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Fall 2009 Events
September 15 @ 8pm in Setnor Auditorium, Crouse College
Public Talk by Lynn Manning
"Weights: One Blind Man's Journey"
Weights is an autobiographical solo performance of poetry and spoken word by award winning poet, playwright, actor, and former Judo champion, Lynn Manning. In Weights, Manning recounts his experience of acquiring a disability after being shot in a bar at the age of twenty-three. Manning challenges racist and ableist assumptions and explores insights gained from marginality. Positioned at the intersections of race, gender, and disability, Weights is neither a solely a disability narrative nor a racial story: rather, it is a story about the tangle that we call identity. Along with an extensive list of TV and film credits, Manning has performed Weights nationally and internationally, including such venues as the Kennedy Center, The National Black Theater Festival, and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Manning has received three NAACP Theater Awards, including Best Actor.
September 17th @ 4:30 in Maxwell Auditorium
A Reading with Mojha Kahf
"Arab American Muslim Woman Balancing Act"
Born in Damascus, Syria, Mohja Kahf is an associate professor of comparative literature and faculty member of the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas. Her books include a novel, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (Perseus, 2006), a poetry book, E-mails from Scheherazad (U Press of Florida, 2003), and a book of scholarship, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman (U Texas, 1999). Kahf’s work, approach, and presentation are revisionary and extremely important in discussions of gender and sexuality in Islam, Middle Eastern and Muslim identities in the US, as well as cross-cultural links between the US and the Arab world.
September 25 from 4 to 6pm in the Goldstein Alumni Faculty Center
WGS Opening Reception
Please mark your calendar for the WGS opening reception on Friday 25 September, 3 to 5 pm (venue TBA). Come and meet new feminist colleagues and reconnect with good friends, share information about your own projects, and find out about WGS plans for the Fall. Feel free to bring any new feminist faculty and students from your department to the reception. WGS welcomes Professor Himika Bhattacharya, our brand new faculty member, and Professor Irmary Reyes-Santos, (Ethnic Studies, University of Oregon) the Future of Minority Studies (FMS) Postdoctoral fellow this fall.
October 8 @ 4pm in 220 Eggers, Public Events Room
Heal Africa: Health for a Country at War
Dr. Kasereka Muhindo “Jo” Lusi has spent his professional life in rural Congo as an orthopedic surgeon. In 1996 he went to Goma, Congo, to begin what is now known as HEAL Africa, training young African doctors to practice rural medicine. Jo was a Senator in the transitional government of Congo, but his first love is orthopedic outreach surgery for disabled children in remote corners of Congo. Lyn Lusi was born and educated in England and went in 1971 as a missionary teacher to Congo, where she married Dr. Jo Lusi in 1974. In 1999, she joined HEAL Africa in Goma as Program Manager. Currently, she is responsible for the community outreach programs of HEAL Africa, which focus on the social determinants of health and women’s empowerment.
Wednesday, October 14 @ 12:15 in 304 Tolley
Who Counts as Smart? Whose Knowledge Counts as Worthy?
Join us for our first Democratizing Knowledge (DK) Project Conversation. A discussion with Professors Cecilia Green (sociology) and Sari Biklen (Cultural Foundations of Education) facilitated by Professor Margaret Himley (Writing Program and LGBT Studies Program and Minor)
Friday, October 16th at 4pm in Maxwell 341
Public Discussion by Veronica Leyva, Organizer, Mexico Solidarity Network
US/Mexico Border Dynamics:
A Speaker from the front lines of one of Mexico’s most dynamic social movements
Ciudad Juárez is at the center of a failed neoliberal experiment based on low‐paid jobs in maquiladoras. In March, President Calderón sent nearly 10,000 army troops and federal police to Juarez, removing over half of the local police force for links with drug cartels. Veronica will speak about the state of security in this border city that has been at the center of drug related violence. She will also discuss the failed neoliberal project that led to hundreds of femicides and massive migration.
October 19 from 5–7pm Life Sciences 001
“Feminist Methods and Contemporary
Quests for Social Justice”
Public Lecture by Distinguished Visiting Professor
Angela Davis
November 2 at 5:30 in Grant Auditorium
Jyotsna Singh Public Lecture
King James in the Mughal Court:
Translation and Traffic in early Anglo-Muslim Encounters
King James I of England never set foot in the court of Jahangir, the Mughal Emperor of India in the early seventeenth century. Yet his presence was registered in the figure of Sir Thomas Roe, his Ambassador to the Mughal court, as is evident in the historical record of negotiations and communications between the two monarchs, including letters, gifts, and treaties. This talk will explore how the two kingdoms (and monarchs) took a measure of each other via the prism of a cultural, religious, and linguistic divide. And the story that emerges from the historical record of negotiations and communications between the two monarchs, including letters, gifts, and treaties is a complicated one -- one that produces novel paradigms of cross-cultural/transcultural translations and interpretations.
Thursday, November 5th at 4:30pm in Maxwell Auditorium
The Education Program, UISFL, History Department, and Women's and Gender Studies Department co-sponsor a public lecture by Joseph Massad.
"Conjunctive Prepositions: Sexuality and/in Islam"
Joseph Massad is an Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History
Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University. Professor Massad is one of the most prominent scholars on masculinity and sexuality within Middle East Studies. His first book on colonialism and national identity in Jordan was based on research that was awarded the Malcom Kerr Dissertation Award from the Middle East Studies Association. His most recent book tracing Arab social, cultural and intellectual views on sexual desire Desiring Arabs received the Lionel Trilling Award from Columbia University in 2008.
Monday, November 16th at 11:45am - 12:45pm in the SU College of Law Room 201
Public lecture by Cynthia Carroll. Free lunch provided.
"Why Didn't She Just Leave?"
Join the SU College of Law's National Women's Law Students' Association chapter for an informative discussion about victim-blaming and how to serve clients who have been, or are, victims of domestic violence. The discussion will be led by veteran Family Law attorney Cynthia Carroll of the Legal Aid Society of Rochester.
November 18th at 4pm in Hall of Languages 500
“Crafting a Post-colonial State in Africa
through feminist Engagement”
Public Lecture by Distinguished Visiting Professor
Patricia McFadden
December 3rd from 4 - 6 pm in 200 Eggers Hall, the Public Events Room
Public Lecture by Irmary Reyes-Santo, Future of Minority Studies Fellow
“Racial Geopolitics: Interrogating Caribbean Cultural Discourse in the Era of Globalization”
Spring 2009 Events
March 4th, 2009 at 4:45 pm in the Peter Graham Commons in Bird Library
Public Talk by Lorgia Garcia Pena, Future of Minority Studies @ SU, Postdoctoral Fellow
Of Bandits and Putas: U.S. Imperialism and the Imagining of Dominicanidad
This study narrates one story of an Afro-Dominican religious expression-Olivorismo- as an important site for remembering, and resisting hegemony and oppression. Through the study of historical documents, photographs and popular songs, I will explore how Afro-Caribbean religiosity can offer the opportunity for making the invisible visible and for literally embodying resistance, through the act of mounting (montarse), at moments of censorship and control. In this sense, my paper proposes memory as an antidote to the historical amnesia that has contributed to the exclusion and alienation of many people from the discourses of the nation(s) that appear in official representations and history.
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March 17th, 2009 at 12:30 pm in 111 Bowne Hall
Women’s & Gender Studies: Food, Fun, and Feminism: Race and Gender Matters
How ‘she’ moves: Gendered implications behind mainstream dance moves
Learning the latest dance moves from your favorite music video is fun but is there more meaning behind these hip and trendy steps? Join us on for a feminist discussion that will address the role of dance and gendered messages about the body as conveyed in mainstream music lyrics and videos. Then come to the follow up work-shop, How we move on March 26th.
April 2nd, 2009 at 7pm in Watson Theatre
An evening with Jennifer Miller including live performance, a film screening and Q&A.
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WGS graduate student luncheon
Who's the Other?
This is where the sideshow, social justice, glamorous spectacle, and tragic farce come together in a simple evening's entertainment. Jennifer will do a live performance including juggling, straightjacket escape and more!! As well as screening "Juggling Politics," a Brazilian documentary about the New York political circus company Circus Amok.
Jennifer Miller is the founder and director of the acclaimed NYC political performance troupe Circus Amok, which has brought free outdoor spectacle to the public since 1989. Known as ‘the bearded lady’, Miller is the focus of Tami Gold's short documentary "Juggling Gender," and Circus Amok is the subject of the French documentary film, "Un Cirque a New York" (2002). In addition to her seven-year stint at the world-renown Coney Island Sideshow by the Seashore, Miller has taught at several universities including UCLA, Cal Arts, Scripps College, and NYU, and is currently teaching at the Pratt Institute.
April 8th, 2009 at 12:30 pm, Location 208 Bowne Hall, WGS Office.
A discussion facilitated by Bonnie Ryan, WGS Reference Librarian
Feminist Internet Activism
Does the internet facilitate feminist organizing and activism? Are race, class, and gender inequalities eased or exacerbated by the internet? Come and explore these and other issues as we discuss feminist organizing and internet activism!
April 14th, 2009 at 7pm in 001 Life Sciences Complex Auditorium
Public Lecture by Dionne Brand
Inventory: Notes to a Poem
Dionne Brand is a poet, novelist and essayist. Her nine volumes of poetry include Land to Light On which won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry and the Trillium Award for Literature in 1997. Brand’s thirsty. was nominated for the Trillium Prize for Literature, the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Toronto Book Award in 2003. It won the Pat Lowther Award for Poetry. Brand’s poetry has been translated into Italian and French. Her 2006 volume of poetry, Inventory was nominated for the Governor General’s Award, the Pat Lowther Award for poetry and the Trillium Award for Literature. Dionne Brand’s last novel What We All Long For was published to great acclaim in Canada, Italy and Germany. It won the 2006 Toronto Book Award. Her fiction includes the acclaimed novel In Another Place Not Here - a 1998 New York Times notable book - and Sans Souci and Other Stories. Her second title At the Full and Change of the Moon was a Los Angeles Times Notable Book of the Year, 1999. Her works of non fiction include Bread Out Of Stone, and, A Map to the Door of No Return. In 2006, Brand received the Harbourfront Festival Award. Dionne Brand is a Professor in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph.