NEWSLETTER OF THE UCLA CENTER FOR THE APR08 CSW STUDY OF WOMEN Gender of “Terror” a public conference organized by Kathleen McHugh and Purnima Mankekar 1 APR08 IN THIS ISSUE 3 DEPARTMENTS 7 Announcements 19 Staff 20 2 APR08 DIRECTOR’S COMMENTARY The Gender of "Terror" On May 2nd, CSW will sponsor an interna- situations of state-sponsored terror? How are Jennifer Terry, Lori Allen, Paola Bacchetta, tional conference on “The Gender of ‘Terror’” discourses of gender and sexuality implicated Sherene Razack, Sunaina Maira and Veena organized by Purnima Mankekar, Associate or reconfigured when terror is visited upon Dubal The discussions we envisage emerging Director of CSW, and myself We intend the communities at the margins of nation-states? out of the conference will bridge conven- conference to make several distinct interven- How are conceptions of martyrdom, sacrifice, tional divides that frequently separate these tions to the topic of terror While there has and victimhood central to the designation of disciplines, such as that between policy and been a considerable amount of scholarship certain populations as perpetrators of terrors theory We are grateful for the generous (and done on September 11, 2001, and its after- and how are these conceptions of martyr- interdisciplinary) support we have received math, conversations on terror and terrorism dom gendered and sexualized? from our co-sponsors: the Deans of the Hu- have been largely from U S-centered per- The conference features three panels, manities, Law, Social Sciences, and Theater, spectives Our conference will international- the first on the role of states, civil societies Film and Television; the Center for India and ize the discussion and foreground the role and NGOs in the politics of terror, counter- South Asia and the Asian American Studies of gender and sexuality in the formation of terrorism, state-endorsed terror, and peace- Center; and the Departments of Anthropol- terror Our concern is not with demograph- keeping The second investigates the repre- ogy, Asian American Studies, Comparative ics (as in discussions of how many men vs sentational practices that construct terror Literature, and Women’s Studies The com- women become terrorists) but related more The third will consider how legal discourses plete conference program can be viewed at fundamentally to the interrelated construc- and practices of citizenship constitute the http://www csw ucla edu/Flyers/GT_program tions and representations of gendered identi- very category of terror The scholars we have pdf The conference is free and open to the ties, agency, nationhood, and citizenship For invited hail from humanities, social sciences, public (If you want to join the participants for example, how might ideas about manhood legal, and media studies backgrounds and all the lunch, you must pre-register ) Please join or feminine agency shape how men and do interdisciplinary research They represent us for our consideration of this timely and women are recruited to become terrorists? very diverse, possibly divergent, perspectives important topic What is the role of gender and sexuality in on these issues They include: Susan Buck- − KathlEEN MCHUGH Morss, Malathi De Alwis, Inderpal Grewal, 3 BY NOEL ALUMIT I started doing AIDS work in the early 1990s. not belong to one group of people. It was I was a young Filipino man raised to believe something that was also ravishing women in charity. I started as a volunteer at the Chris and children from everywhere. Brownlee Hospice for People with AIDS. In the hospice, I was informed that people were When I say "ravishing," I mean this Webster there to live out the last six months of their definition: To seize and carry away by vio- lives. My job was to make those last months as lence; to snatch by force. In those days, that's comfortable as possible. what it felt like. Once vibrant beings were Photo: Reed Hutchinson Reed Photo: being seized, carried away by diseases that The only face of AIDS that I knew at the time appeared violent to the body (the rashes, the Survival by Fiona Kirkwood was always gay and usually white. When I sores, the lesions), snatched by some unseen started volunteering, I was not prepared to see force until they were gone. people of color and I certainly didn't expect nothing like a stigmatized disease to see who to see women. I was shocked when I met a In the rooms of the hospice were photos of truly loves you. Susan Sontag said it best in Filipina—a woman who resembled some of individuals before illnesses like pneumonia her book AIDS and its Metaphors, "The unsafe the aunties who raised me—dying of AIDS. or karposi sarcoma took over. In the pictures behavior that produces AIDS is judged to be from their pasts, hospice residents had shining more than just weakness. It is indulgence, I think it was at that moment that I realized faces with strong bodies, friends and family delinquency-addictions to chemicals that are that AIDS, contrary to media indications, did surrounding them. Alas, this is AIDS. There's illegal and to sex regarded as deviant." APR08 4 CSupdateW It was with this sentiment that friends and infections, addresses the question, Why are family went away, leaving volunteers like me condoms controversial? to fill the void. Jean Carlomusto's provocative The Portrait That was 1991. Gallery, is "an interactive multi-media installa- tion that allows visitors to explore the evolu- Today, the Chris Brownlee Hospice for People tion of a health crisis that forever changed With AIDS no longer exists. It did not fold due medical research and public policy towards to mismanagement or lack of funds. It closed those with communicable disease." Carlo- because no one was dying. Breakthroughs in On May 7th, MAKE ART/STOP AIDS and the Interna- musto, an associate professor of media arts medication came by to prolong life. tional Institute will host AIDS|SIDA - Global Updates, at Long Island University, provides moving Art, and Performance, from 1 to 5pm, Kaufman images of fine women and men doing AIDS Upon entering the MAKE ART/STOP AIDS exhi- Hall 200. It will feature updates and art from Latin work. Their faces literally light up a room. bition at UCLA's Fowler Museum, I was struck America, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa. with the amount of time that had passed. It Some of the most moving pieces are by is 2008 and I am a not-so-young Filipino man Admission: free. For more information call Larissa Indian photographer Dayanita Singh. of forty. The exhibition chronicles the last Deckert at 310-825-4811. She photographed thoughtful caregivers twenty-five years of artistic response to AIDS working with people with AIDS in India. It and we know things now. We know that in It is agreed that AIDS no longer favors one reminded me of 1991. the United States, the cases in women have group; it affects people from everywhere. tripled since 1985. Women make up almost Artists from India, South Africa, Brazil, and the Looking at the exhibition, I believe it's half of all people living with HIV/AIDS in the United States offered their voices to the cho- ravishing. This time, I use this definition: to world. That's close to 15 million women. We rus. South African artist Fiona Kirkwood flew in transport with joy or delight. know that the medications don't reach everyone. to personally lay hundreds of male and female condoms to spell out the word: Survival. Noel Alumit is the bestselling author of Faces of women—about 45% of people with Survival, explains Kirkwood, encases the words Talking to the Moon and Letters to Mont- HIV/AIDS are women—are throughout the viva and virus. gomery Clift. His work has appeared in USA exhibition. Africa leads the global death toll in Today, The Advocate, and A&U: America's AIDS cases. The exhibition features South Afri- Brazilian fashion designer Adriana Bertini of- AIDS Magazine. He worked at the Asian Pacific can images of a HIV-positive mother and her fers her condom couture dress, an evening AIDS Intervention Team for fifteen years before HIV-positive children and a lesbian infected gown made of condoms. It raises AIDS aware- becoming the Community Organizer for MAKE through rape. ness and, if condoms significantly reduces HIV ART/STOP AIDS. APR08 5 CSupdateW Attributions of Blame in Gender Violence and the Mass Media WHOWORDS BY LESLIE M. SCHWARTZ The power communication has over how meaning is created and REALLYtransmitted in society is indisputable—language contributes to decisions we make, opinions we form, stories we believe, attribu- tions we assign, and perceptions we internalize. Because of the CAN substantial influence that language has on these areas of social life, it is essential to critically examine how language functions in the mass media in order to discuss possible implications com- HURT munication has on audiences and the perceptions, opinions, and attributions they form about gender violence in our society. APR08 6 CSupdateW HOW WORDS REALLY CAN HURT, continued from page 1 From a linguistic perspective, the Sapir- Whorf hypothesis illustrates that “human beings do not live in the objective world alone, [and] are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has be- come the medium of expression for their society….We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community pre- dispose certain choices of interpretation” (Sapir, 1929). Here, Sapir defines language as a social medium of expression that influenc- es our choices and interpretations of reality within given contexts. Whorf (1940) further describes our world as “a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds.” Both of these conceptions relate to the influence language has in our given social structure to mold and shape the version of reality we perceive, illustrating the powerful impact of newspaper articles or broadcast news ies scholar and UCLA professor, Douglas language has on constructing individual reports, the way these messages are com- Kellner (2003) reports that “media images ideas of social reality.