2001 from the AUTUMN CenterCENTER FOR THE STUDY OF WOMEN IN SOCIETY · UNIVERSITY OF OREGON A Crowning Year of Conversations By Lynne Fessenden, Ecological Conversations Program Director uring the final year of Ecological Conversations, CSWS welcomes another five resident research fellows. The Rockefeller Foundation–funded program, Ecological Conversations: DGender, Science, and the Sacred, has brought together a diverse group of scholars and activists to engage in scientific, political, and spiritual discourses raised by the global nexus of women’s and environmental movements. During the past two years, several UO faculty and graduate students have joined the conversation via an ongoing program seminar, a public lecture series, and CSWS-sponsored retreats and conferences. Creating a context where a diverse cohort of scholars are given the opportunity to interact and participate in an ongoing dialogue has had a catalytic impact on the work of all involved. In Creating a context addition to providing stimulation for individual research endeavors (collectively, six book manu- where a diverse cohort of scholars scripts have been submitted and four journal articles published), this arrangement has sparked a are given the oppor- number of creative collaborations, including publishing opportunities for graduate students. The tunity to interact and participants, though rarely in agreement on issues, have gained a great deal in recognizing the participate in an tangible value of bringing a variety of perspectives to the table. ongoing dialogue has The theme for this third and final year of conversations is the integration of scientific and had a catalytic sacred epistemologies in investigations of ecology, cosmology, health, and healing. We intend impact on the work for the dialogue to aid us in reconceptualizing our relationships to place, land, and other living of all involved. beings. Two international fellows will be joining us fall term, Imelda Bacudo and Veronica Brady (see page 9). During winter and spring term, three fellows from the United States will visit. Nimachia Hernandez, a Native American of Blackfoot descent and a scholar of linguis- tics and human development, has spent the past several years interviewing Blackfoot elders about their creation stories, cosmology, and views of nature. Philosopher Edrie Sobstyl is researching ways in which science and the sacred are entwined and reconciled in ecofeminist science fictions. And religious studies scholar Sarah Taylor is currently documenting and analyzing the growing movement of environmentally active Catholic nuns in North America— INSIDE specifically the green nuns’ radical resistance to biotech and genetic engineering technologies as spiritual crusades. (See public lecutre schedule on page 9.) The Rockefeller Foundation has generously provided funding so that all fifteen of our centerview ............. 2 Ecological Conversations fellows will return to the University of Oregon for a program finale next May. This event will allow the fellows from different years to meet one another, as well as upcoming ............... 3 offer the public and the greater university community a chance to hear some of the culminat- ing ideas from the three-year project. rigs ........................... 4 This final gathering of fellows will focus our collective insight toward a dialogue of re- imagining. Even as we critique current environmental discourses for their limitations and kudos........................ 5 exclusionary practices, we will imagine paradigms and power structures that are inclusive of all life forms; that take diverse spiritual beliefs and nontraditional ecological practices seriously as creative center ...... 6 ways of knowing; and that aim to nourish more just and sustainable relationships among humans and other forms of life, men and women, those who currently over-consume the news ....................... 8 earth’s resources, and those whose basic needs for food, shelter, health, safety and dignity are unmet. We will pivot the focal point among the triad of terms that have guided our three-year awards ................ 10 conversation: gender, science, and the sacred—as we work to build a provocative vision connecting ecological sustainability and social justice. csws ..................... 11 For more information and continual updates, visit the Ecological Conversations Program website at: http://ecocon.uoregon.edu, or call Lynne Fessenden at (541) 346-5399. author’s note ...... 12 2 centerview An Ecological Conversation with Giovanna Di Chiro iovanna Di Chiro is assistant professor that insists that humans are part of nature. Gof environmental science at Allegheny This is different than the more rarefied, College in Pennsylvania. Her research upper-class notion of environmentalism that focuses on the transformation and produc- separates humans from nature. A big irony in tion of environmental science by women my mind is that “saving nature” in the environmental justice activists engaging in mainstream environmentalist sense is about community-based politics. She was a separating yourself from nature. It’s a way of Rockefeller Humanities fellow at CSWS last occluding close-to-home, everyday nature spring and is currently at work on a book, and justifying that by protecting “wilderness” Uncommon Expertise: Women, Science, and or exotic, out-there nature. Environmental Politics. Q: That means you write-off what’s in the Q: Your research focuses on women who city. work along the “margins” of the environmen- A: And the city is coded as a place where tal policy arena due to their race, class, poor people live, factory workers, and people ethnicity, and nationality. How are such of color, what was termed in the nineteenth activists gaining access? century as the “dangerous classes.”So the A: What I’ve been seeing in this country urban environment is already “lost to and many others around the world is the nature;” it’s considered dangerous. “Nature” phenomenon that women community-based becomes the domain of the middle- and activists are the dominant force in the rank upper-middle classes. The environmental and file of most environmental organiza- justice movement, again, largely a movement tions. The women activists I’ve seen aren’t of women, is showing that, rather than being necessarily the ones with the microphones in separate, humans are profoundly a part of front of their faces, but they’re the ones with nature. Giovanna Di Chiro the staying power beyond the time when it Q: Do women have a special ability to becomes frustrating or when it’s no longer grasp such issues and to work together in CSWS FACULTY AND STAFF flashy in the media. ways that men can’t? Sandra Morgen, director One of the reasons ordinary women get A: I think that it’s a historical and socio- Judith Musick, associate director involved in environmental struggles is due to logical phenomenon, not a biological or Marie Harvey, director of research the daily experiences and observations they hormonal one, that has placed many women Shirley Marc, office coordinator Lin Reilly, accountant make while fulfilling their responsibilities to where core environmental planning is felt Diana Taylor, office specialist take care of their families—they recognize most strongly. It has to do with who has Cheri Brooks, dissemination when things aren’t going well, when things responsibility for what in the society; histori- specialist are starting to deteriorate: the quality of the cally, women’s social roles have included the Meredith Roberts Branch, administrative assistant water; the capacity of the fields to grow food; task of figuring out what people need. As a Research Assistants and Associates the health of the farm animals or pets; the result, the focus of women’s organizations Ecological Conversations health of children, the elderly, etc. These are tends to put people at the center. Program: Lynne Fessenden, the kinds of things that women notice. And, Q: I guess women working together Tina Richardson that kind of knowledge, which is conven- within these emerging networks, trying to Feminist Humanities Project: tionally viewed by the scientific establish- live harmoniously with nature and make Jan Emerson, Dan Gillfilan, Eric Lawson ment as anecdotal or not very systematic, is their communities healthier is a hopeful sign. Welfare Project: Joan Acker, very important in understanding how our We get so much doom and gloom regarding Kate Barry, Lisa Gonzales, environment and our relationships to it can the environment. Terri Heath, Jill Weigt be made more sustainable. A: I certainly think the environmental Women’s Health Research Initiative: Sheryl Thorburn Bird, Q: Are these women part of a new justice movement is driven by hope. That is Judy Hibbard movement? one of the things that has inspired me. I’ve Special Projects: Barbara Sutton A: The environmental justice movement traveled around the world and interviewed a For more information: is, I think, an extension of the civil rights lot of women, including women who live in (541) 346-5015 movement and other social justice struggles really terrible circumstances. But, because they http://csws.uoregon.edu with a more explicit focus on human rela- have adopted an activist standpoint, these From the Center is published three tionships with the environment. It thinks women have a sense of hope. One woman times per year by the Center for the Study of Women in Society at about the environment as a very basic activist I spoke with puts it this way, “This is the University of Oregon. It is relationship with nature—eating, breathing, not revolution. This is evolution.” It’s a kitchen- designed by Lori Howard drinking, making a living, raising children— table, person-by-person form of change. (University Publications) and edited by Cheri Brooks, with assistance by Shirley Marc. 3 Events upcoming OCTOBER 5–7: Conference: Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial and Modern China. Gerlinger Lounge, University of Oregon. Contact Lori O’Hollaren for informa- tion, 346-1521, [email protected]. 10: Brown Bag: “For the Love of the Tune: Irish Women and Traditional Irish Music,” Carol Spellman, folklore.