2006 The Wave - Humanities Computing Services

Transcription

FeministStudiesatUCSantaCruzVol.IX,No.1Summer2006
The Wave
APeriodicalfortheUniversityCommunityandFriendsofFeministStudies
Chair’s Greeting
War Against Terror Teach-In
by Emily Honig, Professor of Feminist Studies and History
by Bettina Aptheker, Professor of FMST and History
This has been a
year of tremendous
growth and exciting changes for the
Feminist
Studies
Department. It is
the first full year
that our name
change has been in
Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel, Emily Honig,
effect, and the rest
Bettina Aptheker, Rosa-Linda Fregoso,
of the campus has
and Anjali Arondekar (l-r)
gracefully adjusted
to calling us “Feminist Studies” instead of “Women’s Studies.” After
a year of extensive discussions about the undergraduate curriculum, the
department completed a set of revisions that have now been accepted by
the Committee on Educational Policy, including new concentrations that
are more reflective of recent developments in the field.
Faculty Against War, the Feminist Studies Department, and the Institute
for Advanced Feminist Research were among more than twenty cosponsors of the April 24th day-long teach-in The War on Terror: A
Credible Threat. It was estimated that over 1,500 people attended the
event held in UCSC’s Upper Quarry. UCSF held a teach-in on the same
day in solidarity with UCSC, and another teach-in was organized this
spring at UCSB in
response to the UCSC
initiative.
One of the most exciting things to happen this year has been the addition
of two new faculty members: Assistant Professor Felicity SchaefferGrabiel and Professor Karen Barad. Both have already provided
substantial service to the department and have expanded our research and
teaching in the areas of Latina studies, science studies, and transnational
feminism. Some of their many contributions will be obvious in the pages
of this issue of The Wave. Because of Felicity’s presence on our faculty,
UCSC will be hosting the annual MALCS conference this August (see
page 6). We also look forward to celebrating the publication of Karen
Barad’s major book, Meeting the Universe Halfway (see page 3).
Faithful readers of The Wave know that for the last four years the
department has written, revised, and expanded a proposal for a Ph.D.
program in Feminist Studies. Over the course of this year the proposal
began its travels through the campus bureaucracy, and we are hopeful
that next year it will proceed to the University of California systemwide
committees that must review it before full approval. Watch for the year
that we can announce admission of the first class of graduate students.
In the meantime, we have an increasing number of graduate students in
the parenthetical notation program, and we continue to support graduate
students by awarding dissertation and teaching fellowships (see page 10).
In conjunction with the graduate program proposal, the department has
continued to sponsor the Feminism and Transnationalism Seminar Series
(see page 7).
continued on page 23
The teach-in was
inspired by a Pentagon
report released in Fall
2005 that listed the
UCSC campus as a
Students, faculty, and staff listen attentively to
“credible threat” to
Joseph Wilson at The War on Terror teach-in
national security as
a result of a protest
INSIDE
organized by Students Against War
in April 2005 at a career fair where
New Publications
3
military recruiters were present.
Event Highlights
5
Opposing the war in Iraq, aggressive
military recruiting tactics in commuMALCS Institute
6
nities of color, and the discriminatory
Institute for Advanced
policies of the military towards gays
Feminist Research
6
and lesbians (with its “don’t ask-don’t
Feminism &
tell” policy), the student protest
Transnationalism
resulted in the military recruiters
Seminar Series
7
leaving campus. Similar actions were
Chicano/Latino
held in October 2005 and again in
Research Center
7
early April 2006, two weeks prior to
the teach-in.
Ekua Omosupe Poem 8
Among the featured speakers at
the teach-in was Joseph Wilson, a
career diplomat and Ambassador to
Iraq just prior to the first Gulf War
in 1991. Ambassador Wilson, who
is the husband of outed CIA-agent
Valerie Plame, has been at the center
of White House-engineered intrigue
because of an op-ed piece he wrote in
Incarcerated Mothers 9
Graduate Students
10-11
Undergrads in Action 12-13
Alum Greetings
14-20
Thanks to our Donors 23
How to Support
Feminist Studies
24
UCSC Feminist Faculty Accolades and Activities
Gabriela Arredondo, Asst. Professor, Latin
American and Latino Studies. 2007-08
fellowship to study inter-racialism, Stanford
Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.
Doris Ash, Asst. Professor, Education.
$1.8 million grant to study informal science
education, National Science Foundation
(April).
Margarita Azmitia, Professor, Psychology.
Grant to study student retention and academic
success, UC All Campus Consortium on
Research for Diversity and UCSC Academic
Senate (September).
Karen Barad, Professor, Feminist Studies.
Featured speaker, “Experimental Metaphysics,”
“Two Cultures: Reconsidering the Division
Between the Sciences and Humanities”
conference, University of New South
Wales ( July). UCSC Cultural Studies talk,
“Experimental Meta/physics and the Matter
of Time” (February). Course Development
Fellowship for “Women’s Studies and Scientific
Literacy,” Center for Teaching Excellence.
Reprint of Signs article, “Posthumanist
Performativity,” Beliefs, Bodies, and Being:
Feminist Reflections on Embodiment, McAlister
and Orr, eds. (Rowman and Littlefield).
Martin Berger, Assoc. Professor, History
of Art and Visual Culture. Sight Unseen:
Whiteness and American Visual Culture (UC
Press, 2005) awarded American Culture
Association’s 2006 Cawelti Prize.
Eva Bertram, Assistant Professor, Politics
and Barbara Rogoff, Professor, Psychology.
Golden Apple Awards for outstanding
undergraduate teaching in the social sciences
(October).
Nancy Chen, Assoc. Professor, Anthropology.
Workshop grant, “Asian Biotechnology: An
Emerging Field of Life, Nationalism, and
Capitalism” ( June). With Helene Moglen,
Professor, Literature, co-edited Bodies in the
Making: Transgressions and Transformations
(New Pacific Press, 2006) (see page 6).
Faye Crosby, Professor, Psychology. Kurt
Lewin Award, Society for the Psychological
Study of Social Issues (October).
Angela Davis and Neferti Tadiar,
Professor and Assoc. Professor, History of
Consciousness. Co-edited Beyond the Frame:
Women of Color and Visual Representation
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
Margaret Delaney, Professor, Ocean Sciences.
Named one of the first four Fellows of
The Oceanography
Society for her
outstanding contributions
to the field (February).
Teresa de Lauretis,
Professor, History of
Consciousness. Doctorate
honoris causa, University
of Lund, Sweden
(November).
Teresa deLauretis
Gina Dent, Assoc. Professor, Feminist Studies.
With Neferti Tadiar, co-chaired the Committee on Affirmative Action and Diversity.
and Technical Professionals (February). 2006
Maria Mitchell Women in Science Award
(May).
Melanie DuPuis, Assoc. Professor, Sociology.
2005 Frederick H. Buttel Outstanding
Scholarship Achievement Award (September).
Convener, UC Humanities Research Institute
Residential Research Group, “Eating Cultures:
Race and Food” (Fall 2006).
Dana Frank,
Professor, History.
Bananeras: Women
Transforming the
Banana Unions of
Latin America
(South End Press,
2005).
COURTESY OF DANA FRANK
Anjali Arondekar, Asst. Professor, Feminist
Studies. 2006 Ernestine Richter Avery
Fellowship, Huntington Library. Faculty
Residency Fellowship, University of California
Humanities Research Institute (Fall 2006).
Dana Frank
Marge Frantz, Professor Emerita, Women’s
Studies. Interviewed for Smith College’s
Sophia Smith Collection (December).
Rosa-Linda Fregoso, Professor, Latin
American and Latino Studies. “‘We Want
Them Alive!’: The Politics and Culture of
Human Rights,” Social Identities (March).
Scholar of the Year, Chicano/Latino Research
Center (March) (see page 7).
June Gordon, Assoc. Professor, Education.
$20,000 research fellowship to study
immigrant children in urban Japan, Japan
Foundation ( January).
Herman Gray, Professor, Sociology; Norma
Klahn, Professor, Literature; and Andrea
Steiner, Research Associate, Community
Studies. Contributing essayists, Hurricane
Katrina: Response and Responsibilities, John
Brown Childs, ed. (New Pacific Press, 2005).
JENNIFER MCNULTY
Congratulations
Gina Dent (r) discusses campus
diversity survey results with undergraduates
Denice Denton, Chancellor and Professor,
Electrical Engineering. Invested as Chancellor
(November). 2006 Educator Award, National
Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists
Roxi Power Hamilton, Lecturer, Writing.
“Take Everyone to Heaven with Us: Anne
Waldman’s Poetry Cultures,” Impossible
to Hold: Women and Culture in the 1960s
(NYU Press, 2005). Creative Writing Series
Coordinator, National Women’s Studies
Many thanks to Carla Freccero and Emily Honig
for their outstanding service as Department Chairs in 2005-06.
Special heartfelt appreciation from the entire department to Carla for her continuing service
on the Feminist Studies Executive Committee and for her unflagging energy and
profound dedication to the success of the department and all its endeavors.
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New Books by Feminist Studies Faculty
Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for
Free Speech, and Became a Feminist Rebel
Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and
the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning
Bettina Aptheker
Karen Barad
Professor of Feminist Studies and History
Professor of Feminist Studies, History of Consciousness, and Philosophy
(Seal Press/Avalon Publishing Group, forthcoming September 2006)
(Duke University Press, forthcoming Fall 2006)
Set amidst the political upheaval of
the McCarthy trials, the Vietnam War,
and the rise of the women’s movement,
Intimate Politics is a courageous and
uncompromising account of one woman’s
personal and political transformation and
a fascinating portrayal of a key chapter in
our nation’s history.
At eight years old, Bettina Aptheker
watched her family’s politics play out
in countless living rooms across the country when her father,
historian and U.S. Communist Party leader Herbert Aptheker,
testified on television in front of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s
Senate Committee in 1953. Born into one of the most
influential U.S. Communist families whose friends included
W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn,
Aptheker lived her parents’ politics witnessing first-hand one of the
most dramatic upheavals in American history. She also lived with
a terrible secret: sexual abuse and a frightening and lonely life lived
inside a home wrought with family tensions.
A gripping and beautifully rendered memoir, Intimate Politics is at
its core the story of one woman’s struggle to still the demons of her
personal world while becoming a controversial public figure herself.
Only twenty-one when she became a leader of the Free Speech
Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, a leader of young
Communists on campus, and a media darling, Aptheker at this time
was in a sexually abusive relationship, battling severe depression, and
had weathered an illegal pre-Roe abortion in Mexico. As the turmoil
of the 1960s and 70s swirled around her, Aptheker continued to be
in the spotlight as she played key roles in the defense of childhood
friend and fellow comrade Angela Davis during her trial for charges
of murder and conspiracy; she also turned a spotlight in on herself
as she came to terms with her lesbian identity. Though she became
a scholar and activist like her father, Aptheker chose to carve a very
different path for herself as a professor of women’s studies and in so
doing became a guiding light of contemporary feminism and the
head of one of the most respected departments of women’s studies,
at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Intimate Politics is the story of childhood sexual abuse, abortion,
sexual violence, activism, feminist scholarship and teaching, and the
triumph over one’s past. It’s about FBI harassment and persecution,
Jewish heritage, and lesbian identity. It is, finally, about the courage
to speak one’s truth despite the consequences and to break the sacred
silence of family secrets.
Book descriptions courtesy of the publishers.
Meeting the Universe Halfway is an ambitious book with far-reaching
implications for numerous fields in the natural sciences, social sciences, and
humanities. In this volume, Karen Barad, a theoretical physicist and feminist
theorist, elaborates her theory of agential realism. Offering an account of
the world as a whole rather than as composed of separate natural and social
realms, agential realism is at once a new epistemology, ontology, and ethics.
The starting point for Barad’s analysis is the philosophical framework of
quantum physicist Niels Bohr. Barad extends and partially revises Bohr’s
philosophical views in light of current scholarship in physics, science studies,
and the philosophy of science as well as feminist, poststructuralist, and other
critical social theories. In the process, she significantly reworks understandings
of space, time, matter, causality, agency, subjectivity, and objectivity.
In an agential realist account, the world is made of entanglements of “social” and
“natural” agencies, where the distinction between the two emerges out of specific
intra-actions. Intra-activity is an inexhaustible dynamism that configures and
reconfigures relations of space-time-matter. In explaining intra-activity,
Barad reveals questions about how nature and culture interact and change
over time to be fundamentally misguided. And she reframes understanding
of the nature of scientific and political practices and their “interrelationship.”
Thus she pays particular attention to the responsible practice of science, and
she emphasizes changes in the understanding of political practices, critically
reworking Judith Butler’s influential theory of performativity. Last but not
least, Barad uses agential realism to produce a new interpretation of quantum
physics, demonstrating that agential realism is more than a means of reflecting
on science; it can be used to actually do science.
Queer/Early/Modern
Carla Freccero
Professor of Literature, Feminist Studies, and History of Consciousness
(Duke University Press, 2005)
Queer/Early/Modern argues for a reading practice
that accounts for the queerness of temporality,
for the way past, present, and future appear out
of sequence and in dialogue in our thinking about
history and texts. Carla Freccero takes issue with
New Historicist accounts of sexual identity that
claim to respect historical proprieties and to derive
identity categories from the past. She urges us to
see how the indeterminacies of subjectivity found
in literary texts challenge identitarian constructions,
and she encourages us to read differently the relation
between history and literature. Contending that the term “queer,” in its
indeterminacy, points the way toward alternative ethical reading practices that
do justice to the after-effects of the past as they live on in the present, Freccero
proposes a model of “fantasmatic historiography” that brings together history
and fantasy, past and present, event and affect.
3
Intro to Fem Taping Project
FMST Majors’ Awards and Accomplishments
by Eric Zamost, Project Coordinator
Ritika Aggarwal, Patrice Douglass, and Lauren Stower each received
a $250 Feminist Studies Community Service Award, initiated in 2001
by Peggy Downes Baskin and Mary Solari to recognize outstanding
community service by FMST graduating seniors, for their work with
women in prison. Patrice served as project coordinator for The Inside
Out Writing Project, and Ritika and Lauren volunteered as case managers
with Friends Outside. In addition Ritika and Lauren co-taught a spring
student-directed seminar, Gender and the Prison System, which used
prisoners’ narratives and documentaries, along with works by historians,
scholars, and activists, to examine the history and ideologies of the prison
system (see page 12). Lauren was also selected to give a commencement
speech at Cowell College. The text of her speech will be posted in early
July at http://feministstudies.ucsc.edu/news.
In previous issues of The Wave
we’ve described our project
to record an entire quarter of
Professor Bettina Aptheker’s
Introduction to Feminisms course
and to make DVD copies of the
lectures available inexpensively
to high schools, community
Bettina Aptheker
colleges, universities, libraries, and
individuals. The video material has now been through one edit, and a
set of draft DVDs has been produced. We’ve been lucky enough to be
able to hire Micaela Blondet, a Film and Digital Media student, to help
with the editing process and the creation of final versions of the DVDs.
Micah Bennett-Cauchon received a $100 stipend from Feminist Studies
to attend ATHGO International’s April symposium “The Architects of
the Future: Reforming the UN to Meet the Millennium Development
Goals” at the United Nations (see page 12).
To get a taste of what we’re working on, go to www.IntroToFem.org,
where you can see a six-minute clip in which Bettina gives her definition
of feminism. We’ve also set up a new email address for this project: send
email to DVDs (at) IntroToFem (dot) org, and we'll let you know when
DVDs are available.
Candy Guinea participated in the Faculty Mentor Program
Undergraduate Research Colloquium in June where she presented her
research on “The First Civil Rights Movement,” which argues that
activist work by African American women in the late 1800s cleared the
way for the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Her mentor was Bettina
Aptheker.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ERIC ZAMOST
Undergraduate News
This project would not have been possible without generous financial
support from many individuals, and we thank them for their donations.
We welcome additional donations, which would help make the DVDs
available to those who might not otherwise be able to afford them.
See back cover for details on how to donate.
....................................................................................................................................................................................
Staff News and Congratulations
JIM MACKENZIE
Nicolette Czarrunchick, FMST Department Manager, enjoyed
celebrating the Women’s Center 20th anniversary in October with
over a hundred supporters and friends. “It was wonderful to recall the
Opening Celebration in 1985 and to reflect on how much the Center has
flourished over two decades.” In winter she had a splendid time in Italy
and Paris with her daughters, and in spring she greeted the Dalai Lama
at San Francisco airport. Much joy.
Corinne Miller
Congratulations to STARS Director Corinne
Miller for receiving the UCSC Alumni Association’s
Outstanding Staff Award this year! Her over
twenty years of service to transfer and re-entry
students is commendable, exceptional, and has led to
innumerable successes for thousands of students.
Corinne Taylor-Cyngiser, Department
Assistant (www.geocities.com/cyngiserfamily),
has her hands and heart full raising
a feminist son and continuing her
involvement in local community groups.
This year she initiated a social justice
documentary movie series in her home
town of La Honda and edited the FMST
newsletter while visiting family in Israel.
Corinne Taylor-Cyngiser
with son Theo in Haifa, Israel
John Thompson completed an energetic first year in Kresge Academic
Services, assisting UCSC faculty and other community members in
4
various ways, including staffing the War on Terror Teach-In (see page 1).
John is also Co-chair of the Santa Cruz Chapter of the ACLU.
Betsy Wootten has been enjoying her first year of semi-retirement,
working part-time in FMST and volunteering at Animal Services. She
visited Washington State and Washington DC, took her first trip abroad
to Italy in 2005, and is looking forward to touring Ireland this year.
Many thanks to the FMST student staff for their efforts in 2005-2006!
Executive Committee: Ritika Aggarwal and Sandra Alvarez for representing undergraduate and
graduate students, respectively, on the department’s
governing body.
Office
Assistants: Natalie Arellano,
Sheila Ngo, and Jaymie
Orphanidys for helping to
maintain a professional and
efficient office environment.
Library Assistants: Heaven
Hodges, Jenna Horner
Sheila Ngo, John Thompson, and
Nicolette Czarrunchick (l-r)
(senior library assistant),
and Flavia Uselton for their commitment to the collection, initiative in
holding a book sale, and assistance with gathering donations for the Women
in Prison book project (see page 21). Special Projects: Aaron Tamayo
for production assistance on The Wave and updating the department’s
web site.
2005-2006 Event Highlights
The feminist community at UCSC is vibrant, diverse, and exceptionally
energetic, as evidenced by the many events and activities showcased in this
newsletter and by the following partial list of this year’s highlights, cosponsored by Feminist Studies.
FALL
Kresge College hosted a Women Film Directors Night featuring two
L.A. filmmakers discussing the production and grassroots promotion
of The 1 Second Film – a handcrafted collaborative, non-profit, IMAX
film celebrating women’s sexuality and benefiting the Global Fund for
Women.
Savyon Liebrecht spoke on “Israeli Women Writers and Their Effects
on Israeli Culture.” Born to Polish Holocaust survivors who immigrated
to Israel soon after her birth, Liebrecht’s novels, stories, television scripts,
and plays often wrestle with her family’s personal relationship to the
European genocide and the realities of living in
modern day Israel. Liebrecht’s U.S. tour promoted
the English translation of her new book, A Good
Place for the Night.
Ika Hügel-Marshall read excerpts from
Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany,
her autobiography about the intersections of
everyday and institutional racisms growing up
Savyon Liebrecht
Afro-German in post-World War II Germany.
Winner of the 1996 Audre Lorde Literary Award, Invisible
Woman is one of only a few autobiographies chronicling the
experience of Blacks during this time and has contributed
significantly to the emerging field of Black European and
German Studies.
Anna Agathangelou, Assistant Professor of Women’s
Studies and Politics at York University and Co-Director
of the Global Change Institute based in Nicosia, Cyprus,
presented “Sex and Desires in the ‘Shadows’: Transnational
Migration and the Peripheral State.” Agathangelou’s work
engages debates within the fields of feminist and cultural
studies, international relations, international political economy and
sexuality, human rights, and trauma studies.
Tapati Guha-Thakurta, UC Berkeley Visiting Professor of Art History,
gave a talk entitled “Travels, Returns, Repatriations: The Contrary
Careers of India’s Art Objects,” which explored the ambivalence and
instability of identities surrounding the contemporary lives of ancient
Indian art objects, including the recent modes of religious reclamation
and reinscription of Indian sculpted objects that threaten to subvert
their parallel lives as “works of art.” Guha-Thakurta is most recently the
author of Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and
Postcolonial India (2004).
WINTER
The Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community’s Women as
Social Warriors IV: Prevenir y Proteger, Latinas and the HIV/AIDS
Epidemic focused on HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness and featured
Xóchitl Castañeda, Director of the California-Mexico Health Initiative;
Barbara Garcia, Deputy Director of Health for San Francisco; and
Juanita Quintero of UCSF. The event also included participation by
Santa Cruz County health policy leaders, including Leslie Goodfriend,
of the County Health Services Agency HIV Prevention Program, and
UCSC Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies Patricia Zavella,
whose research is a call to action for new outreach and prevention models
that address the social context of women in migrant communities.
The New Sweat-Free Campus Campaign was organized by Comercio
Justo, a UCSC student organization dedicated to fair trade and workers’
rights advocacy, working in conjunction with United States Against
Sweatshops to stop the production of collegiate apparel under sweatshop
conditions. Women union leaders from factories in Thailand, Kenya,
and Indonesia inspired attendees to create
change, starting with the clothes on their
backs and in their campus stores.
Inter-Disciplining Asia-Pacific-America:
A Symposium on Knowledge, Politics,
and the University, co-sponsored by the
Asia-Pacific-America Research Cluster
and the Asian American/Pacific Islander
Resource Center, sought to critically
examine the field of Asian-PacificAmerican Studies in the abstract and also
to constructively brainstorm the future of
the field’s incarnation at UCSC, which is one of only two
UC campuses without an Asian American and/or Pacific
Island Studies program. Featured feminist faculty included
Vilashini Cooppan (Literature), Neferti Tadiar (History of
Consciousness), Karen Tei Yamashita (Literature/Creative
Writing), and Alice Yang Murray (History). Feminist
Studies Assistant Professor Anjali Arondekar helped to
organize the event.
Anthropology graduate students organized a symposium
entitled Roads and Walls: Concrete Histories featuring
more than a dozen presentations addressing how concrete
histories of particular roads and walls open abstract questions
of power and knowledge. Feminist Studies Parenthetical Notation
graduate students who participated included Megan Moodie, Yen-Ling
Tsai, and Sasha Welland.
The Religion and Culture Research Cluster and Jewish Studies hosted
a visit by Ann Pellegrini, Associate Professor of Performance Studies
and Religious Studies at NYU, whose work explores the intersections
of gender and sexuality, religion, psychoanalysis, trauma studies,
performance, autobiography and confessional culture, childhood studies,
and Jewish cultural studies. The respondent for the talk, entitled
“Getting Serious,” was Daniel Boyarin, Professor of Talmudic Culture,
Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric at UC Berkeley;
affiliate of the Department of Women’s Studies; and core faculty of the
minor in Gay and Lesbian Studies.
SPRING
The History Department sponsored a talk by Tera Hunter entitled
“Until Death or Distance Do You Part: Slavery and Marriage in the 19th
Century,” based on a new book she’s writing concerning marriages of
5
MALCS Summer Institute
by Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel, Assistant Professor of FMST and Institute Organizer
The Feminist Studies
Department
invites
you to participate in
the MALCS Summer
Institute, August 2-5 at
Oakes College, UCSC.
Mujeres Activas en Letras
y Cambio Social/Women
Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel Active in Letters and
Social Change (MALCS) is an organization
of Chicanas/Latinas and Native American
women working in academia and across the
community. The conference will begin with
a welcome event and will continue with two
full days of panels, workshops, plenaries, and
events. This annual gathering brings a diverse
group of women from institutions across the
nation to share their academic, creative, and
activist work. The institute also provides a
unique opportunity for women to network
and to offer mentorship for undergraduates,
graduate students, faculty, and community
members. In addition to the annual institute,
MALCS also funds a peer-reviewed scholarly
publication, The Journal of Chicana Studies, and
offers a writing workshop for junior scholars.
Each year the MALCS Summer Institute
invites academic scholars, artists, and activists
to participate as keynote speakers. In the past,
some of the speakers have included Norma
Alarcón, Sandra Cisneros, Gloria Anzaldúa,
Carla Trujillo, Ana Castillo, and Cherríe
Moraga.
This year’s theme, “Transfronteras: Generations and Geographies,” will elicit an
interdisciplinary conversation on multiple
border crossings across time and space. We
have selected a theme broad enough to attract
a variety of topics that foreground attention
to transborder phenomena such as migration,
warfare, human rights, popular cultural
expressions, and natural disasters. For this
reason we invited
scholars from across
the Americas to
broaden the debate
on the ways race,
class, gender, and
......................................................................................
Institute for Advanced
Feminist Research
POSTER DESIGN: ERIN MURPHY
by Helene Moglen, Professor of Literature and FMST
and Institute Director
Beginning in 2003-04, under the rubric
Feminism and the Public Sphere, the Institute
for Advanced Feminist Research (IAFR) has
sponsored projects that are collaborative and
interdisciplinary. These are conceptualized in
ways that allow faculty and students to work in
a creative space between the university and the
community, drawing on academic research and
committed to activism.
In 2005-06, the IAFR continued to develop
its two multi-year projects, Feminisms and
Global War and Generations in Action. For Feminisms and Global War,
Professor Lisa Rofel led a roundtable discussion entitled “Feminism and
Security: What is to be Done?” At this event, a group of UC faculty
discussed ways of intervening in public debates about security in order to
develop alternative ways of imagining collective life.
In winter, the IAFR continued a conversation about global capitalism,
started the previous year. Participants in the seminar read and discussed a
paper written by Professor Anna Tsing, which countered the tendency of
many Left theorists to subsume gender, race, and class in their analyses of
capitalism. In fall, Megan Moodie, a graduate student in Anthropology,
6
sexuality are intertwined with larger global
processes. While MALCS has traditionally
focused on topics spanning the social sciences
and humanities, this year we are also committed
to bridging discussions, panels, and workshops
targeted to women across the sciences.
The institute will begin with a keynote address
and includes plenary panels on the topics of
AfroLatinidades, Transnational Sexuality, and
Women’s Indigenous Native Caucus. We
are also collaborating with the 13th Annual
Women of Color Film and Video Festival (see
box below). We encourage you to participate in
both exciting events.
For more information, please see our web site:
www.institute.malcs.net. For questions, e-mail
[email protected].
13th Annual Women of Color
Film and Video Festival
“Regenerations”
August 5-6, 2006
The longest running event of its kind, the UCSC festival continues to spark
dialogue across communities locally, nationally, and transnationally by
providing a platform for critical explorations of race, nation, class, gender,
ethnicity, and sexuality. “Regenerations,” this year’s theme, draws inspiration
from the number 13 in the Mayan calendar, which symbolizes transformation,
movement, and change.
For more information, visit www2.ucsc.edu/woc.
showed a film about Cindy Sheehan’s anti-war activities and led a
discussion with community and university people about the forms that
local anti-war activism might take. Megan had a follow-up discussion
in spring with representatives of Veterans for Peace of Santa Cruz and
Monterey counties. Finally, the IAFR was an active co-sponsor of the
day-long War on Terror Teach-in (see page 1). Follow-up activities are
planned for Fall 2006, and an effort will be made to create UCSC as a
surveillance-free zone. Helene Moglen and Lisa Rofel are serving on the
Faculty Against War organizing committee.
The most ambitious effort of Generations in Action for 2005-06 was a
three-day conference in October on body modification, Bodies in the
Making: Transgressions and Transformations. The conference was
planned in 2004-05 by a group of faculty and graduate students and
organized by Professors Nancy Chen and Helene Moglen. Participants
from several universities and the local community considered the social,
economic, sexual, political, medical, and technological practices through
which the body is experienced and produced. The essays, collected and
edited by Nancy Chen and Helene Moglen, were published in a volume
named after the conference by the local New Pacific Press in June.
Feminism and Transnationalism Seminar Series
by Radhika Mongia, Assistant Professor of FMST and Events Committee Chair
The Feminism and Transnationalism Seminar Series continued this
year with a range of events that extended conversations on the relations
between feminism and transnationalism to
include discussions on topics such as international
law, science and technology, indigeneity, and the
institutionalization of women’s studies programs.
In the fall Patricia Viseur Sellers visited campus.
Ms. Sellers is Legal Adviser for Gender-Related
Crimes in the Office of the Prosecutor for the
International Criminal Court and has been
engaged in the past several years with the work
Patricia Viseur Sellers
of the Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia
and Rwanda. Her public talk and seminar addressed the work of the
Tribunals, the gendered legacy of patriarchal legal culture, and the impact
of feminist theory on the international legal arena.
the Problem of Freedom in California, 1769-1848.” Also in winter,
we hosted UC Irvine Professor of Women’s Studies Kavita Philip.
Drawing on her essay, “What is a Technological Author? The Pirate
Function and Intellectual Property,” Professor Philip led a seminar for
members of the proposed Feminist Studies graduate faculty and other
campus colleagues on issues of intellectual property rights, gender,
and globalization that arise from new regimes of authorship and
ownership. Her public lecture, “Technoscience, Feminism, Transnational
Analytics: Critical Convergences,” explored the emerging and possible
conversations between the research fields of feminist transnational
studies, technoscience studies, and colonial/postcolonial studies.
The spring term began with a visit by Wang Zheng, Professor of
Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. Feminist Studies
graduate faculty had an opportunity to discuss the institutional aspects of
feminism and transnationalism with a focus on Professor Zheng’s work
creating transnational feminist programs in China over the last decade.
In the winter UCSC Professor of History Beth Haas met with members
of the feminist studies graduate faculty to discuss her book in-progress,
tentatively titled “The Mission-Tribal Frontier: Native Visions and
..............................................
..........................................................................................
Chicano/Latino Research Center
by Aída Hurtado, Professor of Psychology & Center Director
The Chicano/Latino Research Center in partnership with El Centro
and the Latino Alumni Network had a very productive year with the
inauguration of three major events: The Frida Kahlo Ball and Awards
Ceremony (Fall), the Scholar of the Year Award (Winter), and the Gloria
Anzaldúa Distinguished Lecture/Activist Award
(Spring). The Frida Kahlo Ball was attended by
almost 200 faculty, students, staff, and community
people. Chancellor Denice Denton introduced
the alumni award given to San Jose mayor Ron
Gonzalez, and Professor John Brown Childs
introduced the Transcommunality Award given to
Professor Angela Davis and social activist Betita
Martinez.
Betita Martinez
Professors Rosa-Linda Fregoso and Patricia Zavella, both in the Latin
American/Latino Studies Department, received the Scholar of the Year
Award and were honored at an award ceremony held at the Santa Cruz
Museum of Art and History. Each recipient gave a lecture as part of
the event, the theme of which was “Transnational, Transgenerational
Feminisms: Women Working Together for Social Justice.” Professor
Fregoso’s lecture, “‘We Want Them Alive!’ The Politics and Culture of
Human Rights,”
addressed
the
dramatic rise in
violence
against
women in Mexico
and the rest of
Latin
America.
Zavella discussed
Rosa-Linda Fregoso and Patricia Zavella (center, l-r
the
immigrant
wearing scarves) with UCSC graduate students
Our last event for the year was a two-day visit
by Joanne Barker, an enrolled member of the
Delaware Tribe of Indians (Lenape) of eastern
Oklahoma and Acting Chair and Assistant
Professor of American Indian Studies at San
Francisco State University. Professor Barker’s
lecture, “On Gender, Sovereignty, and the
Discourse of Rights in Native Women’s Activism
Joanne Barker
(Canada circa 1980s),” examined Native women’s
efforts to effect a change in the 1876 Indian Act of Canada that established patrilineality as the criterion for determining Indian status, rights
to participate in band government, and rights to live on reserves. In 1983
.........................................................................................
backlash in the United States in a lecture entitled “Resistance to U.S.
Nativist Discourse Through Transnational Popular Culture.”
The Gloria Anzaldúa Distinguished Lecture/Activist Award was the
third event and took place at the Mello Center in Watsonville. This
year’s award recipient was acclaimed
Chicana author Sandra Cisneros
who read from her most recent novel
Caramelo.
The three major events were
fundraisers for the Undergraduate
Research Apprenticeship Program
(URAP), now in its sixth year
Artist Ester Hernández (l) and
of operation with more than 70
writer Sandra Cisneros, with Ester’s
artpiece in honor of Gloria Anzaldúa
students having participated since
the program’s inception. Our fundraising events were successful in
garnering adequate funds for next year’s program.
In addition to these three major events, CLRC in conjunction with its
partners also sponsored the colloquium series Transgenerational Chicana/
Latina Lived Feminisms: Stories from the Trenches featuring seven
speakers. Included in the presenters was the noted L.A.-based artist and
7
Crimes Against Women
Women! Women! Women!
Wake up!
Light the lamps of your intelligence,
spirituality, feeling, community,
action to liberty.
Wake up and notice the beauty in yourself
so you can see the beauty in your sister.
Accept yourself, accept her, embrace yourself
so you will embrace her, learn to love yourself
so you can love your sister.
Your sister is your mirror.
She is your sturdy arm,
Lean on her.
Let us lean on each other.
Competition,
Lies,
separated our mothers,
separate us,
weaken our sixth sense,
a restorative of ancient wisdom,
mother wit, and memory of
who girl children and women are.
We are strong, because we survive,
centuries beyond the burning times
when independent women, women of spirit,
herbal wisdom, philosophy, love, birthing,
vision, wisdom, and government,
not of man,
were burned
over five million of them
at the stake of God,
in the name of
Blessed Right
Holy Church.
Not every woman sacrificed in fire
was a witch—She should have been!
Whose sins did she purify?
Whose lamb was she?
Not even Tituba,
Black witch of Salem,
was guilty of stealing people, starving slaves,
ripping black babies from breasts,
turning mother into baby maker, gadget,
a stick of furniture, a mule.
This is not the work of witches!
Barbara Lee is not of Salem
but violence does threaten her
because she believes in life—
not murder, not terrorism,
not “an eye for an eye,”
not death at an early age,
not dying in the name of
Peace at any cost.
We survive under patriarchy
male domination
over the breath we breathe,
the salaries we make,
the quality of life we live.
There is no Equal Rights Amendment
for Women;
8
by Ekua Omosupe
Alice Paul wrote it in 1921.
In this new century woman cannot claim
equal rights to men throughout the United
States and all its jurisdictions;
Congress does not enforce this article by
legislation,
Congress did not ratify these human requests;
This is a crime against women.
Sexual harassment on the job, in the streets,
at home, on campus, in the doctor’s office;
incest; sex slavery; pornography; genital
mutilation; denial of sexual identity; coercive
birth control; sterilization against their wills
These are crimes against women.
Woman beating; rape; bride price; unaffordable
child care; HIV/AIDS; poverty; no
living wage; prison; dismantling of welfare;
inadequate educational opportunities; no
education; cancer in the breast; cancer in the
uterus; cancer in the heart; anorexia; bulimia;
psychotropic drugs to silence; distorted
images; stereotypes; homelessness; no mental
health care; drug addiction; low self image,
low self esteem
The “Rule of Thumb”
Old English Law sanctioned
husband’s right to “chastise his wife with an
instrument no wider than his thumb.”
Does not apply here, this century, in a code book,
But it is implied when 250 thousand women
die yearly
under the choke of a loving husband, jealous
boyfriend.
This “Rule of Thumb” does not apply
But women die under the thumb, knife, boot,
gun, penis, media,
law of patriarchy,
male-centered, male dominated.
for Women.
This is a crime against women.
The “Right to Vote,” that bright victory for
Women of the 20th century is not enough
to rest on, to use as declaration of
Sisterhood; Equal Rights; Politic of Liberation,
A few women in power in high places can
distract us,
Seduce us into believing there is a balance
of power:
How many women have been president of the
United States?
How many women are on the Supreme Court?
How many women are U.S. Senators?
How many women are U.S. Representatives?
How many women are partners in major
law firms?
How many women are tenured professors,
CEOs, athletic team owners?
How many women are illiterate, How many
women and children live in and under poverty?
How many women are homeless? How many
women are addicted to drugs?
How many women are mentally ill? How
many women are sick unto death and have no
medical insurance? How many women
will be raped in the next twenty minutes?
How many women will die from AIDS
complications? How many women will be
beaten in the next hour? How many women
will die today and their deaths could be
prevented?
for Women.
This is a crime against women:
male solipsism,
male narcissism,
male domination.
Competition,
Lies,
separated our mothers,
separate us,
weaken our sixth sense,
a restorative of ancient wisdom,
mother wit, and memory of
who girl children and women are.
We are strong, because we survive,
centuries beyond the burning times
when independent women, women of spirit,
herbal wisdom, philosophy, love, birthing,
vision, wisdom, and government,
not of man,
were burned.
Their courage is our legacy;
Their lives testimony to the charge they lay
before us:
Women! Women! Women!
Wake up!
Light the lamps of your intelligence,
spirituality, feeling, community,
action to liberty.
Wake up and notice the beauty in yourself
so you can see the beauty in your sister.
Accept yourself, accept her, embrace yourself
so you will embrace her; learn to love yourself
so you can love your sister.
Your sister is your mirror.
She is your sturdy arm,
Lean on her.
Let her lean on you.
Patriarchy will not save you!
Ekua Omosupe is a poet and essayist who
earned her Ph.D. in Literature from UCSC in
1997. She has been an English instructor at
Cabrillo College since 1992. Her poems and essays
are published in various journals and anthologies,
and her first book of poetry, Legacy, was published
by Talking Circles Press in 1997.
Interrupted Life: Incarcerated Mothers in the U.S. by Roberta Valdez
children are the fastest growing population
of incarcerated persons in the U.S.; and (b)
the siting of women’s prisons at substantial
distances from families, and the impact of
siting policies and practices on the ability of
incarcerated mothers to sustain contact with
their children and thus sustain custody.
Through the efforts of UCSC Women’s Center
Director Roberta Valdez Interrupted Life was
brought to UCSC in April and exhibited at the
UCSC Women’s Center and Porter College’s
Faculty Gallery. The Santa Cruz campus was
the first public showing after an installation
at the California Institution for Women in
Corona, CA, in March.
Artist
Sasha
Harris-Cronin
contributed a stunning 12x6 foot
piece showing thousands of rules
governing institutional visitation
policies, focusing especially on
rules shaping relations and contacts
between incarcerated women and
their children.
The “Centerpiece” is a collage of 4x6 inch
postcards. Working with teachers inside
women’s prisons, Interrupted Life distributed
thousands of blank cards asking incarcerated
women to use them for writing, drawing,
and collaging various kinds of messages. The
cards suggest the system’s power to constrain,
diminish, and homogenize life – with each card
reflecting the intense individuality of its maker.
Another piece in the exhibit
created by ten teenage artists in Columbus,
Ohio, was “Inside/Outside,” an extraordinary
corridor of paintings capturing their individual
and collective interpretations, some based
on personal experience, of the impact of
incarceration on mothers and their children.
With “Mapping the Lock Up,” artist Kevin
Pyle created a dramatic, large-scale mapping
installation that illustrates (a) mothers of young
SUSAN WILLMARTH 2005
Interrupted Life: Incarcerated Mothers in the
United States is a beautiful and dramatic
exhibition of folk/outsider art, providing a
powerful occasion for paying attention to the
facts and experiences of incarceration in the
U.S. The national curator is historian Rickie
Solinger.
While the exhibit was on campus, the Women’s
Center presented related public events. One
event, co-sponsored with the ACLU of Santa
Cruz, was a presentation by Professor Nancy
Stoller, followed by a panel of individuals
representing organizations working with
people in women’s prisons: Inside Out Writing
Project, Gemma, Friends Outside, Critical
Resistance, Legal Services for Prisoners
with Children, Justice Now, and the ACLU
Drug Policy Reform Project. The talk and
discussion’s focus was incarcerated mothers in
California prisons.
A visitor to the exhibit wrote in
response to viewing the exhibit,
“Extremely powerful, moving and
educational. Thank you for opening
my eyes and heart.”
A second event at the Women’s
Center in April was a workshop
with Critical Resistance staff called
Abolition 101, which dealt with options to
incarceration and the growing prison industrial
complex.
Two student-directed projects related to people
in women’s prisons are housed at the Women’s
Center: The Inside Out Writing Project and
the Justice Now “The We That Sets Us Free”
curriculum project. Anyone interested getting
involved on campus as a prison abolition activist,
please contact Roberta Valdez at the Women’s
Center at 831.459.2169.
....................................................................................................................................................................................
The Notorious Bettie Page
Reviewed by Carla Freccero, Professor of Literature, FMST, and History of Consciousness
Directed by feminist filmmaker Mary Harron,
The Notorious Bettie Page follows the life
of Bettie Page (played by Gretchen
Mol), born in 1923 and growing up
in a conservative Protestant family in
Nashville. Married to a soldier who beats
her and then gang raped after leaving
him, she escapes to New York City, hoping
to become an actress. She poses for camera
clubs who pay for modeling sessions, eventually
meeting photographer Jerry Tibbs (Kevin Carroll), who suggests her
signature hair style, bangs across the forehead. She then meets Irving and
Paula Klaw (Chris Bauer and Lili Taylor), who run a specialty porn studio;
finding a community of sorts, she goes on to have a celebrated career as
America’s most famous pin-up model from the 1950s. Page is still alive
by the way, and if she had had any interest in this film about her pin-up
days (apparently she doesn’t) she might have been proud and delighted
that such an intelligent group of women actors, directors, writers, and
producers crafted a worthy feminist tribute to her modeling career.
Harron follows what might otherwise look like a melodramatic storyline
(from early abuse to the porn industry) without claiming a simplistic
connection between them and without either demonizing or glorifying
the sex industry. Instead, we see the Klaws as ordinary, hard-working
immigrants who treat their models and their clients with decency and
respect. Gretchen Mol does a fantastic job of portraying someone who
likes her body and feels comfortable with nudity. Page is neither defiant
nor ashamed, having no particular prejudice against the work and seeing
in it no evil. Rather than a hapless victim of men or of low self-esteem,
Bettie Page comes across as someone who appreciates her contribution
and understands the pornographic images for what they are: smoke and
mirrors, costumes and shoes.
We also see Bettie Page waiting to testify at the 1955 Senate hearings on
pornography conducted by Democratic Senator Estes Kefauver, who also
attacked the comic book industry for promoting juvenile delinquency.
The contrast between the descriptions and everything we’ve seen Page
do is amusing, but the movie also manages to change our perspective a
little by attaching different descriptions to the images. Ironically, what we
learn is that the porn industry treats Bettie Page better than the Senate
does, for her voice is completely ignored. What emerges is thus a feminist
critique, not of female victimization in the porn industry, but of women’s
access to power.
9
FMST Graduate Student Awards and Accomplishments
Victoria Bañales Literature (FMST) Ph.D.
for Twentieth-Century Latin American and
U.S. Latina Women’s Literature and the Paradox
of Dictatorship and Democracy (Summer 2005);
tenure-track position, Cabrillo College
English Department; “‘The Face Value of
Dreams’: Gender, Race, Class and the Politics
of Cosmetic Surgery,” Beyond the Frame (N.
Tadiar and A. Davis, eds., 2005).
Julie Beck Sociology (FMST) Ph.D. for
Offending Women: Discipline, Punishment, and
Re-Forming Selves in a Therapeutic-Community
Drug Treatment Program (Spring).
Angelina Chin History (FMST) Ph.D. for
Bound to Emancipate: Management of LowerClass Women in 1920s and 1930s Urban South
China (Spring) (see below); FMST Dissertation
Fellowship for “Women’s Labor, Sexuality
and Migration in Early 20th Century South
China” (Winter); 2006-08 Andrew Mellon
Postdoc Fellowship, Pomona College.
Kami Chisholm (History of Consciousness)
first major documentary film project FtF:
Female to Femme (www.altcinema.com/
ftf.html) premiered at Frameline30: The San
Francisco International LGBT Film Festival
(June).
Michelle Erai (History of Consciousness)
finished collecting data in England and is
working in New Zealand with Amokura, a
consortium of the seven major Northern tribes,
dedicated to ending family violence.
Gillian Goslinga History of Consciousness
(FMST) Ph.D. for Virgin Birth in South
India: Childless Women, Modernity, and the
Paandimunisvaran of Madurai (Spring).
Sora Han History of Consciousness (FMST)
Ph.D. for Bonds of Representation: Race, Law,
and the Feminine in Post-Civil Rights America
(Spring); taught at the Center for the Study
of Ethnicity and Race, Columbia University
(Spring); “Strict Scrutiny: The Tragedy
of Constitutional Law,” CUNY Graduate
Center’s conference “Beyond Biopolitics”
(March); 2006-07 President’s Postdoc, UC
Berkeley’s Boalt Law School, and Visiting
Scholar, Boalt’s Center for the Study of Law
and Society; 2003-06 Davis-Putter Scholarship,
Sora thanks them for their support of her Ph.D.
at UCSC and J.D. at UCLA.
Pascha Bueno Hansen (Politics) Pacific
Rim Research Program Award for “Women’s
Human Rights and the Internal Conflict in
Peru,” Center for Global, International and
Regional Studies and National Women’s
Studies Association Dissertation Fellowship.
Katie Kanagawa (Literature) passed her
qualifying exams (Fall) and advanced to
candidacy (Spring).
Krista Lynes (History of Consciousness)
FMST Dissertation Fellowship for “Resolutions: Video, Visibility, and Women’s Human
Rights” (Summer 2006).
Megan Moodie Anthropology (FMST) Ph.D.
for Culture or Freedom? The Gendered Intimacies
of Modernization in Rajasthan, India (Winter).
Lee Ritscher Literature (FMST) Ph.D. for
The Semiotics of Rape in Renaissance English
Literature (Fall).
Noah Tamarkin (Anthropology) 2005-06
Fulbright grant for dissertation research in
South Africa.
Heather Turcotte (Politics) Feminist Theory
and Gender Studies section’s Graduate Student
Paper Award for “Disciplining Cartographies:
Critical Inquiries into the Methods and
Theories of Feminist International Relations,”
2006 International Studies Association
conference (March).
Gina Velasco (History of Consciousness)
Institute for Humanities Research Dissertation
Fellowship for “Figures of Transnational
Belonging: Gender, Sexuality, and the Nation
in Filipino Diasporic Cultural Production”
(Fall).
Megan Yost Psychology (FMST) Ph.D. for
Consensual Sexual Sadomasochism and Sexual
Aggression Perpetration: Exploring the Erotic
Value of Power (Spring); “Sexual Fantasies
of Individuals Involved in Sadomasochistic
Relationships: The Impact of Gender and
S/M Role on Fantasy Content,” “Safe, Sane
and Consensual: Contemporary Perspectives
on Sadomasochism” (D. Langdridge and
M. Barker, eds., forthcoming 2007).
Congratulations to the 2006-07 FMST
Dissertation Fellowship recipients:
Pascha Bueno Hansen, Yen-Ling Tsai,
and Heather Turcotte
....................................................................................................................................................................................
Huh? Who is Leeaang Lee...k...k...Ching???
by Angelina Chin, History (Feminist Studies) graduate student
These past few months I have been busy writing my dissertation. One night, I interviewed Liang Liqing, a labor
activist in Guangzhou whom I met in a library two years ago. She told me many things about how she started the labor
movement in South China. And then she asked me about what I do. I tried to say that I am both a historian and a
feminist activist focusing on issues in East Asia. After a few seconds of silence, she said that is impossible, since history
is just so far from reality that historians can only be nerds sitting in archives, not activists protesting on the streets. I tried
to defend myself, but couldn’t find the right words…
Then I woke up and realized that it had been a dream. I wish I really had the luck to talk to Liang in person. But
unfortunately, Liang is not a living person anymore. She was involved in a labor movement started by teahouse
waitresses in 1935. I could only find her name in newspapers stored in the special collection of a library.
Angelina Chin
This dream reveals two dilemmas I have. One is to discover the voices of the subjects in my project, who are mostly dead by now. Historians are
constantly criticized for not being able to engage with real people. I don’t think this can be helped, since most subaltern subjects were illiterate and seldom
kept records of their lives. And unless you work on recent history, there is no way to interview your subjects. Sometimes I feel that all we can do is to
read through scattered materials and try our best to weave an incomplete story, while reminding our readers of the silence of women in historical records.
continued on next page
10
by Astrid Schrader,
History of Consciousness (FMST) graduate student
.............................................................................................................................................................................................................
Graduate Work in
Feminist Science Studies
As a former graduate student in physics,
I turned to feminist theories in trying to
understand the paradoxes encountered by
“women in science.” How is it possible to
contribute to reliable knowledges when the
very same apparatuses, ostensibly producing
objective knowledge, inevitably mark you as
“different” – an “other” of science? In physics,
it seems, the very scientificity of science is
at stake when women and racial minorities
Astrid Schrader
become knowledge-producing subjects.
The fatality of paradox, I argue, hinges crucially on conceptions of
temporality and materiality. Many feminists have been pointing
out that difference cannot be thought within the spatiotemporal
frameworks of dominant philosophies. In science the possibility of
difference cannot be dissociated from the making of difference, and
this necessitates a reconfiguration of objective practices.
Feminist Studies Professor Karen Barad’s “agential realist” framework
(see page 3) not only provides tools to rework exclusions but also illustrates
how scientific practices can be both responsible and objective. Reading
Barad together with Jacques Derrida, I ask how responsibility in science
can be linked to responsibility to human and nonhuman “others.” Can
a progressive production and accumulation of knowledge be related to
assumptions of essential differences between non/humans?
My inquiry into toxic dinoflagellate research explores how the pertinent
research questions change when the allegedly ahistorical “objects” of
science are endowed with history and material agency. The complex
behavior of a particular kind of toxic dinoflagellate, Pfiesteria piscicida
– fatefully named “the fish killer” – has been a matter of an expansive
scientific-political controversy. These unicellular microorganisms
thrive in polluted waters and are held responsible for the death of
billions of fish in the Mid-Atlantic estuaries. Pfiesteria’s nutrientcontrolled and history-dependent shape transformations not only
challenge conventional methods to establish an organism’s identity
but also change the very meanings of causality and temporality. The
material agency of these extraordinary microorganisms introduces
a fundamental indeterminacy into toxic dino science, leaving space
for responsibility that is not attributable to particular subjects. This,
I argue, has far-reaching consequences for environmental policy
decisions, which can no longer be endlessly deferred because of
scientific uncertainties or “gaps” in knowledge that scientists would be
able to close with better or newer tools.
About Throwing Away to May 1
by Ceylan Cemali,
History of Consciousness (FMST) graduate student
“We want to build studio apartments,” the white man in the
cowboy hat said to the group
of Mexican workers from his
post at the border of his Santa
Cruz property. Studios were to
replace our Mexican neighbors
– the men who fed us on our
first day and lady Francesca
who yelled at her dogs at 7:40
Ceylan Cemali with children in
28 Haziran
every morning by our window
through which the kids’ ball made its place on the keyboard I tap away at
each day to finish my dissertation.
I conducted art and writing workshops in 28 Haziran, Izmit and
Galatasaray, Istanbul for my research with children who work on the streets
and youth who stay on the streets. While the paperpickers demanded their
spirit in my writing, the storytellers of Galatasaray made a listener out of
me. They asked me: “ Yagmur
tane tane yagmasaydi,
Hocam?” What if the
rain did not drop in piece by piece, Hocam?
Separating garbage for paper on the streets is how paperpickers sustain
their homes, always on the verge of destruction. There is a nauseating
routine to picking paper on the streets – collecting it so that it can be sold
within the right category of paper to the right kind of people. Paper comes
in many forms. My father sold books made of paper, going door to door, as
I learned of paper, bargaining, and school on my grandmother’s lap.
Think about all the paper you throw away each day, all the times you
crumple up a piece of paper, all the paper you’ve heard torn and crushed.
Hear the forms that make and play around with lives – lives framed on
paper, paper bordered by knives, knives that patrol stories.
The bulldozer attacked the houses across the alley from our window. It
was louder than the story I was writing about paper and the noises paper
makes when crushed as the bulldozer crushed the houses here, as if they,
too, were made of paper.
It is the magic of remembering that keeps me going with my research, not
an elite academic community. I recently ran into a magical person who
remembered how some fieldwork participants referred to me. Instead of
an ordinary hello she said, “I remember the youths’ feelings, their art and
writing, and your presence there. You were Hocam!” She had only heard a
presentation of a small piece of my research. Lost for words, I invited her
to visit my class, Writing Women’s Lives. And I remembered, in spite of
it all, I would finish.
....................................................................................................................................................................................
CHIN continued from previous page
The second dilemma is the difficulty to work with activists and scholars of other disciplines to talk about how history is relevant to women today.
Feminists in the U.S. in particular find it hard to relate to my research, which is about women in South China in the 1920s and 1930s. I used to blame
others’ narrow-mindedness for this. Now, I think perhaps I share the responsibility of making cross-cultural conversation happen. Perhaps we historians
should not limit ourselves to transmitting facts from the past of our locations, but also should actively critique contemporary culture and demonstrate the
relevance of our research to broader scholarship and activism across regions and time spectrum.
11
Feminist Studies Undergraduates in Action
RITIKA AGGARWAL and
LAUREN STOWER
After taking the student-directed seminar
“Unlocking Incarceration: A Feminist
Perspective” as sophomores, we felt it was
essential
to
pass along the
empowering
information
that the course
exposed us to
and to spread
that influential
Lauren Stower and
knowledge
Ritika Aggarwal (l-r)
to others by
creating our own student-directed seminar
in our senior year. Because that initial
course shaped our own awareness, yielding
many academic and community-based activist
experiences in the years following it, we felt it
necessary to again present the issues, concerns,
and causes of women in prison. In order to
frame a gender-based perspective, we focused
not only on “women,” but acknowledged
the ways in which gender (intersected with
race, class, sexuality, etc.) shapes the prison
system and is a fundamental element of its
functioning. The prison system aims to
repress those who deviate from normative
patterns of gender (intersected with race,
class, sexuality, etc.) by inflicting punishment,
thus simultaneously relying on gender norms
and expectations while also reproducing
them. With this critical framework in mind,
we created “Gender and the Prison System,”
a student-directed seminar involving eighteen
wonderful, active students who joined us in
covering a wide range of gender-based prison
issues from motherhood and medicalization to
political prisoners and the “Drug War.” We
paired academic materials and readings with
activist tools and resources, enabling students
and their communities to access avenues of
involvement from prison reform, community
organizing, and abolition. These resources
remain available in the FMST Library, and we
hope that people will access them in the future
to inform their position on the prison system.
April 25-27 at the UN Headquarters in New
York. At the symposium, 400 students from
around the world met to attend lectures, hold
discussions, and develop our own resolutions
and strategies to meet the MDGs. This
opportunity to observe and participate in
international politics was extremely beneficial
as I met members of the international
community who both shared and challenged
my opinions regarding foreign affairs.
My background in Feminist Studies prepared
me with numerous critiques of the UN, human
rights discourse, and feminist transnational
organizing. I brought this positionality to
the symposium and was encouraged by the
critical analysis my peers and the international
community are also engaged in within
transnational discussions.
There was a particularly passionate critique of
U.S. policies and its relationship to the UN.
These included the U.S.’s disregard for the
international community by not contributing
its dues and neglecting to sign the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. The U.S. also
holds unchecked power within the UN, as it
is one of the five permanent member states
on the Security Council who possess absolute
veto power.
Despite this criticism, however, members
of the symposium relied on capitalism and
a U.S. model of development to solve gross
human rights violations and global poverty.
Responsibility for implementation of this
model of development was also primarily
designated to the private sector and then civil
society and non-governmental organizations,
with no criticism of the limitations within
these sectors and the important role of
government.
was no discussion or information available
surrounding labor conditions within the UN.
I was disappointed with the overall lack of
interest in labor rights when I asked speakers
and peers about the wages and citizen rights of
the working class employees with jobs in the
UN’s cafeteria, janitorial service, etc.
Overall there was an amazing energy in the
air at the symposium and within the UN
Headquarters, with a diversity of languages
and perspectives. More than anything I
learned that the involvement of academics
and grassroots organizers is essential in
the deconstruction and reconstruction of
transnational political affairs. Theoretical and
activist labor is needed if we are to combat
global inequalities in power and politics.
PATRICE DOUGLASS
Academic research in many respects spawns
from a personal connection to the material
being researched. I began the research for
my senior thesis based on something that was
very personal to my life, the case is known as
Gonzalez v. Abercrombie and Fitch. This was
a class action lawsuit against the retail giant
Abercrombie and Fitch, claiming racial and
gender discrimination on many levels. As one
of the fourteen named plaintiffs, my allegation
was that I was refused a job at Abercrombie
and Fitch, a job I was qualified for, based solely
on my race and gender. The case was settled
in November 2004, but that didn’t end my
interest in the issues at hand.
MICAH BENNET-CAUCHON
When filing my claim, my lawyer asked me if I
would like to file for racial discrimination and/
or gender discrimination. I was explicitly told
that I could not file for both discriminations
as one entity; simply meaning that the law did
not recognize me as a whole person, Black and
female. It became clear to me that the law had
never heard of the term intersectionality! I was
forced to choose which part of me was more
important to fight for, or fight for myself as a
severed human. I chose to fight for both, even
knowing that wasn’t a representation of me.
Although my case was settled and the victory
was rendered to the plaintiffs, in a sense I had
not won.
I attended an ATHGO International
symposium titled “The Architects of the
Future: Reforming the UN to Meet the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)” on
This is where my research comes in. I wanted
to know how it had come to be in American
society that the idea of “women of color” had
been invisible to legal discourse. How was it
12
Within discussion around UN reform, frequent
analogies were made of the UN to a business
which needs to “maximize output.” There
Micah Bennet-Cauchon (top, 2nd from left)
with student participants from Canada, Haiti,
Germany, Russia, and the U.S.
Congratulations 2005-06 Graduates!
that this idea was not commonly understood
outside of the realm of critical race studies or
feminist thought? Through the analysis of
my experiences and myself as a Black woman,
I sought to validate histories of identity
construction in relation to the identity of being
a Black woman, tracing the concept back to
slavery and connecting the ways in which
people perceive my presence to historical ideas
of what it means to be not just a Black person
or a woman, but a Black woman. I am not
insinuating that all Black women are the same
but that our images are perceived by society
in quite similar ways. These constructions of
sameness come from a history of historical
construction. These historical constructions
are what justify the actions of blatantly racist
corporate structures like Abercrombie and
Fitch.
Abercrombie and Fitch
made statements that
they only hire pretty
people or that people
of color don’t wear
their clothes because
they only wear hip hop
clothing. To make these
kinds of statements
without a wide response
Patrice Douglass
of outcry is an example
of the histories of racial formulations that still
function in America. In my thesis I sought
to examine one aspect of America’s racism
through examining my personal identity.
PATRICIA PILAS
In my short time as a UCSC undergraduate in
Feminist Studies, I have been impacted most
by rethinking what I already know. My classes
here consistently challenge me to examine
familiar territory with new questions, often
rendering it productively unrecognizable. This
education has been intense and experienced
with excitement, satisfaction, panic, deflation,
depression, fear, guilt, elation, despair, and
admiration.
This year, my internship with Justice Now
and the UCSC Women’s Center has played a
huge role in shaping my awareness. Early in
fall quarter, I met with the Women’s Center
Director Roberta Valdez, unsure of what I
wanted to pursue, and left her office with a
CD titled The We That Sets Us Free. Produced
by Justice Now, an organization committed to
Summer 2005
Fiona Carlone
Patti Curl *
Erica Lee
Sarah LeVar *
Scott Ward
Kristen Weaver
Fall 2005
Kelly Densmore
Sonja Graves *
Heather Mabery
Molly O’Neil
Aleen Raybin
Adrienne Roberts *
Pamela Specht
Winter 2006
Mireya Amador
Consuelo Baratta
Marisol Castañeda
Kelly Curry *
Julissa Espinoza
Danielle Funk
Stephanie Hubbard
Michelle Neal
Moana Ruwhiu
JacQui Ryan *
Emi Shinozaki
Kathleen Tarr
Spring 2006
Ritika Aggarwal
Andrea Brower **
Kelly Brown
Cailin Bryant
Naomi Chapman
Giovanna Coto
Rachel Dievendorf
Molly Dilworth
Roselyn Domingo
Denlin Doty
Patrice Douglass
Lauren Finkelstein *
working to end the prison industrial complex,
the compilation of spoken word, song, and
excerpts pursued issues surrounding women
and prison. The joint internship between
the Women’s Center and Justice Now offered
the opportunity to create a curriculum to
complement the CD. Listening to the tracks,
I reacted with all the emotions previously
described. It may seem strange that a Feminist
Studies major at UCSC would be unacquainted
with the critical work on prisons or the idea of
prison abolition, but after hearing the CD I
immediately wanted to be part of the project.
Breana George *
Erin Gilday *
Gena Inkeles
Jill King
Jacquelyn Kuzmin
Barbara Lette
Heather Lim
Cady McElravey Sitkin
Megan Phillis *
Christine Ramirez
Cecily Reber *
Lindsey Robinson
Suhagey Sandoval *
Heidi Sermeno
Koko Shishida **
Lauren Stower
Julia Trist *
Erin Weeks *
Zoe Winant
Emily Wynbrandt
* honors
** highest honors
intersection of critical theory, immediate aid,
and strategic planning, remaining vigilant of
the potential pitfalls.
Researching and reading about the prison
industrial complex has continued to jolt me out
of my usual thinking and challenged me to sit
in some uncomfortable places.
The working title for the curriculum is currently
“Imagining a World Without Prison” – asking
what a world without prisons would look like,
what systems the prison industrial complex
relies on and reproduces, what work it does,
and how to create safety, accountability, and
strong communities. These questions bubble
up to my consciousness every day while talking
to friends about the Enron trials, watching
a home security commercial, or listening to
politicians debate immigration. At times it
can seem overwhelming and urgent to find the
perfect solutions, but I am mostly just grateful
that the questions themselves are there.
Most inspiring is the passion and dedication
of those I have been lucky enough to meet
through this project. I traveled to Justice Now’s
offices in Oakland and continue to be energized
by and grateful for their support. The Women’s
Center has hosted wonderful events including
the art exhibit Interrupted Life focusing
on women in prison and their children, a
complementary panel discussion, and an
Abolition 101 workshop by Critical Resistance
(see page 9). Interns also continue their political
education through weekly discussions led
by a former Justice Now intern. As a nexus
of academia and activism, the curriculum
project also provides a space to examine the
FMST senior Leah Walsh with Winona La Duke,
Founding Director of the White Earth Land
Recovery Project, and Education for Sustainable
Living Project (ESLP) organizers (l-r).
Since 2004, ESLP (www.eslp.net) has succeeded
in bringing sustainability into the UCSC curriculum
by organizing a spring lecture series.
13
Greetings from Alums
Marcy Alancraig (‘76, [email protected])
earned an Art and Media Technology (Creative
Writing) M.A., teaches English at Cabrillo
College (since ‘91), is Cabrillo’s Student Learning Outcomes Assessment Coordinator, and
chairs an accreditation self-study committee.
Kirstin Broome (‘97, [email protected])
is moving to London to continue her career
in non-profit fundraising. She hopes to move
from fundraising for medical research to
working with an academic or social services
institution.
Craig Ayala-Marshall (‘93, gometeach@
aol.com) and wife Maria Ayala-Marshall (‘93)
live in Boise, ID with their three children:
Alec (7), Malika (5), and Mia (3). Craig is an
elementary school principal and spent seven
years teaching Spanish at an inner-city LA
high school.
Heidi Bruins (Green) (‘79, hbgreen@
earthlink.net) designs finance training for
Fortune 100 companies and is organizing a
conference for women in finance leadership.
She is also actively involved in making the
business world safe for LGBT people. “You can
take the girl out of WMST, but you can’t take
WMST out of the girl!”
Amy Bailey (‘93, [email protected].
edu) worked in non-profit communications
(reproductive health, HIV, and addiction
issues); earned her Sociology M.A. in ‘04; and
is nearing completion of her Ph.D. She has
been happily married to Richard Lintermans
since ‘98.
Alex Barron (‘93, [email protected])
earned an English Ph.D. with a portfolio in
Women’s and Gender Studies from U. of
Texas in ‘05. She will be a Visiting Professor
of Feminist Studies this year at a small liberal
arts college in Austin where she owns a home
with her girlfriend.
Jenny Chin (‘02, [email protected]) teaches
high school in San Jose, married in June, and
will take next year off to work on writing and
start a private, part-time tutoring business.
She’s looking forward to the summer and to
her honeymoon on the Big Island.
Carrie Clayden (‘95, [email protected]) is
married with children ages 14 and 10. She is a
full-time mother who has pursued an Interior
Design Certificate.
Melanie Cole (‘04, [email protected])
is a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco, where
Andrea Carmen
(‘79, [email protected])
Andrea Carmen, Yaqui Indian Nation, has been a staff
member of the International Indian Treaty Council since
1983 and IITC’s Executive Director since 1992. Andrea
has many years of experience working with Indigenous
communities from North, Central, and South America
and the Pacific. She was a founding member of the
Andrea Carmen, the first Indigenous
woman to be selected as a Rapporteur for
Indigenous Initiative for Peace with Nobel Laureate
a UN expert seminar, pictured here with
Rigoberta Menchu and has participated as a human rights
Tom Calma, seminar chairperson
observer and mediator in crisis situations in the U.S.,
Chiapas, Mexico, and Ecuador. Andrea has extensive experience working at United Nations
bodies addressing human rights and Indigenous Peoples, and is an IITC team leader for work
on the UN Draft Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. At the June ‘97 UNGASS
Earth Summit +5 she was one of two Indigenous representatives to formally address the United
Nations General Assembly for the first time in history. Andrea has served as an advisor to the
World Council of Churches, the North American Indigenous Peoples Bio-Diversity Project,
and the First Nations Development/Eagle Staff Fund Native Food Systems Initiative. She has
served as the co-coordinator for the Chickaloon Village Tribal Environmental Program and as a
member of the Indigenous Environmental Network National Council, the International Union
for the Conservation for Nature Working Group on Extractive Industry and Bio-Diversity,
and the Calvert Group Social Investment Advisory Council. Andrea was selected as an expert
participant as well as the Rapporteur for the UN’s “Expert Seminar on Indigenous peoples’
permanent sovereignty over natural resources and their relationship to land” in Geneva, February
2006. She was selected as “Speaker of the Year” by People Are Speaking in San Francisco.
Andrea has three sons and two grandchildren.
14
she is helping to build a village laundry station
so the women will no longer have to wash their
clothes in a freezing river.
Melanie Cole (center) with Moroccan girls
on the last day of Ramadan
Sarah Covey (‘99, [email protected]) lived
in SF, Seattle, and NYC, and returned to San
Jose in June ‘05. She is currently completing
an Advanced FIDER Certificate for Interior
Design at West Valley College, working parttime at Starbucks, doing Iyengar yoga, and
training capoeira. “I look back fondly at my
time in WMST and wish that the whole world
was as rigorous, intelligent, articulate, creative,
compassionate, and kind.”
Jackie Cuneo (‘91, www.sf-re.com) joined
Zephyr Real Estate in SF and is a new member
of the Board of Directors of the Gay Lesbian
Bisexual Transgender Historical Society.
Ann (Clark) Curtis (‘02, anninsc@hotmail.
com) loves teaching at a Sierra Foothills charter
high school. “The perspective I gained from
WMST has made me a better teacher. I feel
very equipped to deal with the myriad of issues
facing young people today.”
Nicole Daro (‘98, [email protected]) works
for the Carpenters’ Union in Northern CA,
helping workers get and use power on the job.
She is married with one daughter and another
baby on the way. “I can’t think of an area in my
life that hasn’t been affected by my education
at UCSC… The most important application of
feminist theory so far has been in raising my
daughter.”
Ellen Dee Davidson
is writing and raising a
13-year-old daughter.
Her 18-year-old is a
PoliSci/French major at
UCSB. Her young adult
fantasy novel, Stolen
Voices, was recently
Ellen Dee Davidson
published (Lobster Press); her picture book is
due out next spring (Charlesbridge); and she’s
expecting a contract on a second picture book
(Boulden Publishing). She is currently working
on a chapter book, a screenplay, a sequel
to Stolen Voices, and a narrative nonfiction
picture book about an amazing community in
Columbia called Gaviotas. “WMST gave me
a lens in which to view my life and culture. I
think that it empowered me in many subtle
ways.”
Dawn Rae Davis (‘98, [email protected]), a
FMST Ph.D. candidate at U. of Minnesota, is
nearing completion of her doctoral dissertation,
“Decolonizing Love: Feminist Subjects and the
Ability of Not Knowing.” The mother of a two
year old, she hopes soon to continue writing
her memoir, “Seeking Life: The Baby Project,”
which she began in Bettina Aptheker’s oral
history and memoir class. Next year she’ll be
a Visiting Assistant Professor at U. of Iowa’s
Women’s Studies Department.
Stephanie Denmark (‘85, [email protected])
is on maternity leave with her second child
from her career as a freelance writer/editor.
She lives in North Haven, CT, with her twoyear-old son and husband, Adam Simon, who
teaches at Yale U.
Molly Macfarlane Dilworth (‘06, mmdilworth
@gmail.com) works with Choice USA in
Oakland. She plans to move to Washington
DC to continue working with feminist nonprofits and is considering a graduate degree in
public health or public policy. “I feel lucky to
have gotten an entry-level job pretty quick after
I finished school in the area of my choice. Being
a student organizer with a WMST background
really facilitated that.”
Denise Diskin (‘01, [email protected])
moved back to SF to attend UC Hastings
law school after a two-year stint teaching and
doing queer
women’s
cabaret
in
B a l t i m o re .
She has a
fabulous
partner
Denise Diskin (l) with partner
whom she
Ridley Beierschmitt
met at a
union rally and spends too much time in the
library.
Elaine Draper (‘76, contact info available upon
request) teaches sociology and directs the Law
and Society Program at CSU, Los Angeles.
Samuel (FKA Rachel) Lurie
In the mid-1990s, I transitioned from female to male and joined
a growing community of FTM transgender Women’s Studies
graduates. While we didn’t always have support for our choices
(or existence) within older feminist theory, I incorporate skills of
gender analysis in nearly everything I do. I also get to continue to
foster social change by being a feminist man.
I founded an organization that provides training nationally to healthcare/social service providers
and higher education administrators on meeting the needs of transgender people. Over the past
nine years, I have trained over 10,000 people in 25 states.
Sometimes I joke that I’m one of the few Women’s Studies majors who actually gets to use my
degree in my work. Of course that isn’t true, we all use a gender and power analysis in our daily lives,
but I am lucky enough to work at helping others to deconstruct concepts of the gender binary and
examine possibility and fluidity in thinking about gendered lives. I can personally illustrate this
fluidity by acknowledging that when I lived as a butch, masculine woman, I was expanding what
a woman could be; and now, living as a soft, sensitive man, I am expanding what a man can be.
For more information about my work, or just to get in touch, go to www.tgtrain.org.
Kolleen Duley (‘04, [email protected]) is
finishing her first year of the WMST Ph.D.
at UCLA and continues her work with Free
Battered Women, an organization which seeks
to end the re-victimization of incarcerated
survivors of domestic violence. Her research
critically interrogates various political projects,
conditions, and ideologies surrounding U.S.
mass incarceration, policing, and surveillance.
Monica Eisenhardt (‘85, Monica.Eisenhardt@
ucsfmedctr.org) is a social worker at UCSF
Medical Center, focusing on adults dealing
with chronic/life-threatening illness. “I loved
being a WMST major. Feminism certainly
changed my life for the better.”
Carole English (‘83, [email protected])
currently lives in Yelapa, Mexico, during the
winter; project manages a house she’s building
on the Hawaiian Big Island; is a grandmother
to ten children and great grandmother to three;
and lives with her husband in Santa Cruz. “It is
easy for me to say in one sentence what WMST
gave me... It gave me a life! WMST helped me
discover as a woman, where my place is on the
planet. It was the foundation of support I
needed to change the cultural role models I was
raised with and gave me choice and possibility
to create a new way to be in the world.”
Allison Forth (‘02, [email protected])
is the Client Coordinator at Justice Now, a
human rights organization that works with
women in prison and local communities to
build a safe and compassionate world without
prisons. She will begin a Master’s in Social
Work in NYC this fall.
Jessica Garcia (‘01, Jessica_Garcia@onebox.
com) lives in SF with Justin and their twoyear-old son, Kaia. She is a birth doula and
midwifery student. “My degree in WMST was
the most stimulating and formative part of my
formal education. UCSC’s WMST program is
something to be very proud of!”
Susan Gershwin (‘94, SGershwin@trinity
churchboston.org) is the Church Growth and
Urban & Justice Ministries Assistant for a large
downtown Boston parish.
Martha Graham-Waldon (‘84, marthagw@
comcast.net) has lived in the Santa Cruz area
for over 25 years, currently residing in the
mountains with her supportive partner and
spirited 8-year-old daughter. She worked in
the advertising department at the Santa Cruz
Sentinel and as a free-lance writer, and recently
changed jobs and mediums, now working
for Comcast Spotlight in cable advertising.
“WMST gave me a unique perspective on life,
helping me to embrace and value individuals
from every walk of life and persuasion.”
“The personal continues to be political” for
Jeremy Grainger (‘80, [email protected])
who married his longtime partner, David
Smagalla, in a private ceremony in Cambridge,
MA, in ‘04. The pair has been in a loving
relationship for 15 years. They moved to
Brooklyn last year after many years in the
Boston area. Jeremy is the Northeast Sales
Representative for the sexy art publisher
TASCHEN. He continues to make installation
art and DJ experimental and ambient music.
15
Kayla Grant (‘01, [email protected])
acquired a Law Clerk position at the Law
Offices of Helen Santana in SF after graduating
from Golden Gate U. School of Law and
passing the CA State Bar exam in May. She
would appreciate hearing from WMST alums
who are attorneys.
speciality. She lives with her partner of seven
years in New Haven, CT.
Kaitlin Gravitt (‘05, [email protected]) works
as a political/community organizer for SEIU
child care providers and at a civil rights law
firm in LA. She will begin the year-long
Congressional Hunger Center Fellowship
program in Washington DC this August.
Marya Grosse (‘94, [email protected])
earned her Nursing M.S. as a Family Nurse/
Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner from
Vanderbilt U. in ‘96. After working at Planned
Parenthood for several years, she is now at a
post-partum unit. She bought her own home
in Berkeley in ‘04. “Cheers to the WMST
Department. You’ve meant a lot to many people
and have touched many people beyond those
who have graduated directly. Just think of all
the thousands of patients I’ve seen!”
Jenner Greil (‘00, [email protected]) is
working towards an M.S. in Nursing at Yale
University with a family nurse practitioner
Rachel Gugelberger (‘92, rachelgugelberger@
yahoo.com) earned her Master’s in Curatorial
Studies in Contemporary Art and Culture from
Melissa Moreno
Teaching and learning about citizenship
formation are her passions. Melissa Moreno
studied Women Studies and Sociology at
UCSC. Today, she is a Ph.D. candidate in the
Department of Education, Culture and Society
at the University of Utah. Currently she is
completing a Dissertation Fellowship with the
Melissa Moreno (center) organizing a Latino youth
Chicana/Latina
Research Center at UC Davis.
leadership conference at the University of Utah
This fall, Moreno will start a Research Fellowship
at the University of San Francisco’s Department of International and Multicultural Education.
With the support of these fellowships and in the midst of the current immigrant backlash,
Moreno is completing an ethnographic research study entitled “Constituting Citizenship
Practices and Citizen Identity among Young Adult U.S.-Mexicans in the California Borderlands.”
Her project focuses on the complexity of citizenship formation among post-college graduate
young adults of U.S.-Mexican communities. Moreno examines how these young adults have
co-produced citizenship practices, pedagogies, and knowledge about cultural citizenship to
negotiate institutions that bound their practices and citizen identity within U.S.-national
cultural-politics. Her research draws on cultural citizenship, Foucauldian, and standpoint
feminist theories.
Before pursuing a doctorate, Moreno was a faculty member in the Liberal Studies Department at
CSU, Monterey Bay. For ten years she’s taught Latino and non-Latino young adults and youth in
and outside traditional educative settings. Her research work takes special meaning in teaching,
mentoring young scholars, collaborating with researchers and academic associations, and working
with non-profit organizations.
Moreno’s research and teaching has been inspired by her brilliant mentors, including Gloria
Anzaldúa, Dolores Delgado Bernal, Norma Gonzalez, Susan Kimoto, Christine Sleeter, Sofia
Villenas, and Patricia Zavella. With the support of the WMST Department, Moreno served
as Anzaldua’s intern doing folklore research, editing, discussing, and preparing manuscripts for
publication. Anzaldúa and many other caring scholars and community members prepared her for
an academic and citizenship journey.
Within the context of xenophobia, Moreno is preparing to edit a forthcoming special issue of the
journal Social Justice on citizenship theory, practice, research, and cultural citizen voices. She also
looks forward to teaching courses on learning cultural citizenship, inter-cultural ethnic youth and
young adult knowledge, and educational feminist research as a political practice and method.
16
Bard College in ‘97. She has been an intern
at museums in Germany (‘93), London (‘93),
San Diego/Tijuana (‘95), and Los Angeles
(‘95); director, Gallery of Contemporary
Photography, Los Angeles (‘94-‘95); editorial
assistant, Art Talk, KCRW, Santa Monica
(‘95) and Warhol Foundation for the Visual
Arts, NY (‘97-‘98); Associate Director of
Exhibitions, School of Visual Arts, NY (‘98‘05); co-director, Sara Meltzer Gallery, NY
(‘05-present); and independent curator (‘98present).
Tim Guichard (‘04, [email protected])
will begin a WMST M.A. at SFSU this fall.
He plans to work on feminist interventions in
public education administration and curriculum
and develop a high school curriculum that
explores the international political economy of
gender and labor.
Carrie Hagan (‘02, [email protected]
m) is working on a Ph.D. in 20th century U.S.
social and cultural history at Carnegie Mellon
U., with an emphasis on women and sexuality.
“The foundation in theory and the support I
received have served me well in these last years.
Thank you WMST!”
Mary Hansen (‘96, [email protected])
received her Library and Information Science
M.A. from the U. of Washington in June and
is looking for work in the Portland area, where
she continues to live happily with her partner
Queta.
Anne Hill (‘84, [email protected]) is an
author, mother, dream worker, and irreverent
blogger about dreams, family, and spirituality
at www.gnosiscafe.com.
Celeste Hirschman (‘94, celeste@celestial
erotics.com) earned an M.A. in Human
Sexuality Studies from SFSU, became a Sex and
Intimacy Coach, was
certified as a Sexological
Bodyworker, and started
a new business in ‘06
(www.celestialerotics.
com). “One of the
most profound insights
I gained from my
experience in WMST
was that sexuality is
a very central part of
Celeste Hirschman
women’s empowerment
and that a sexually confident woman is a rare
and powerful force in this world. Embodying
this archetype and teaching other women how
to embody it, while teaching men how to be
intimate, communicative, supportive, and
loving towards sexually-powerful women is
central to my approach.”
Rebeccah Sturtz (‘93, [email protected])
In 1993, as a newly minted graduate of the UCSC WMST
Department, Rebeccah accepted a position with an agency serving
battered women and their children. Eventually she realized that
although she loved working for a cause dear to her, she hated
spending the day cooped up behind a desk, and she left the nonprofit sector for a job loading and driving large cargo trucks for
UPS and later for FedEx.
Cas Holman (‘03, [email protected])
finished her Master’s at Cranbrook Art
Academy and opened her own design studio in
NYC (www.casholman.com). Her first product
will debut at the MoMA Design Store in fall.
Jessi Huff (‘02, [email protected]) is in
her final year of law school at Golden Gate U.
in SF and is President of the campus’ Women’s
Law Association. “WMST meant everything to
me, and what I learned inspired and motivated
me for the biggest challenge of my life – law
school! Without Bettina, I would not be where
I am, and doing what I am doing!”
Tracy Johnson (‘94, [email protected])
earned her Early Childhood Special Education
M.A. from SFSU, focusing on infant/toddler
care and development. She is the Regional
Training Coordinator for WestEd’s Program
for Infant Toddler Care and adjunct faculty
at City College of SF and Santa Rosa Junior
College’s child development departments.
Tracy recently purchased a home in Petaluma
where she lives with her partner Owen and 10year-old daughter Marley. “I will always value
my time at UCSC and continue to encourage
those who are interested in social justice and
feminist issues to check out the program at
UCSC.”
Keely Jones (‘05, [email protected]) is a
case manager with Housing Opportunities for
Women, working with families living in public
housing on Chicago’s North side. “Graduating
from UCSC WMST Department gave me
an edge in my field in several ways. WMST
helped me see people’s personal/familial
challenges from a structural level… and gave
me a wide range of perspectives that allows me
to offer solutions that are outside of the box.
My fellow WMST comrades are all working on
behalf of progressive issues in politically trying
times, and I feel hopeful about the ways we can
take on the future and create the changes that
we want to see.”
Suzanne Karp-Graham (‘93, suzanne@
suzannekarp.com) is a professional wedding
photographer living in Venice, CA, with her
husband Matt Graham and their son Zeke,
“making the knowledge she received from
WMST part of her daily life always!”
Kathleen Kennedy (‘05, [email protected])
lives in Brooklyn, NY, where she is completing
Rebeccah Sturtz and
niece Annalise
In 1997, she joined a large Bay Area fire department as a
Firefighter/EMT. This department was, in 1987, the last
metropolitan fire department in the U.S. to be forced to admit women into its ranks and, by
the time Rebeccah joined, was only 7% women. In her jobs at the delivery companies, she had
been comfortable working in a male-dominated, muscle-based work environment, and she had
been accepted by her male co-workers. Consequently, she was astounded at the level of sexist
hostility she encountered in the fire department. Specifically, she was horrified by The Smoke
Eaters’ Gazette, an underground newsletter widely circulated throughout the fire department
that perpetuated the “old boys” attitude that integration was ruining the quality of the fire
department. The Gazette disseminated venomous stories about female and minority male
firefighters, describing them as inept “affirmative action job thieves.” Although The Gazette’s
reporting was often of questionable objectivity, the newsletter’s stories were widely believed
and repeated throughout the fire department, taking on the status of urban legends around the
firehouse dinner table.
an AmeriCorps program at a public school in
East Harlem. This fall she will begin teaching
special education at a Bronx middle school.
Karen Klein (‘75, karenbklein@sbcglobal.
net) lives in SF with her two sons and partner
Benjamin Golvin (‘75). She worked in public
radio, went to law school, and campaigned for
issues concerning immigrant rights, affordable
housing, homelessness, mental health, and other
social justice issues. She is busy raising her 10and 14-year-olds and serving as a volunteer
school librarian and substitute teacher. “I am
happy to hear that WMST/FMST is alive and
well… I think the new name for the program
is terrific.”
Melinda Kolk (‘93, melinda@tech4learning.
com), husband David Wagner (‘93), and
friend Dallas Jones founded Tech4Learning,
a company that designs software tools for the
constructivist classroom. Melinda travels the
country, now with son Iain, training teachers
and students to use clay animation and
creativity tools.
Sarah Korda (‘01, [email protected]) is
earning a Psychology M.A. with an emphasis in
Drama Therapy at the CA Institute of Integral
Studies in SF. She continues to work as an
actor and is the founding member of Boxcar
Theatre. WMST gave Sarah the courage
to feel confident in pursuing equality in her
professional and personal goals.
Laura Krier (‘01, [email protected]) moved
to Boston and works at Pearson Longman
in higher education publishing. She hopes to
begin an English Ph.D. next year.
Brynn Kusic (‘01, [email protected]) was
awarded a New Voices Social Justice Fellowship
to fund her leadership development work with
teen girls in rural West Virginia.
Cynthia Landes (‘90, cynthia@cyncreations.
com) “Even though I was a re-entry student, I
really grew up, both as a student and a woman,
at UCSC. I am continually grateful to the
WMST faculty who mentored and taught me
so much. Thank you!”
Darcy Lassiter (‘99, [email protected]) teaches
tenth grade world history at a public school
in SF’s Mission District. “My curriculum is
infused with what I have learned at UCSC, and
I would not be the teacher I am today without
all of the knowledge I received in WMST.
Thank you!”
Victoria Lawson (‘99, vlawson1104@hotmail.
com) lives in Palo Alto and works at a large
LA-based entertainment/intellectual property
law firm in Redwood Shores. She chose her law
school because its professors included Nadine
Taub and Drucilla Cornell, two scholars she
became familiar with through WMST.
17
Leia LeFay (‘02, [email protected])
co-owns the largest online DJ dance music
record store in the country (awarded “Best
Dance Music Retailer” for the second year in
a row at the Winter Music Conference). She is
currently applying to law school for a career in
entertainment law.
Katrina Leupp
(‘04,
Katrina_leupp@
yahoo.com) is teaching English in Osaka,
Japan, traveling, and saving money for graduate
school. She previously worked in social work
and domestic violence advocacy in Portland,
Maine.
Sarah LeVar (‘05, [email protected]) is a
counselor in a substance abuse rehabilitation
group home for adolescent girls in SF,
volunteers at SF Women Against Rape, and
recently completed their rape crisis counselor
training program. “I draw on my WMST
education daily.”
Amy Lind (‘88, [email protected]) earned
her City and Regional Planning Ph.D.
from Cornell U. in ‘95, focusing on gender,
globalization, postcolonial studies, and Third
World feminisms. She taught at universities
in the U.S. (Arizona State U., ‘97-‘05) and
Latin America (Ecuador, Bolivia); published
Gendered Paradoxes: Women’s Movements,
State Restructuring and Global Development in
Ecuador (Penn State U. Press, ‘05); and is coediting the anthology Queering Development:
Genders, Sexualities and Global Power.
Audrey Lyndon (‘86,Audrey.lyndon@sbcglobal.
net) is a second-year Nursing Ph.D. candidate
at UCSF and is thrilled to see how profoundly
Donna Haraway’s work has influenced
qualitative research in nursing and sociology.
Lorna Lyons (‘91, [email protected])
works in Burlington, VT, where she levels the
playing field for women entrepreneurs at the
Women’s Small Business Program and has
an 8-year-old Feng Shui consulting business
helping individuals and businesses to be
successful.
Julia Marrack (‘94, [email protected])
“Becoming a WMST major was the best
decision I ever made. Not only did it give to me
the best group of girlfriends ever, but also what
I learned informs every day of my life, helping
me make my way through this crazy world with
humor and strength. Thank you for everything
and keep up the great work!”
Liza (Moritz) Mastrippolito (‘98, l.moritz@
verizon.net) earned her M.Ed. from UCLA
18
and taught high school English and English
Language Development for seven years. She
married in ‘04 and is taking a career break to
stay home with her two-year-old Ella.
Shayle Matsuda (‘03, phoenixrisingsc@yahoo.
com) will begin a WMST M.A. at SFSU this
fall.
Laura McElroy (‘95, [email protected])
is finishing her first year at the Medical U. of
Ohio and is planning a summer wedding to
her partner of ten years Lara. “WMST means
everything to me. Feminist scholarship has
given me a box full of lenses for constructing
and deconstructing the world. I use many of
them every day.”
Morgan McLoughlin (‘05, morganmcl7@
hotmail.com) was accepted into the Women’s
and Gender Studies M.A. at Rutgers U.
where her focus will be feminisms and politics.
Currently she is working in the office of a
Sydney, Australia law firm.
Annette Mears (‘97, [email protected]) is
a postdoctoral psychology resident at Kaiser
providing individual and group therapy. “I
love my job and have integrated the concepts
I learned from WMST in my work with
women.”
Elizabeth Moore (‘00, liz_Gonzales_moore@
hotmail.com) started the Nursing Masters
Entry Program at UCSF in June.
Nancy L. Morgan (‘84, [email protected])
lives in the Bay Area and Ashland, OR, where
she owns a bed and breakfast (www.albioninn.com), an organic farm, and is establishing
a wine-tasting venue with her partner, Mary
Beth Davis in ‘07. She holds a Ph.D. in
Clinical Psychology, is an active member in
the American Psychological Association,
and consults to both the legal industry and
businesses regarding management training and
development. She is currently researching the
Gender Identity Disorder diagnosis.
Renee Nashtut (‘05, [email protected])
is the Care Coordinator for Aging as Ourselves,
a program for LGBT seniors run by Elderhelp
of San Diego. She lives with her partner of
four years, Melissa Hall (‘05, WMST), who
is the Clinical Department Intake Coordinator
at Jewish Family Services of San Diego. They
both plan to apply to graduate school in ‘07.
Nicole Nasser (‘99, [email protected]) was
accepted to Tulane U. medical school, is waiting
to hear from other schools, and hopes to stay
in CA. She works for Planned Parenthood
in Sacramento, is still skiing, and rowed the
Grand Canyon twice last summer.
Sarah Joe Neubauer (‘04, sarahjneubauer@
gmail.com) is living happily ever after in SF
with her partner Judi. While working part-time
as a retail shift leader in the Bay Area’s favorite
woman-run sex store, she is earning a Library
and Information Science M.A. degree from
San Jose State U. She misses working in the
department’s FMST Library most of all!
Meredith Obendorfer (‘99, meredithob@
yahoo.com) is currently an account executive
with a SF high tech public relations firm,
Blanc & Otus, after spending a year as the
program manager for Hewlett Packard’s
Brand Innovation Lab. She lives in Redwood
City, enjoys spending time with her boyfriend,
continues to race mountain and road bikes on
the amateur Northern CA circuit, and will earn
her MBA from San Jose State in December.
Kristen O’Shea (‘97, [email protected])
is in her fourth year of a Clinical Psychology
Ph.D. at U. of Montana in Missoula and
recently completed a thesis entitled Female
Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence: Interactions with the Legal System.
Sharon Papo (‘01, [email protected]) is
the coordinator of STRANGE, a queer youth
activist program,
a counselor with
Families inTransition
at the Santa Cruz
Community Counseling
Center,
and a trainer for
Mosaic,
which
supports LGBT
inclusivity
at
Jewish institutions.
Sharon Papo (r) and
Sharon
recently
Amber Weiss at their wedding
married her beloved
Amber Weiss. She is an avid belly dancer (www.
sharonbellydancer.com) and will start a Social
Welfare M.A. at UC Berkeley this fall.
Jonnie (formerly Jeannie) Pekelny (‘92,
[email protected]) lives in Oakland, works
as a technical writer, and has been transitioning
to non-profit work for the last four years. She
also sings, pursues spiritual studies, and is
trying to create a cohousing community.
Lyla Reed (‘04, [email protected]) “As an
Aerospace Quality Engineer for Space Systems
Loral, I can say with pride that I graduated
from UCSC with a degree in WMST! I love
what I do, and I share my experience with
people to help them understand that if you do
what you love, you will always have a feeling
of satisfaction.” Lyla also shares her love for
martial arts as a Black Belt Prep student teacher
at Shou Shu Kung Fu School in Hayward.
beyond what’s on the surface, so that I can
begin to understand what’s truly going on.”
Rachel Roth (‘87, rroth@ibisreproductive
health.org) was named a 2006 Soros Justice
Fellow to work on a project analyzing how
prisons undermine women’s reproductive
health and rights.
Mary Salome (‘89, [email protected])
lives in SF with her partner Arwyn Moore,
works at the UCSF Center for HIV
Information, does volunteer programming for
KPFA radio, started a web site for queer Arab
women (www.bintelnas.org), and has developed
an interest in urban beekeeping.
Lyla Reed
Caroline Reich (‘98, caroline@coincidence.
net) earned a graduate degree in Public
Health, focusing on community-based health
education, after running She Rocks!, a Santa
Cruz youth leadership program. She also
worked in development and marketing at
Girls Inc. of Alameda County, and is currently
the Corporate Development Manager at the
Make-A-Wish Foundation in SF. She rode the
AIDS Lifecycle in June, 586 miles from SF to
LA to raise money for HIV/AIDS services and
programs.
Marcy Reiser (‘91, [email protected].
edu) worked for a small alternative energy
company before returning to school last year to
pursue an Archaeology Master’s and Geospatial
Sciences Certificate at Colorado State U.
Julie Rose (‘94, [email protected]) and her
partner Lynda live in Pacifica with their son
Dylan, born in November. Julie returned to
work in April at Levi Strauss & Co. as the
Assistant to the President of Dockers. Lynda is
a stay-at-home mom.
Julie Rose (r) with partner Lynda and son Dylan
Stephanie Rosen (‘94, [email protected])
is a fourth-year Pathology resident at the U. of
New Mexico Health Sciences Center and lives
with her supportive husband and two-year-old
son. “WMST has given me the ability to see
Mari Schimmer (‘04, mari.schimmer@
gmail.com) is a community organizer for the
Progressive Voter Network in Denver, where
she is working on a campaign to end America’s
addiction to fossil fuels.
Lanetta Smyth
Lanetta L. Smyth
(‘96, lanetta_smyth
@sbcglobal.net)
earned a Master’s
in Social Work in
May from San Jose
State, focusing on
mental health and
substance abuse.
Yunnie Tsao Snyder (‘00, yunnie_snyder@
yahoo.com) earned an Education M.A. from
Stanford U. in ‘05 and works as a Kindergarten
Enrichment teacher in East Palo Alto, focusing
on arts education, anti-bias curricula, and
critical pedagogies. She will return to UCSC
this fall to begin an Education Ph.D. and
pursue work in community participatory action
research projects.
Sandra Soklin (‘78, [email protected]) is a
jewelry appraiser who talks to people every day
about their property and their relationship to
their property. “My feminist sensibilities and
political economic framework have an effect
on me daily. They are a primary filter for my
worldview, keeping me aware and critical of the
market economy and of the commodification of
virtually everything.”
Eleanor Sommers (‘00, [email protected])
earned a Master’s in Social Work in June ‘05
and does group therapy at a private psychiatric
hospital. She is enjoying being a mom to
her daughter, Millicent, who was born in
September. “WMST fostered an environment
of passion, conviction, and enrichment for
which I am grateful.”
Tenley Spatz (‘01, [email protected])
earned a Women’s Spirituality M.A. from
New College of CA in SF (focusing on tantric
Buddhism as a reclaiming of female and male
sexuality) then spent six months traveling in
Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka,
and India.
Eliza Struthers (‘97, elizastruthers@yahoo.
com) is an elementary teacher who is excited
to move back to Santa Cruz in August after
ten years living in SF and the last six months
traveling around the world with her new
husband. “Find a feminist partner, ladies!
Never settle.”
Jodi (Morgan)Tharan (‘87,[email protected])
is completing a yearlong DeLeT Fellowship
(www.delet.org), job hunting in the education
field, and making cool stuffed animals with
her kids. Speaking up as a feminist DeLeT
Fellow was a lot easier with WMST as her
foundation.
D’vora Tirschwell (‘89, [email protected]) is an
attorney for the CA Court of Appeal; has two
children Sydney and Nathan with her domestic
partner Pat, and is loving life. “In raising both
kids I’m putting into practice the perspectives I
gained from WMST, which can be a challenge
even in progressive SF.”
Samantha Tobias-Espinosa (‘99,sammiely
[email protected]) married her high school
sweetheart in December and is finishing an
Education Specialist Credential (Level II)
and Special Education M.A. at Chapman U.
She earned a Multiple Subject and Level I
Education Specialist Credential in ‘04 and has
been teaching sixth grade special education for
six years in Bay Point, CA.
Samantha Tobias-Espinosa with husband Albert
Tammy Tolgo (‘97, [email protected]) is
an Executive Search Consultant with Ajilon
Finance, whose clients include organizations of
all sizes and types (Fortune 500 industry leaders
to small non-profits). “UCSC and WMST
provided me with an incredible foundation from
which to build and I am forever indebted.”
19
Dawn D. Valadez (‘88, [email protected])
is in post-production on her film A Girl’s
Life (www.agirlslife.org), which she hopes to
complete by the end of the year. The project
received a significant grant from the CA
Council for Humanities and was selected
by the Working Films residency program at
MASS MoCA. She is looking for interns in the
SF area and funds or leads on sponsorships.
Sarah Vickers (‘05, sarahlizvickers@yahoo.
com) is applying to feminist and
cultural studies graduate programs
and working at Logos Books and
Records in downtown Santa Cruz.
“I miss feminist theory classes!”
Nancy Wadsworth (‘91, nwadswor@
du.edu) landed a tenure-track
position in the Department of
Political Science at the U. of Denver,
with a focus on race and religion in U.S. politics,
and is hoping for a book contract this year.
Scott Ward (‘05, scottmichaelward@gmail.
com) lives in SF and just got a great job at the
STOP AIDS Project.
Meliza Wetzler (‘99, [email protected])
is finishing her second year as a Peace Corps
volunteer in the semi-autonomous Comarca
region of Panama. She recently presented a
community grant proposal for a sea turtle
conservation project and is involved
in a women’s organic garden project.
“The roots of WMST have sent me
far. Without the strength of women’s
community, I would not thrive.”
Nancy Wadsworth
Matthew White (‘76,
matt@
mattwhitelaw.com)
has
been
practicing law since ‘79 and lives in
Mill Valley, CA.
Jinna Wilson (‘01, [email protected])
teaches at colleges around the Bay Area,
relies heavily on information gleaned from
her WMST classes, and is constantly learning
from and appreciating the struggles of her
women students. “I am especially reminded of
how much more there is to learn as I deal with
women from around the world whose needs,
fears, and joys are unique to their cultures and
have very little to do with American feminism
as is it is usually understood.”
Deborah Wuliger (‘84, [email protected])
continues to work in feature film production
as a publicist, this year for War of the Worlds
and Munich.
McKenzie Zeiss (‘99, [email protected])
is writing her English Ph.D. dissertation at UC
Irvine on the relationship of behaviorism to the
humanities during the Cold War.
....................................................................................................................................................................................
EVENTS continued from page 5
African Americans in the 19th century. Hunter is Associate Professor of
History and Associate Director for the Center for Africanamerican Urban
Studies and the Economy (CAUSE) at Carnegie Mellon University and
is currently a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Women’s and
Southern History.
José Esteban Muñoz, Chair of the Department of Performance Studies
at Tisch School of the Arts and Associate Professor of Social and Cultural
Analysis and Latino Studies at NYU, presented “Queerness as Horizon:
Utopian Hermeneutics in the Face of Gay Pragmatism,” sponsored by the
Queer Theory and Critical Race Studies research clusters. Drawing on
the work of philosopher Ernst Bloch, the paper staged a posterior glance
at different moments and acts of queer futurity that offer an anticipatory
illumination of queerness and posited a concrete utopianism that offers
to remake rationalism, delinking it from the provincial and pragmatic
politics of the present to imagine a future of queer possibility.
The fifth annual Reel Work May Day Labor Film Festival (www.
reelwork.org) hosted sixteen different events including the regional
premieres of Sir! No Sir! about rank-and-file GI resistance to the
Vietnam War and Meeting Face to Face depicting the historic nationwide
visit of Iraqi labor union leaders to the U.S. in 2005. In another event
two female miners and union activists from the Mesabi Iron Range
of Minnesota discussed the Academy Award-nominated film North
Country, which tells the story of the first successful class action workplace
sexual harassment case in the U.S.
The Asian American/Pacific Islander Heritage
Month Committee and the Asian Pacific
Islander Coalition sponsored a visit by Native
Hawaiian rights activist Haunani-Kay Trask
who discussed “Native Hawaiian Opposition
to American Militarization: The Role of
Student Resistance.” Trask was the first fulltime director of the Center for Hawaiian
Studies at the University of Hawai’i-Manoa in
20
Haunani-Kay Trask
Honolulu and is one of the founders and leading members of Ka Lahui
Hawai’i, the largest native sovereignty organization in Hawai’i.
Maquilapolis, a documentary
film shot by a group of
Tijuana factory workers
as they confront labor
violations, environmental
devastation and urban
chaos, was screened by the
departments of Community
Studies and Latin American
Some of the promotoras (community based
and Latino Studies. The
activists) who filmed Maquilapolis
project is a collaboration
between filmmaker Vicky Funari, artist Sergio De La Torre, and Tijuana
women’s organization Grupo Factor X, with the participation of the
human rights organization Global Exchange and The Environmental
Coalition.
Cui Zi’en, Beijing Film Institute professor, director, screenwriter,
novelist and outspoken queer activist, discussed “Underground: Sexuality
and Cinema.” The Anthropology Department and Cultural Studies
sponsored this visit by Zi’en and presented a screening of two of his films.
Zi’en is one of the most avant-garde digital video makers in Chinese
underground cinema and the author of nine gay novels.
The Sociology Department and the Lionel Cantú GLBTI Center hosted
this year’s Lionel Cantú Memorial Colloquium featuring speaker Eithne
Luibhéid, Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of
Arizona, whose research focuses on the intersections of sexual regulation,
racial formation, and immigration control in transnational contexts.
The National Women’s Studies Association hosted its 27th annual
conference, “Locating Women’s Studies: Formations of Power and
Resistance,” June 14-18 in Oakland, CA (www.nwsaconference.org).
Participants included UCSC Lecturer Roxi Hamilton and graduate
students Tanya McNeill and Heather Turcotte. The FMST Department was a cosponsor of the opening reception.
Feminist Studies Library News by Jenna Horner, Senior Library Assistant
Along with the Feminist Studies Department, the Women’s Studies
hard to secure a space for the library across the hall from its new offices.
Library changed its name appropriately to the Feminist Studies Library
We ask that you please continue to support the FMST library. If you
in this, its 13th, year. With the help of staff members Elizabeth “Flavia”
have materials to donate, please contact us; we would love to add them
Uselton and Heaven Hodges, we removed
to our collection. Thank you to this year’s donors:
duplicate copies of books to prevent overcrowding
Bettina Aptheker, Anjali Arondekar, Christine
and donated many books to a women’s prison
Bunting, Carolina Wren Press, Bernie Goldner
reading project. The library also managed to keep
(collection from the late Adrienne Abrams), Jane
some texts on reserve for students taking feminist
Roberts, Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel, and Dick
studies courses thanks to our generous professors.
and Phyllis Wasserstrom. Thanks also to A&U,
With the FMST Department scheduled to move
Bitch, Bust, Colorlines, Ms., Off Our Backs, and
across campus in 2006-07 to the new Humanities
She magazines for donating subscriptions. Please
Division building, the future location of the library
visit the library during the academic year: Monday
Library staff Flavia Uselton and Jenna Horner
remains uncertain. FMST faculty are lobbying
through Thursday, 12-5 p.m.
with Graphic Designer Aaron Tamayo (l-r)
....................................................................................................................................................................................
STURTZ continued from page 17
The fire department administration had been made aware of this
damaging newsletter infiltrating the stations, but was very slow to act
against the newsletter or the hostile work environment it was creating.
Finally, after more than thirty women firefighters filed discrimination
complaints with the city, the city attorney launched an investigation into
the identities of the anonymous publishers of The Smoke Eaters’ Gazette.
Still, the fire department administration took no apparent disciplinary
action against the men involved, and the newsletter continued to be
published.
In 2002, a group of women firefighters met again to discuss the
situation. The women felt that perhaps filing a lawsuit against the
men who were publishing The Gazette might finally force them to stop,
while a lawsuit against the fire department might actually require the
administration to take action to provide a harassment-free workplace
for its employees. By now, a large portion of the female firefighters
in the department had been singled out by this newsletter. Possible
plaintiffs were compared, and it was felt that Rebeccah would have a
particularly strong case. She recognized the necessity of such a step,
but fearing workplace retaliation, was initially hesitant to personally go
forth with a lawsuit. The turning point, she says, was the realization
that, “If I, who had spent four years at UCSC studying the effects of
institutionalized sexism and racism was still afraid to take action against
it in my own life, how could I possibly expect someone else to take up
this battle?”
She filed the lawsuit in 2002, and the newsletters finally stopped
appearing in the firehouse mail. She says that it was a grueling and
lengthy battle, but now that it’s finally over, she’s glad she followed
her conscience and took a stand against the hate-filled newsletter.
She describes her proudest moment, when at a gathering of female
firefighters in 2005, the subject of The (late) Smoke Eaters’ Gazette was
raised. One new recruit raised her hand and asked, “What’s The Smoke
Eaters’ Gazette?” and the women cheered. Rebeccah was so moved
by the idea of a new generation of female firefighters never knowing
the hostility that she and the women who had come before her had
confronted that she had to fight to hold back tears.
Today Rebeccah works as the Tiller (the person who drives the back
end of the long ladder truck) of Truck 19, where she plans to stay. Her
firehouse is one of the most diverse stations in the city, and she loves
how, in an environment where there is no true majority, no one gets
marginalized into the role of “minority.”
One of her favorite things about being a firefighter is serving as a role
model to children and teens. Rebeccah was already in college when
the first woman was admitted to her department, so as a child it never
occurred to her that firefighting could be a realistic career option for her.
She believes that while it’s important for boys to see women performing
non-traditional jobs, nothing beats the look on the face of a young girl
who, while standing on the street corner watching the fire truck zoom
by, looks up, tugs at her mother’s sleeve, points, and exclaims, “Look,
Mommy, that’s a girl driving the back of the fire truck!”
.......................................................................................
CLRC continued from page 7
activist Alma Lopez. Visit our recently renovated CLRC conference
room in Casa Latina at Merrill College to view a small exhibition of
Alma Lopez’s art.
CLRC continues its important intellectual mission dedicated to
promoting cross-border perspectives in studying Chicano/Latino
populations by funding various research activities, including six research
clusters of faculty and graduate students. The research clusters for 200506 and their coordinators are: “Borders, Nations, Regions,” Gabriela
Arredondo and Carter Wilson; “Transcommunal Studies,” John Brown
Childs; “Transcommunality and Feminist Coalitions,” Aída Hurtado;
“Latinos in California,” Susanne Jonas and John Borrego; “Cuba in
Americas and Transatlantic Contexts,” Lourdes Martinez-Echázabal;
and “Transnational Popular Cultures,” Patricia Zavella.
In addition, CLRC funded four mini-grants to facilitate graduate
students’ research: Janelle M. Silva (Psychology), “Creating a New
Neighborhood: A Parental View of Multicultural Television for
Children”; Isela Ocegueda (Literature), “Transtemporal, Urban Journey:
Significations of Cityscopes and Memory in Latin American Literature”;
Susy J. Zepeda (Sociology), “Mexicana Lesbianas: Exploring Cultural
Production with Lesbian Movimientos”; and Marco A. Mojica (Politics),
“Con Dios y con el Diablo: Sandinista Politics in Neoliberal Nicaragua.”
This August, CLRC will help sponsor the MALCS Summer Institute
and the Women of Color Film and Video Festival (see page 6). For more
information on CLRC and its activities visit http://lals.ucsc.edu/clrc/.
21
ACCOLADES continued from page 2
Association conference ( June). “Neo-Benshi”
performances at San Francisco Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts, SFSU, and UCSC. Editor,
Viz. Inter-Arts (Issue 1, June). Hired at Mills
College (2006).
Amelie Hastie, Assoc. Professor of Film and
Digital Media. Convened residential research
group, “The Object of Media Studies,” UC
Humanities Research Institute and curated
on-line project, “Objects of Media Studies,”
based on this seminar for digital journal
Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a
Dynamic Vernacular. With Shelley Stamp,
Assoc. Professor of Film and Digital Media,
co-edited special issue of the journal Film
History, including selections from their 2001
conference “Women and the Silent Screen.”
Alma Martinez, promoted to Assoc. Professor,
Theater Arts. Actor, Anna in the Tropics: Lucy
Stern Theatre (March) and opposite Jimmy
Smits (Spring 2005), National Public Radio.
2006-07 Fulbright Scholar, Peru, to work with
Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani (May). Ph.D. in
Directing and Dramatic Criticism, Stanford
University ( June).
Radhika Mongia, Asst. Professor, Feminist
Studies. Plenary address, “Without Let or
Hindrance: Inclusion and Its Subversion
from the Medieval to the Modern,” Lancaster
University ( July). “Historicizing State
Sovereignty: Inequality and the Form of
Equivalence,” accepted for publication in
Comparative Studies in Society and History.
Nicole Paiement, Professor, Music. Autour
de Messiaen (MSR Records), Music of Darious
Milhaud in America (Helicon Records), and
Lou Harrison – In Memory (Cleos Records,
forthcoming). Publication of Marriage
at the Eiffel Tower (G. Schirmer, 2005).
Conducted world premieres of Ragnarök,
Kiklos, Accumulation in Dispersion, and Durée,
Suwon Philharmonic Orchestra, Korea
(September). Guest conductor, Jobim tribute,
Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Commissioned
and conducted world premiere, Lady Lazarus,
by Laura Schwendinger. Artistic Director,
BluePrint Project, San Francisco.
Eleonora Pasotti
Eleonora Pasotti,
Asst. Professor,
Politics. 2006-07
Postdoctoral Scholar,
Center on Democracy,
Development, and the
Rule of Law, Freeman
Spogli Institute for
International Studies,
Stanford University.
Christina Ravelo, Professor, Ocean Sciences.
Five-year appointment, Director of the
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics,
Santa Cruz branch.
B. Ruby Rich,
Asst. Professor,
Community Studies.
2006 Honorary Life
Member Award,
Society for Cinema
and Media Studies.
Neferti Tadiar, Assoc. Professor, History
of Consciousness. Philippine National
Book Award for Fantasy-Production: Sexual
Economies and Other Philippine Consequences
(Hong Kong, 2004).
Renee Tajima-Peña, Assoc. Professor,
Community Studies. $50,000 Alpert Award
in the Arts for Film/Video (2004). 2005
Christopher Award, Cable/TV category, The
New Americans (shared). 2005 Cine Golden
Eagle Award, My Journey Home (shared).
Who Killed Vincent Chin? part of special
retrospective, New Directors/New Films
festival, New York (April).
Megan Thomas, Asst. Professor, Politics.
Pacific Rim Research Program Award, Center
for Global, International and Regional Studies
(May).
Anna Tsing, Professor, Anthropology. Friction:
An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton
U. Press, 2004) awarded 2005 Senior Book
Prize, American Ethnological Association
(December).
Patricia Zavella, Professor, Latin American
and Latino Studies. Scholar of the Year,
Chicano/Latino Research Center (March) (see
page 7).
FMST WELCOMES NEW FACULTY:
Marcia Ochoa, Acting Assistant Professor,
Community Studies
Jennifer Reardon, Assistant Professor,
Sociology
B. Ruby Rich
....................................................................................................................................................................................
TEACH-IN continued from page 1
The New York Times, prior to the invasion of
Iraq, in which he challenged the President and
Vice-President on their allegations that Saddam
Hussein had nuclear capability and weapons of
mass destruction. Ambassador Wilson’s speech
at the teach-in reiterated his original assertions,
declared the war based on systematic lying,
and gave a powerful and moving defense of the
democratic process.
Joseph Wilson
Several civil liberties and civil rights attorneys
offered detailed analyses of the violations of international and domestic
law by the current administration, including Eben Moglen who gave an
inspired speech on surveillance in the 21st century. He proposed that the
university be at the forefront of countering and curtailing these practices.
David Cole, law professor at Georgetown University School of Law in
Washington DC, delivered a passionate defense of civil liberties and a
brilliant critique of the excessive use of presidential authority upsetting
the constitutional separation of powers. Maria Blanco, a San Francisco-
22
based attorney, presented a critical analysis of immigration law citing the
ways in which public discourse has now linked immigration with terrorism
in such a way as to greatly set back prospects for immigration reform.
Cynthia Mathews, Mayor of Santa Cruz and long-time director of Santa
Cruz Planned Parenthood, addressed the devastating fiscal impact of
the war on local economies. Sonali Kolhatkar, a leader of the Afghan
Women’s Mission, spoke movingly about the deteriorating situation for
women in Afghanistan. Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich presented a brilliant
and profoundly disturbing speech about the Bush administration’s threat
to use nuclear weapons against Iran. Jenn Pearson and other members
of the Watsonville Brown Berets spoke about the effects of aggressive
military recruiting tactics on the Latino community. Five members of
Students Against War each offered insightful and impassioned remarks
on war and military recruiting, creating a moving testimonial from a
student perspective.
Several UCSC faculty also spoke, including Alan Richards (Environmental Studies), a long-time authority on the Middle East, and Daniel
Wirls (Politics) with expertise on the often secret U.S. military build-ups,
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....................................................................................................................................................................................
CHAIR’S GREETING continued from page 1
past and present. Neferti Tadiar (History of Consciousness) gave a
detailed and cogent analysis of the ways in which the “war on terror” has
impacted life in the Philippines. UCSC Chancellor Denice Denton
also spoke, addressing issues of Pentagon surveillance and the need for
greater racial, cultural, and gender diversity in
university life.
We have many things to look forward to in the coming year. Karen
Barad will begin a three-year term of service as Department Chair.
A new director will be appointed to the Institute for Advanced Feminist
Research, and we look forward to creating even stronger collaborative
possibilities between the Institute and Department. And finally, we will
be moving to a new Humanities Building.
Bettina Aptheker concluded the teach-in
and pledged to seek faculty support to make
UCSC free from government surveillance.
She also encouraged students to join the
Watsonville Brown Berets’s anti-recruitment
campaign, which works with high school
students to encourage them to attend college
as an alternative to military service. Finally,
Chancellor Denice Denton
Bettina said that Faculty Against War would
mobilize to reduce the university’s complicity in military research and
especially to divest itself of involvement with developers of nuclear
weapons at Los Alamos and Livermore laboratories.
As Chair for spring quarter, I extend my warmest greetings to all of our
readers and supporters. I also wish to convey our collective gratitude to
Carla Freccero for serving as Chair in fall and winter quarters. Most of
all, on behalf of the faculty, I want to express our ongoing indebtedness
to our Department Manager Nicolette Czarrunchick and Department
Assistant Corinne Taylor-Cyngiser, whose work has been critical to the
functioning and development of the Feminist Studies Department.
....................................................................................................
TEACH-IN continued from previous page
Faculty organizers of the teach-in felt that it was an extremely successful
event, and they are committed to continued educational and activist work
on the UCSC campus.
Further information is located at www.facultyagainstwar.org, where a DVD
of the teach-in is available. A podcast of Joseph Wilson’s speech and of a recent
lecture by Bettina Aptheker are available at podcasts.ucsc.edu.
.......................................................................................
SEMINAR SERIES continued from page 7
and 1985, several different kinds of Indian women’s constituencies and
their allies were able to secure constitutional and legislative amendments
that partially reversed the 1876 criterion. Professor Barker demonstrated
how the work of the women for equality is fundamental to the work of
Native peoples for sovereignty and self-determination.
The series will continue next year, beginning in the fall with a visit by
Sylvia Yanagisako, Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University,
who will discuss aspects of her work on gender and the lived practices of
contemporary capitalism.
23
UCSCFEMINISTSTUDIESNEWSLETTER
the 21st century feminist scholarship endowment , etc...
and awards • the Intro to Feminisms Taping Project •
Your donations support conferences, symposia, and speakers • student scholarships
graduate student travel and conference attendance • the feminist studies library •
....................................................................................................................................................................................
#323
Feminist Studies Department
University of California
1156 High St.
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
Phone: 831.459.4324
Fax: 831.459.4872
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: feministstudies.ucsc.edu
Return Service Requested
THE WAVE
Vol. IX, No. 1 Summer 2006
Editor:
Corinne Taylor-Cyngiser
Editorial Assistance:
Nicolette Czarrunchick
Design Assistance:
Aaron Tamayo
Photography:
As noted or upon request
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2006 The Wave - Humanities Computing Services

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