (3:00 – 5:00), during (5:00), and after the ceremony (6:00 – 7:00).
If you’re interested, please e-mail us at matthewmckibben@austin.utexas.edu.

Are you graduating in May, August or December 2011 from a UT Austin undergraduate or graduate program?
If so, join us to celebrate your success at the annual UT Lavender Graduation on May 18th ! To register, follow this link.
Lavender Graduation is a special graduation ceremony that honors the achievements of graduating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and ally students on campus.
Lavender Graduation is co-hosted by the Gender and Sexuality Center Advisory and Working Group and the Queer Students Alliance (QSA). Our goal is to provide a venue to demonstrate the success of our community members in a personal, entertaining and celebratory way. The Lavender Graduation Ceremony includes: exhilarating speeches from UT faculty, administrators, students, and alumni; the chance to cross the lavender stage to celebrate your success and to receive a Lavender Graduation certificate as well as a rainbow tassel; and music, cake and food to share with friends, family and well-wishers!

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!

The Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies 2011-12, Poets&Scholars, is having a two Preview/Promo events on Wed. April 27.

Introducing:

P.S. Poets&Scholars Lunchtime Reading Series

This is the first in a monthly series in which English department students and faculty share their own poetry and favorite poems by others.

Location: Atwood Library

Time: noon (light lunch provided)

Participants Roger Reeves, Liz Cullingford, Meta duEwa Jones, and Lisa Moore

Door Prize: An autographed manuscript (handwritten) copy of an original poem by Roger Reeves!

Evening poetry reading with

Eileen Myles and Hoa Nguyen

Location: Black Box Theater, new Student Activities Center (beside Gregory Gym)

Time: 5-7 p.m.

- Born in Saigon and raised in Washington, D.C., Hoa Nguyen is author of Red Juice, Hecate Lochia, six other books and chapbooks and co-editor of Skanky Possum. She has been teaching creative writing in Austin for 12 years.

- Eileen Myles was born in Boston and moved to New York in 1974. Her Inferno (a poet’s novel) is just out from OR books. For her collection of essays, The Importance of Being Iceland, she received a Warhol/Creative Capital grant. Sorry Tree is her most recent book of poems. In 2010 the Poetry Society of America awarded Eileen the Shelley Prize. She is a Prof. Emeritus of Writing at UC San Diego. She lives in New York.

We hope to see you there!

For Earth Week this semester, the Students for a Sustainable Campus and the Campus Environmental Center are sponsoring Green Campus Tours of several buildings on UT Campus. We will be touring the sustainability initiatives employed in the UT Tower, the SAC, and the Power Plant on April 19th.

The tours are absolutely free but there is a limited amount of space, so sign up today! To learn more about this unique opportunity or to sign up, please click here .

NSPIRE UT Presents:

SPEAK: A Multilingual Show

We’re here to say what we mean. We’re here to speak. About ourselves. About our bodies. About our experiences. About love and relationships, sexuality, culture.

We’re here to say things that aren’t being said. Things we’ve been told we can’t say, because our real feelings don’t always translate or because what we have to say will make people uncomfortable. These words in your minds – from our lips.

SPEAK is a multilingual monologue show written by the performers. In conjunction with Sexual Assault Awareness Month, INSPIRE UT asked men and women to speak in their own languages about themselves – their experiences, their idea of love, their relationships, their bodies – because we believe that talking about these things – in the ways that people think about them, in all languages – has the power to tear down the mystery surrounding them and to help others find their voices and the power to SPEAK.

PERFORMANCES:

Friday, April 15th – 8:00pm
Saturday, April 16th – 8:00pm
Friday, April 22nd – 8:00pm
Saturday, April 23rd – 8:00pm

All performances are in CAL 100.

Tickets: Suggested $5.00

Tickets will be available before the show. Proceeds will support INSPIRE UT and SafePlace.

CAST:
Aurora Sanchez – Tagalog
Ariel Dang-Tran – English
Lynn Hou – American Sign Language
Chinyere Ugwuzor – English/Pidgin English
Ganiva Reyes – Spanish/English
Juan Portillo – Spanish
Tatiana Makhinova – Russian
Veronica Hernandez – Spanish/English
Bobbi Duncan – English
Erica Allseitz -Facilitator (English)

If you are currently a student leader or are wanting to gain leadership experience and have at least a 3.0, this is the position for you! The College of Liberal Arts is looking for a few good men and women to fill the ranks of FIG Facilitator. As a FIG Facilitator you will help the FIG Mentor organize and conduct educational and social activities to help new UT students become better acquainted with each other, faculty, the university, and community as a whole.

No prior experience required. Just fill out the attached application and turn in to Shelley Bowers at sbowers@austin.utexas.edu by April 29.

Attention: UT Students, Faculty and Staff
An opportunity to share your work and engage with sustainability on campus

Call for Abstracts (official document attached)
Deadline: Monday, May 2nd, 2011

2nd Annual Symposium: Sustainability at UT-Austin
September 2011 date to be announced

The President’s Sustainability Steering Committee, with the support of the Center for Sustainable Development (CSD), the UT Office of Sustainability, the Campus Environmental Center and additional co-sponsors to be named, will host a full day symposium dedicated to sustainability on the University of Texas at Austin campus that will integrate scholarly and practical pursuits in hopes of finding new opportunities for collaboration and innovation.

Topics in the realm of operations might include: facilities, transportation, maintenance, residential life, service learning, living wages, admissions practices, and food/waste management, while academic presentations might focus on research, teaching, or outreach activities. Ideally, some presentations will touch on the ways that these different arenas can build on one another in order to make the campus a leader on issues of sustainability.

In its inaugural year in 2010, the symposium used a challenging, but engaging image-based format that proved to be very successful, and we will ask that all participants follow these guidelines again this year. The symposium will feature 28 short presentations from a variety of scholars and practitioners. Each presentation will be no longer than 7 minutes and accompanied by a PowerPoint containing no more than 20 images {no text, please) detailing how your work (or proposals for future work) are related to concepts of sustainability. All the presentations will be videotaped and posted on the 2011 symposium website, and a collection of short essays resulting from this symposium will be produced and serve as a platform for future research. To read the essays or view presentations from the 2010 symposium, visit http://soa.utexas.edu/csd/symposia/campus_sustainability/.

We encourage collaboration in the submission of abstracts, which will be chosen by a committee based on relevancy to the topic and their unique contribution to the diversity of answers presented. Please send an abstract of no more than one page by Monday, May 2nd, 2011 to sustainabilitysymposium@austin.utexas.edu.

The Center for Asian American Studies (CAAS) at The University of Texas at Austin is an interdisciplinary academic program devoted to raise awareness of issues pertaining to Asian Americans. CAAS provides scholastic awards for exceptional students who have furthered the promotion of research, service, and academic involvement which is imperative for the growth of Asian American Studies.
CAAS Scholarships are open to any student attending the University of Texas at Austin, pending that they meet specific application requirements. Please visit this website in the Spring Semester to download the scholarship application(s). Contact CAAS if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.
SPRING 2011 Awards:

Spring 2010 Scholarship/Awards are now available. Click Here!
Scholarships Available: DUE DATE for all scholarships is Friday, April 22nd.
CAAS Student Service Award:
The Center for Asian American Studies (CAAS) at The University of Texas at Austin is an interdisciplinary academic program devoted to raise awareness of issues pertaining to Asian Americans. CAAS provides scholastic awards for exceptional students who have furthered the promotion of research, service, and academic involvement which is imperative for the growth of Asian American Studies.
Community involvement is highly encouraged both at the UT-Austin and CAAS levels. Additional support to CAAS is very appreciated and should be noted in the applicants CV/resume.
Undergraduate applicants must have completed or are enrolled in at least 1 (3 credit hour) Asian American Studies (AAS) course.
Service Award Amount for the 2010-2011 academic year: (Pending on the applications received, one award will be received by an undergraduate student and the second to a graduate student.)
$250 for two undergraduate students
CAAS: Asian American Undergrad. Student Organizational Excellence Award:
CAAS provides scholastic awards for exceptional students and organizations who have furthered the promotion of research, service, and academic involvement which is imperative for the growth of Asian American Studies. University and community involvement is highly encouraged both at the UT-Austin and CAAS levels. Additional support to CAAS is very appreciated and should be noted in the application.
Award will be given to President of the organization. This individual should be the one who fills out the scholarship form. This individual will also be the recipient of the monetary award. Only one form per organization please.
Student Organizational Excellence Award Amount for the 2010-2011 academic year:
$500 for one undergraduate student organization
CAAS: Undergraduate Research/Scholarship Award:
Due to the interdisciplinary focus of our program, the scholarship awards can include research papers, works of fiction, visual art/representation, and other types of research activities. Research must be backed by the faculty assigned to the course in which the research paper/project was completed. Research submitted may be from the Fall 2009 and/or Spring 2010 semester. Items submitted must be in it’s completed and graded form from Fall 2009. However, Spring 2011 research may be “works in progress” meaning that they are 90% completed. This is for research that would be graded for the final, but due to the deadline of this application may not have received the final grade before May 6, 2010.
Please submit a copy of the completed Research Papers/Project with the grade you received on it. We need some indication on what grade you received for the Research/Project. A letter of recommendation from the faculty member who was the instructor of record for the course your research paper/project is required. Papers should be electronically submited to Barbara Jann a barbaraj@austin.utexas.edu. Anything on DVD/CD should be delievered to CAAS.
Undergraduate applicants must have completed or are enrolled in at least 1 (3 credit hour) Asian American Studies (AAS) course.
Undergraduate Research Award Amounts for the 2010-2011 academic year:
$200 for two undergraduate student with an exceptional research paper/project
CAAS: Graduate Student Research Scholarship Award
Please see description above for undergraduate research scholarship award.
Additionally, graduate students should acknowledge in their application any affiliations they have with CAAS. Please also attach your CV/Resume.
Graduate Research Award Amounts for the 2010-2011 academic year:
$250 for one graduate student

Here is what students have to say about the Theatre for Dialogue class with Voices Against Violence:

“This class will teach you so much about yourself and the world in which you live. This type of class, I believe, is what you come to university for; to foster a positive and beneficial relationship and awareness between community and school, between yourself and strangers. I will always cherish this class and what it’s done for me.”

“The amount of growth I’ve obtained from being in this class, both personally and
academically, has been immeasurable. This class has provided me with some serious self-reflection on the roles I play in life, as a student, as a friend, as a relative, and even as a boyfriend.”

The Theatre for Dialogue program of Voices Against Violence is looking for students for the 2011-2012 class cohort. Train with Voices Against Violence through a two-semester academic course:

Theatre for Dialogue
SW 360K or TD 357T
Wednesdays 2:00 – 5:00pm

Receive: 2 semesters of upper division credit through Theatre and Dance or Social Work.
Registration/participation is through application and interview. Applications DUE APRIL 18TH.

Find more info here:
http://cmhc.utexas.edu/vav_peertheatre.html

application available here:
http://cmhc.utexas.edu/vav_peereducator.html

“Amazing! Awesome! I cannot say enough good things about this class and the instructors.
It is of immeasurable value to me. By far, to me one of the most important classes on campus in this university.”

Hear what students have to say about this class:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mey55fB7DM4&feature=player_embedded

CAAS Scholarships

The Center for Asian American Studies (CAAS) at The University of Texas at Austin is an interdisciplinary academic program devoted to raise awareness of issues pertaining to Asian Americans. CAAS provides scholastic awards for exceptional students who have furthered the promotion of research, service, and academic involvement which is imperative for the growth of Asian American Studies.

CAAS Scholarships are open to any student attending the University of Texas at Austin, pending that they meet specific application requirements. Please visit this website in the Spring Semester to download the scholarship application(s). Contact CAAS if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.

SPRING 2011 Awards:

Spring 2010 Scholarship/Awards are now available. Click Here!
Scholarships Available: DUE DATE for all scholarships is Friday, April 22nd.

CAAS Student Service Award:
The Center for Asian American Studies (CAAS) at The University of Texas at Austin is an interdisciplinary academic program devoted to raise awareness of issues pertaining to Asian Americans. CAAS provides scholastic awards for exceptional students who have furthered the promotion of research, service, and academic involvement which is imperative for the growth of Asian American Studies.

Community involvement is highly encouraged both at the UT-Austin and CAAS levels. Additional support to CAAS is very appreciated and should be noted in the applicants CV/resume.
Undergraduate applicants must have completed or are enrolled in at least 1 (3 credit hour) Asian American Studies (AAS) course.

Service Award Amount for the 2010-2011 academic year: (Pending on the applications received, one award will be received by an undergraduate student and the second to a graduate student.)
$250 for two undergraduate students CAAS: Asian American Undergrad. Student Organizational

Excellence Award:
CAAS provides scholastic awards for exceptional students and organizations who have furthered the promotion of research, service, and academic involvement which is imperative for the growth of Asian American Studies. University and community involvement is highly encouraged both at the UT-Austin and CAAS levels. Additional support to CAAS is very appreciated and should be noted in the application.

Award will be given to President of the organization. This individual should be the one who fills out the scholarship form. This individual will also be the recipient of the monetary award. Only one form per organization please.

Student Organizational Excellence Award Amount for the 2010-2011 academic year:
$500 for one undergraduate student organization

CAAS: Undergraduate Research/Scholarship Award:
Due to the interdisciplinary focus of our program, the scholarship awards can include research papers, works of fiction, visual art/representation, and other types of research activities. Research must be backed by the faculty assigned to the course in which the research paper/project was completed. Research submitted may be from the Fall 2009 and/or Spring 2010 semester. Items submitted must be in it’s completed and graded form from Fall 2009. However, Spring 2011 research may be “works in progress” meaning that they are 90% completed. This is for research that would be graded for the final, but due to the deadline of this application may not have received the final grade before May 6, 2010.

Please submit a copy of the completed Research Papers/Project with the grade you received on it. We need some indication on what grade you received for the Research/Project. A letter of recommendation from the faculty member who was the instructor of record for the course your research paper/project is required. Papers should be electronically submited to Barbara Jann a barbaraj@austin.utexas.edu. Anything on DVD/CD should be delievered to CAAS.
Undergraduate applicants must have completed or are enrolled in at least 1 (3 credit hour) Asian American Studies (AAS) course.

Undergraduate Research Award Amounts for the 2010-2011 academic year:
$200 for two undergraduate student with an exceptional research paper/project
CAAS: Graduate Student Research Scholarship Award
Please see description above for undergraduate research scholarship award.

Additionally, graduate students should acknowledge in their application any affiliations they have with CAAS. Please also attach your CV/Resume.
Graduate Research Award Amounts for the 2010-2011 academic year:
$250 for one graduate studen

The application is available at: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/aas/undergraduate-program/financial-aid.php