2007-2008 Speakers
Judy Rohrer
"The Marrying Kind?"
Intersectional Ambivalence in the Borderlands of Gay Marriage
Friday, May 2, 2008, 10:00 a.m.
Women's Studies Conference Room
As coincidence would have it, I was living in Honolulu in 1996 when public debate over gay marriage flared up, in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2004 when Mayor Newsom opened the floodgates of queer marriage, and in
Europe in 2005 when Civil Partnership was legalized in the UK. Unwittingly caught in media storms and political campaigns that demand a response from my queer-activist self, I am sucked from the borderland by the increasing strength of a twisting pink vortex. This paper weaves together my experience with an analysis of intersectional ambivalences to gay marriage. What historical conditions, intersectional positionings, and political discourses produce these anxieties? This paper asks not just how it is that marriage has come to monopolize gay politics, but also how that phenomenon is productive of certain ambivalences among particular queers. What might we learn by centering those anxieties, by beginning to think through the questions they raise and taking them seriously rather than discounting or denigrating them? In other words, what can we learn by leaving the limiting binary framework of the dominant discourse and investigating the borderlands of gay marriage?
Can Marriage Be Saved? A Forum from The Nation, July 5, 2004: 16-26
Claudia Koonz
Department of History, Duke University
"The Right to Cover: The Muslim Headscarf debates in Britain, France, and Germany"
Monday, February 25, 2008, 1-2:30 p.m.
Women's Studies Conference Room
South Hall 4631A
Come continue the conversation we began last quarter on France but expand the discussion to consider Britain and Germany through noted Women's and German historian Koonz's analysis of transnational reactions to the hijab as a kind of thermometer for national culture.
Reading: "Hijab/Headscarf: A Political Journey"
Dana L. Barron
Associate Director, Institute for Public Affairs at Temple University
"Double Days or Opting Out: The Work and Family Dilemma"
Friday, February 15, 2008, 9:30 - 11:00 a.m.
Women's Studies Conference Room
South Hall 4631A
Join Temple University's Dana Barron for a wide ranging discussion of current research on work and family, including policy recommendations being promoted during this election year and concrete actions proposed under the legal rubric of family responsibilities discrimination.
Click here for the readings: "Opting Out"? The Effect of Children on Women's Employment in the United States and Psychology at the Intersection of Work and Family: Recommendations for Employers, Working Families, and Policymakers.
--- --- ---
Judith Ezekiel
University of Toulouse-le-Mirail
and Professor-in-Residence,
Wright State University
"Unraveling the Hijab: Race and Gender in the French Republic"
November 15, 2007, 12:00 - 1:30 p.m.
South Hall 4631A
Brown Bag discussion. Drinks and dessert will be provided.
Judith Ezekiel is author of: Feminism in the Heartland, and the editor of a special issue of the European Journal of Women's Studies on “The Traffic in Feminism: Contemporary Women’s Movements in Europe,”and an editor of the web-based "The ‘Second Wave’ and Beyond."
Click to read Ezekiel's articles: French Dressing: Race, Gender, and the Hijab Story and Le Women's Lib: Made in France.
Join us to discuss feminist responses to the use of the veil in contemporary politics. |
