GenderGender && Women'sWomen's StudiesStudies SpringSpring 20122012 NewsNews && UpdatesUpdates

Report from the Interim Head, Dr. Miranda Joseph

As I write from my temporary post as Interim Department Meanwhile, we have worked to educate ourselves and our Head, the & Women’s Studies Department is in community in response to the attacks on Ethnic Studies the midst of an incredibly busy and exciting semester. We and, specifically, the Tucson Unified School District’s have undertaken a national search for the next permanent Mexican American Studies program. The department’s Head and are incredibly gratified to have received a large Anti-Racism Task Force has organized a series of number of applications from superbly qualified candidates. presentations, workshops and colloquia addressing topics This is a tribute to our outstanding work and reputation such as the history of political struggles initiating Ethnic and a reason for great confidence in our future. Studies and the practice of feminist anti-racist pedagogy. Laura Pulido, Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity We have experienced a number of transitions in the faculty. and Geography at University of Southern California, gave Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy has retired (read more about a presentation entitled "Popularizing Ethnic Studies Kennedy on p5). Laura Briggs, Caryl Flinn and Nicole M. through Alternative Tourism" to a large and enthusiastic Guidotti-Hernández have all moved on to other audience. We hosted Bettina Aptheker, Professor of universities, and we wish them the best in their new faculty Feminist Studies and History at the University of positions. Meanwhile, we are thrilled to welcome Susan California, Santa Cruz, where she taught her acclaimed Stryker, internationally renowned Introduction to lecture scholar and founder of the field of course for decades. She led a Transgender Studies, to the UA as workshop on pedagogy, gave a a faculty member in Gender & lecture from her new scholarship on Women’s Studies and Director of LGBT people in the Communist the Institute for LGBT Studies. Left, and spent a dinner with Honor’s College students, talking We are also pleased to have with them about her own life story, become the home for Feminist which she has narrated in her recent Formations. This important venue memoir, Intimate Politics: How I Grew for the publication of feminist Up Red, Fought for Free Speech and scholarship is now co-edited by Became a Feminist Rebel. GWS faculty member, Sandra K. Soto, and Adela C. Licona, GWS As always, our community affiliate and faculty in Rhetoric supporters have been busy at work: Composition and the Teaching of as you’ll read on p4, the Women’s English (RCTE). Our PhD Plaza of Honor marked key candidate Erin Durban-Albrecht serves as Managing achievements with the dedications of two arches this Editor and Londie Martin (PhD candidate in RCTE) as year. Meanwhile, the Women’s Studies Advisory Council Editorial Assistant. has organized a number of great events, including Our PhD program is going strong with our first three Women Who Lead and LunaFest, that bring friends and students—November Papaleo, Shannon Randall and Erin funds to our department. Durban-Albrecht—passing their comprehensive exams and advancing to candidacy. Turn the page for a full report on I hope you enjoy reading this newsletter, which is the program and our fabulous students. intended to be the first in an ongoing series to keep you up-to-date on our activities and accomplishments. Thank you so much for your interest and support.

2 3 4 5 PhD Student Profiles Graduate Program; Women’s Plaza of Kennedy: Working with Alumna Profile Honor Dedications the Wounaan PhD Student Profiles: Lisa Logan & Mari Galup Department of Gender & Women's Studies Lisa Logan recently transferred to our department from Indiana 925 N Tyndall Ave University, Bloomington’s Gender PO Box 210438 Studies PhD program when her Tucson, AZ 85721-0438 mentor, Susan Stryker, was hired Tel: (520) 621-7338 to be the director of the UA Fax: (520) 621-1533 Institute for LGBT Studies. “The [email protected] thing I appreciate most about our program is that people here are highly committed to a feminist FACULTY ethic and many integrate their Mari Galup is a third year PhD scholarship and activism. I feel at student in Gender & Women’s Jennifer Croissant home here because I am able to Studies with a minor in Geography. After completing an Adam Geary build on my life experience as a feminist activist while getting a MA in our department with a Miranda Joseph priceless interdisciplinary education thesis focused on women, from world-class professors.” intimacy, and domestic labor in Eithne Luibhéid , Mari has shifted Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy Lisa is working on a Master’s Paper her research focus to gender and titled “Posthuman Birth” that relationships to the land in food Patricia Macquodale combines interests from her years justice, food sovereignty, and Kari McBride as a homebirth activist with the related collective movements in theory she has learned about the Americas. She was drawn to Sandra K. Soto gender, technology, and the body. the department because it supports a wide variety of Sally Stevens She researches childbirth patient simulators commonly used in projects and also because “getting Susan Stryker medical training and how they blur a PhD in a feminist program the boundaries between the human offers the opportunity to learn, Judy Temple and non-human and challenge the see, and be in the world in a meaning of “woman.” Despite different way.” being in the department less than a STAFF year, Lisa is highly active on For example, while studying for campus–she is a graduate assistant her comprehensive examinations Terry Mullin, Business Manager at the Institute for LGBT Studies in the areas of Transnational and is involved with Feminist Feminisms, Immigration, and Lupita Loftus, Accounting Specialist Action Research in Rhetoric. She Food Studies, Mari remains active Darcy Roman-Felix, reports that her biggest in several community projects that combine her interests in Academic Program Coordinator accomplishment is working toward earning social justice for immigrants and Laura Caywood Barker, a...PhD communities of color in the Administrative Assistant while United States and sustainable raising agriculture. She describes these three projects as a vibrant milieu that Women's Studies Advisory children. provides an ongoing learning opportunity. “Their dedication to Council (WOSAC) social justice is an example that I seek to follow in any work that I Betsy Bolding, Board President do.” Leigh Spencer, Program Coordinator Early on in the program, GWS faculty asked me, ‘What is at stake in the work you do?’ For me, this is a salient question that keeps me grounded, that makes me think about how the work I engage in is meaningful and can make a material contribution in the lives of people locally and elsewhere in the Americas.” ~ Mari Galup Supporting New Generations of Feminist Scholars: The GWS Graduate Program Our new and still growing oral histories, theory and Mom Counter-Narratives Within PhD program in Gender and philosophy, social networking, and and Without the Web: Theorizing Women’s Studies currently performance, literature, media, and Web-Based Feminist Narrative supports 16 PhD students as other forms of cultural production. Analysis" at Feminisms and well as an MA/JD student In the fall, three of our students Rhetorics in Mankato, MN. and many more graduate were funded by WOSAC to present Finally, Erin Durban-Albrecht minor and certificate students their work at conferences. Angela gave “Bristling with the Desire to from across the university. Stoutenburgh gave her paper, Confront Injustice: Elizabeth Our students have a wide “University as Intellectual Lapovsky Kennedy’s Queer variety of research interests in Commons - Reprioritizing and Contributions to Transnational women’s, gender, and Respatializing Public Education” at ” at the American sexuality studies that use the 8th Annual Historical Studies Association conference in feminist approaches to topics Materialism Conference in London. Baltimore. such as social movements, Jenna Vinson presented "Teenage

Alumna Profile: Agatha Beins, PhD

Agatha Beins, who received her MA from our department in 2003, recently returned to the southwest as an assistant professor of women’s studies at Texas Woman’s University after earning her PhD in Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers in 2011. We interviewed her about her career and current projects, which include turning her dissertation on 1970s U.S. feminist periodicals into a book, working as an editorial collective member for Films for GWS folks on the 2012 annual recruitment weekend hike led by Liz Kennedy. the Feminist Classroom, and volunteering weekly for a local farm. Here are some of the things she had to say: wanted to make . . . . Though I did “I found my dissertation topic in not start the program with a the basement of the UA library “[T]he MA gave me the particular trajectory in mind—that is, while doing research inspired by language to articulate why I I did not narrate a Master’s degree as my thesis topic . . . . I wanted to wanted to keep learning in a an initial step on my way to a locate feminist publications that feminist way and why I wanted PhD/academic career—looking back circulated under the radar of to do so in an interdisciplinary I can see that a significant part of my popular media and that might fit women’s studies program. MA in Women’s Studies was being into the DIY ethic. Sitting in the Working on [the book] treated from the very first day as a library, Women’s Studies for the Future scholar. The classes I took running through rolls of with Liz [Lapovsky Kennedy] challenged me through the range of microfilm I came across four really clarified that applying to readings, the density of the theories, different feminist periodicals PhD programs in Women’s and the expectation that I could (and published in the 1970s: Ain’t I a Studies was not just about my would) contribute to the intellectual interests; it was conversation.” also a political commitment I …Continued on page 5 3 The Women’s Plaza of Honor Arch Dedications The Women’s Plaza of Honor the UA Hispanic Alumni Club. with a blessing, notable speakers, and continues to celebrate women’s lives music performed by renowned Yaqui and accomplishments with The African American Women’s classical guitarist Gabriel Ayala. dedications this year of three major Arch was dedicated in February. Speakers at the event will include areas of the Plaza. Nearly one hundred community Tohono O’odham Chairman Ned members gathered in celebration, Norris, Jr., and Arizona Board of In October, the Tribute to Hispanic with honorees traveling from as far Regents member LuAnn Leonard, the Women event honored women away as Austin, TX, to participate. first Native American Arizonan across the region through the Completed in 2011 under the appointed to the Board. dedication of the southern plaza. leadership of Saunie Taylor and The Tribute was the result of nearly Daisy Jenkins, the arch collectively Funds generated from these and other a year’s planning by a large honors the lives of dozens of naming opportunities in the Plaza committee, coordinated by long- individual women as well as support the Elizabeth Lapovsky time Plaza Executive Board member members of the Links Inc. of Kennedy Endowment, which provides Edie Auslander. A boulder engraved Tucson and the Tucson Alumnae fellowships for graduate students in for the Tribute was unveiled by a Chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta Gender and Women’s Studies. If you multi-generational group of Sorority. would like more information about Hispanic women, demonstrating the the Women’s Plaza of Honor, please Plaza’s commitment to honoring On April 13th, an arch honoring visit http://womensplaza.arizona.edu women’s past, present, future. Native American women from or call 621-5656. Funds raised from this event will go each of Arizona’s 22 federally towards scholarships awarded by recognized tribes will be dedicated

The Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy Endowment Building on our success in raising an endowed PhD fellowship through the Women's Plaza of Honor campaign, we have embarked on a campaign to endow a second fellowship designed to honor Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy for her extraordinary contributions to our department and field. It will be awarded to students whose interests sustain and develop Kennedy's own intellectual and political passions. A phenomenal international group of scholars have stepped up to serve on an advisory board that will work with our local fundraising committee to reach out to those who have been touched in various ways by Liz and her work as a scholar and institution-builder. The campaign was launched with gifts by all of the GWS faculty and staff. We hope you will join our growing group of generous donors by making your contribution today. Beins, Continued from page 3 feminism in the 1970s.”

Woman? from Iowa City, off our Agatha Beins will spend her backs from Washington D.C., Rat summer conducting additional from New York City, and It Ain’t archival research about 1970s Me, Babe from Berkeley…. The women of color periodicals in authors were angry, they were Oakland at the Third World trying to imagine and produce Women’s Alliance Papers and at alternative ways of seeing and Simon Fraser University, whose living in the world, and they archives contain papers donated published to call attention to by feminists who helped plan the injustice not to make a profit. … Indochinese Women’s Conference [T]hese publications were in Vancouver in 1971. grappling not only with gender but also with the complexities of For more information about Dr. race, class, sexuality, and Beins, check out her faculty in a way that belies profile: http://www.twu.edu/ws/beins.asp the dominant narratives about Feminist Formations, the international journal of women’s, gender, and Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy: sexuality studies, is now Working with the Wounaan located at the University of Arizona. The indomitable Elizabeth does not exacerbate the Lapovsky Kennedy retired from colonization of their land and http://feministformations UA Gender & Women’s Studies livelihood. Kennedy is committed .arizona.edu in spring 2011 but she remains as to collaborative research, a active as ever. While Kennedy remarkable quality that has set apart will continue to be involved in her career, and in that spirit wants audience in the Gender & the department, she decided that to undertake cultural recovery Women’s Studies conference official retirement would give her research with the Wounaan and room at the University of the opportunity to spend more another US collaborator, Dr. Julia Arizona. Kennedy discussed her time with , friends, and her Valezquz-Runk. She notes that 1960s research with the Wounaan partner Bobbi Prebis. She is also there have been many challenges in more detail along with how her working on two major projects working together, but that all of the experiences in women’s studies that demand her attention: a collaborators have persisted and and American Indian studies book about Julia Boyer Reinstein have decided to apply for changed some of the (stay turned to future issues of supplemental funding to bring five interpretations she had of her the GWS newsletter for more Wounaan to Arizona to attend the time in Colombia with the information) and a return to her American Indian Language Wounaan. 1964-1966 fieldwork with the Development Institute. Last but Wounaan, an indigenous nation not least, Kennedy explains that She additionally mentioned the in northwest South America. major impetus for her work is the Wounaan’s largely positive desire to understand the reactions to the screening of the Kennedy explains that there are international situation for film in Panama this past January. three things driving her current indigenous peoples and to be able Kennedy is currently fundraising work with the Wounaan, which is to participate in decolonial efforts to get the remaining two funded by the National Science by educating people in the U.S. ethnographic films from this Foundation through summer about, for instance, ongoing research digitized and translated 2013. She wants to give her struggles over land rights. into Spanish. original research— films, noted and recorded stories, and her Kennedy screened her film, dissertation—back to the “Wounaan: A People of the Wounaan now that this return Rainforest” on March 27th to a large 5

University of Arizona Department of Gender & Women’s Studies PO Box 210438 Tucson, AZ 85721-0438

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