CSWS Annual Review

Interviewed by Michelle McKinley, CSWS Director and Professor, School of Law, and Alice Evans, CSWS Managing Editor 

 With a new book forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, Angela Joya is pressing forward with more projects focused on the Middle East and North Africa. An assistant professor in the UO Department of International Studies, Joya was born in Afghanistan, lived for twelve years as a refugee in Pakistan, and immigrated with her family to Canada when she was sixteen.

Q :Tell us about your book project.  

An anthropological study of female workers in the global apparel industry in Bangladesh uncovers a zero-sum game. Aged out by 40 with worn-out bodies and younger workers ready to take their place, women often have little or no savings to sustain them.

by Lamia Karim, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology

V Varun Chaudhry worked as a CSWS pro tem research assistant during AY 2018-19 while completing his dissertation through the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University.  He is now an instructor in the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Brandeis University. V’s research focuses on the institutionalization of “transgender” in nonprofit and funding agencies through ethnographic research in Philadelphia, PA.

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.

I started as director of CSWS in the summer of 2016. Sadly for us, CSWS lost two of our founding mothers within months of each other in 2016. Joan Acker and Sandi Morgen, pathbreaking feminist titans, made the Center a focus of research and activism around women’s economic rights and security for over forty years.

by Daizi Hazarika, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology

by Jane Nam, PhD Candidate, Department of Philosophy

by Carmel Ohman, PhD Candidate, Department of English

by Amna Javed, PhD Candidate, Department of Economics 

Every year, approximately 5,000 women are murdered globally in the name of honor. These crimes, labeled as “honor” killings, are meant to punish transgressing individuals who are believed to have brought shame to their families by overstepping social boundaries regarding acceptable sexual freedoms. In Pakistan’s context, where the “purity” of a woman is crucial to ensuring a successful arranged marriage, dishonor might result from, among other reasons, coming home late, having an alleged affair, or eloping. 

by Marc J. Carpenter, Doctoral Candidate, Department of History