May 2008: Gender, Families, and Latino/a Immigration in Oregon. Conference proceedings were compiled in English and Spanish.
May 2007: Empires in the Twenty-First Century: Emergence, Contestation, and Gender. The conference was generously funded by a Carlton Raymond and Wilberta Ripley Savage International Studies and Peace Grant.Oct. 2005: Gender, Race, and Militarization, a conference - CSWS and the Women's and Gender Studies Program. The conference and two-year program was generously funded by a Carton Raymond and Wilberta Ripley Savage International Studies and Peace Grant. The book, Security Disarmed: Critical Perspectives on Gender, Race, and Militarization, edited by Barbara Sutton, Sandra Morgen, and Julie Novkov, grew out of the program of speakers and the conference.
March 2005: The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Higher Education - a panel discussion with visionary academic scholars and leaders who have worked to promote racial and gender equality in higher education.
May 2004: The Borders of Human Security: Geopolitics Comes Home - CSWS and Women's and Gender Studies Program with cosponsorship from many UO departments and the College of Arts and Sciences.
2004-2006: Joy Belsky Memorial Lecture Series
The three-part lecture series honored the legacy of Portland, Oregon plant ecologist Joy Belsky who died of breast cancer on December 14, 2001, at the age of fifty-seven. Funded by a gift from Joy's husband, plant physiologist Robert Amundson, the lectures celebrated Joy Belsky's commitment to equality for women and justice for the earth, her collaborative work ethic, and her courageous refusal to separate scientific research and advocacy.
Feb. 2004: #1 The Public Trust and the Precautionary Principle: Visionary Tools for the Environment and Public Health, speakers were Carolyn Raffensperger (executive director, Science and Environmental Health Network) and Martha Dina Arguello (director, Health and Environment Programs, Physicians for Social Responsibility, L.A.)
Dec. 2004: #2 Hope in the Dark, speaker was author Rebecca Solnit - writer, art critic, and environmental activist. Critics have warmly welcomed Hope in the Dark. Mike Davis calls it "an extraordinary book," applauding how her "prose grows poetic wings that enable her to soar to a visionary height." Studs Terkel appreciates how her book illuminates hope for those "seemingly lost in the woods of deceit and banality, bereft of hope."
Feb. 2006: #3 Gender, Science and the American West: Experiments in the Demilitarized Zone Between Development and Preservation. Speaker was nationally esteemed historian Patricia Limerick.
May 2001: Feminism Unbound: an interdisciplinary graduate symposium about women, gender, and feminism - a joint program with CSWS, the Social Sciences Feminist Network Research Interest Group, and the University of Oregon Graduate School.
Feb. 2001: Taking Nature Seriously: Citizens, Science, and Environment - a joint program of CSWS, the College of Arts and Sciences, Oregon Humanities Center, the Environmental Studies Program, and the departments of Biology, English, and Philosophy.This conference was designed to bring together scientists, community activists, and science studies scholars who were working on environmental issues in an effort to reveal and move beyond barriers that have inhibited interaction between scholars in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and between academics and activists. From the common ground of our concern for our global environment, we devoted this conference to establishing a dialogue between the interdisciplinary fields of science studies (history, philosophy, sociology, literature, cultural studies) and environmental studies (biological and natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, management, policy, design, and law), as well as between academic research and public activism. Such a dialogue enabled both a richer understanding of similarities and differences in our approaches to environmental problems and a realization of the common ground shared in our ultimate goals.
Feb. 2000: Work, Welfare, and Politics Conference. The book that grew out of the conference is Work, Welfare and Politics: Confronting Poverty in the Wake of Welfare Reform, edited by Frances Fox Piven, Joan Acker, Margaret Hallock, Sandra Morgen. The conference was supported, in part, by a grant from the Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics and co-sponsored by the Labor Education Research Center, University of Oregon. The keynote speaker was Frances Fox Piven.
1999-2002: Ecological Conversations: Gender, Science and the Sacred - partially funded through a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellowship Program. It concluded with a week of conversations between the 15 fellows and participants and was followed by a public conference. Click on this link to access the 19 related video titles: "Ecological Conversations Program, University of Oregon, Center for the Study of Women in Society."
1999 RIG-A-Fair: Border Lies: Race, Identity and Citizenship. Main speakers were Lydia Chavez (associate professor of journalism, University of California, Berkeley), Patricia Penn Hilden (professor of ethnic studies, University of California, Berkeley), and Dorothy Roberts (professor of law at Northwestern University School of Law). Also included were four roundtable sessions on affirmative action and beyond, border crossings- subjectivity and identity, opening/closing borders - immigration, globalization, and capitalism; and decoding citizenship and the reproduction of whiteness. The conference ended with a penary session on the (re) imagined community - research and policy directions.------
1998 RIG-A-Fair: Girls, Generations, and Globalizations - explored three related sets of questions: Girls: What does cutting edge research about girls suggest are some of the most pressing issues facing pre-teen and adolescent girls today? Does the agenda that has been delineated for girls encompass the needs of girls across racial, ethnic, and class lines and does it recognize the particular needs of girls with disabilities and girls whose sexual identities differ from the heterosexualized norm so prevalent in youth culture? Generations: Why do so many girls and young women today reject the label feminism? If feminism is to remain vital into the future, how can transgenerational dialogue and leadership emerge, particularly given the ways issues primarily affecting youth have been marshaled to support a conservative social agenda? Globalization: How are global economic, political, and cultural changes shaping the dreams of young people in the West and the developing world? How can young people (traditionally with very limited political power) translate those dreams into policies nationally and internationally?
1997: Teaching the Past in the Present Conference: involved teachers and scholars in reshaping how the past is studied and presented. Special emphasis was placed on gendered perspectives, the needs of diverse audiences, and the development of interactive electronic resources. The content of sessions crossed historical periods and cultures. The three primary topics covered were: women and religion; women and power; women and the arts.
April 1997: the Engendering Rationalities conference blossomed into a book, Engendering Rationalities, edited by Nancy Tuana and Sandra Morgen. Section content of the conference included: pragmatism and feminist epistemology, actual lives and ordinary knowers, recovered memories of childhood abuse: meaning, ethics, and healing, countering the absolutism of the familiar: the critical praxis of dialectical thought, gender, Judaism and knowledge, bodily texts, textual bodies, and looking at reason through historical lenses.
Feb. 1997: Engaging Feminisms was the title of a one-day conference. The invited guests included Barbara Epstein (History of Consciousness Program, University of California, Santa Cruz), Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias (co-director, Pacific Institute of Women's Health and former President of the American Public Health Association), and Frances Winddance Twine (women's studies, University of Washington). A related discussion of Barbara Epstein's "Why Post-Structuralism is a Dead End for Progressive Thought," was also held.