In late May, CSWS concluded its three-year focus on “Women and Work” by joining with the recently renamed Department of Indigenous, Race, & Ethnic Studies in a celebration of the publication of a book that had its origins in Hendricks hallowed hallways. Shireen Roshanravan was doing post-doctorate work in the Women and Gender Studies Program at UO during 2009-10 with the mentorship of Lynn Fujiwara—now an associate professor in the Department of Indigenous, Race, & Ethnic Studies at UO—when they began a collaborative relationship in their shared focus on Women of Color feminisms. As Roshanravan moved on in the academic world—she is currently an associate professor in the Department of American Ethnic Studies at Kansas State University—they coedited their collection across distance, writing and editing essays and refining the direction of their manuscript, which culminated this academic year in the publication of Asian American Feminisms & Women of Color Politics (University of Washington Press, Dec. 2018). The book is being lauded as a groundbreaking collection and is already finding its way into college syllabi.
It’s a good feeling to celebrate perseverance and triumph in academia, when so often we’re doing it against a backdrop of national and international politics that seems increasingly populist, anti-academic, celebratory of white nationalism, hateful and punitive toward immigrant peoples of color, and disparaging to lesbian, gay, bixexual, and transgender peoples and to women and men who do not conform to white patriarchal norms.
There are now more women, and especially more women of color, in the U.S. Congress than ever before; however, as we bring the CSWS Annual Review to its final stages in the summer of 2019, several of these young Congresswomen find themselves under belligerant and dangerous verbal assault by the leader of the free world. We’re living in a political era of stunning hatefulness, bordering on evil.
So then, let us marvel at the courage to persevere, and let us look toward a future where women continue to gain leverage in academia, world politics, and all arenas of the working world. Let us applaud and encourage the speaking of truth in the face of evil. Let us lift up those who are struggling to find voice, and those whose voices already ring out strongly.
Among the many speakers sponsored or cosponsored by CSWS during AY 2018-19, no one stands out more as a speaker of truth in the face of evil than Judge Yassmin Barrios. CSWS cosponsored her visit last March. The Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies, a sister unit which ten years ago was incubated at CSWS, was the primary sponsor for Judge Barrios’s visit, with CLLAS director Gabriela Martínez serving a major role in bringing her to campus. Judge Barrios was the presiding judge in the prominent case against former dictator General Efraín Ríos Montt, which concluded with his conviction for genocide against the indigenous Ixil Mayans of Guatemala, marking the first time in his home country.
Judge Barrios delivered a lecture titled “Justice and Reparation in Guatemala: Challenges and Possibilities” to a sizeable audience that included UO faculty, staff, and students and also community members from surrounding areas You can read more about her work and her visit to campus on page 37.
Early in the fall term, CSWS sponsored investigative reporter Bernice Yeung, who was part of an Emmy-nominated reporting team that had investigated the sexual assault of immigrant farmworkers. Yeung’s topic was “The Invisible #MeToos: The Fight to End Sexual Violence against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers.” She spoke to an attentive audience at the Knight Law School as the lead-off lecturer for the Race, Ethnicities, and Inequalities Colloquium directed by Michelle McKinley. Cosponsors of the talk included Office of the Provost and Academic Affairs, School of Journalism & Communication, and the UO School of Law.
On October 3, attorney Asaf Orr and Prof. Paisley Currah convened a panel on the topic of “Trans* Law: Opportunities and Futures.” Currah, a professor of political science and women’s & gender studies at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, has written widely on the topics related to transgender rights, sex reclassification policies, and feminism. Orr, the Transgender Youth Project staff attorney of the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), one of the nation’s leading advocacy organizations for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, has worked for almost a decade to advance the rights of the “t” in LGBT. Beatrice Dohrn, director of the Nonprofit Clinic at the UO School of Law, served as moderator. Cosponsors of the panel included The Tom and Carol Williams Fund for Undergraduate Education, School of Law, Oregon Child Advocacy Project, and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Education and Support Services (LGBTESS), Office of the Dean of Students.
Two weeks later, Patricia Matthew explored issues of faculty diversity with an audience of faculty, administrators, and graduate students, in a lecture titled “Written/Unwritten: On the Promise and Limits of Diversity and Inclusion.” An associate professor of English at Montclair State University, Matthew is often invited to speak about faculty diversity at universities throughout the country and is the editor of Written/Unwritten: Diversity and the Hidden Truths of Tenure (University of North Carolina Press, 2016). Cosponsors of the talk included the Division of Equity and Inclusion, and the Office of the Provost.
In the final week of October, CSWS joined the Department of Sociology and other UO units in welcoming Barbara Sutton, our 2002 Jane Grant Dissertation Fellow, back to the university to give a talk about her new book, Surviving State Terror: Women’s Testimonies of Repression and Resistance in Argentina (New York University Press, 2018). Sutton, a student of Joan Acker and Sandi Morgen while at the UO, is now an associate professor, Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University at Albany, State University of New York. While at UO, she was co-founder and coordinator of the Social Sciences Feminist Network and the Gender in Latin America research interest groups.
In late November, CSWS offered a grant information workshop for graduate students and faculty to provide instruction on how best to apply for CSWS research grants and the Jane Grant Dissertation Fellowship.
On November 30, Joane Nagel delivered her talk on “Gender and Climate Change” to a large audience at the UO School of Law. Nagel, who is the University Distinguished Professor of Sociology and chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of Kansas, used a PowerPoint presentation and case studies to illustrate her theme that gender does matter in global climate change. In her talk, Nagel illustrated that around the world, more women than men die in climate-related natural disasters. She also showed that the history of science and war interweave masculine occupations and preoccupations, and that the climate change denial machine is driven by conservative men and their interests. Nagel argued that males with an ideology of perpetual economic growth are the predominant climate policymakers, embracing big science approaches and solutions to climate change, with an agenda that marginalizes the interests of women and developing economies. Nagel’s talk was cosponsored by the Environment and Natural Resources Center at the UO School of Law and the Department of Sociology.
In February, CSWS continued its recent legacy of allyship trainings, this year facilitated by Dena Zaldúa, then CSWS’s operations manager. Two 101 Sessions and one 201 Session were offered at the Many Nations Longhouse, aimed to help participants examine their own privilege, their implicit biases, and how to develop dialogue and create safe spaces on campus and in our community. The sessions taught participants how to be an effective ally: how to intervene and stand up safely, appropriately, and constructively when they hear or see something racist, sexist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise discriminatory on campus or anywhere in our community.
In March, Christen Smith continued the Race, Ethnicities, and Inequalities Colloquium at the UO School of Law with her talk, “The Sequelae of Black Life in Brazil and the US: Violence, Gender, Space and Time.” Smith, an associate professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin, examined the lingering, deadly impact of police violence on black women in Brazil and the U.S.
Chandan Reddy delivered the Queer Studies Lecture in May, speaking on the topic “Convergence, Dissymmetry, Duplicity: Enactments of Queer of Color Critique in the Era of Administrative Violence.” An associate professor in the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington, Reddy discussed his research project on divergent modes of queer of color engagements with social movements, looking in one mode with Act Up, feminist anti-violence movements, and marriage equality efforts, and in another mode at the strong “queer” component in anti-rascist, indigenous, anti-prison, and anti-poverty politics. His visit was cosponsored by the Oregon Humanities Center and the Departments of English, Ethnic Studies, and Cinema Studies.
Also in May, CSWS joined with the Department of Sociology to welcome Miriam Abelson, the 2013 CSWS Jane Grant Dissertation Fellow, in a colloquium focused on the book that emerged from her dissertation research, Men in Place: Trans Masculinity, Race, and Sexuality in America (University of Minnesota Press, 2019).
This strong series of presentations was topped off with the panel discussion of Asian American Feminisms & Women of Color Politics, complete with a designer cake celebrating Lynn Fujiwara’s and Shireen Roshanvaran’s achievement.
—this article is a round-up based on CSWS staff reports and website entries