Fall 2010

Hampshire College
University of Massachusetts: Everywomen's Center
Five College Womens Studies Research Center

Hampshire College Events

Let the Body Speak: A Performance Project

What:
Let the Body Speak will be a safe and collaborative space in which woman of all ages, races, ethnicities, sexual orientations and social and cultural backgrounds are invited to explore some of the many narratives of their unique female body.

When:
Workshops will begin in early November and culminate in a final performance on February 12 and 13.

Where:
Most workshops will be held at The Center for Feminisms at Hampshire College.

Why:
What does it mean to be an empowered woman in our school, family, and society?
In what ways do we speak through and about our bodies, and in what ways are they/we already spoken for?

This workshop is formulated to allow women to engage in an open and collaborative exploration of the way in which our relationships with others—friends, family, society and culture—have come to constitute our body-image and lives. In sharing our stories, we will uncover myths the have become obstacles to us, and imagine and embody possibilities for our new selves.

No theatre experience necessary!

Please contact Emily Rimmer for inquiries and application at erSA@hampshire.edu.


Sexpert Training

Want to be a Sexpert?
Then come to our training
Sunday September 26
10 a.m.-5 p.m. (You must be able to attend the whole session)
Lunch is included.
Location: The Center For Feminisms.

Learn about STI’s, safer sex, harm reduction, condom practice, anatomy, birth control, and communication and inclusive sexual health education.

If you’d like to be a Sexpert you must attend the training and be able to make our Monday meetings 5-6 p.m.

Sponsored by the Hampshire Sexperts
For more information contact Emily erimmer@hampshire.edu


Back to top

University of Massachusetts/Amherst: Everywomen's Center Events 

Back to top

Five College Womens Studies Research Center Events

FCWSRC Events

Regular events in Fall 2010 at the FCWSRC take place on Mondays at 4:00 p.m., Thursdays at 5:00 p.m., and Fridays at 1:00 p.m. in our seminar room at 83 College Street on the Mount Holyoke College campus in South Hadley.

Talks are free and open to the public. All are welcome. No pre-registration is required. For more information, call 538.2275.


Thursday, October 7 at 5:00 p.m.
Rajeswari Sunder Rajan
Distinguished Visiting Global Professor and Professor of English (New York University)
From Antagonism to Agonism: Shifting Paradigms of Women’s Opposition to the State The familiar feminist representation of Antigone’s “defiance” described and questioned in Judith Butler’s book Antigone’s Claim (2000), leads to an exploration of the political and historical reasons for the turn from the “antagonistic” model of opposition to the state that this literary icon has long represented, towards a modality of struggle that might be described as
instead “agonistic.” Sunder Rajan examines the classical Tamil epic Silappadikaram whose heroine, Kannaki, is a comparable figure. The talk concludes with a discussion of the implications of an agonistic feminist politics, especially as it was played out in the circumstances surrounding the mobilization of Indian women around the passage of the Child Marriage Restraint Act in colonial India in 1929.

This presentation is part of the Fall 2010 Critical Sexualities Series organized by the  the University of Massachusetts/Amherst Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program.

Thursday, October 14 at 5:00 p.m.
Jennifer Fronc
Assistant Professor of History (University of Massachusetts/Amherst)
Gender, Sexuality, and Undercover Investigation in New York City
This presentation explores how New York City social reformers dispatched undercover investigators into dance halls, cabarets, and other popular leisure sites to gather information on gender, sexuality, and sexual behavior, with an eye toward punishing those who hosted immorality. Those same undercover investigators who were used to identify debauched leisure spaces, however, had to cross the line of moral behavior in order to fulfill their assigned duties. Their interactions with "the other half" and the reports they filed with their employers reveal interesting contradictions about their work, and rich details about sexuality and leisure in the early twentieth century.

Friday, October 15 at 1:00 p.m.
Gender and the Human Genome: Collaborative Research in Feminist Science Studies
Students and faculty from the collaborative Five College research project, "Gender and the Human Genome," will present results from their research. The project tracks emerging questions in sex and gender difference in human genomic research and is part of a long-term collaborative and interdisciplinary project, the “Genes and Gender Initiative." Specific topics include homosexuality; epigenetics; monogamy and animal models; women's health movement and investment in genomic research; gendered dimensions of autism; and direct-to-consumer marketing.

Thursday, October 21 at 5:00 p.m.
Japonica Brown-Saracino
Research Associate (Boston University)
From the Lesbian Ghetto to Ambient Community: The Perceived Costs of Integration for Community
Drawing from her ethnography of four U.S. towns with growing or emerging populations of lesbian, bisexual, and queer women, Brown-Saracino traces the origins of women's migration, as well as their experiences of community upon settling in one of her sites. Brown-Saracino demonstrates that queer women interviewed in Ithaca, New York, report a greater sense of safety and acceptance than in other places they have lived. Yet the majority report dissatisfaction with their sense of community. Brown-Saracino's talk isolates the origins of this discontinuity and in so doing reveals the perceived consequences for social ties of changes in identity politics.

Friday, October 22 at 1:00 p.m.
Ceyda Kuloglu -Karsli
Research Associate (Middle East Technical University)
Women's Experiences in Internal Displacement: A Case of the Current Armed Conflict in Turkey
This study is based on in-depth interviews with internally displaced women in Turkey. Kuloglu-Karsli will also give a brief history on the ongoing internal armed conflict between the Government's security forces and the non-state organization called as PKK (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan/Kurdistan Worker's Party).

Monday, October 25 at 4:00 p.m.
Benita Blessing
Research Associate (University of Massachusetts Amherst DEFA Film Library)
Girls, Women, and Science in East German Children’s and Youth Films: Cinderella's Glass Ceiling
This presentation examines the images of girls and women in science roles in East German children's and young people's films. East Germany boasted near-equity of women in science and technology positions; the larger context points to a glass ceiling. Children's and young people's films, including films for classroom use, highlighted this problem in fairy tale fashion: "happily ever after" always cuts both ways. Positive female role models in science on the Big Screen also reified gender roles: women scientists are nurturing; girls in math classes only get an A in math with the help of magic rings.

Thursday, October 28 at 5:00 p.m.
Jaclyn Pryor
Research Associate (University of Texas)
Time Slips: The Politics and Poetics of Performance in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
This presentation explores three cases studies of contemporary artistic work that combines live performance with archival memory. Pryor uses the term “time slips” to mark both the ephemeral nature of live performance, as well as to name a reception practice in which a spectator is at once situated in the present time, location, and affective state while simultaneously experiencing a portal to one or multiple prior ones. Case studies include Peter Forgacs' Dutch film, The Maelstrom; Ann Carlson and Mary Ellen Strom's New Performance Video at the De Cordova Museum in Lincoln, MA; and floodlines, a site-specific performance Pryor conceived and directed in Austin, Texas.

Thursday, November 4 at 5:00 p.m.
Megan Elias
Research Associate (Queensborough Community College)
What is American Food?
Elias will discuss how female writers and readers created a national cuisine. From the end of the Civil War to the death of Gourmet magazine, cookbook and magazine writers have labored to define American food, thereby playing an important role in creating a sense of national identity and giving women and their kitchens a central role in American culture.

Monday, November 8 at 4:00 p.m.
Karin Ekström
Research Associate (University of Dayton)
Desire as Duty in Post-Transition Spain
Based on fieldwork in Valencia, this presentation discusses how women in post-transition urban Spain relate to, negotiate, maintain and change the gender order. Ekström has chosen two of her investigated themes--motherhood and the body--to illustrate her argument that despite a generally high political consciousness, gender differences are ultimately framed in individualist discourses and rationalized as choices and desires. (Individual) desire has become a (collective) duty.

Thursday, December 2 at 5:00 p.m.
Amy Mittelman
Research Associate (Independent Scholar)
There is Nothing Like a Dame: Women and Men in Academic Communities 1890-1930
This presentation explores faculty wives' clubs and dames associations during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Using manuscripts, literary sources, and club records, Mittelman argues for the importance of restoring these groups of women to the historical record. The women who comprised the memberships of faculty wives' clubs and dames associations were not famous. For both fledging and established institutions of higher learning, they met invaluable college needs that would not have been met without them.