WGSS Calendar: 2008-2009

WGSS Events:  September            October           November     March

Other events on campus:  Pride Center Calendar     Multicultural Student Services     Diversity Organizations Coalition

City events:  http://www.explorelacrosse.com

Events for faculty only:   TFD Schedule:   Fall 2008 and Spring 2009

WGSS cordially invites you to the following events, open to the campus and the community.  Check with your instructor if you are not sure an event satisfies requirements for the course you are taking.

September

September 6:  Steppin' Out in Pink

The Organization for Campus Women (OCW) invites all UW-L employees, students, and friends-of-UW-L to be a part of our team for Gundersen Lutheran’s Steppin’ Out in Pink walk for breast cancer research and awareness, taking place Saturday, September 6, from 9 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.  Our team name is SAVE SECOND BASETM (S2B), an organization founded on the belief that although breast cancer is no laughing matter, we can fight it with humor.  We encourage you to visit their website at http://www.save2ndbase.com/. 

September 16:  Byron Hurt:  Film/Lecture:  Hip-Hop on Violence and Masculinity, Campus Activities Board event.  7 p.m. Valhalla, Cartwright Center.  For additional CAB events, see   ../Advancement/connectx/2008/summer/july/28/cab.pdf

September 25:  Linda Kerber, University of Iowa:   "Why Diamonds Really Are a Girl's Best Friend -- Putting the Constitution into Practice"  7 p.m., 332 Cartwright Center (co-sponsored by Women's Studies Student Association and Pride Center)

The Declaration of Independence begins with the assertion that "all men are created equal," and the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, added in 1868, promises "all persons...equal protection of the laws."  But over the long course of American history, women have regularly been denied equal protection of the laws -- not only in the right to vote, but also in the right to be tried by an impartial  jury  [a right not fully established until 1992] ;  in the right to petition for the redress of grievances,  in the right to marry,  in the right to make choices about their  own bodily integrity and the right  a secure citizenship which they can pass down to their children.   Many rights important to women have only been established firmly as a result of the grassroots feminist movement of the last generation.  Some are not yet achieved.

 Linda K. Kerber is May Brodbeck Professor in Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Iowa.   In her writing and teaching Linda Kerber has emphasized the history of citizenship, gender, and authority. In the history department she teaches courses in U.S. history with an emphasis on the history of women and gender; feminist theory, and U.S. legal history. 

Dr. Kerber is the author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship (1998) for which she was awarded the Littleton-Griswold Prize for the best book in U.S. legal history and the Joan Kelley Prize for the best book in women's history (both awarded by the American Historical Association). Among her other books are Toward an Intellectual History of Women (1997), Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (1980), and Federalists in Dissent: Imagery and Ideology in Jeffersonian America (1970). She is co-editor of U.S. History As Women's History, and of the widely used anthology, Women's America: Refocusing the Past (6th edition, 2004), which has been translated into Japanese.

October

October 9:  Andrea O'Reilly, York University:   The Maternal Wall in Academe:  Academic Mothers and Strategies of Resistance and Empowerment , 4 p.m. Cleary Alumni Center

Many women today, particularly those that are college educated, middle-class and professional, may not encounter gender discrimination until they become mothers and hit full throttle the maternal wall that blocks and blindsides them in their attempts at advancement.  As Ann Crittenden, author of The Price of Motherhood, writes, "Once a woman has a baby, the egalitarian office party is over."  Dr. O'Reilly's presentation will explore the various strategies used by academic mothers as they encounter the maternal wall in academe.

Andrea O'Reilly, Ph.D. is Associate Professor in the School of Women's Studies at York University.  She is co-editor/editor of twelve books on motherhood, including Redefining Motherhood:  Changing Identities and Patterns (Second Story Press, 1998), Mothers and Daughters:  Connection, Empowerment and Transformation (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), Maternal Theory:  Essential Readings (Demeter Press, 2007) and Feminist Mothering (Forthcoming, SUNY 20008.)  Her forthcoming books include From Personal to Political:  Toward a New Theory of Maternal Narrative, with Silvia Caporale-Bizzini and Motherhood at the 21st Century:  Policy, Experience, Identity, Agency.  She is currently completing the 20th anniversary of Sara Ruddick's Maternal Thinking and writing a book on being a mother in the academe.

Dr. O'Reilly is the founder and director of the Association for Research on Mothering, (ARM), the first feminist research association on the topic of mothering-motherhood.  Dr. O'Reilly is also founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering.  In 2005, she launched Demeter Press, the first feminist press on motherhood.  She is founder and director of "Mother Outlaws," a feminist mother group.

October 13:  Panel with Cheri Niedzwiecki, UW-L, Communication Studies and WGSS, Carol Bekerjeck, UW-L Foundation, and Luanne Sorenson:  "Living in Pink:  Coping with Breast Cancer"  (4 p.m., Cartwright Center 259)

October 14:  Film:  "The Greatest Silence:  Rape in the Congo," a film by Lisa Jackson.  7 p.m. 307 Graff Mail Hall, sponsored by Women's Studies Student Association

October 15:  Devon Browning, UW-L Student, "Thai Women Artists, Noon, CWH 432

This presentation focuses on Thai artists and the contemporary art scene in Bangkok. The presentation will compare some male Thai art with female Thai art, and will address what is considered acceptable subject matter for women to portray and for Thai art to portray in general.

October 20:  Multicultural Women's Film Series:  "Running in High Heels," 7 p.m., CWH 102.  Post-film discussion  moderated by Ceciilia Manrique, Political Science and WGSS

A film about the difference between what women say and do in politics, Running in High Heels follows the campaign of a woman running for State Senate in New York City as women around her from the left and right of the spectrum try to explain how women can be the majority of the population at 52% but run nothing. Written by Elm Films, Inc.

November

November 6:   Sharon Jessee, UW-L, English and WGSS:  "Women doing Wordwork:  Research and Identity," 4 p.m., 432 CWH

In this presentation Dr. Jessee will discuss the personal as well the professional parameters of the process of writing a critical book on the novels of Toni Morrison. Her research journeys involved learning about musical aesthetics, travelling to Oklahoma, and working on her own confidence in making a valuable contribution to Morrison’s scholarship.

November 10:  Multicultural Women's Film Series:  " A Massacre Foretold, " 7 p.m. CWH 102.  Co-sponsored by WGSS and the Institute for Latina/o and Latin American Studies, and the Women's Studies Student Association

This film the WACC/SIGNIS Prize for "Best Human Rights Documentary" and was winner of the 2007 International Festival de Cine de Morelia.  It focuses on "Las Abejeas," a group of pacifist women who supported the Zapista Uprising in Mexico, and were massacred while at church on December 22, 1997, in Acteal, Ciapas, Mexico.  59 minutes, Maya, Spanish, and English with English subtitles.

November 13:  Christine Hippert, UW-L, Sociology/Archaeology:   "Gender Mainstreaming and Development Priorities:  Popular Participation and Gendered Work in Rural Bolivia" 4 p.m., Cartwright Center 257

Dr. Hippert’s presentation examines community development and popular participation in rural Bolivia as a gendered process.  In 1994, Bolivia passed a law requiring an increase in women’s participation in local government and community development.  Around the world, human rights advocates and activists promote this type of gender equity as part and parcel of the goals of social development and cultural progress. The results of Dr. Hippert’s two-year ethnographic research in rural Bolivia found that women are extremely visible in development and political contexts, and on the surface it seems as if Bolivia’s goal of increasing women’s political participation is being met.  However, her presentation will show that men and women often challenge and accommodate outsider’s perceptions of gender equity and gender roles in their development work.  In order to foster inclusion, collaboration, and engagement in local popular participation, women attempt to both maintain conventional social relations at the same time that they struggle to transform them.  Dr. Hippert’s presentation shows that without understanding cultural constructions of gender, gender equity, as envisioned by NGOs in the West, can over-burden women and misconstrue the power that men – particularly poor, indigenous men – have as stakeholders in rural communities.   

 

Spring 2009:  Under Construction!

March

March 1 "Little Women Then and Now: UW-L hosts a discussion of a classic and its modern re-tellings" -- a collaboration between WGSS and the Department of Theatre Arts.  Click above for details.