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Constance Curry, Writer, Activist, and Fellow at the Institute for Women's

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Constance Curry, Writer, Activist, and Fellow at the Institute for Women's WOST core faculty member Dr. DeAnne K. Hilfinger Messias has received a grant for $250,000 from Constance Curry, writer, activist, and the Centers for Medicare and Med- fellow at the Institute for Women's stud- icaid Services to conduct a two-year ies, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, study on improving access to health- will present the keynote address for the care through a language education 17th Annual Women's Studies Conference curriculum. Dr. Messias holds a joint "Gender, Race and Uberation in the 21st appointment in the College of Nursing. Century." on Thursday, February 26, at 5: 30 p.m., in the Moore School of Business , A co-investigator on the study is Dr. Deborah Parra-Medina, also a WOST Belk Auditorium. The title of her lecture core faculty member who holds a joint is "We Who Believe in Freedom." appointment with the School of Pul>- Curry has a BA from Agnes Scott Col- lic Health. lege and a J.D. from Woodrow Wilson Col- The researchers will develop lege. She was a Fulbright Scholar at the and test a community-based edu- University of Bordeaux in France and a ConstanceCurry cational program aimed at improv- fellow at the University of Virginia's Cart - ing the capacity of recent Hispanic er G. Woodson Institute, Center for Civ- struggle for education in Sunflower Coun- immigrants to access and navigate il Rights. ty, Mississippi. The Carters were Mis- the formal U.S. healthcare system. Curry is the author of several works, sissippi Delta sharecroppers living on This project is especially critical for including her award-winning book, Silver a cotton plantation in the 19605 when Hispanic women, who typically bear Rights (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, they dared to send seven of their 13 chil- the burden of ensuring the health of 1995; paperback Harcourt Brace, 1996), dren to desegregate an all-white school all family members. which won the Ullian Smith Book Award system in 1965 after the passage of the The educational program, enti- for nonfiction in 1996; was a finalist Civil Rights Act of 1964. Curry's book pro- tled "Navigating the U.S. Healthcare for the 1996 Robert F. Kennedy Book vides much insight into the family's deter- System," will be delivered through Award; was recommended by the New mination to obtain an education for their English-As-A-Second-Language classes York Times for summer reading in 1996; children. Her most recent book is Missis- offered by local adult education and and was named "outstanding book" on sippi Hannony with Winson Hudson, pub- lished fall 2002 by Palgrave/St, Martin's community-based programs. Expect- the subject of Human Rights in North ed outcomes include improved knowl- America by the Gustavus Myers Cen- Press. Mississippi Hannony tells the life edge of the local healthcare system ter for the Study of Human Rights. With story of Mrs. Winson a civil rights lead- and available healthcare resources, an introduction by Marian Wright Edel- er from Leake County, Mississippi, who man, Silver Rights tells the true story of also challenged segregation in the 19605. Grantscontinued on page7 Mrs. Mae Bertha Carter and her family's Curry continued on page 7 of Americans today. We used the term lexicon, social inequalities are simply "liberation" as a reminder that societies individual differences in distributions of are not naturally inclined to grant and to resources and options-some people protect the freedoms of their citizens- have more education, income, wealth, that freedom is not given: it is won in the status, and prestige than others. The ongoing act of democratic participation. fact that certain groups may have less of And while the great social movements eachof thesevalued resourceshas only to of the recent past-women's, labor, gay do with the characteristics of the groups and lesbian,black, Latino, or PanAsian- themselves-they are collectively less have not achieved their goals of "liberat- ambitious, intelligent, and hardworking; ing" America from unjust constraints on have entered the country recently; prefer these groups, the languageof liberation less rewarding occupations,etc. In short, and freedom is no longer even associat- the wealth, health, and prestige of those ed with them. who are disadvantagedare in no way con- Today,we are likely to hear freedom nected to the power, resources,and con- Dr. Lynn Weber, WOSTdirector spoken of in its individual, consumerist trol of the privileged. This ideology is the sense-as when George Bush advised reason that the concepts of race, gender, Feminism and Freedom in after 9/11 that our collective response, sexual orientation, and class are typical- indeed responsibility, was to shop- Iy equated with people of color, women, the Twenty-First Century because we can. Or freedom is simply gays and lesbians,and the working class- What is freedom? Most people think proclaimed to be a characteristic that is es and with the deficits they are believed of freedom as the power to act, speak, owned by the United Statesand that sep- to embody. or think without externally imposed arates us from the rest of the world. Free. In contrast, feminist scholarship restraints.In the United Statesat the dawn dom is American. Freedom is the Ameri- examining social inequalities has come of the twenty-first century, the abstract can flag. Freedomis what makesAmerica to see that they are relational-they notion of freedom is typically called on morally superior to other nations. Free- are power relations. The resources and to mean one of two things: dom is what we have to give the world. options availableto privileged groups are And our moral superiority is what justi- possiblebecause those sameoptions and .the powers that individuals have ties whatever actions we choose to take resources have been restricted for oth- to choose freely among a variety of against other nations in the name of free. ers. Men's dominance in the workplace, options for meeting our needs and dom. for example, is made possible by wom- satisfying our wants-e.g., the free- To me and to many feministsand oth- en's care for families in the home, and dom to choose a school, a physician, ers who have worked their lives in and white's dominance in the economy and a diet, a career-to consume for justice movements, this shift in lan- in the political sphere is made possible .the quality of societies or nations in guage-from the association of freedom by limiting access for people of color to which individual freedoms are guar- with liberation movements for justice to decent educations, jobs, and full partic- anteed and protected by the state- the rationale for war-is deeply disturb- ipation in the democratic state. When a "free society." ing. We need to understand how such a we recognize that there is a relationship shift happened and what can be done between power and privilege on the one When the women's studies facul- both to reclaim the concept and to fur- hand and disempowerment and disad- ty decided on the theme for this year's ther the cause of justice. vantage on the other, we have laid the women's studies annual conference, Sincefreedom is about power,insight groundwork for reclaiming freedom. We "Race, Class, Gender, and Liberation in into the shift can be seen in the differing can expand freedom from the individual the Twenty-First Century," we wanted ways in which the dominant ideology right to consume to the collective possi- to encourage people to think about the and feminist scholarship treat power bility for voice and participation in the everyday reality of freedom in the lives and social in equality. In the dominant democratic state. When citizenship is about individual con- are out of our hands and are individually pro- Mark your calendar now sumerism, we have been reduced as a nation duced, leave us collectively in a position of for Women's Studies 30th to a point where we collectively don't exist. vulnerability to a language of fear and to sim- anniversary celebration We are told that we are a nation of individu- plistic explanations that blame others for our to be held on Thursday, als. Yet we are collectively suffering from war plight. We have been brought to a crisis point September 30, 2004! and loss, radical economic inequalities, and a in our nation-divided against each other and Members of the Wom- top-notch health care system only the few can the world around us-bya set of arguments en's Studies Partnership afford. And perhaps most significantly,we are that tells us that freedom is about individual Council, in collaboration a people disenfranchisedin a political system choice, that our choices have no consequence with faculty and staff that does not include our voices (e.g., neither for others, that our power cannot be connect- of the Women's stud- Clinton nor Bush receivedthe votes of over 75 ed to others' misfortunes. Feminist scholar- ies Program, are making percent of adults in the nation). ship and that of other movements for libera- plans for an exciting day Individualism, its attendant social isola- tion have shown us that these arguments are to mark three decades of tion, and the sense that social inequalities Commentscontinued on page7 the program's constant- ly increasing growth and service. The day-Iong event will include panels, sym- posia, and lunch with a Spring2004 Pedagogy speaker, and will culmi- BrownbagTeaching Series: Receptionfollowing lectures nate with an evening pre- Teachingfor Social Justice "Girls, Math, and School Tracking" . sentation by a nation- ally renowned figure of "The Thursday,)anuary 22, 2004, 3:30 p.m.
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