brown university spring 2008 Pembroke Center for teaching and research on women

Visions of Nature: Gender and the Politics of “Traditional” Constructing the Cultural Other

Leslie Bostrom, Associate Professor of Art, Muslim Practices Conference will lead the 2008-09 Pembroke Seminar. Western cultures have an uneasy and contradic- March 7, 2008 tory relationship with the natural world, humans being of it as animals yet simultaneously observing, consuming, and attempting to con- trol it. Through the visual arts and popular media, through literature, philosophy, aesthet- ics, and science, through landscaping and archi- tecture, humans represent their relationships with nature. Nature can be a kind of dark mirror, reflecting back one’s desires and fears, loaded with contradictions and colonial yearnings. It is thought to be fragile yet indestructible, finite yet cyclical, dangerous yet restful. Notions of the natural are employed to build theories of the human, as in human nature, natural law, natural gifts, natural intelligence. On the one hand, there is something essentially natural about humans, some sort of authentic animal core; on the other, there are fantasies of the wild, as if there were a territory of pure nature excluding the human predator. The Western eth- ical relationship to nature is similarly ambiva- lent: on one hand, nature is pure and uncor- Hank Randall rupted by human desire; on the other, nature is by definition the location of sin, the refusal or (L-R): Sherine Hamdy of Brown University, Lila Abu-Lughod of Columbia University, Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf of Qatar University, and Dicle Kogacioglu of Sabanci University, Istanbul. inability to recognize divine intervention and moral authority— the “Noble Savage” vs. “Lord of the Flies.” The 2008-09 Pembroke Seminar In cases where Muslim women and girls so-called “traditional” Muslim practices. will look at how such ambivalences toward are seen as needing to be rescued and They examined instances where every- nature have driven Western cultural aspira- advocacy seems imperative—as with thing from local politics to transnational tions—political and economic—as well as cul- honor crimes, female circumcision, and economics might contribute to a given tural notions of the self, of ethics, of aesthetics, early marriage—structural analyses of practice, and where the political, the of sexuality and the body. And by studying for- issues apart from gender can fall away, socio-economic, or the cultural might be mations that emerge from other cultural repre- thus producing little new knowledge and the most important factors to consider. sentations of nature, the seminar will examine reinforcing stereotypes of Muslim back- Plans for the ongoing project include pub- some of the above assumptions about what is wardness versus Western modernity. lication of the March conference and con- particularly “Western” about Western nature. Leading scholars came to Brown in tinued conversations at other institutions. For more information, please visit our website March to discuss alternative ways to view Please see page 4 for more information. at www.pembrokecenter.org. Pembroke Seminar: The Question of Identity in Psychoanalysis

Bernard Reginster, Professor of Philosophy and the Chesler- confusing fabric of effects on academic disciplines such as phi- Mallow Senior Faculty Research Fellow at the Pembroke Center, losophy, religious studies, history, , literature, is the director of the 2007-08 Pembroke Seminar. This year’s media studies, and anthropology. The seminar looks at how seminar has as its theme “The Question of Identity in Psycho- psychoanalytic views of identity continue to evolve and what analysis.” In the century since Sigmund Freud’s early psychoan- impact these theories have on scholarship in a variety of fields. alytic works, the discipline has witnessed a theoretical explosion For a full seminar description, please see: of ideas. These new ideas have produced a rich and sometimes www.pembrokecenter.org. Hank Randall Hank Randall Hank Randall

Elisabeth Anker Lara Kelingos Elana Weiner Carol G. Lederer Postdoctoral Fellow Nancy L. Buc Postdoctoral Fellow Artemis A.W. and Martha Joukowsky Ph.D. in Political Theory, Ph.D. in German Studies, Postdoctoral Fellow University of California, Berkeley, 2007 Cornell University, 2007 Ph.D. in Psychology, Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, 1995

Project: “Orgies of Feeling: Melodra- Project: “The Melancholic Subject in matic Identifications and the Post-9/11 Relation: Subjectivation, Attachment, Project: “The Negotiation of Envy and Political Subject” and Resistance” the Development of the Self”

Anker’s research focuses on post-9/11 This project examines the politics of Weiner’s research examines the intersub- political life, drawing from Freud’s remembrance and inheritance in post- jective negotiation of envy, with mutual insights into identification to help war Germany, with a particular focus on experiences of giving and receiving, as understand how American citizens iden- the intersection of political and psycho- central to the development of the self. tify with violent state action as a form of analytic accounts of subjectivity. Kelingos Challenging traditional formulations of individual heroism. Looking in particu- examines several German novelists envy as a destructive force, Weiner exam- lar at the role of melodrama in Ameri- whose works draw from their experi- ines the ways in which, under optimal can political discourse, Anker asks how, ences as children in Nazi Germany. conditions, envy operates as an impetus whether, and to what degree Freud’s var- Looking at these writings through the for development. Her work explores the ied analyses of the human psyche can be lens of the psychoanalytic concept of child’s emergent capacities to apprehend used to examine the workings of con- melancholia and situating them in their and create certain kinds of affective temporary political phenomena. Anker particular historical context, she is able to states and thereby to regulate the sense understands melodrama to incorporate shed light on the legacies of a criminal of self. Weiner is a practicing psycholo- identifications with figures of both vic- national inheritance for citizens of post- gist and provides psychoanalytically ori- timization and heroism and explores war and post-reunification Germany. ented therapy to adults. tensions and problems that this dual identification engenders within contem- porary American political subjectivity.

2 • pembroke center 2007-08 Pembroke Center Lectures Hank Randall Hank Randall

Arnold H. Modell Judith Guss Teicholz John Forrester Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Supervising Analyst and Professor of History and Harvard Medical School Faculty Member Philosophy of Science Massachusetts Institute University of Cambridge “Identity and the Selection for Psychoanalysis of Value” “Women and the Reception of “A Strange Convergence: Psychoanalysis in Cambridge in October 9, 2007 Postmodern Theory, Infant the Early Twentieth Century” Research, and Psychoanalysis” April 3, 2008 December 4, 2007

Faculty Fellows Graduate Fellows Undergraduate Fellows Bernard Reginster David Bering-Porter Jessica Laser Philosophy Modern Culture and Media Religious Studies Chesler-Mallow Senior Faculty Research Fellow Erin Roberts Alexandra Regenbogen Religious Studies Psychology Omer Bartov History Carlos Vazquez American Civilization Edwin and Shirley Seave Faculty Fellow

Coppélia Kahn English Edith Goldthwaite Miller Faculty Fellow

Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg Italian Studies and Comparative Literature Pembroke Center Faculty Fellow Hank Randall Graduate Fellows David Bering-Porter, Erin Roberts, and Carlos Vazquez

pembroke center • 3 Gender and the Politics of “Traditional” Muslim Practices Conference Presenters Rogaia Abusharaf Anthropology Qatar University, Qatar “Transforming the Gendered Self in Northern Sudan”

Annie Bunting Law and Society York University, Canada “An Analysis of ‘Promoting Muslim Women’s Rights through Sharia in North- ern Nigeria’: A Development Strategy?”

Arzoo Osanloo Law, Societies & Justice Program University of Washington, Seattle “When Blood Has Been Spilled: Unraveling the Gendered Logistics of Islamic Criminal Sanctioning in Iran”

Elliot Colla, Middle East Studies, Brown University, and Sherine Hamdy, Anthropology, Brown University served as moderators for the conference.

The conference was sponsored by the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. Institutional cosponsors included: Middle East Studies, Cogut Center for the Humani- Hank Randall ties, Watson Institute for International Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian of Hebrew University and Sherine Hamdy of Brown University Relations, Anthropology, and the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center. Leti Volpp Sherene Razack Law Sociology University of California, Berkeley Ontario Institute for Studies in Opening Remarks Education, Canada Hank Randall “Multiculturalism vs. , Round Dicle Kogacioglu Two: Feminist Responses to Violence Sociology against Muslim Women” Sabanci University, Turkey “Gender in Tradition: A Kaleidoscope Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian of ?” Faculty of Law Hebrew University, Lila Abu-Lughod “‘Security Theology,’ Global Economy Anthropology of Fear and Columbia University in Conflict Zones: The Palestinian “The Scandal of Honor Crimes: Case Study” Liberalism and the Circulation of Rights Discourses” Sherene Razack of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

4 • pembroke center Ford Foundation Awards $200,000 to Child Development Research Initiative Charley Chen (L-R) Ray Serrano’07, MD’11, Christelle Ngnoumen’09, Alison Toth’08, and Mary Zeng’09 code data and perform statistical analysis for the Child Development Project. Ngnoumen also works as laboratory coordinator for the project.

The Child Development research initiative, directed by Anne At present, researchers are conducting detailed analyses of Fausto-Sterling, Professor of Biology and Gender Studies, four infants (two boys and two girls) and their mothers in applies a dynamic systems approach to questions of human weekly videotaped sessions from ages two to fourteen months. development. The initiative’s research suggests that complex Through these analyses, researchers are obtaining a rich sex-typed behaviors come into being through a process of description of the development of activity level, vocalization, dynamic interactions between children and their environ- and play behavior, three behaviors for which sex-typed differ- ment—a function of both biological and social influences. ences have previously been reported in the first three years of The Ford Foundation, which made its initial grant in 2004, life. Parental behavior is also being observed and coded. recently extended its support with a $200,000 award to fur- When the data analyses are complete, researchers hope to test ther the project’s research through 2010. hypotheses and identify how stable patterns emerge that point This interdisciplinary research initiative began with the to differences between the genders. 2002-03 Pembroke Seminar, “Theories of Embodiment.” The new Ford Foundation support will enable researchers to Following the seminar, Fausto-Sterling undertook the begin- extend their sample of four infant-mother pairs to a sample of ning stages of the project in collaboration with a faculty fellow thirty infant-mother pairs, thus allowing analyses that combine of the “Embodiment” seminar, Cynthia García Coll, Professor the depth and detail of dynamic systems case studies with the of Education, Psychology, and Pediatrics. Fausto-Sterling and predictive power of multivariate statistical analysis. In doing García Coll have been joined in their research by Ronald so, researchers hope to translate their dynamic systems model Seifer, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and of sex-typed differences into the language of mainstream Director of the Center for the Study of Human Development, developmental science. and by William H. Warren, Jr., Professor of Cognitive & Lin- guistic Sciences and chair of the department. The initiative To learn more about the Child Development research has received seed funding for several years from the Pembroke initiative, please visit: Center. Additional support has come from the Wayland Col- www.brown.edu/Research/Behaviors_in_Infancy legium and the Office of the Vice President for Research. (URL is case-sensitive)

pembroke center • 5 Forthcoming Book: Women’s Studies on the Edge

comes at a time when women’s studies disrupt prevailing systems of gender. programs have achieved department sta- Refusing to perpetuate and protect tus in many universities, establishing orthodoxies, they ask tough questions tenure-track appointments, graduate about the impact of institutionalization programs, and consistent course enroll- on the once radical field of women’s ments. Yet, as Scott notes in her intro- studies; about the ongoing difficulties of duction, women’s studies has lost much articulating women’s studies with eth- of its critical purchase. Feminism, the nic, queer, and race studies; and about driving political force behind women’s the limits of liberal concepts of emanci- studies, is regarded by many of today’s pation for understanding non-Western students as an outmoded political posi- women. They also question the viability tion, and activism is no longer central to of continuing to ground women’s stud- women’s studies programs on many ies in identity politics authorized by per- campuses. In Women’s Studies on the sonal experience. In Women’s Studies Edge, leading feminist scholars tackle on the Edge, there are conflicting inter- Joan Wallach Scott was the founding director of the Pembroke Center and is the Harold F. Linder Professor, the critical, political, and institutional pretations that sometimes overlap and School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study. challenges that women’s studies has sometimes stand in opposition to one faced since its widespread integration another. The result is a collection that into university curricula. embodies the best aspects of critique: A third book in the differences series is the intellectual and political stance that due to appear this spring with Duke The contributors embrace feminism not the contributors take to be feminism’s University Press. Women’s Studies on as a set of prescriptions, but as a critical ethos and its aim. the Edge, edited by Joan Wallach Scott, stance, one that seeks to interrogate and

differences Guest Editor and Contributors to Present at Cultural Studies Association Meeting

On behalf of differences: A Journal of The panel will discuss the judicial his- Feminist Cultural Studies, Elizabeth tory of secularism, explore a series of Castelli, Professor of Religion at Barnard examples where law and religion overlap College at Columbia University, will lead in complex and sometimes paradoxical a discussion on the intellectual under- ways, and examine the rhetorical strate- pinnings of conservative Christian gies underpinning various sites of activisms in contemporary U.S. culture Christian activism. Progressive thinkers at the Sixth Annual Cultural Studies have increasingly raised the specter of Association meeting. The meeting, “theocracy” in analyzing the current which will be held in May at New York state of affairs in U.S. politics; God and University, provides a forum for scholars Country offers readers a series of case of Cultural Studies, in all its diverse studies for critically assessing such manifestations, to exchange their work claims. and ideas across disciplinary lines and institutional locations. Castelli has assembled a panel comprised of the con- tributors to God and Country, the spe- cial issue of the journal that she guest edited (differences 18.3).

6 • pembroke center Annual Gender Studies Lecture Barbara Anton Intern: Hank Randall Nancy Duke tures titled, respectively, Society Must Be Lewis Professor Defended (1976-77) and Security, Terri- Alison Fairbrother and Professor tory, Population (1977-78), Foucault offers of English, his most comprehensive explanation as to The Pembroke Center Comparative why the disciplinary procedures aimed at Associates, the Cen- Literature, and producing self-governing individuals ter’s alumnae/i sup- Modern Culture required supplementary policies that dealt port organization, and Media with the population at large and so give awards an annual rise to what he calls bio-power. Even here, internship to an Nancy Armstrong however, he stops short of acknowledging undergraduate stu- the difficulty of articulating the subject dent whose honors “Gender Must Be Defended” presupposed by liberal society to the project involves an object of bio-power. Armstrong discussed internship or volun- October 23, 2007 a number of Victorian novels to see how teer work in a com- Alison Fairbrother’08 munity agency. This Victorian novelists were the first to they negotiated the contradiction posed year, the Associates awarded the internship confront the problem of the relationship by the two modes of government and grant to Alison Fairbrother, a Development between themselves as individuals and concluded that a more flexible concept Studies concentrator, who is interning for the what Foucault calls “man-as-species.” of gender can show how the Victorians African Services Committee (ASC). This com- This is a problem for theorists of liberal themselves imagined an alternative to a munity organization, based in Addis Ababa, democracy as well. In two series of lec- society composed of individuals. Ethiopia, provides HIV prevention education, mass condom distribution, counseling and testing for HIV, and care and support for HIV positive individuals.

Helen Terry MacLeod Research Fairbrother’s internship with ASC has Grant Recipient: Elisabeth Stelson involved writing grants and overseeing a pilot program she helped develop to improve the The Pembroke States. While the anti-suffragist move- health of fifteen HIV positive mothers and Center awards ment of the Northeast has been studied, their children living in an impoverished area the Helen Terry historians had largely ignored the move- on an isolated mountaintop above Addis MacLeod ment in Illinois, and particularly in Ababa. In addition to providing medical care Research Grant Chicago. In identifying this research gap and nutrition, Fairbrother’s project helps to support under- and developing a case study of the anti-suf- arrange no-interest loans for the mothers to graduate honors frage movement in Illinois, Stelson’s hon- start businesses to generate income for their research on ors thesis explores the dialogue between families. An important element of this project issues having to anti-suffragists and suffragists and exam- is its respect for the families’ belief in the heal- do with women ines how capitalists, immigrants, and ing properties of holy water from a stream at or gender, or organized labor responded to and influ- the top of their mountain. Elisabeth Stelson ’08 research that enced the debate about women’s suffrage. Utilizing the findings from her internship in brings a feminist analysis to bear on a prob- The MacLeod grant enabled Stelson to Ethiopia, Fairbrother is writing an honors the- lem or set of questions. Elisabeth Stelson, travel to numerous locations vital to her sis that investigates the ways Western medi- a senior concentrating in History, is the research, including Harvard’s Schlesinger cine can be combined with a strong local com- recipient of this year’s MacLeod grant to Library’s Women’s Rights Collection, the mitment to religiously-inspired medicinal support her research exploring the history Chicago History Museum, the Newberry beliefs, such as holy water. Her research asks of women’s anti-suffrage activity in Illinois. Library in Chicago, the Illinois State His- how the incorporation of traditional practices The national anti-suffragist movement is torical Society, and Cornell University’s can have an impact on the success or failure of considered to be a precursor of the conser- Women’s Studies Collection located at the programs that introduce Western medicine. vative women’s movement in the United Carl A. Kroch Library.

pembroke center • 7 Pembroke Center Presort First Class for teaching and research on women US Postage PAID Permit No. 202 Brown University Providence, RI Box 1958 Providence, RI 02912

Pembroke Center Pembroke Center Associates Advisory Board Council Officers Rey Chow Diane Lake Northrop ’54, P’81 contact Comparative Literature Chair and Modern Culture and Media information Phyllis Santry ’66 Carolyn J. Dean Vice-Chair Pembroke Center History and Modern Culture Brown University and Media Pembroke Center Staff Box 1958 Mary Ann Doane Elizabeth Weed, Ph.D. ’73 Providence, RI 02912 Modern Culture and Media Director and English phone: 401 863-2643 Christy Law Blanchard fax: 401 863-1298 Anne Fausto-Sterling Director of Alumnae/i Affairs Biology and Medicine e-mail: [email protected] Denise Davis, A.M. ’97 web: www.pembrokecenter.org Lynne Joyrich Managing Editor of differences Modern Culture and Media Donna Goodnow David Konstan Center Manager Classics and Comparative Literature Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg Ex Officio Director of Gender Studies Nancy Armstrong English, Comparative Literature, Jane Lancaster, Ph.D. ’98 and Modern Culture and Media Consultant to the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives Karen Newman Comparative Literature Martha Hamblett and English Programs and Stewardship Coordinator Ellen Rooney Modern Culture and Media and English