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