brown university spring 2010 Pembroke Center for teaching and research on women

2010-2011 Pembroke Dedication of the Feminist Seminar: The Power and Mystery of Theory Papers

Expertise Formally dedicated on February 5, 2010, for the preservation of – and scholarly the Feminist Theory Papers project has access to – the papers. Each set of docu- collected—and will continue to collect— ments is unique, representing that David Kennedy, Professor of Law at Har- materials of scholars who, in the last scholar’s contributions to feminist the- vard Law School and Faculty Director of several decades, have changed the intel- ory as well as to her discipline and, in the Institute for Global Law and Policy will lectual landscape of universities in the some cases, to political work and institu- lead the 2010-2011 Pembroke Seminar. United States and The seminar will explore the question of internationally. expertise. The significance of expertise for Although distin- rulership today is easy to see – in the ver- guished collections nacular of national politics, the manage- of women’s scholar- The Feminist Theory Papers ment of international economic life, the ship exist elsewhere, arrangement of family and gender rela- such as in the tions, and more. But what is “expertise”? Schlesinger History What part knowledge, what part common- of Women in Amer- sense – what portion analytics, argument, ica Collection at Har- lifestyle, character? Expertise is often asso- vard, Brown’s Femi- ciated with professional or disciplinary for- nist Theory Papers is mations; how important are these institu- the only collection tional forms to the practice and that offers a rare reproduction of expert rulership? How perspective on the does expertise write itself into power? rigorous interdisci- plinary work that brought feminism to tion building. The materials collected The aim of the seminar will be to develop the vanguard of academic research. The include correspondence, research notes, components of a general model or theory Pembroke Center’s role for nearly three manuscript drafts, syllabi, and other rel- of expertise. The seminar will bring decades as an institution dedicated to evant items. together scholars approaching these issues feminist theory makes it particularly To see a full list of scholars who have from multiple fields of inquiry – historical well suited to conserve the legacy of committed their papers to date, and for studies of expert vernaculars and profes- scholars who have been at the forefront details about the dedication of the Femi- sional practices; cultural study of the lan- of critical thinking. guages of governance and the management nist Theory Papers, see page seven. For of the subject; philosophers interested in Some ninety-one prominent scholars further information about the Feminist the operations of language and rhetoric; have signed letters of intent to include Theory Papers collection, visit: science studies scholars who look at ways their materials in the collection. Cur- http://pembrokecenter.org/archives/ expert knowledge gives power to scientific rently processed and available to FeministTheoryPapers.html claims; sociologists of the professions and researchers are the papers of Teresa of contemporary practices of power. Brennan, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Elaine Marks, Naomi Schor, and Louise Tilly. For more information, please visit our The Brown University Library provides website at www.pembrokecenter.org 2009-2010 Pembroke Seminar: Markets and Bodies in Transnational Perspective This year’s Pembroke Seminar, led by structions of these processes. Scholars politicized across the world? How do anthropologist Kay Warren, examines explore contradictory patterns of change regulatory strategies define rapidly mov- global flows of people and technologies in transnationalism. How are different ing currents of change? This inquiry that reimagine the body and transform sites – adoption, organ transplantation, calls for a variety of disciplinary perspec- what it means to be human. It is tracing family cancer risks, labor migration, tives in the humanities and social sci- the ways bodies are tied to commodities, human trafficking, humanitarian sup- ences, as the seminar has discovered. to markets of different sorts, and the port of refugees, micro-loan projects for individual experiences and social con- low-income women – moralized and Hank Randall Hank Randall Hank Randall David Machledt Anita Starosta Sonja van Wichelen Carol G. Lederer Postdoctoral Fellow Artemis A.W. and Martha Joukowsky Nancy L. Buc Postdoctoral Fellow Ph.D. in Anthropology, University of Postdoctoral Fellow Ph.D. in Social Sciences California, Santa Cruz, 2007 Ph.D. in History of Consciousness, Uni- (Anthropology & Sociology), versity of California, Santa Cruz, 2009 University of Amsterdam, 2007

Project: “Moving Risk: Tuberculosis, Project: “Aberrant Subjects and Project: “Markets, Adoptee-Bodies, Migration and the Scope of Public New Borders: Sex Trafficking in and Transnational Ethics: The Cultural Health at the U.S.-Mexico Border” Expanded Europe” Pragmatics of Global Adoption”

Machledt’s research analyzes how public Starosta’s research considers the Van Wichelen’s research explores the par- health bureaucracies engage migrants problem of sex trafficking of women adoxical tension between the growing through different scalar frameworks of from Eastern Europe and the former global adoption market on the one hand tuberculosis, including global, Soviet Union after the end of the Cold and international legal discourses seeking population, and community perspectives. War. In contrast to social-scientific, to curtail the practice on the other. She While peripheral health workers depend policy-related, and legal treatments that analyzes justifications of “adoptability” in on patients’ social context to deliver constitute the prevailing perspective on different adoption fields and examines treatment, policy planning generally trafficking and forced prostitution, how they correspond to conceptions of favors decontextualizing risk Starosta mobilizes the tools of critical transnational ethics. She conducted eight populations like the “foreign-born.” theory, cultural studies, and literary months of ethnographic study in Ameri- Media reports posit an interconnected theory to examine sex trafficking can and European adoption agencies and world where “disease has no borders,” through a humanistic lens. Her interviewed representatives in child wel- but simultaneously cast migrants as research examines how sex trafficking fare institutions, intergovernmental potential disease vectors. In a binational poses challenges to the dominant organizations, and public advocacy setting dominated by health inequalities, narratives of postnational European groups. By tracing “justifications” in the Machledt’s research engages how these identity and cosmopolitanism. realms of the market, law and the public, different frameworks interact and she anticipates that this will help to conflict, how they are deployed across explain the pragmatic strategies underly- bureaucratic levels, and how these ing today’s adoption quandary and clarify deployments affect policy, binational mechanisms of legitimacies in global eth- organizing, and individual treatment. ical frameworks.

2 • pembroke center Pembroke Center Lectures 2009 – 2010 Hank Randall Jean Comaroff Didier Fassin Adriana Petryna Sunny Distinguished Service Professor James D. Wolfensohn Professor Associate Professor of Anthropology Director, Chicago Center for School of Social Science University of Pennsylvania Contemporary Theory Institute for Advanced Study University of Chicago “When Experiments Travel” “Of Words and Wounds: The Thin “Nations without Borders: Evidence of Asylum Seekers” April 20, 2010 Liberalization and the Problem of Belonging in Africa and Beyond” March 2, 2010 October 13, 2009

2009-2010 Pembroke Seminar Fellows

FACULTY FELLOWS Jessaca Leinaweaver Anthropology Edwin and Shirley Seave Faculty Fellow Project: “Transnational Circulations: Peruvian Migrants and Adoptees in Spain” GRADUATE FELLOWS

Sohini Kar

Hank Randall Anthropology Faculty Fellows Linda Cook, Kay Warren, and Project: “Creditable Lives: Microfinance, Hank Randall Graduate Fellows Aniruddha Maitra, Sohini Kar, Jessaca Leinaweaver Development, and Financial Risk in India” Coleman Nye Kay Warren Anthropology Aniruddha Maitra Modern Culture and Media UNDERGRADUATE FELLOW Chesler-Mallow Senior Faculty Research Fellow Project: “Unruly Crossings: Heteronormativity, Migration, and Lauren Kay ’11 Biopolitics” Linda Cook Anthropology Political Science Project: “An Coleman Nye Exploration of the Pembroke Center Faculty Fellow Anthropology Project: “Re-Building Russia’s Commodification Population: Mothers, Men, and Project: “Assembling ‘Previvors’: of Transnational Migrants” Risk, Relation, and the Changing Childcare” Stakes of Survival in Breast and Sherine Hamdy Ovarian Cancer Genetics” Anthropology

Edith Goldthwaite Miller Faculty Fellow Hank Randall Project: “The Political Economy of Biomedicine and Its Religious Critics”

pembroke center • 3 Pembroke Center Roundtable April 8-10, 2010 “Sites of Critique in a Dystopic World: Innovative Framings of Markets, Bodies, and Transnationalism”

Presenters: Wendy Chun Sora Han Associate Professor of Modern Assistant Professor of Criminology, Culture and Media, Brown University Law & Society, University of “Crisis, Crisis, and Crisis, Or the California – Irvine Temporality of Networks” “Writing the Wall” Clara Han Julie Livingston Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Associate Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University Rutgers University “From Global Mental Health to the “The Onco-Circuits of Hope and Toxicity” Symptom: Or, What Everyday Miglena Nikolchina Indebtedness Can Teach Us about Associate Professor at the Department Health and Well-Being” for Theory and History of Literature (L-R): Miglena Nikolchina, Julie Livingston, Wendy Chun, Sofia University, Bulgaria Clara Han, Sora Han “The Seminar: Mode d’emploi”

Brown to Host Scholarly Exchange with Nanjing University As part of the Nanjing-Brown Joint Program in Gender Studies and the Humanities, a delegation of Nan- jing University faculty will travel to Brown University in June to engage in scholarly dialogue with Brown faculty and students. Hosted by the Pembroke Center, East Asian Studies, and the Cogut Center for the Humanities, the Nanjing faculty will participate in a symposium that will continue discussions begun in 2008 in Nanjing when a group of Brown faculty visited China for the dedication of the collaborative proj- ect. Proceedings from that 2008 symposium will appear in the inaugural issue of Nanjing’s new schol- arly journal, Gender, Theory, and Culture. In addition to the symposium, the Chinese visitors will partici- pate in the annual meeting of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes to be held this year at Brown and hosted by the Cogut Center. The consortium, to which both the Pembroke and Cogut cen- ters belong, is an international organization that looks at the role of the humanities in a global context.

Modern China from Socio-economic Hong Huang “Pragmatism in China” and Transcultural Perspectives Professor of French Literature and Discussant: Paget Henry, Professor June 12, 2010 Gender Studies, Nanjing University of Sociology and Africana Studies, “‘Oriental Ghosts’ in Marguerite Brown University Duras’s Works” Huamin Peng Chengzhou He Discussant: Gretchen Schulz, Professor Professor of Sociology, Nanjing University Professor of English and Drama, of French Studies, Brown University “The Experience of Unemployment Nanjing University and Registered Long-term Unemploy- Jun Liu Associate Director of the Institute for ment in China: A Gender Perspective” Professor of Chinese, Nanjing University Advanced Studies in Humanities and Discussant: John Logan, Professor of Director of the Confucius Institute, Social Sciences Sociology, Brown University Waterloo University, Canada Co-Director, Nanjing-Brown Joint Junya Ma “History, Memory, and Writing: Program in Gender Studies and the Professor of History, Nanjing University North American Chinese Literature Humanities “A Sacrificed ‘Local’: Water-Control in the Homeland Images” “Intercultural Theater: Decisions and the Transformation Discussant: Emma J. Teng, Adaptations and Staging of of the Huabei Social Economy, Associate Professor of Chinese Studies, Western Plays in China” 1580-1949” Massachusetts Institute of Technology Discussant: Haiping H. Yan, Professor and Director of the Graduate Field in Discussant: Peter Purdue, Professor of Yajun Chen Theatre Studies, Cornell University History, Yale University Professor of Western Philosophy, Nanjing University 4 • pembroke center What’s the Difference? The Question of Theory

This special anniversary issue titled insists that an increasingly corporate aca- What’s the Difference? The Question of demic model needs to move away from Theory considers the ways critical theory its emphasis on output and acknowl- has changed in the twenty years since edge, instead, the pleasures of teaching, the journal’s inception. differences first learning, and thinking. Another takes appeared in 1989 in the midst of heated stock of the conceptual and political debates between poststructural theories gains that an antibiological stance in of difference and the politics of racial queer and feminist theory has conferred and sexual diversity. In the ensuing on theoretical innovations, suggesting years, the journal has established itself as that the confluence of physiology and a critical forum where the problematic of phantasy in psychoanalyst Melanie differences is explored in texts ranging Klein’s work offers a new way to think from the literary and the visual to the about critical theories of embodiment. political and social. In this issue, contrib- Yet another contributor racializes “white- utors bring their own critical convictions, ness,” asking whether a male-authored A special issue of differences: A Journal of personal passions, and sometimes unex- work, which contains no black characters Feminist Cultural Studies pected investments to bear on questions of consequence, is nevertheless fair of what counts as theory today and what game for a black feminist reading. kinds of work theory still does. Contributors: Miglena Nikolchina Jacques Khalip A distinguished list of contributors from Emily Apter Elizabeth Grosz Gayle Salamon a cross-section of disciplines and political Simon Critchley Ranjana Khanna Elizabeth Cowie positions looks at the contemporary Ann duCille Elizabeth Castelli Elizabeth A. Wilson theoretical landscape. One contributor Avital Ronell Susan Gubar Elizabeth Weed Joan Copjec Lee Edelman Anne Fausto-Sterling Named Nancy Duke Lewis Professor

Technology Studies. The Nancy Duke including two books that have trans- Lewis Chair is designated for a distin- formed the field: her 1985 Myths of Gen- guished scholar in any field who has der: Biological Theories about Men and contributed significantly to feminist Women, and her 2000 Sexing the Body: scholarship who has a commitment to Gender Politics and the Construction of the work of the Pembroke Center and to Sexuality. Fausto-Sterling has been a dis- the vitality of research on gender at tinguished visiting faculty member and Brown. Fausto-Sterling has long sup- scholar in residence at a number of

Hank Randall ported women and gender studies at institutions in the US, including Har- Brown, and is an active member of the vard, Mount Holyoke, Cornell, and The Pembroke Center is pleased to wel- Pembroke Center’s leadership. SUNY, as well as at the University of come Anne-Fausto Sterling as the new Amsterdam and the Hubrecht Labora- holder of the Nancy Duke Lewis Chair. As an international pioneer in the study tory in Utrecht. Anne Fausto-Sterling is Professor of of scientific understandings of gender Biology and Gender Studies and chair of and sexuality, she is known for her Brown’s Committee on Science and numerous scholarly publications,

Annual Gender Studies Lecture “Gender, Sexuality, and the Problem of Memory” November 10, 2009

To celebrate her appointment to the Nancy Duke Lewis Chair, Fausto-Sterling delivered the Center’s annual lecture in Gender and Sexuality Studies. In her lecture, Fausto-Sterling discussed her recent exploratory inquiries into attempts to explain the varieties of gender expression and human sexual desire. She examined the social scientific use of personal memory as a form of statistically analyzable data, contrasting this use with contemporary neurobiological understandings of how memory works. Following two recent books—Ansermet and Magistretti, The Biology of Freedom, and Harris, Gender as Soft Assembly—she pointed to the ways neurobiology has more in common with psychoanalytic understandings of memory than with psychological or sociological accounts.

pembroke center • 5 Helen Terry MacLeod Research Grant Recipient Joy Neumeyer Studies Private Life and the Russian State in the Late Soviet Period

Joy Neumeyer’10 is the recipient of from Literaturnaia Gazeta, one of the this year’s Helen Terry MacLeod most influential newspapers of the Research grant to support research for Soviet era. She also researched Russian her honor’s thesis in history. language periodicals, plays, and tracts Neumeyer’s research project is on the on marriage and family. Neumeyer relationship between private life and draws upon these and other sources to the Russian state in the late Soviet analyze how the state promoted ideals of period. Specifically, Neumeyer seeks gender and private life through social to understand how the Soviet state services and rituals, how the media com- sought to appropriate gender and sex- municated them to the public, and how uality to realize its aims. citizens adapted this official discourse to the realities of daily life. Using her research grant, Neumeyer has traveled to Washington, D.C. to do research at the Library of Congress, uti- lizing a set of hundreds of letters that the Library of Congress has acquired

Barbara Anton Internship Award Recipient William Lambek Explores the Formation of Political Identity through Transnational Migration

ship or volunteer work in a community Lambek’s project seeks to understand agency. This year’s award recipient is claims to community and shared iden- William Lambek ’10, who is conducting tity made within immigrant community primary research in partnership with organizations. He traces the disparate four Rhode Island non-profit organiza- paths of transnational migration leading tions. He is studying political identity Latina/o migrants into these organiza- formation and community organizing tions, exploring the commonalities and among Latina/o immigrants in Rhode divergences between their transforma- Island for an honors thesis in Latin tions in self-identification and attitude American Studies and Africana Studies. with regard to class, race, sexuality, gen- der, nationality, and immigration status. Using ethnographic and oral history By linking personal histories to commu- methodologies, Lambek’s research is nity narratives, and by drawing connec- centered within four membership- tions between identity formation and driven community organizations: modes of community organizing, Lam- Fuerza Laboral (Power of Workers), the bek’s work will further understandings Olneyville Neighborhood Association, of the basis, nature, and possibilities of Direct Action for Rights and Equality, grassroots organizing in Latina/o immi- and the Action Committee of English for The Pembroke Center Associates offer grant communities. the annual Barbara Anton Internship Action. His research participants are Award to an undergraduate student Latina/o immigrants who are members whose honors project involves an intern- and staff within these organizations.

6 • pembroke center Contributors to the Feminist Theory Papers

Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia University Louise Lamphere, University of New Mexico Linda Martin Alcoff Hunter College City University of New York Joan B. Landes, Pennsylvania State University Emily Apter, New York University Marnia Lazreg, Hunter College Frances Bartkowski, Rutgers University Saba Mahmood, University of California - Berkeley Sandra Lee Bartky, University of Illinois - Chicago Elaine Marks (1930-2001) Seyla Benhabib, Yale University Anne McClintock, University of Wisconsin - Madison Anne-Emmanuelle Berger, Cornell University Deborah E. McDowell, University of Virginia Lauren Berlant, University of Chicago Nancy K. Miller, City University of New York Jacqueline Bhabha, Harvard University Tania Modleski, University of Southern California Susan Bordo, University of Kentucky Henrietta L. Moore, Centre for the Study of Global Governance Rachel Bowlby, University College London Chantal Mouffe, University of Westminster Teresa Brennan, (1952-2003) Karen Newman, New York University Karen Brodkin, University of California - Los Angeles Linda Nicholson, Washington University Wendy L. Brown, University of California - Berkeley Felicity A. Nussbaum, University of California - Los Angeles Judith Butler, University of California - Berkeley Kelly Oliver, Vanderbilt University Hazel V. Carby, Yale University Mary Poovey, New York University Elizabeth A. Castelli, Barnard College, Columbia University Denise Riley, University of East Anglia Anne Anlin Cheng, Princeton University Mary Louise Roberts, University of Wisconsin - Madison Joan Copjec, State University of New York - Buffalo Avital Ronell, New York University Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University Ellen Rooney, Brown University Elizabeth Cowie, Rutherford College, University of Kent Jacqueline Rose, Queen Mary University of London Joan E. DeJean, University of Pennsylvania Renata Salecl, Central European University Penelope L. Deutscher, Northwestern University Chela Sandoval, University of California - Santa Barbara Wai Chee Dimock, Yale University Sylvia Schafer, University of Connecticut Janice L. Doane, Saint Mary’s College - California Mira Schor, Parsons School of Design Mary Ann Doane, Brown University Naomi Schor (1943-2001) Ann duCille, Wesleyan University Joan W. Scott, Institute for Advanced Study Zillah Eisenstein, Ithaca College Jenny Sharpe, University of California - Los Angeles Jean Bethke Elshtain, University of Chicago Elaine Showalter, Princeton University, emerita Yasmine Ergas, Columbia University Barbara Herrnstein. Smith, Brown University and Duke University Anne Fausto-Sterling, Brown University Hortense J. Spillers, Vanderbilt University Frances Ferguson, Johns Hopkins University Ann Laura Stoler, New School for Social Research Margaret W. Ferguson, University of California - Davis Jennifer Terry, University of California - Irvine Jane Gallop, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Barrie Thorne, University of California Berkeley Judith Kegan Gardiner, University of Illinois - Chicago Louise A. Tilly, New School for Social Research, emerita Shahla Haeri, Boston University Leti Volpp, Berkeley Law University of California Sandra Harding, University of California - Los Angeles Judith R. Walkowitz, Johns Hopkins University Nancy C.M. Hartsock, University of Washington Kay B. Warren, Brown University Mae G. Henderson, University of North Carolina Elizabeth Weed, Brown University Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University Kari Weil, Wesleyan University Bonnie Honig, Northwestern University Laura Wexler, Yale University Jean E. Howard, Columbia University Mimi White, Northwestern University Lynne R. Huffer, Emory University Linda Williams, University of California - Berkeley Alison M. Jaggar, University of Colorado - Boulder Elizabeth A. Wilson, Emory University Alice A. Jardine, Harvard University Linda M.G. Zerilli, University of Chicago Claire Kahane, State University of New York - Buffalo, emerita Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, State University of New York - Buffalo Coppelia Kahn, Brown University Cora Kaplan, Queen Mary College, University of London For more information about donating papers or accessing Vicki Kirby, University of New South Wales the collection, please contact Feminist Theory Paper Archivist Amy Greer at (401) 863-6268 or Dorothy Yin-Ye Ko, Barnard College, Columbia University [email protected]. K. Dian Kriz, Brown University

pembroke center • 7 Pembroke Center Non-Profit teaching and research on women Organization for US Postage PAID Permit No. 202 Brown University Providence, RI Box 1958 Providence, RI 02912

Pembroke Center Pembroke Center Associates Advisory Board Council Officers contact Leslie Bostrom Phyllis Santry ’66 Visual Art Chair information Carolyn J. Dean Elizabeth Munves Sherman ’77, P ’06, P ’09 History and Modern Culture Vice-Chair Pembroke Center and Media Brown University Mary Ann Doane Pembroke Center Staff Box 1958 Modern Culture and Media Elizabeth Weed Providence, RI 02912 and English Director phone: 401 863-2643 Anne Fausto-Sterling Christy Law Blanchard fax: 401 863-1298 Biology and Medicine Director of Program Outreach e-mail: [email protected] Lynne Joyrich and Development web: www.pembrokecenter.org Modern Culture and Media Denise Davis David Konstan Managing Editor of differences Classics and Comparative Literature Donna Goodnow Bernard Reginster Center Manager Philosophy Amy Greer Ex Officio Feminist Theory Papers Archivist Ellen Rooney Martha Hamblett Modern Culture and Media Programs and Stewardship Coordinator and English Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg Director of Gender and Sexuality Studies Italin Studies and Comparative Literature