Lessons from Disability and Gender Studies for the K-12 Classroom

Thu, 5 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

THIS PAST SUMMER I WAS

fortunate to attend the Institute

for the Recruitment of

Teachers’ (IRT) summer workshop

in Andover, Massachusetts. My

summer was filled with challenges

and motivation from the IRT as I

participated in a rigorous graduate

preparatory program with a group

of talented and passionate individuals

dedicated to dismantling

educational disparities and creating

an equitable society. My days

consisted of graduate-like seminars

and facilitation on dense theory,

which challenged me academically

and personally. Furthermore,

I received feedback from the IRT

faculty, which allowed me to reflect

on my teaching methodology and

practices as a future educator.

Engaging with challenging text

not only helped prepare my peers

and me for the rigors of graduate

study but served as a reminder to

our motivations for pursuing higher

Murdering Mothers: Infanticide, Madness, and the Law, Rio de Janeiro, 1890-1940

Thu, 5 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

In 1923, the Rio de Janeiro public

prosecutor charged twentyfive-

year-old Portuguese immigrant

Maria de Jesus for the crimes

of both abortion and infanticide.1

Maria stated that she had miscarried

a five-month-old fetus at the Eunice

Hotel where she worked as a maid.

She then disposed of the cadaver by

cutting off its head, flushing the body

down the toilet, and throwing the

head into the backyard. The police

investigation found that Maria had

recently given birth and that the child

was full term. The prosecutor pressed

charges despite the legal discrepancies

inherent in accusing Maria of both

abortion, which implied the expulsion

of a dead fetus, and infanticide, which

required a live birth and then death.

How Cuba Changed My Life

Thu, 5 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

STILL REMEMBER receiving

the acceptance email for the

paper I was to present in Cuba

at a week-long conference that proposed

to celebrate the bicentenary

anniversary of Gertrudis GЧmez

de Avellaneda’s birth, one of the

pillars of Cuban literature. I will

never forget the happiness I felt

when I was notified; not only was

I going to Havana for a week but I

was also going to present a paper

on one of the best novels I had

ever read.

New Directions in Black Feminist Studies

Thu, 5 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

In 1994, Barbara Christian presciently outlined the many institutional challenges faced by Black feminism as a field in her essay “Diminishing Returns: Can Black Feminism Survive the Academy?” In this essay, Christian imagined a grim future marked by the abolishment of affirmative action and by deep cuts to funding and support for ethnic studies and gender studies programs and projects, a future that in many ways has come to pass. Yet a new generation of scholarship is evidence that Black feminist studies has not only survived but is producing some of the most intellectually innovative, politically imperative scholarship being done today. New Directions in Black Feminist Studies lecture series, organized by Grace Kyungwon Hong, Associate Professor, Department of Asian American Studies and Department of Gender Studies, brings together three scholars working across a number of fields and conversations in order to showcase the best of contemporary Black feminist scholarship, including...

Health, Immunity, and the Pursuit of Happiness:The Relationship between Positive Emotions and Inflammation in Breast Cancer Survivors

Thu, 5 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

A RECENT STUDY conducted

by UCLA researchers examines

the relationship of positive

emotions and inflammation

in women diagnosed with breast

cancer, a disease that affects 1

CSW Update Fall 2014 Issue

Thu, 20 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Complete issue of Fall 2014 newsletter

Lesbian Writers Series

Thu, 20 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

History of the Lesbian Writers Series, a series of public talks organized between 1984 and 1994 at A Different Light Bookstore and other venues in Los Angeles.

Message from the Director

Tue, 18 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Message from the Director

Women’s Activism and International Indigenous Rights

Tue, 18 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Overview of Faculty Curator Series organized by Maylei Blackwell, Associate Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies and Gender Studies, with profiles of the two speakers, Margarita Gutierrez Romero and Sonia Henríquez.

Misogyny and Manipulation in Mauritius

Tue, 18 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Misogyny and Manipulation in Mauritius

Q&A with Diane Richardson

Tue, 18 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Interview with Diane Richardson, who is a CSW Visiting Scholar for Fall 2014 and a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellow and Professor of Sociology in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University, UK. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on sexuality, gender, citizenship and social justice. Her latest bookSexuality, Equality and Diversity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) focusses on LGBT equalities policy, examining what has been achieved by legislation and resistance to such developments. She also recently co-edited Intersections Between Feminist and Queer Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and Contesting Recognition: Culture, Identity and Citizenship (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). With Victoria Robinson she is currently co- editing a 4th edition of Introducing Gender and Women’s Studies(Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), with whom she also co-edits the Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences (GSSS) Book Series...

Sex Worker Activism in Latin America

Mon, 23 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Sex Worker Activism in Latin America

Picturing Freedom

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Picturing Freedom

Cinephilia as Post-traumatic Compulsion

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Cinephilia as Post-traumatic Compulsion

Trap Laws: Protecting Women or Harming Them?

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Trap Laws: Protecting Women or Harming Them?

A Life of International Women's Health, Service, and Poetry

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

A Life of International Women's Health, Service, and Poetry

More Fire!: Robin Epstein and Dorothy Cantwell and the Lesbian Feminist Theatre Scene in the East Village in the 80s and 90s

Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

More Fire!: Robin Epstein and Dorothy Cantwell and the Lesbian Feminist Theatre Scene in the East Village in the 80s and 90s

Making Invisible Histories Visible: Processing A/V Collections

Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Making Invisible Histories Visible: Processing A/V Collections

Thinking Gender 2014 Preview

Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Thinking Gender 2014 Preview

Visiting Rwanda to Dicuss Gender Equity in Education: Q&A with Kathleen McHugh

Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Visiting Rwanda to Dicuss Gender Equity in Education: Q&A with Kathleen McHugh

Archival Research and the Daughters of Charity

Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Archival Research and the Daughters of Charity

Mysteries of the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives: Martha Foster Collection

Wed, 4 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Mysteries of the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives: Martha Foster Collection

Latinas and Black Women's Stories: Preliminary Views on the Path to Homelessness

Wed, 4 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Latinas and Black Women's Stories: Preliminary Views on the Path to Homelessness

Edge of the Map: An Experiment in Science and in Theater

Wed, 4 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Edge of the Map: An Experiment in Science and in Theater

College Gender Gaps

Wed, 4 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

College Gender Gaps

Special Issue on the NEH/Mazer Project

Mon, 8 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives contain collections of photographs, recordings of conferences, workshops, meetings, performances, radio and news broadcasts, interviews, and oral histories concerning topics such as homosexuality, lesbian issues, feminism, racism, discriminations, literature, music, history, and so on.

We have put up a special issue of the monthly newsletter bringing together all of the updates over the course of the 2012-2013 academic year for the "Making Invisible Histories Visible" project at the Mazer Lesbian Archives. This issue features many fascinating additions to the Archives, like Broomstick magazine, the Lesbian Schoolworker Records, as well as hundreds of photographs documenting the lesbian communities around the country from Elaine Mikels and Angela Brinskele, Director of Communications at the Archives.

Fear and Loving in Los Angeles Public Schools: What Volunteerism Reveals About Women and Work Culture

Mon, 8 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Zara Bennett is a former professor who received her Ph.D. in French and Francophone Studies from UCLA in 2007. Bennett is a CSW Research Scholar, an activist, a writer, and a mother of two. Her current research focuses on the politics of parental engagement in schoolyard greening within the Los Angeles Unified School District.

An Interview with Ann Giagni

Wed, 3 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Ann Giagni, the president of the board of the June Mazer Lesbian Archives since 1996, recalls her history intertwined with that of the Mazers'.

Special Issue on the NEH/Mazer Project

Wed, 3 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This is a special issue of the monthly newsletter bringing together all of the updates over the course of the 2012-2013 academic year for the "Making Invisible Histories Visible" project at the Mazer Lesbian Archives. This issue features many fascinating additions to the Archives, like Broomstick magazine, the Lesbian Schoolworker Records, as well as hundreds of photographs documenting the lesbian communities around the country from Elaine Mikels and Angela Brinskele, Director of Communications at the Archives.

Migration and Sociopolitical Mobility in Africa and the African Diaspora Conference Honors the Career of Ned Alpers

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Kathleeon Sheldon has been a CSW Research Scholar since 1989. She received her Ph.D. in history from UCLA in 1988. Her books include The A to Z of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa. She is an editor on the listserv H-Luso-Africa, which focuses on the Portuguese-speaking countries of Africa.

Q & A with Chandra Ford

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Chandra Ford is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA. Her areas of expertise are in the social determinants of HIV/AIDS disparities, the health of sexual minority populations, and Critical Race Theory. She earned her Ph.D. from the Gillings School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina.

Leaning in to the Backcourt Violation

Thu, 9 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg’s new book Lean in: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (Knopf, 2013) has been credited with trying to re-start a conversation on the “gender-problem-that-has-no-name” (New York Times, 2/21/13). if you’re not already familiar with the book, here’s a quick summary: Sandberg recapitulates previous studies by academic researchers and gives them a platform among a certain group of elite power brokers (the evidence: Richard Branson of Virgin group had her TED Talk front and center on the Virgin Airlines reservation page for a week in mid-March). her key message is that subtle, unintended, diffuse, unrecognized forms of discrimination are nevertheless combining to produce systemic effects of gender disadvantage. a 2007 study conducted at Barnard stressed similar concerns and called such diffuse forms of discrimination micro-inequities.

Records of Broomstick Magazine

Thu, 9 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Broomstick was an independent, self-published radical feminist magazine dedicated to supporting and promoting women and lesbian activism and art for an audience of women over forty. Founded by Maxine Spencer and Polly Taylor in Berkely, California, in 1978, it ceased publication in 1993.

Bloody Body Doubles

Thu, 9 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Megan Lorraine Debin is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art History at UCLA. She is completing her dissertation, “Body Traces: Performance Against Violence in Contemporary Mexico (1994–2012).” She received a CSW travel grant to present her research at the Center for Latin American Visual Studies, Third International Forum for Emerging Scholars at the University of Texas at Austin in 2012.

Q&A With Nathan Ha

Thu, 9 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Nathan Ha received his Ph.D. in the history of science from Princeton University. He is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics, and is a member of CSW’s Life (Un)Ltd working group. While at UCLA, he is offering courses on the history of the sexual sciences and the genetics of human origins.

Celebrating Carole Browner

Thu, 9 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

As she retires, we salute an extraordinary scholar who has done essential work connecting gender, reproduction, and health. "Many of us know Carole formally as an outstanding and much-awarded teacher and mentor. We know her, too, as a committed citizen of the profession—here at UCLA and broadly in the academic community," noted Sondra Hale in her closing remarks at the recent conference honoring Carole Browner. "However, many of us know her more informally as a person of great integrity, impeccable politics, and sharp mentoring skills."

Cultural Politics of Seeds: Preivew of the Symposium on May 17th

Thu, 9 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Organized by Allison Carruth and RachelLee,“The Cultural Politics of Seeds”symposium will look at how gender, ethnicity, and race shape contemporary cultural and politicalmovements related to seeds. Conceived as aforum for integrating research, policy, activism,and art practice, this event will include day-longevent with 3 panels and two keynote talks anda related art exhibit at UCLA’s Art/Sci Centerfeaturing Fallen Fruit, the Los Angeles–basedart collaborative. By bringing together farmers,artists, academics, and political organizers, thesymposium demonstrates that to adequately examineseeds’ diverse functions in culture, takinga multifaceted approach is fundamental.

Director's Commentary: Why Seeds?

Thu, 9 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Why does it make sense for those interested in gender and women to be interested in "The Cultural Politics of Seeds"? Because they are potent symbols of fertility, seeds present an ideal topic through which to prompt our feminist, gender studies, and LBGTIS communities to gauge their awareness of linkages between, let's say, the devaluing of women's worth and issues of gendered violence (for example, use of amniocentesis to select for male babies) to horticulture, soil health, and labor on farms. CSW's upcoming symposium on "The Cultural Politics of Seeds" also offers the opportunity to acknowledge the immense scientific expertise held by rural women in their processes of farming -- expertise that has been hones and refined for thousands of years.

Argentine Former Political Prisoners after the Dictatorship

Thu, 9 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Rebekah Park has been a CSW research scholar since 2012. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from UCLA and an M.A. in Applied Medical Anthropology from the University of Amsterdam.

Behind the Horse-Crazy Girl: Learning to Live Across Species

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Black Beauty, National Velvet, My Friend Flicka, Ann Romney’s Olympic dressage horse Rafalca, infamous race horses such as Barbaro and Seabiscuit, and, of course, My Little Pony. What does a three-ounce plastic figurine vaguely recognizable as a “pony” have in common with 1,200 pounds of flesh-and-blood horse? What stories help us narrate our relationships to these very different types of beings? What is the draw toward such figurative and material instantiations of animality? What explains the fact that there are over 9 million horses in the United States 150 years after the industrial revolution mechanized transportation and labor, rendering our dependence on horsepower a relic of our past? The sensual and emotional glories of mud, sweat, tears, and triumph are all very real aspects of contemporary horse-human partnerships, but there is something more that inhabits this horse-crazy love.

On conducting sexualities research in Africa

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Over the past decade, gay men and other men who have sex with men (MSM) have become a key concern in the fight against AIDS, not only in high-income Western countries but also in low- and middle-income countries where same-sex sexual transmission of HIV had rarely—if ever—been considered. My work examines how MSM emerged as a global HIV prevention priority at the transnational health policy giant UNAIDS, how this new global priority diffused to national governments around the world and what happens when global prevention priorities targeting MSM collide with local contexts and people.

Q & A with Hannah Landecker

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Hannah Landecker is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at UCLA and a member of CSW's Life (Un)Ltd working group. She is a historian and sociologist of biology and biotechnology whose work on cell culture, microcinematography, and metabolish draws on and contributes to issues central to feminist science studies.

Grier Periodical Collection and Diana Press Records

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Over the course of the winter quarter i had the opportunity to work with two different collections from the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives. the first collection I processed was the Barbara Grier Periodical Collection. Barbara Grier (1933-2011) was a lesbian-feminist activist, writer, and publisher. She is perhaps best known for her work with the Ladder, the monthly magazine published by the daughters of Bilitis, the first national lesbian organization in the United States. Writing under the pseudonyms Gene Damon, Vern Niven, and Lennox Strong, Grier began contributing copy to the Ladder in 1957, and continued until 1968 when she assumed the role of editor, and then publisher, in 1970. in 1973, Grier co-founded Naiad Books, which later became Naiad Press, the preeminent lesbian book publisher that opened up lesbian writing to the world.

The Art of Resistance

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Aceh, which is located at the northernmosttip of the island of Sumatra, is one of thirty-four provinces that comprise Indonesia. In the sixteenth century, Aceh was known as a center of trade for Indian, Chinese, and Arab merchants and as a center of Islamic learning. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, however, Aceh gained a reputation for violence and disaster. From 1976 to 2005, rebel fighters known as GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka or, the “Free Aceh Movement”) fought for independence from the Indonesian nation-state. This protracted political conflict came to a halt with the arrival of another tragedy; in 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami devastated much of Aceh, leaving 170,000 peopledead and 500,000 homeless.

First, do no harm

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

On August 2, 1995, a police task force led bythe California Department of Industrial Relations raided a compound surrounded by razor wire in El Monte, California. Inside the compound, the police discovered 72 Thai garment workers who had been forced to work 18-hour days for less than $2 an hour. The workers had been held in debt bondage for more than eight years, sewing tirelessly to pay off the cost of their journey to the United States. This paper examines the designing of a model of trauma-informed care for survivors of human trafficking in Los Angeles County.

Q&A with Allison Carruth

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Professor Allison Carruth recentlyjoined the faculty of the Department of English at UCLA. She is also an affiliated faculty member at the Center for theStudy of Women and at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. Last year, she served as a respondent at CSW’s “Life (Un)Ltd” symposium on May 11, 2012. She is currently working with CSW Interim Director Rachel Lee on organizing “The Politics of Seeds,” a symposium that will take place on May17, 2013. She kindly agreed to talk with us about her research and the upcoming symposium.

Un-Thinking Gender?

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

February, the shortest month, has traditionally been one of the most ambitious, most exhausting, and most rewarding for CSW. Our signature conference, Thinking Gender, opens the month, as we host graduate students from snowier regions to balmy southern California lured by the conference’s well-earned reputation as an Un-Thinking Gender? incubator of rigorous interdisciplinary exchange.

Lesbian Schoolworker Records

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In 1978, Proposition 6 was presented on the California State ballot. This initiative, proposed by conservative legislator John Briggs as well as California Defend Our Children (CDOC), and later nicknamed the Briggs Initiative, rallied to ban gays and lesbians from teaching within the public school system. This later extended to possibly include any supporters of gays or lesbians as ‘advocates of homosexuality.’ A CDOC pamphlet in circulation at the time argued that the purpose of the initiative would not deny gays or lesbians their human rights, but instead “protect the rights of innocent children from people who choose their position as a teacher,” maintaining that “there is no inherent right for an individual to hold a teaching job.” was the Lesbian Schoolworkers Records, which contained information regarding its organizational history, principles of unity and structure, press releases, newsletters, flyers, paste-ups, and photographs. With a commitment to “fighting racism, sexism,...

7 Myths about Undocumented Immigration

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I have spent the last 13 years working with undocumented communities in Los Angeles and have witnessed, time and time again, how the ripple effects of living without formal immigration status can tear apart the lives of some of the people I hold dearest. And so part of my personal, professionaland political life’s work has been to fightalongside undocumented folks in the struggle to gain rights, recognition, and respect. Immigration—especially undocumented immigration—is a loaded topic in this country. The President is talking about it, Members of Congress are debating about it, pundits are complaining about it, and everybody has an opinion about it. However, as I have engaged in this work over the past decade, I have met hundreds of people who are confused and/or misinformed about undocumented immigration, in large part due to negative representations of immigrants in the media. This article attempts to address some of the most common misconceptions about undocumented immigration.

Victoria Sork

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Since taking over as Dean of UCLA’s Division of Life Sciences in 2009, Victoria Sork has developed a set of initiatives that delineate her objectives for the division and her understanding of the role of the university in meeting the challenges facing society. These initiatives reveal her conviction that interdisciplinary research collaborations will be the engine for generating fresh approaches and innovative methodologies. These efforts include the development of a robust computational biosciences program to create a research infrastructure, health research focused on interdisciplinary research collaborations, biological conservation projects, and mentorship programs to advance diversity in the division.

Vandana Shiva

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

To celebrate International Women’s Day, CSW is hosting a lecture by the world-renowned philosopher, environmental activist, ecofeminist, and academic researcher on agricultural and women’s empowerment issues.

Sentimental Mexicans in Nineteenth-Century California

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

No es la raza Mexicana diferente de laAmericana para que se crea que solo ennuestro cuerpo se recontaran las enfermedades. (The Mexican race is not different from theAmerican race and one should not think that disease only takes hold in our bodies.) – Mexican Laborers’ Petition tothe Mexican Consul in the United States (quoted in Molina, 67)

Imagining a Genetic Seed Bank