dynamicdynamicGENDER SusanSusan StrykerStryker Gender and sexualities scholar visits Northwestern TwoTwo seniorsseniors completecomplete honorshonors thesestheses Photo by Evren Savci DIRECTOR’S NOTE Reflections on a busy year in Gender Studies The summer dresses in the cover photo tell you that our busy year has come to an end. The occasion was an end-of-the-year celebration where we honored our graduating seniors (among them Jen Piemonte and Maggie Birkel, pictured), our graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, and the faculty who taught and mentored them. It was a day when past, present and future came together. Professor Emerita Rae Moses spoke evocatively about the fiercely fought begin- nings of Women’s Studies at Northwestern – a poi- gnant reminder that this year we lost one of the pro- gram’s founders, sociologist Arlene Kaplan Daniels. It is always a little hard to watch the present turn into the past: it was a delight to watch graduating senior Cat Hammond receive the Rae Moses award that he so richly deserves -- but we will miss his active and lively presence in the Gender Studies offices next year. Say- ing goodbye to Cat and the other students renewed my determination to stay in more active contact with all our alums in the years to come. It was also an occasion to make an important announcement about the immedi- ate future: next fall, we will officially become the “Gen- der and Sexuality Studies Program”. That festive event was the last in a whirlwind of ac- Mary Weismantel, Director of Gender Studies tivities that filled this busy and productive year. One highlight of winter quarter was the extraordinary con- ference hosted by SPAN. “Libidinal investments: Emerging Scholarship on Sexuality and the Social” brought young researchers from across the United States to the NU campus, and consolidated our national reputation as a major center of social-scientific research on sexuality. Another big thrill came when we saw our new undergraduate course, Lane Fenrich’s “Sexual Subjects”, profiled on p.4 of the Chicago Tribune. We all know that our curriculum on gender and sexuality is stellar, but it is not every day that the entire city takes notice! Spring quarter featured campus visits by two very different historians, courtesy of the Kreeger-Wolf fund. The first was well-known transgender activist, filmmaker and historian Susan Stryker, who gave us three contrasting glimpses of the U.S. over its long twentieth century; the second was distinguished Europeanist Kathleen Canning, who explored the gendered dimensions of citizenship in Weimar Germany. I have only scratched the surface: as you thumb through the pages or scroll down the screen to see the rest of this newsletter, you will discover the enormous range of activities undertaken by our community members, which give our program its national and international reach. Professor Héctor Carrillo is off to Harvard as a prestigious Radcliffe Fel- low; Visiting Professor Vrinda Nabar returned to the NU campus to bring a South Asian perspective to our curriculum; post-doctoral fellows Kristin Lems, Tom Waidzunas and Evren Savci taught us about Germany, Uganda and Turkey respectively; the alumni updates mention Ethiopia, New York City, and South Dakota’s Rosebud Reservation. You will also find the names of some up-and-coming undergraduates to watch out for, like Ryan Lim, Tristan Powell, and Alysa Statler. But don’t let me spoil the fun: look and see for yourself. CONTENTS Students chat before awards are given out at the Gender Studies year end awards ceremony and celebration. Photo by Emily Gilbert FACULTY GRADUATE Gender Studies screens Stryker film Screaming QPGSA continues Queer Salon, introduces Da 4 Queens; Stryker talks “Cross Dressing for Empire”; 12 Vinci’s Room; Graduate Student Updates Gender and the Meaning of Revolution in Germany Doctoral candidate researches body An excerpt from Family Fables and Hidden 13 commodification 5 Heresies 6 Faculty Updates In Memoriam: Arlene Kaplan Daniels; Gender and the UNDERGRADUATE 8 Meaning of Revolution in Germany “How do you solve a problem like Black Swan?”; 14 Senior reflects on four years in gender SPAN studies 15 Two seniors complete honors theses Libidinal Investments: Sexuality scholars address Alumnus to study feminist studies in doctoral pro- 9 key themes of emerging research 16 grams at UC Santa Barbara; Alumni Updates Gendered Scripts within Psychiatric Prescriptions; New introductory course “Sexual Subjects”; Un- 10 Science and turn-of-the-century German Feminism 17 dergraduate board works with Project ShoutOUT; SPAN announces ‘12-’13 faculty research awards; Four students earn undergraduate awards 11 Richard Parker on “Sexual Matters, the Politics of Undergraduate Updates HIV and AIDS and the Invention of Global Health” 18 GRADUATEFACULTY Gender Studies screens Stryker’s film Screaming Queens By Beth Corzo-Duchardt (PhD Candidate Screen Cultues, Gender Studies Certificate) During her visit this spring, historian Susan Stryker screened excerpts from her film-in-progress Christine in the Cutting Room, which uses Christine Jorgensen’s biography as a lens to “explore the relationship between cinema and embodiment.” It marks an aesthetic depar- ture from her previous film, Screaming Queens (2005), which was screened in advance of Stryker’s arrival to the Northwestern campus. The latter combines inter- views and archival footage with voice-over narration about an overlooked event in queer history: the riot at Compton’s cafeteria in San Francisco in which trans- women stood up to resist police brutality. Christine in questions about her aesthetic choices, the historical the Cutting Room is decidedly experimental, presenting contexts of each film, and the state of transgender stud- a montage of images and sounds from disparate his- ies. Both events attracted audiences of faculty, graduate torical moments and contexts to illuminate the constel- students, undergraduates, staff, alumni and community lation of ideas, events and affects that created the con- members, a testament to the Gender Studies Program’s ditions for a transsexual woman to become a celebrity vital role in facilitating interdisciplinary dialogue that ex- in 1950s America. After the screening, Stryker fielded tends beyond the boundaries of academia. Stryker talks “Cross Gender and the Meaning Dressing for Empire” of Revolution in Germany By Christine Wood (PhD Candidate, Sociology, Gen- By Kirsten Leng (SPAN Post Doctoral Fellow in der Studies Certificate) Sexuality Studies) On April 23 Gender Studies welcomed Susan Stryk- On May 10, 2012, Kathleen Canning, Arthur F. Thur- er, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Stud- nau Professor of History, Women’s Studies, and Ger- ies at the University of Arizona. Stryker presented a talk man at the University of Michigan, delivered a talk en- entitled “Cross-Dressing for Empire: Transgender Per- titled, “Aftermaths and Future Visions: Gender and the formance at San Francisco’s Bohemian Club, 1870s- Meaning of Revolution in Germany, 1918-1919.” Can- 1920.” Stryker, a historian, has unearthed a wealth of ning’s talk was made possible by the generosity of the evidence about gender performance at the Bohemian Kreeger-Wolf family. Grove Club, an exclusive social club for members of Professor Canning’s talk was derived from a larger the nation’s “power elite” at the turn of the 20th cen- book project that examines the impacts of the First tury. While gathered on social retreats, club members World War and Revolution on the fledgling German engaged in ritual “high” and “low” jinks comedic perfor- “Weimar” Republic of 1919-1933, and specifically upon mances, which often included cross-dressing and ra- demands for and practices of citizenship. Although most cialized minstrelsy performance. Stryker challenged a historians dismiss the war and revolution as “flawed and standard queer reading of these performances, arguing mistaken events,” Canning argued that the tumultuous that we cannot read such rituals as vital signs of the for- First World War homefront and the German Revolution mation of LGBT and queer subjectivities. Instead, these of 1918-1919 constituted crucial staging grounds for performances represent the consolidation of white, subsequent struggles over democratic power and par- masculine heteronormativity among political and social ticipation—struggles that were grounded in gender(ed) elites. Stryker’s research encourages us to continue to language, bodies, images, and ideologies. As Canning think through the ways in which empire, racial hegemo- (continued on page 8) 4 ny, and gender are co-constituted. Excerpt from Family Fables and Hidden Heresies By Vrinda Nabar (Visiting Professor Gender Studies) It was only over the years that I learned also of the op- pressive native structures that had constrained many of One day many years after my mother died I wrote this these women in their individual lives. The personal as paragraph without being aware of what I was saying. By political in my journey towards feminism could thus be then I had played around in my head with the lives of my traced to that morning on the beach in 1930, long be- loved ones for a long time. The beginning is never easy. fore I was born, when two women central to my life had I’ll be honest, you say, tell it the way it was. Then you played a part in at least one symbolic proclamation of start to think about the hurt, the endless explanations, freedom. the disagreements. No, it wasn’t like that, no, I wasn’t India’s rapidly changing and somewhat uncer- there when it happened. I don’t remember saying that. tain political, economic and cultural landscape makes How could you have gone and put that down? What will the present an especially troubling time to write about people say? gender. I see a parallel between the lives of my mother All these become compounded by the closeness of and grandmothers and my own troubled present.