(Download the PDF version: March/April 2009.PDF)
WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH UPDATE“People attending our events will have opportunities to build solar panels, drill for environmental reasons, and find out what NIU does to recycle,” said Amy Levin, director of the Women’s Studies Program. Levin is also excited that the program will be offering its first event for alumni in Chicago, and that its national effort, “This is what a feminist looks like” sticker day is in its fifth year.
A complete schedule of lectures, exhibits, performances and other activities can be found online on our Women's History Month page.
Events Include:
Monday, March 2
The month-long celebration will kick off with a self-defense workshop presented by Lesley Rigg, who will teach women how to protect themselves in their environment. The workshop is from 4:30-5:45 p.m. in Anderson Hall, Room 102.
Tuesday, March 3
NIU will celebrate its fifth annual “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” Sticker Day, showing the community the many faces of feminism. Stickers are available in Reavis Hall, Room 103.
Bring your lunch and join us in DuSable Hall, Room 276, at noon when NIU’s Recycling Specialist Mary Crocker will discuss NIU’s efforts to be an “earth-friendly” campus.
Wednesday, March 4
Diana Swanson, Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and English, will examine the connections between environmental activism and feminism. This event takes place at 3:30 p.m. in Holmes Student Center’s Heritage Room.
Thursday, March 5
Today at noon, Kimberly Lombardozzi, Sustainability Manager for the Mohawk Group, and Mari Anne Wohlfeil, Commercial Sales Manager with Dal-Tile Corporation, will explore the challenges of attaining environmental sustainability in building and manufacturing. This discussion will take place in DuSable Hall, Room 302.
Tuesday, March 17
Tiffany Holmes, Associate Professor and Chair of Art & Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, will give two presentations on the ways that art and technology may combine to encourage ecologically responsible behavior: “Greenmedia Futures: Art & Technology to Promote Sustainability” is at noon in Holmes Student Center’s Heritage Room and “DIY Eco-Tech: Solar Panel Sculptures” is at 2:00 p.m. in the Heritage Room.
Wednesday, March 18
Janet Smith, Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood & Community Improvement at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will give two presentations focusing on the challenges low income women and women of color encounter in finding environmentally sustainable housing: “Trading Off or Trading Up for Housing” is at 2:00 p.m. in Room 100 of the Campus Life Building, and “A Woman’s Place is in a Green Kitchen” is at 6:00 p.m. in Holmes Student Center’s Heritage Room.
Thursday, March 19
NIU alumna Jolene Skinner will give a keynote talk about her work with Dell’s award winning work-life program. Skinner is currently a Talent Management Senior Consultant for Dell. A reception will follow Skinner’s talk. The event begins at 5:30 p.m. at the Hilton Chicago-Marquette Room, 720 South Michigan Ave. The event is free for NIU Alumni Association Cardinal and Black members and $10 for non-members. Registration is required. Click here to register online or call (815) 753-1452. For more information about this event, contact the NIU Alumni Association at 815-753-1452, or email alums@niu.edu.
Monday, March 23
Women’s Rights Alliance will present part one of their “Vagina Seminar” in DuSable Hall, Room 140. Part two will take place at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 24, in DuSable 148. Come learn what you’ve always wanted to know but were afraid to ask!
Wednesday, March 25
At 5:00 p.m. in Eco-Park (north of Stevenson Towers), Melissa Lenczewski, Associate Professor of Geology and Environmental Sciences, will showcase a method of drilling for soil and water in environmental investigations using the Geology department’s Geoprobe 6600. Participants will gain hands-on experience with the drill. For safety reasons, all participants must wear jeans and closed-toe shoes. Hardhats, safety glasses, and ear plugs will be provided.
Thursday, March 26
Margaret Asalele Mbilizi, Assistant Professor of Counseling, Adult & Higher Education and Director of International Initiatives, will discuss her sustainable livelihood improvement program for women in Malawi. She will describe practices that facilitate community involvement in poverty reduction while empowering women and girls to take control of their lives. Her talk will begin at noon in the Holmes Student Center’s Regency Room.
Event sponsors include the NIU Women’s Studies Program; Graduate Colloquium Committee; NIU Alumni Association; College of Engineering & Engineering Technology; School of Art; Division of Public Administration; Departments of Political Science and Geology; Department of Counseling , Adult and Higher Education; and NIU’s Women’s Rights Alliance.
(top)“Silent Spring: A Screening and Discussion”
Join us on Wednesday, April 8, at 6:00 pm to view and discuss PBS’s “American Experience: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,” led by Lesley Rigg, Associate Professor of Geography. The event will take place in the Women’s Resource Center’s television room (upstairs). Sponsored by the Women’s Studies Program, Department of Geography, and Women’s Rights Alliance.
"Past, Present, and Future: The Women of Environmental Science"
On Monday, April 13, at noon, Lesley Rigg will discuss female environmental scientists in DuSable Hall, Room 276. Bring your lunch and join us for this fascinating discussion. Sponsored by the Women’s Studies Program and Department of Geography.
Prominent LGBT Scholar to Speak at NIU
Toni McNaron, Professor Emerita of English at the University of Minnesota and author of numerous books, will present a lecture and seminar as part of NIU’s celebration of LGBT Awareness Month. Her lecture, “Metaphors from the Closet, Plain Speech from the Outside: Gains and Losses in Contemporary Lesbian and Gay Writing,” will take place on Thursday, April 23, at 7:00 p.m. in DuSable Hall, Room 204. McNaron’s seminar, “Poisoned Ivy? Lingering Homophobia Within Academe,” will be held in the Rare Books room of Founders Memorial Library (4th floor) at 11:00 a.m. on Friday, April 24. Sponsored by the LGBT Studies Program, Presidential Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, and Women's Studies Program.
Austin Sawicki, former Women's Studies teaching assistant and graduate student in Philosophy and Anthropology, would have turned 27 on March 24. He was the kind of individual who made others happy to be in his presence because he was so clearly passionate about his work and educating others. Students who knew Austin found him a ready listener, generous with academic and personal advice. Austin was killed in a construction accident last May, but we will be remembering him on his birthday and when we award the first Austin Sawicki scholarship in April. The scholarship recognizes students who share Austin's intellectual curiosity, feminism, and service ethic; contributions are welcome at any time. Please send checks made out to the NIU Foundation with Austin's name in the subject line to the Women's Studies Program. For more information on the scholarship or how to contribute, call 753-1038 or email womenst@niu.edu.
(top)Carol Walther joined NIU’s Sociology department in fall 2008 and became a Women’s Studies faculty associate this spring. She came to NIU from Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, where she taught sociology and feminist theory courses. Walther holds two Bachelor’s degrees from Indiana University-Bloomington—a B.S. in Biology and a B.A. in Sociology, with a minor in Environmental Studies. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Texas A&M University.
Since joining NIU, Walther has taught nearly half a dozen courses, including Women in Contemporary America; Race and Ethnic Relations; and a pro-seminar called The Sociology of Sexuality. She is currently teaching Sociology of Gender, which she is “really enjoying.” She is looking forward to teaching courses on population and demographics.
Walther’s dissertation, Who counts?: How the State (Re)creates Households, “examines the confluence of the state upon how people interact with governmental forms, specifically the Census Schedule.” The first part of her dissertation considers “settlement patterns of male and female same-sex couples,” and what may influence them to settle in one part of the U.S. over another. In the second part of her dissertation, Walther “explores ideas of legal and statistical consciousness” through interviews with same-sex couples about how they fill out the Census Schedule. She is continuing to conduct interviews and study settlement patterns.
Currently, Walther is also engaged in research on racial attitudes and beliefs on college campuses. Working with colleagues from other Midwestern and Southern institutions, she is examining “racial attitudes related to criminology, affirmative action and religion.” She is working with colleagues to “conduct a pilot project to examine censorship in junior and senior high schools in the greater Chicago area” as well.
Walther first became interested in Women’s Studies as an undergraduate when she took a course on the sociology of gender. She explains that the graduate student teaching the course “showed data demonstrating that with a college degree I was projected to make less money over my life time than my brother who has technical training as a mechanic. I became very angry at what I perceived and still perceive to be economic and social injustice.” When asked about the value of Women’s Studies, she said that “the value of Women’s Studies programs and courses are their ability to create community and family. As in every family, one can fight and disagree, but at the end of the day, family is the only place one can return and they are always supposed to take you in.” We in Women’s Studies are thrilled to have Carol Walther as part of our Women’s Studies family!
(top)Josh Adair accepted a tenure-track twentieth century British literature position at Murray State University in Murray, KY. He successfully defended his dissertation “Sanctuary: Nurturing Gay Narrative Space in World War Literature” on February 2, 2009.
Chris Blankenship presented “Montaigne and the Sophist Tradition” at the 5th Annual MadLit conference in February at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Lise Schlosser presented “‘Men shall have no cause to feare’: Margaret Cavendish’s Authorizing Strategies” at the 5th Annual MadLit conference.
Barbara Burrell’s “Likeable? Effective Commander in Chief? Polling on Candidate Traits in the ‘Year of the Presidential Woman’” was published in PS Online 41.4 (2008). A copy of this article is in the Women’s Studies library.
Kate Cady’s “Labor and Women’s Liberation: Popular Readings of The Feminine Mystique,” will appear in the Fall 2009 issue of Women’s Studies in Communication.
Amy Levin’s new reader on gender, sexuality, and museums has been accepted by Routledge. The book will be published in 2010 and will include articles by Robert Ridinger and Joshua Adair. Levin’s 2007 book, Defining Memory: Local Museums and the Construction of History in America’s Changing Communities, was the subject of the lead review in the January/February 2009 issue of Museum, published by the American Association of Museums.
“Exudate feeding in Callimico goeldii,” co-authored by Leila Porter, was published in the American Journal of Primatology 71.2 (2009). Porter also presented four papers in 2008, including two papers in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Rob Ridinger was one of twelve writers and researchers from across the U.S. invited to participate in the “Speaking About the Unspoken” conference held at the Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago, February 6-8, 2009. The aim of the conference was to promote discussion both on academic input to the Archives’ development and the future of research on the leather and fetish communities within the contemporary social sciences and humanities.
Debbie Smith-Shank published three articles in 2008: “Three art educators in cancerworld,” which she co-authored, appeared in the Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education 26; “Visual culture and issues-based curricula” was published in Australian Art Education 31.1; “Visual Culture and Visual Pedagogy” was published in Visualidades 4. Smith-Shank presented numerous papers in 2008, including two presentations in Japan and two presentations in Australia.
Sharon Sytsma’s book review, “Defining Right and Wrong in Brain Science,” was published in the Quarterly Review of Biology 83.1. She gave seven presentations in 2008, including “Recent and Continuing Issues in Medical Practices for Disorders of Sexual Differentiation” at Children’s Hospital in Orange County, California.
Carol Thompson and her collaborators from Argonne National Laboratory published an article, "Reversible chemical switching of a ferroelectric film," which appeared in the January 30, 2009, issue of Physical Review Letters. The peer-reviewed article was chosen for the distinction of an "Editors Suggestion" logo, and the results were also chosen as the subject of a "Viewpoint" commentary in the American Physics Society on-line general interest journal "Physics". Thompson is an invited speaker at the Metals, Mining, and Materials Society annual meeting in San Francisco in February, where she will be discussing this work and more recent results from these studies.
(top)Call for Papers on Marjane Satrapi's Works (film, literature, and art)—The proposed book of critical essays aims to examine Satrapi's works as literature, art, film, and cultural phenomena, bringing diverse ideological and theoretical perspectives to bear on the intellectual and political issues that they raise. Interdisciplinary papers as well as analyses rooted in disciplinary approaches are invited. By June 15, 2009 submit double-spaced, full-length essays VIA EMAIL ONLY to Colette Morrow (Associate Professor of English, Purdue University Calumet) at colettemariemorrow@yahoo.ie.
Girls Interrupted: Disruptions of/by the Sex/Gender System—Girls Interrupted will investigate the use of interruption in both fiction and non-fiction as a medium through which writers register protest, discontent, resentment, and/or other forms of resistance to the sex/gender system. Essays that consider interruption in a variety of sociological and literary contexts, as well as essays that offer new definitions are welcome. Send a C.V. and abstracts of no more than 500 words to Jennifer.A.Rich@hofstra.edu with 'Abstract, Girls Interrupted' in the subject line by May 1, 2009.
Seeking Undergraduate Submissions for Transcending Silence…—Women's Studies undergraduate student editors at the University at Albany are seeing submissions for the sixth issue of Transcending Silence… Topics are varied and may be historical or contemporary (i.e. covering the economic crisis, last year's presidential elections from an intersectional analysis of race, class, gender, or this year's Presidential Inauguration). Text and multimedia (digital video, art, audio, gaming, etc.) submissions are welcome. Deadline for submissions is March 20, 2009. Submission guidelines are available at www.albany.edu/ws/journal/guidelines.html.
Personal Stories of Trauma and Mothering—If you or someone you know has experienced a globally significant trauma (i.e. Hurricane Katrina, terrorist attacks on 9/11, fighting in Iraq, etc.), editors of a volume on trauma and mothering want you to reflect on what impact that experience had on your emotions about mothering and, most likely, thereby the act of mothering itself. Please keep to the focus of the emotional impact on mothering; beyond that, narrative, theoretical, and combinations of both approaches to the topic are welcome. Send 1-2 page abstracts; mail, email, and telephone contact information; and a 1-page CV to burstrem@email.arizona.edu by May 1, 2009 with "Trauma and Mothering" in the subject line. Full essays, 4500-6000 words will be due by December 1, 2009.
Midwest Girls Collaborative Project--NIU STEM Outreach is hosting the Kick-Off Conference for the Midwest Girls Collaborative Project, which will help people find resources and funding to create STEM activities for young women. The conference will take place from 9:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m. on April 17, 2009 at NIU's Naperville campus (1120 East Diehl Rd.). Registration is required. For more information and to register for the conference, visit http://www.icsps.ilstu.edu/services/registration/mwgcp/kickoff09.html.
Going Public: Cross-disciplinary perspectives on presenting women's history—Presented by the Canadian Association for Women's Public History (CAWPH), this symposium considers the complex and creative ways in which women's history is presented in public contexts. Participants are encouraged to approach this issue from diverse perspectives. Presentations are welcome in a variety of formats, including film or video, formal papers, research commentaries, and reflections on ongoing projects and community activities. Full panel proposals are encouraged. To apply as a panel, submit: a panel title and abstract of the panel session (no more than 2 pages in length), including the names of the chair/commentator and each of the panel members; and a 1-page CV or abstract of no more than 250 words for each panel member. To apply as an individual, submit no more than a 1-page abstract and a 1-page CV or a 250-word biography. Abstracts will be published on the CAWPH website. Proposals are due by April 2, 2009. Final copies of your paper must be submitted to other members of your panel by September 22, 2009, one month prior to the conference. Please direct any questions, and send all proposals to Patricia Myers, Historian, Historic Resources Management Branch Old St. Stephen’s College, 8820 - 112 Street, Edmonton AB T6G 2P8; or email pat.myers@gov.ab.ca.
Women Mobilizing for Change: Past, Present, Future—The breadth of this conference allows for research in a wide historical area, allowing for papers which: a) revisit and reexamine well-known historical landmarks for women to explore their legacies for the present and the future; b) investigate contemporary interaction of women's movements with local, regional, and global communities, organizations, and institutions; c) demonstrate efforts of women to influence and change existing political, economic, education and community culture and structures to improve the lives of women and children; d) look to the future to explore how underlying ideological concerns today will impact women's roles tomorrow. Individual papers, panels and roundtables or workshops are welcome. Conference proposals are due by June 1, 2009. For more information or to submit a proposal, contact Judy A. Hayden, Director of Women's Studies at the University of Tampa at judyahayden@gmail.com, or visit http://web1.cas.usf.edu/wst/fcws.
Health, Healing, and Rural Life Conference—The Rural Women's Studies Association (RWSA) is seeking proposals for its triennial conference at Indiana University, September 24-27, 2009. The RWSA welcomes proposals for individual papers, panel sessions, workshops, or presentations on its theme. Inter-/trans-/multi-disciplinary proposals are encouraged, as are those that develop connections between rural women's history and present-day social and economic concerns, world-wide. Send the following in your submission: a) title of paper/session/workshop/performance; b) 1-page abstract of paper or brief description of proposed session/workshop, etc.; c) brief vita/bio of presenters/persons involved, with complete contact information. Submissions are due by April 1, 2009. Send submissions to Deboray Stiles at dstiles@nsac.ca. For more information, contact conference co-chair Valarie Grim at 812-855-3875 or vgrim@indiana.edu.
NIU Finance Need Tuition Scholarship Program—In order to be considered student must be nominated by an NIU faculty or staff member. Furthermore, applicants must: be an undergraduate; be enrolled as a full-time student with a minimum of 12 semester hours during the semester to which the award is applied; demonstrate financial need; not have received other FULL tuition dollar scholarship during the same academic year; maintain a GPA of 2.0 or higher during the semesters to which the award is applied. Due to the limited availability of these awards qualifying students with the highest credentials (i.e. ACT score, class standing, GPA, honors, etc.) will be given priority. Applications are available on the NIU Scholarship website. Applications must be submitted by March 18, 2009. Late submissions are not acceptable and will not be considered. Return materials to Financial Need Tuition Scholarship Program, NIU Office of Scholarship Coordination/Scholarship Services, 245K Swen Parson, DeKalb, IL 60115. You may also email your submission to scholarships@niu.edu.
AARP Foundation Women's Scholarship Program—The scholarship is open to low-income women, ages 40+. Priority is given to women who are in one of three categories: 1) women raising the children of another family member; 2) those in 'dead-end' jobs; 3) those who have been out of the paid workforce for an extended period. The scholarships, which range from $500-$5000, are to be used for tuition and books and are paid directly to the educational institution. Applications are due by March 31, 2009. For more information and to apply, visit www.aarpfoundationwlc.org.
We invite submissions for future WS bulletins. If you know of any information that we should include in future bulletins, please email Rebekah Kohli with subject heading “Bulletin.” You may also call 753-1038.