Upcoming Events at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center

Posted: September 03, 2013

The following events will be held at the Five College Women's Studies Research Center (FCWSRC), 83 College Street, on the Mount Holyoke College campus unless otherwise noted. All events are free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible.

On Thursday, September 19 from 4:30-6 p.m.at the FCWSRC at 83 College Street on the Mount Holyoke College campus in South Hadley, the Center is pleased to present a reading by Saiya Miller and Liza Bley, editors of Not Your Mother's Meatloaf: A Sex Education Comic Book. The collection aims to provide a new approach to the way we teach about sexuality; a more accessible, interactive tool to help share knowledge about sex; one that demystifies the facts and speaks frankly about experiences whose lessons may fall into the grey areas. The comic format makes it possible for people to open up and talk about often embarrassing, sometimes even painful experiences in a way that is humorous and engaging.

On Friday, September 20 from3-5 p.m. at the FCWSRC at 83 College Street on the Mount Holyoke College campus in South Hadley, the Center will hold its Annual Fall Reception welcoming this year's Research Associates and new Five College faculty and staff. The Center is delighted to introduce an international group of distinguished scholars and activists whose work focuses on the ongoing theme of "New Media in Feminist Scholarship, Teaching, and Activism." Refreshments will be served.

On Thursday, October 10 from 4:30-6 p.m. at the FCWSRC at 83 College Street on the Mount Holyoke College campus in South Hadley, the Center is pleased to present Research Associate Annina Rüst, who will present a talk on "Feminist Technologies and the Tech Workplace." An artist-technologist, Rüst will outline how she thinks through the lack of women in tech spaces. The talk will start with an overview of how researchers from different disciplines explain the gender imbalance in the technology workplace. Based on this, she will explain her approach to creating feminist technologies. Specifically, she will talk about her project "A Piece of the Pie Chart", a machine that puts pie chart visualizations gender data onto (edible) pies. She will conclude with an outlook on other ongoing and future projects.

On Wednesday, October 16 at 7 p.m. at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, the FCWSRC is pleased to co-sponsor a reading by Carla Kaplan from her new book Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance. The 1920s in New York City were a time of freedom, experimentation and passion—with Harlem at the epicenter. Miss Anne in Harlem focuses on six of the unconventional, free-thinking women who crossed race lines and defied social conventions to become a part of the culture and heartbeat of Harlem.

On Thursday, October 24 from 4:30-6 p.m. at Smith College, the FCWSRC is pleased to present Research Associate Dr. Valentina Cardo, who will give a talk entitled "Twittering Women or Tweeting Candidates? The 2012 US Presidential Election." In her presentation, Cardo will discuss the 2012 U.S. presidential election campaign and the ways in which it was unusual from a gender perspective: it saw the highest number of female candidates running for and winning seats in the Senate and House of Representatives; women's issues and policies (such as abortion, rape and birth control) became priorities for women, especially in swing states; and male candidates who were seen as taking a controversial stance on gender lost votes in some cases and their seats in others. This presentation investigates this phenomenon of gendered politics. It investigates the role that social media platforms, like Twitter, played in the gendering of political communication and explores whether women officials using these platforms were able to bring different values and priorities to their political campaign that were relevant to other women.

On Thursday, November 7th from 4:30-6 p.m. at the FCWSRC at 83 College Street on the Mount Holyoke College campus in South Hadley, the Center is pleased to present Research Associate Eva París-Huesca, who will give a talk entitled "Female Spanish Noir and Detective Fiction: From 1990s to the Present." This inter-disciplinary approach explores how the works of several female authors are representative of the advancement of Spanish women´s socio-cultural, political and economic status in the last 20 years. Their projects tackle different forms of discrimination and violence against women and other subjects conditioned by class, ethnicity, sexuality, age or disability, and propose new models of masculinity and femininity that subvert traditional gender and genre paradigms.

On Thursday Nov 14th from 4:30-6 p.m. at Hampshire College, the FCWSRC is pleased to present Research Associate Katherine Sender, who will give a talk titled "What is a Sex Museum? Bodies of Knowledge in Marginal Institutions." This paper will look at how institutions that display explicitly erotic materials challenge conventional ways that museums construct knowledge and engage audiences. In contrast to a conventionally masculine, rational, detached mode of engagement, sex museums encourage participation, engage with the body, are frankly entertaining, and thus recall nineteenth-century approaches to exhibition. They still, however, privilege heterosexuality, normative gender and racialothering through their displays.

On Thursday November 21st from 4:30-6 p.m. at the FCWSRC at 83 College Street on the Mount Holyoke College campus in South Hadley, the Center is pleased to present Research Associate Dr. Noa Milman, who will give a talk on "Globalization and Local Resistance in the Media: Welfare Rights Discourses in Israel and Massachusetts." Studying welfare rights movements in Massachusetts and in Israel, Dr. Milman shows how welfare reforms as part of a global neoliberalpolicy agenda meet different types of political resistance in different national contexts. Using critical discourse analysis of newspaper articles, Dr. Milman compares welfare discourses in Israel (2003) and Massachusetts (1995). The work traces the surprising media success of the Israeli welfare movement and compares it with the failure of its American counterpart. To explain this phenomenon, Dr. Milman explores the role of culture in shaping media and public response to social movements. The research pays particular attention to questions of race, class and gender and to the ways by which activists' intersecting identities impact their ability to gain political influence in different cultural contexts.

To learn more about FCWSRC Research Associates, please visit https://www.fivecolleges.edu/fcwsrc/associates.

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