In 2000-2001 the Comparative Women's History Workshop is jointly sponsoring a lecture series entitled "Engendering Politics" with the Center for Advanced Feminist Studies. We will be examining how a gender analysis does not just mean adding women to history and politics, but transforming our understanding of politics. We will also have our own CWHW workshops. All students (graduate and undergraduate), faculty, staff, and community visitors are welcome.
CWHW workshops are informal presentations; papers are distributed in advance, available in the History department office, 6th floor Social Science Building. The presenter will briefly introduce her work, and then participants will offer comments on the written paper.
Friday, September 22 Rashmi Varma, Department of English,
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. HHH 215.
Professor Varma extends the analysis of citizenship and political mobilization
to contemporary nationalist movements that claim to defend traditional
morality. Varma’s work demonstrates how some Indian women have developed
alternative understandings of citizenship that challenge the sectarian
lines of Hindu fundamentalism.
Monday, September 25 Sandra Patton, Department of Women’s Studies,
University of Minnesota. HHH 215.
The work of Professor Patton challenges the conservative narrative
that cites the breakdown of the family as a justification for dismantling
the Unites States’ welfare system. Patton shows how stereotypic race narratives
function in contemporary public discourse regarding family values, and
offer a multi-racial feminist perspective to raise questions about whose
values are enforced and fostered by social institutions.
Monday, October 2 Dawn Rae Davis, Feminist Studies, University
of Minnesota; Jodi Horne, Feminist Studies, University of Minnesota; and
Sara Hottinger, Feminist Studies, University of Minnesota. HHH 215.
Davis, Horne, and Hottinger will present a collaborative work in progress
that takes up the question of professional and disciplinary identity in
Women’s Studies.
Monday, October 9 Nancy Campbell, Department of Women’s
Studies, Ohio State University. HHH 205.
**PLEASE NOTE ROOM CHANGE**
In her forthcoming book Using Women: Gender, Drug Policy,
and Social Justice, Professor Campbell addresses postmodern Progressivism
and its implications for feminist activism and scholarship. Campbell
is particularly interested in feminist activism that aims to negotiate
with the state, and explores the relationship between postmodern Progressivism
and the rhetoric of “compassionate convervatism.”
Friday, Oct. 20, 2:15-4, 710 Soc. Sci. Bldg. CWHW Workshop.
*NOTE TIME CHANGE*
Sako Ogata, UMN, on Japanese and American attitudes to abortion.
Monday, October 23 Avery Gordon, Department of Sociology,
University of California - Santa Barbara. HHH 215.
Professor Gordon's work emphasizes the relationship between "haunting,"
memory, and history, she proposes a new approach to understanding the role
of power relations in the construction of knowledge. “Hauntings” incorporates
notions of loss, invisibility, and absence as aspects of knowledge—for
example, in the connection created between relatives of the absent "disappeared"
in Argentina—in ways that call for a critical writing of history based
on the partiality of knowledge and experience.
Monday, October 30 Richa Nagar, Department of Women’s Studies,
University of Minnesota. HHH 215.
Focusing on a grassroots campaigns of poor, rural women in Uttar Pradesh,
India, Professor Nagar’s work demonstrates how space is central to women’s
struggles and how feminist discourses emerge as situated practices in particular
places. Nagar charts the discursive geographies in Bundeli women’s
resistace by mapping the sociospatial circuits through which women share
and politicize their experiences.
Friday, November 3 CWHW Workshop: Kirsten Fischer, University
of Minnesota. 710 Social Sciences, Ford Room.
"Race and Sexuality in the Old South."
Friday, Nov. 10, 3:30, 710 Social Sciences, CWHW Workshop.
Estella Musiiwa, "Linking Women to Canalscapes and Waterscapes: Women
and Smallholder Irrigation Technology in Zimbabwe, 1912- 1995."
Friday, November 17 Betsy Hartmann, Director of the Population
and Development Program at Hampshire College. HHH 215 (co-sponsored
by ISEES and ICGC).
In her work on the global politics of reproductive rights, Hartmann
shows how international development organizations often justify their projects
(including population control measures) by claiming these will enhance
women's political, economic, and social rights and lead to women's increased
empowerment. Gender is one of the processes for constituting entire populations
and nations as “oppressed,” underdeveloped,” and “traditional,” and, thereby,
justifying economic development initiatives that serve the interests of
global capitalism.
Friday, December 1 CWHW Workshop: Amy Kaminsky, University
of Minnesota. 710 Social Sciences, Ford Room.
"Gender, Film and Nation in Argentina"
Friday, December 8 Karen Hagemann, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies on Women and Gender, Technical University of Berlin. HHH 215. "Nation, War and Masculinity in 19th century Germany" Professor Hagemann's work on German nationalism during the period of the French Wars shows how gender is implicated in the constitution of nationalist ideologies that depend on images of the nation as a family. She argues that such images give rise to a highly militarized, masculinized nationalism that is justified on the basis of protecting women, children, and other "dependents."
For spring 2001, our speakers will include:
Julia Roos, "Prostitution and Reform in Weimar Germany"
Ruth Mazo Karras, "Medieval Masculinity"
Jean O'Brien, "Race, Class and Gender in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Old
Town Folks"
Laura Edwards, topic TBA
Susan Amussen (Union Institute) "Gender and Slavery in the Caribbean"
Kathleen Canning (U of Michigan) "The Body and Politics in Weimar Germany"
Kay Reyerson, "Medieval Women"
Margot Canady (UMN graduate student), "Sexuality and Citizenship in
US History"