Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies - Feminisms Today Speaker Series 2003-2004

February 2004 | March 2004 | April 2004

September 2003 | November 2003 | December 2003

2005-2006 Speakers
2004-2005 Speakers

April 2004

R. Zomara Linmark is an Award-winning novelist and poet. He is author of Rolling The R's, a novel, and Slippery When English, a poetry collection forthcoming from Hanging Loose Press. He is currently at work on a novel and the stage adaptation of Rolling The R's. He divides his time between San Francisco, Honolulu, and Manila.

Slippery When English
"Slippery When English," is the tentative title of my poetry collection forthcoming from Hanging Loose Press. The afternoon will begin with an informal talk on the Englishes that I speak and write in, Pidgin (Hawaiian-English Creole) and Taglish (Tagalog-English). It will be followed by a prose/poetry reading of my work, novel excerpts and poems that examine the crucial relationship between gender and racial identity formation and the English languages.

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March 2004

Lee Roper-Batker serves as the CEO of the Women's Foundation. She has over 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector. Datra Christie, Development Fellow, is finishing her senior year at Macalester College where she is majoring in Economics and Fine Arts, with a minor in Communications.

Careers in Philanthropy - "Turning your Passion into a Career: How to Attain a Job in the Nonprofit Sector."
Lee Roper-Batker and Datra Christie of the Women's Foundation will discuss, "Turning your Passion into a Career: How to Attain a Job in the Nonprofit Sector." This presentation is designed to be an interactive, informal discussion for anyone interested in exploring a career in nonprofits and what the role of nonprofits and foundations are in creating social change.

Science Group - A Life in (and Outside of) Science
Women faculty from Math & Science discuss their careers in the sciences, and particular challenges they have faced in balancing life, career, & family. All students are welcome to attend this panel discussion, but women considering a career in the sciences may find the discussion of most interest.

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February 2004

Dr. Wesley Thomas is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and resides in northwest New Mexico and in Bloomington, Indiana. He is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and International Studies at Indiana University (IU), Bloomington, IN. Also, he is the Director of the First Nations Cultural Program, which includes organizing the annual IU First Nations Pow Wow held in late March.

[Re-]Situating Native Genders and Sexualities
Dr. Wesley Thomas has conducted extensive research on the multiple genders present in Navajo society, and he has examined their links to gender roles in a variety of Native American societies. In this talk, he will explain how academic research on Native genders and sexualities is being re-situated by the work of Native American scholars, as well as by community building among lesbian, gay, and two-spirit Native Americans.

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December 2003

Afsaneh Najmabadi is Professor of History and of Women's Studies at Harvard University
Gender and the Secularism of Modernity in Contemporary Middle East
In recent years the emergence of feminists and women's rights activists from within Islamist movements in several Middle Eastern countries has posed important challenges for secular feminism and for the project of modernity more generally. Focusing on developments in Turkey and in Iran, this talk will trace how feminism and women's rights activism have historically come to mark secularism of modernity in these countries and how that historical heritage has shaped contemporary responses. It will argue for a re-thinking of this historical legacy in terms which would make it possible to go beyond our current conceptions of secular and modern; within such a project feminism can (and is playing) a critical role.

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November 2003

Annie Janeiro Randall is an Associate Professor (Musicology) at Bucknell University.
The Trouble with Minnie, Puccini's Exotic American Heroine
This paper surveys the work's reception with regard to its handling of the American Other (Native Americans, Mexicans, European Americans, immigrants, and the unseen Chinese population) and pays particular attention to the leading character, Minnie. Her portrayal as an American exotic met with derision while her redemptive powers (grafted onto Belasco's original conception) elicited little more than superficial comparisons to Parsifal. Minnie as redeemer failed to register strongly with critics despite the composer's efforts to direct attention to this crucial dimension of his leading character, and indeed, of the opera itself. I suggest various reasons for this failure and draw my conclusions from analyses of three sources of material: the composer's little-known correspondence with his librettist Zangarini, the premiere's contradictory publicity, and early twentieth-century public discourse on the "New Woman."

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September 2003

Galia Golan is a professor at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzlia, Israel, Professor Emerita of Political Science and Russian Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and founder of the Israeli peace movement, Peace Now.
Gender and Cross-Cultural Dialogue focusing on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Cross-cultural dialogue has been going on for many years between Israelis and Palestinians in mixed and in purely women’s frameworks. In the course of this experience, significant gender differences have been noted, with women, particularly in women’s dialogues, behaving in ways different from men and achieving different results. Experience has shown that while women may not necessarily be “more dovish” than men, they do relate to the other differently, and in a way that may provide greater potential conflict resolution.

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Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · 651-696-6318

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