Nalini Natarajan, Wednesday, Apr 4, 2 - 3:30, Duques 250: "Tamil Women of the Transvaal"

On Wednesday, April 4, 2 – 3:30, Duques 250

Nalini Natarajan will speak on

“Tamil Women of the Transvaal”

The paper contextualizes the mobilization of the Tamil women of the TRANSVAAL by Gandhi in relation to the history of women's indenture and that of the 'Madrasi' 'coolie.' It discusses the 'problem' of the coolie woman worldwide, the specificity of South African 'coolie' women, and the role Gandhi played 

Nalini Natarajan, is Professor of English at University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, author most recently of The Resonating Island: The Caribbean in Postcolonial Dialogue (Terranova), and the forthcoming Atlantic Gandhi (Sage).

This is open and free to the public.

Nalini Natarajan, Wednesday, Apr 4, 2 - 3:30: "Tamil Women in the Transvaal"

On Wednesday, April 4, 2 – 3:30, Duques 250 (22nd St, between G and H Sts)

Nalini Natarajan will speak on 

“Tamil Women in the Transvaal”

Nalini Natarajan, is Professor of English at University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, author most recently of The Resonating Island: The Caribbean in Postcolonial Dialogue (Terranova), and the forthcoming Atlantic Gandhi (Sage).

I am a senior graduating in May 2012 with a B.A. in Women’s Studies

I am a senior graduating in May 2012 with a B.A. in Women's Studies. In addition to this program, I minored in public health, studied abroad in Madagascar, and followed the premed track. One of the most outstanding academic experience I have had was deciding to be a women's studies major. Two courses from my major had a particularly strong impact on my life.

The first was during the Spring semester of my sophomore year and was titled Women in and Beyond The Global Prison. There were five students in my class, which was taught by the director of the Women's Studies Program. For the first time at GW, I had ample opportunity to speak as often as I wanted, to really grapple with the text, examine my peers' perspectives, and not have to fight for access to my professor during office hours. Professor Moshenberg is an active advocate and researcher for the demographic expressed in the subject matter. Through him we had access to grass-root activities, current literature, and various movement activists and leaders. He brought in several speakers, including the previously incarcerated and those who work in jails. This course made me seriously consider changing my career goal of being a neonatologist to being a physician/social worker at a prison facility.

Later, I enrolled in my senior capstone course, during the Fall 2011 semester. Similar to Women in and Beyond The Global Prison, I read 10-12 books and articles related to a variety of feminist theories and their intersectionality with politics, consumerism, the media, and health. There were five students in this class as well, and I had the same exhilarating feel to come to this class. I wanted to work through the texts, hear my professor's commentary, and engage in discussion with my peers.

Without these small class sizes and the quality of these instructors my enthusiasm for academics at GW would not be as ecstatic as it is now! 

Natasha T. Dupee

The George Washington University

Columbian College of Arts and Sciences

B.A. Women's Studies, Expected 2012

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg Scholar, 2008

GW Colonial Cabinet Member, 2010

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Award Recipient, 2012

Student Coordinator, GW Center for Student Engagement

President, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated, Xi Sigma Chapter

Brother, Alpha Chi Sigma Fraternity, Incorporated, Alpha Pi Chapter

Class of 2012 Representative, GW Class Council

ntdupee@gwmail.gwu.edu

2012 Yulee Lecture, Wednesday, Mar 29: What Would Harriet Do? Unfinished Liberation or the Dangers of Innocence by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

What Would Harriet Do? Unfinished Liberation or the Dangers of Innocence

by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

2012 Yulee Endowed Lecture

Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 6:30 p.m.

Marvin Center, Room 309

800 21st Street, NW

Washington, DC 20052

Free and Open to the Public

The world is in crisis and -- as everybody knows -- the effects of structural adjustment and organized abandonment fall most heavily on the shoulders of those most burdened by the cares of everyday life in the first place. In this talk I will discuss some of the crisis-driven opportunities in changing the scale and scope of the prison-industrial complex, and argue that the struggle against the all-purpose use of criminalization to solve social, political, economic, and cultural problems cannot be won with an appeal either to “innocence” or to naming “the real criminals.” That said, how we account for how we got to where we are determines in part what alternative futures we might make. Using the story of Harriet Tubman as a model and case, I will conclude with an argument about what I call the “infrastructure of feeling” and what it means to work in the Black Radical Tradition.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore is Professor of Geography in the Earth and Environmental Studies Ph.D. program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her prize-winning book is Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, published in 2007. She is a founding member of California Prison Moratorium Project; Critical Resistance; the Central California Environmental Justice Network; and many other organizations.

Radical Feminisms & Occupy: Panel Event, Wed Mar 7, GWU

Related event: Panel Discussion on the Future of Occupy, GWU Gelman Library, Wed March 7

As one who was an activist and a radical pre-occupy (as I have been during- and will be post-), I had mixed feelings upon occupy’s initial momentum. It is nice to be surprised once in a while. A friend put it best—“if someone had told you five years ago that Adbusters would be responsible for the next US protest movement, and that Crimethinc would be providing useful, levelheaded discourse on it, would you have believed them?” Not a chance. So when it kicked off, I was extremely skeptical. I had long ago dismissed anything resembling a mass mobilization as being unable to enact real change in the USA. Instead, I cast my lot (as did many of my friends and colleagues) with what we call somewhat euphemistically “long term movement building”: direct services, raising funds and resources for said direct services, and small-scale community building. But I was also excited that the national conversation was approaching a critique of capitalism, excited for there to be a left movement in the USA again, and intrigued by the possibilities of the encampment tactic. Occupy’s connection to the “Arab Spring” in the national imagination gave it a particularly tantalizing flavor of possibility.

On paper, occupy is inherently aligned with feminist critiques of power. The heart of occupy is an objection to unearned power—the same objection at the heart of work seeking to dismantle patriarchy, white supremacy, homophobia, ableism, and the myriad intersectional oppressions that both sustain the ruling order (or in the parlance of occupy, the 1%) and keep the 99% divided and conquered.

But at large and locally, the internal and external dynamics of the movement have not always reflected that ideological alignment which seems at once so obvious and so necessary. Instead, the physical spaces of occupy have often replicated oppressive social relationships, when they should have been sanctuaries for those who need it the most—people experiencing homelessness, people of color, queer and trans* people, women in need of shelter and childcare, and survivors of violence, to name a few. Also, the conversation within occupy seems to have shifted to mainstream liberal concerns such as Citizens United and away from poverty and structural violence.

Occupy’s shift to liberal values, if not tactics, did not come as a total surprise. Radicals have long known to be wary of our liberal and moderate compatriots. They can sometimes be our worst enemy or biggest obstacle, as The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so eloquently expressed in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”:

 …the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom…lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

This is why a feminist critique is essential to occupy. We have got to keep an eye on the people who claim to be speaking for us or on our behalf, but are not. It is not a lack of demands or incoherence of message that weakens the occupy movement, but the lack of a radical analysis, and the unwillingness of privileged people within the movement to step back and let the movement be directed by the needs of its most marginalized participants.

For moderated panel discussion of this and more—where is occupy going in relation to labor? To academia?—please attend a panel Wednesday, March 7th, at 5:30 in the Teamster Research Center at Gelman Library (suite 702).

Beck Levy, becklevy@gmail.com

Meet The Women Workers Who Sew GWU Apparel! Monday, March 5, GWU

Meet The Women Workers Who Sew GWU Apparel! 



Monday, March 5, 6 – 8, Philips Hall 414A

The GWU Women’s Studies Program invites you!

Come hear first-hand from two courageous union leaders at the Alta Gracia factory, Maritza Vargas and Ana Marinez, about how their community is being transformed by living wages.

Thanks to more than a decade of cross-border collaborations between the Fedotrazonas union and students, Alta Gracia brings living-wage college-logo t-shirts and hoodies to over 400 university bookstores nation-wide. Join us for a discussion of how to bring living-wage and union-made apparel to George Washington University!

Set at more than three and a half times the Dominican minimum wage and based on a cost of living study conducted by independent labor rights watchdog Workers Rights Consortium, workers receive a “salario digno”, which enables them to support their families with dignity, covering food, housing, transportation, health care and education costs for their children. The ripple effect in the community is impressive: new businesses have opened across from the factory, construction has picked up as workers invest in more livable homes, and not just children, but Alta Gracia workers themselves are going back to school to continue where poverty had forced them to abandon studies. At Alta Gracia, workers enjoy top health and safety standards at work and a union – a voice on the job. 

For a bit of background on Alta Gracia, this recent article in The Nation is helpful. This video on the impact of living wages at Alta Gracia in union leader Martiza Vargas’ family and this quick video about the project’s history, made by students in United Students Against Sweatshops might also be useful overviews.

Tiffany Finck-Haynes

"What Would Harriet Do? Unfinished Liberation or the Dangers of Innocence" by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

What Would Harriet Do? Unfinished Liberation or the Dangers of Innocence

by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

2012 Yulee Endowed Lecture

Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 6:30 p.m.

Marvin Center, Room 309

800 21st Street, NW

Washington, DC 20052

Free and Open to the Public

The world is in crisis and -- as everybody knows -- the effects of structural adjustment and organized abandonment fall most heavily on the shoulders of those most burdened by the cares of everyday life in the first place. In this talk I will discuss some of the crisis-driven opportunities in changing the scale and scope of the prison-industrial complex, and argue that the struggle against the all-purpose use of criminalization to solve social, political, economic, and cultural problems cannot be won with an appeal either to “innocence” or to naming “the real criminals.” That said, how we account for how we got to where we are determines in part what alternative futures we might make. Using the story of Harriet Tubman as a model and case, I will conclude with an argument about what I call the “infrastructure of feeling” and what it means to work in the Black Radical Tradition.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore is Professor of Geography in the Earth and Environmental Studies Ph.D. program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her prize-winning book is Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, published in 2007. She is a founding member of California Prison Moratorium Project; Critical Resistance; the Central California Environmental Justice Network; and many other organizations.

Sponsored by the George Washington University Women’s Studies Program

For more information: 202-994-6942, wstu@gwu.edu

www.gwu.edu/~wstu

Meet a candidate for founding director of the GW Global Women’s Institute: Thursday, February 23, 5 - 6 pm

A committee comprising faculty from all ten schools and colleges at GW, as well as student members and representatives from the Board of Trustees and GW administration, has been carrying out an international search for the founding director of the Global Women's Institute (GWI). As a member of the search committee, I am delighted to report that our first candidate will be on campus Thursday, February 23. As part of the campus visit, a reception is scheduled from 5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m., Duques Hall 553.

The Women’s Studies Program invites you to attend the reception where the candidate will discuss her achievements and commitment to the GWI mission.  We hope you can join us and hear the candidate's remarks about her work and achievements.

We are searching for the best person to launch the Global Women's Institute and promote its mission of improving the lives of women and girls worldwide through enhanced teaching, research, and service engagement at the George Washington University.

The required criteria for the Director include the following:

• enduring commitment to women's/gender issues in a global landscape

• experience with more than one of the HERS areas (health, education, rights, and security)

• success in institution building

• major fundraising experience through grants and/or individual donors

• demonstrated leadership and management experience

• excellent communication skills (in writing and orally).

If you would like information on the candidate, please contact Robert Luke, Special Assistant, Office of the Provost & Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs: rluke@gwu.edu

Fierce: Nicaraguan feminists protest for their bodies, autonomy, lives

The news of the day was that Democratic representatives walked out of a hearing on“religious liberty and birth control.” Republicans had blocked the testimony of a woman who wanted to speak in favor of the Obama administration’s compromise on birth control.  But the Republicans allowed representatives, men, from conservative religious organizations to testify.  House Representative Carolyn Maloney remarked, “What I want to know is, where are the women?”

A picture tweeted by Planned Parenthood illustrates this question completely.

Where are the women?  In Nicaragua, some women are in the streets.

Yesterday, at the International Poetry Festival in Granada, there was a parade, with dancing and singing and cheers.

There was also a protest by Nicaraguan women.  Nicaraguan feminists.

On the parade route, a group of Nicaraguan women, wearing signs that read “Fui violada y ahora estoy embarazada.  ¿Te parece justo?” (“I was raped and now I am pregnant.  Does that seem just?) lay down in the middle of the parade, stopping the flow of the marching.  They passed out flowers in protest of the ban against therapeutic abortion in the country.

Therapeutic abortion—an abortion performed to save the life of a pregnant woman—had been constitutional in Nicaragua up until October 2006.  When Sandinista politician Daniel Ortega re-assumed the presidency, he kept the law intact, a complete reversal from his stance before his re-election.  Women’s groups have been pressuring the State to repeal the ban, but Ortega’s switch came with the support of an important Catholic bishop.  Within a year of the law’s passing, 82 women had died due to lack to life-saving abortion procedures.

The State passes regulations preventing women from accessing health care that would save their lives.  Then the State uses religious institutions to embolden its position.  Sound familiar?

Violence against women more than often flows from patriarchal institutions trying to police their bodies and autonomy.  It happens globally, outside the United States, and inside the country just as easily.

Women are defending their equality all over the world, in the State and in the streets.  That is where they will be until the job is done.

Paul Seltzer

(Paul Seltzer is a GW Women's Studies major, currently in Nicaragua. This posting is cross-posted from Women In and Beyond the Global: http://www.womeninandbeyond.org/?p=1222.)

GW-led study in Malawi finds cash payments help cut HIV infections among young women

The Guardian today reports: Cash payments help cut HIV infection rate in young women, study finds: Research in Malawi finds girls who receive regular payments are able to resist attentions of older men and avoid infection.”

The headline pretty much says it all … or does it?

The study on which The Guardian report is based on a study that appeared in today’s Lancet: “Effect of a cash transfer programme for schooling on prevalence of HIV and herpes simplex type 2 in Malawi: a cluster randomised trial.” It’s accompanied with an editorial, “Paying to prevent HIV infection in young women?”

The Malawi study was led by Dr. Sarah J Baird, Assistant Professor of Global Health and of Economics at The George Washington University. The interpretation of the findings, as reported in The Lancet, is, for those of us lay folk, the heart of the matter: “Cash transfer programmes can reduce HIV and HSV-2 infections in adolescent schoolgirls in low-income settings. Structural interventions that do not directly target sexual behaviour change can be important components of HIV prevention strategies.”

Pay to prevent HIV infection in young women? You betcha. In effect, when it comes to women’s health, it’s the economy, stupid. In some senses, the larger lesson is that women’s health and well being is always part of the whole life of each woman and girl as well as of women and girls, more generally. HIV transmission is not `simply’ a consequence of sexual behavior, whatever that is. It emerges from the whole life.

Dan Moshenberg

Author and Journalist Nicole Pope discusses her book: Honor Killings in the Twenty-First Century

Author and Journalist Nicole Pope discusses her book: Honor Killings in the Twenty-First Century

When: Wednesday, February 15, 5:45-7pm

Where: Funger Hall Room 220

Nicole Pope will host a conversation about her new book about honor killings and violence against women.  The book examines honor-based violence, its roots and its evolution, as well as the ongoing struggle to eradicate it in Turkey, Pakistan and other countries, including Western European nations.  Thousands of women are murdered every year by close relatives for allegedly violating an unwritten social code or rebelling against the patriarchal order. “Honor” killings and other harmful practices such as forced marriage, child marriage, and bride exchange have been recorded for centuries. Under growing pressure from human rights activists, these old traditions have also evolved and adapted to modern circumstances.  Pope will talk about the process of interviewing women and researching crimes that are often hidden and obscured as simply local customs. 

As one reviewer said of Pope’s work, “In this powerfully written book, Nicole Pope takes a comparative look at so-called honor killings, searching out the patterns and triggers that cause families and relatives to kill women suspected of sexual misconduct or even just defiance or disobedience. Pope compares honor killings in Pakistan and Turkey with violence against women elsewhere in the world, opening the road to new ways of understanding what has often been seen as a Middle Eastern or Muslim problem. Her heart-wrenching interviews with victims’ families and with women who survived illuminate the social and cultural forces that lead families to murder, but also give some glimpse of how this scourge might be eliminated.”  Jenny White, associate professor of anthropology, Boston University and author of Islamist Mobilization in Turkey

Nicole Pope is a Swiss journalist and writer based in Istanbul, Turkey. She worked as Turkey correspondent for the French daily Le Monde for 15 years and has published articles in numerous international publications. She is the co-author of Turkey Unveiled: A History of Modern Turkey (2010, revised edition) and has been conducting research on violence again women for the past decade.