UO Abroad: International Studies’ Anita Weiss reconnects with writing in Italy | AroundtheO.

1. Where in the world were you?

I was at the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy, on Lake Como, from Feb. 21 to March 21.

2. What work were you doing there?

I went there to write a book, “Interpreting Islam, Modernity and Women’s Rights in Pakistan.” I brought a suitcase of clothes for the month, and another suitcase of books and notes. Plus, of course, my laptop for access to the Internet.

Anita Weiss is a CSWS faculty affiliate. Read more in AroundtheO

Jason Lindo

“Gender-Specific Measures of Economic Conditions and Child Abuse,” the Spring 2013 issue of CSWS Research Matters, examines data collected from California counties, with stark results. Written by Jason Lindo, assistant professor, University of Oregon Department of Economics, the paper takes a different tack than previous studies. Lindo writes that “by focusing on aggregate measures of economic conditions, prior studies have been missing the story.” Instead, his study, funded in part by a 2012 CSWS Faculty Research Grant, takes a close look at the role of gender. “Male layoffs increase rates of child abuse,” he writes, “while female layoffs reduce rates of child abuse.”

Study: Women altering menstruation cycles in large numbers | AroundtheO.

A research team headed by Christopher Minson, a human physiology professor at UO and a CSWS faculty affiliate, shows that “a surprisingly large number of women 18 or older choose to delay or skip monthly menstruation by deviating from the instructions of birth-control pills and other hormonal contraceptives.” Read more in AroundtheO

In Print: Race & Ethnicity | AroundtheO.

April 4, 2013 — “University of Oregon Philosophy Professor Naomi Zack’s newest publication, Race and Ethnicity (Bridgepoint Education, Inc., 2012), is a textbook that combines her earlier philosophical work examining the concept of race as culturally relative with a look at the social aspect of race being associated with oppression.” Read more in AroundtheO

Naomi Zack is a CSWS faculty affiliate.

Charise Cheney’s research expands Civil Rights debate | Around the O.

Recent blog entries on the websites for Inside Higher Ed and the American Historical Association provide details of an amicus brief filed March 1 in US v. Windsor, a case before the U.S. Supreme Court contesting the validity of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The brief, signed by the American Historical Association and a group of individual distinguished historians including UO professor of history and CSWS faculty affiliate Ellen Herman, argues that DOMA’s 1996 passage represented a sharp break from the long-term pattern of diversity in state marriage laws. That pattern illustrates that the significant inter-state contestation that characterizes same-sex marriage in the United States today has many historical precedents, from battles over miscegenation to degree of permissible consanguinity. Federal involvement in marriage has occurred rarely and only in instances where state authority had collapsed, such as the recognition of marriages among freedmen and women in the South during Reconstruction. Additionally, historical research has shown that marital regulation by states has been directed toward numerous social goals and cannot be reduced to a single or primary governmental interest in regulating heterosexual procreation.

Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan, Edited by Alisa Freedman, Laura Miller, and Christine R. Yano (Stanford University Press, March 2013)

This book comes out of a conference held at the University of Oregon in 2010 and organized by Alisa Freedman, UO associate professor of Japanese Literature & Film in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures. Freedman is a CSWS faculty affiliate who has written about her research for the CSWS website in the article “Changing Images of Japanese Workingwomen.”

From the publisher:

“This spirited and engaging multidisciplinary volume pins its focus on the lived experiences and cultural depictions of women’s mobility and labor in Japan. The theme of “modern girls” continues to offer a captivating window into the changes that women’s roles have undergone during the course of the last century.