CSWS Annual Review

by Aletta Biersack, Professor, Department of Anthropology
Between late March and the end of July 2015, I resumed my research on gender in the Porgera and Paiela valleys of Enga Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG). PNG achieved independence from Australia in 1975. Gold has been mined in the Porgera valley since the mid-1940s, but it was not until 1990, when hard rock mining operations replaced alluvial mining, that these two valleys underwent rapid change. I went to PNG to see for myself what had changed. I was especially interested in impacts on women.

by Stephanie Teves, Assistant Professor, Departments of Ethnic Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies
Acting as a subtle form of resistance to settler colonialism, a film and play about a Hawaiian Kingdom princess who died more than a hundred years ago allows Native Hawaiians to honor Ka‘iulani by thinking about her life and that of the Kingdom critically.

by Gina Herrmann, Associate Professor of Spanish, Romance Languages
On April 14, 1945, the very day the Allied troops liberated the Ravensbrück Nazi camp for women, inmate 43225, Mercedes Núñez Targa (1911-1986), had been slated for transport to the camp gas chamber. Núñez Targa’s route to Ravensbrück had begun in 1931 with the declaration of Spain’s progressive Second Republic. Mobilized in youth organizations along with hundreds of thousands of women who supported the Republic, Núñez Targa eventually took up a post as the head of the Spanish Communist Party in her native region of Galicia.

When Michelle McKinley applied for the position of CSWS director earlier this year, an academic colleague exclaimed in ironic surprise: “But you hate administration!” It seems a fair question, then, to ask Dr. McKinley—law school professor, human rights lawyer, cultural anthropologist, mother of four children, caretaker of her own father, and an obviously busy and committed human being—why she took on the administration of an academic research center.

By Olivia G. Wing, PhD Candidate, Department of History
In the late 1930s, Portland’s Chinese Girl Reserves and Japanese Girl Reserves each hosted a variety of fund-raising events to support causes of their choosing. Fundraisers were not unusual for a service organization sponsored by the YWCA. In the late 1930s, however, the Chinese and Japanese Girl Reserves each chose to sponsor seemingly diverging causes: war relief for Chinese refugees and summer camp, respectively.

by Ruby Amanda Oboro-Offerie, PhD Student, Department of Sociology
Public trust in institutions has long been a focus of social science research, yet most studies have concentrated on political institutions (Van Der Meer 2010), banks (Fungáčová et al. 2019), and regional (Ron and Crow 2015) and international organizations (Torgler 2008; Hessami 2011). In contrast, limited attention has been paid to trust in women’s organizations (e.g., women’s rights/empowerment groups or feminist movements), despite their growing role in civil society, global gender advocacy, and transforming social norms and gender power relations (Hassim 2006).

by Yuan Fang, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology
One summer break back home in China, I visited the Henan Museum and found myself drawn to a bronze mirror on display. I had seen many before, but something about this one stopped me. Its delicate designs were beautiful, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what it meant. I pictured a Tang dynasty court lady using it for daily grooming—the familiar image often used to represent bronze mirrors as feminine tools tied to beauty.

by Tali Bitton, PhD Candidate, Department of Philosophy
For many colonized women, gender-based violence (GBV) is never solely about their being women. When considering GBV within Palestine and Israel, like other forms of political violence, GBV functions as a mechanism of male supremacy within and across both peoples as much as a mechanism of settler colonization. But whereas Israel has a long history of documented GBV against Palestinians (as the UN has found occurred systematically in Israel’s current genocidal campaign in Gaza), the view of GBV within Israel is often presented in inverted form.