University of Kansas Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Department Upcoming Events: February 6th @ 3:00 pm January 2020 Seminar Room, Hall Center Gender Seminar, featuring A Message from the Chair: Kyle Velte th 2019 has been a year of change for the Women, Gender, and February 24 @ 4:00 pm Sexuality Studies Department. Attentive readers will note that Centennial Room, Union we are publishing this newsletter in January instead of May; from now on we will publish two newsletters annually, one February Sisters lecture, after each semester ends. We are also introducing a section featuring Ayu Saraswati where we highlight an alumna or alumnus of the Department. March 30th @ 7:00 pm In much more important news, there have been some Lawrence Public Library retirements and arrivals on the third floor of Blake Hall. In September Jan Emerson, longtime Administrative Associate, Stopping Sexual Violence, a retired after thirty-three years of service at KU. (We profiled Jan Community Approach, feat. in our last newsletter.) Stepping into some big shoes, we are Jennifer Hirsh & Shamus Khan delighted to introduce Emma Piazza as our new Administrative Associate. Emma is a graduate of our department (as well as the KU School of Music), earning her BA and BM in 2019. She also has a number of years of experience working in the Are you a WGSS alum? Spencer Research Library at KU. (For more on Emma, please Let us know what you’re up see page 17.) to! We are reaching out to Ann Schofield has also retired after forty years at the University our WGSS graduates and of Kansas. Ann began teaching here in 1979 as a Visiting would love to hear from you. Assistant Professor of History and the next year began on the If you’d like to be a part of tenure track in American Studies and what was then called our alumnae/i spotlight Women’s Studies. On Thursday, December 12 we had a project, please email our wonderful reception in the Union, honoring Ann and her Administrative Associate, career. Pictures, tributes by myself and Kim Warren, and a Emma Piazza, at response from Ann herself can all be found on pages 7 [email protected]. through 11. WGSS Department Newsletter January 2020 Page 1 of 19 Message from the Chair (cont). Our work in teaching and research continued apace, despite all of these changes. We welcomed back Katie Batza, who was conducting research last year under the aegis of an ACLS fellowship. In the fall Hannah Britton was on sabbatical, which involved a long research trip in South Africa, working on her next big projects. Sarah Deer continued her busy travel schedule on research- intensive leave in the fall, including being inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, alongside Jane Fonda and Sonia Sotomayor. Alesha Doan is currently lending her administrative savvy to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, chairing that Department for the 2019-2020 school year. And Ayesha Hardison takes up the position of editor of the journal Women, Gender, and Families of Color, now housed within the WGSS Department. This coming calendar year, Akiko Takeyama will be on leave working on her book on the pornography industry in the U.S. and Japan. Under the auspices of an SSRC Abe Fellowship, Akiko will be spending six months in LA and six in Tokyo finishing her research. The heart of the Department continues to be our students. As of this fall we have more than seventy majors and almost eighty minors. This year we also launched a new undergraduate certificate in Gender, Law, and Policy that students can fulfill by taking four classes, including WGSS 563: Gender, Sexuality, and the Law. We also have a thriving Ph.D. program as well as our longtime Graduate Certificate program. As this newsletter goes to press I have just learned that one of our Ph.D. candidates, Jo Kipgen, who will complete her dissertation this spring, will also begin her first position as Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in the fall of 2020. Congratulations, Jo! One of the pleasures of Ann’s retirement reception was the announcement of the Schofield Faculty Development Fund, which was established by Ann’s former Ph.D. student, Liz Miller, in Ann’s honor. If anyone would like to make a donation in Ann’s honor to that fund, they may do so here (simply note “Schofield Fund” in the Special Instructions field). We are extremely grateful to Liz and to all the donors over the course of 2019, who continue to allow us to help junior faculty and graduate students in their research, to bring speakers to campus, and to aid in the work that we do. Thank you so much. Finally, if you are an alum of our department and you have news to share, please email me at [email protected], or Emma Piazza at [email protected]. We have updated our website to include as complete a list as possible of departmental alumnae/i; the goal is to demonstrate to prospective students the great variety of possible careers available to those with a BA in WGSS or Human Sexuality. You can find this page under our Alumnae/i & Friends tab. Please email if you would like to be included! Nick Syrett. WGSS Department Newsletter January 2020 Page 2 of 19 What’s Happening with WGSS faculty: Katie Batza: Katie Batza spent the summer at Harvard working on a digital reproductive justice walking tour and podcast for Boston to wrap up her 18 months of fellowship. She returned to teaching in Fall 2019 and quickly got to work designing her Making a Pandemic course that she is excited to teach for the first time this Spring. She also was successful in getting the Trinity Episcopal Church in St. Louis listed on the National Register of Historic Sites- the first site in Missouri based upon its importance to LGBTQ history. Batza continues to work on her book project on the early AIDS epidemic in the United States Heartland and will present some of that research at two major conferences this Spring. Hannah Britton: This October and November, Hannah Britton started three new research projects in South Africa focusing on gender-based violence, institutions for the advancement of women, and human trafficking. Hannah’s next book will be released in April 2020, entitled Ending Gender-Based Violence: Justice and Community in South Africa, with the University of Illinois Press. Hannah continues to lead the Anti-Slavery and Human Trafficking Initiative at the University of Kansas, and she was recently appointed by Governor Laura Kelly to the Human Trafficking Advisory Board for Kansas. Hannah’s other new research collaborations are focused on improving opportunities for vulnerable populations. She is a member of the research team led by Dr. Hyunjin Seo at KU, focusing on digital literacy and technology education for women in transition and exiting incarceration. Finally, she is a researcher on the team led by Cheryl Holmes at KU, focusing on improving the health access and patient-centered outcomes for migratory and seasonal agricultural workers. Sarah Deer: Sarah Deer is Professor of WGSS and Public Affairs and Administration. She recently published “(En)Gendering Indian Law: Feminist Legal Theory in the United States” in the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism. She also co-authored (with Elizabeth Kronk Warner) a new article in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law entitled “Raping Indian Country.” Professor Deer collaborated with WGSS PhD Candidate Abigail Barefoot to write “The Limits of the State: Feminist Perspectives on Carceral Logic, Restorative Justice, and Sexual Violence” in the Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy. Professor Deer continues her efforts to support reauthorization the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). She published an op-ed in The Hill in June, and spent several days in November working on Capitol Hill to address concerns about the future of VAWA. Among her many speaking engagements in 2019 was a presentation to the 9th Circuit Federal Judiciary conference. She is working on an empirical research project with PhD student Melinda Chen about the ways in which Native survivors of sexual violence conceptualize justice for themselves. WGSS Department Newsletter January 2020 Page 3 of 19 Alesha Doan: Professor Doan’s research is situated at the intersections between gender, public policy and organizations. She examines the ways in which gender is infused into the social and political structures that shape formal and informal practices. Her research interrogates how these gendered practices create obstacles for people that limit their decisional autonomy, and create inequities in organizations, policies and the lived experiences of people. In 2019, Professor Doan’s co-authored book, Abortion Regret: The New Attack on Reproductive Freedom was published. She also published Organizational Obliviousness: Entrenched Resistance to Gender Integration in the Military (part of the Cambridge Elements Series) and an article in the journal Trauma, Violence, & Abuse. Professor Doan also received a three-year grant (2019-2022) to work with a collaborative research team to investigate gendered eating disorders in the military. Ayesha Hardison: Ayesha Hardison is an Associate Professor with a joint appointment in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and English. Her research and teaching focus on African American literature and culture with particular interests in gender, genre, and historical memory. In 2019, she became the editor of Women, Gender, and Families of Color, http://wgfc.ku.edu/, a multidisciplinary journal centering the study of Вlack, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian American women, genders, and families. She co-guest edited with Randal Jelks the journal’s fall 2019 issue dedicated to exploring “Black Love After E.