Ellen Lewin: Consuming (Gay) Fatherhood
4:00 - 5:30 PM, 2239 Lane Hall
Ellen Lewin's (University of Iowa) major research interests center on motherhood, reproduction, and sexuality, particularly as these are played out in American cultures. Over the course of her career, she has completed studies that focus on low-income Latina immigrants in San Francisco, lesbian mothers, and lesbian and gay commitment ceremonies in the United States. She has recently published a book on gay fathers-men who have fathered or adopted children either on their own or with male co-parents or who became parents during earlier heterosexual unions. Common Language will be on hand during and after her lecture selling her new book.
LGQRI: Peggy Shaw, MUST: The Inside Story
4:00 - 5:30 PM, 2239 Lane Hall
MUST is a poetic look at what it feels like to have a body. It excavates the memories and images contained in the joints and layers of the bone. Legendary New York performer Peggy Shaw journeys across landscape of her own body, excavating the memories and images which shelter in her muscles and joints.
This event is co-sponsored by School of Art & Design, Horace Rackham Graduate School.
What Does It All Mean? An Evening of Stories and Songs with Cantor Linda Hisrchhorn
8:00 - 9:30 PM, U-M Hillel
A songwriter's journey through religious school and the feminist movement on the way to becoming a cantor and the use of songs and stories (funny and poignant) to understand torah text, liturgy and her own life growing up in New York City as a first gene
This event is co-sponsored by U-M Hillel.
Symposium: Emerging Rural, Nonmetropolitan, and Working-Class Perspectives in LGBTQ Studies
9:30 AM Continental Breakfast @ sessions site: 2239 Lane Hall, University of Michigan
10:00 Welcome: David M. Halperin, Director of the U-M Lesbian, Gay, Queer Research Initiative.
Opening: Nadine Hubbs, symposium organizer10:10 - 12:00 SESSION I: HISTORY & ETHNOGRAPHY OF RURAL QUEERS - Esther Newton, moderator
- Papers by Mary Gray, Emily Kazyak, & Colin Johnson
Mary L. Gray, Indiana U.,"Queer Kids Here? Mediating the Politics of Gay Visibility in Rural America"
Emily Kazyak, U-Michigan, "Rejecting Cultural Markers of Queerness: Sexual Identity Constructions of Rural Gays and Lesbians"
Colin R. Johnson, Indiana U., "Hard Women"
Q&A12:00 - 1:00 Lunch
1:10-3:00 SESSION II: LGBTQ RURAL & WORKING-CLASS CULTURES - Valerie Traub, moderator
- Papers by Scott Herring, Nadine Hubbs, & Heather Love (20-25 min. each)
Scott Herring, Indiana U., "I Hate New York: Dispatches from Another Country"
Nadine Hubbs, U-Michigan, "Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music"
Heather Love, Penn, "'Eye-on-the-teacher': Queer Routes of Upward Mobility"
Q & A3:00-4:00 Sessions wrap-up
7:00-8:15 PM Small Town Gay Bar (2006, 76 min), FREE film screening at SH\aut\ BAR (315 Braun Ct., Ann Arbor)
All evening - Farm Night at the \aut\ BAR (315 Braun Ct., Ann Arbor)
This event is co-sponsored by \aut\ BAR, Spectrum Center, and Department of Women's Studies. It is free and open to the public, no registration required. Information @ 734.764.9537
Michelle McClellan: Looking for Laura: Place, Memory, and the "Authentic" Little House
12:00 - 1:30 PM, 2239 Lane Hall
Michelle McClellan (IRWG, History) is an assistant professor of U.S. and public history. She is especially interested in issues of place and memory, and has embarked on a study of heritage tourism at the sites associated with the "Little House" books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Rebecca Godderis: Motherhood Gone Mad? Psychiatry and Postpartum Depression
3:00 - 4:30 PM, 2239 Lane Hall
Public anxieties about mothering and the break-down of the family in the US in the 1970s and 80s led to an increasing interest in postpartum mental health issues. Along with the general public, psychiatric researchers were increasingly interested in postpartum experiences that were previously considered mild or even common. As a result, the amount of psychiatric research on postpartum depression (PPD) grew at an unprecedented rate from the late 1970s onward, and postpartum mental health issues were framed as a growing social problem. By 1994, depression with postpartum onset was officially added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, version four (DSM-IV) - the classification system used by most North American psychiatrists to label emotional distress.
With the addition of the postpartum onset specifier, PPD had officially been classified for the first time in American psychiatric history; however, a number of researchers and postpartum mental health activists disagreed with how PPD was categorized. Godderis's research documents the historical development of PPD as a psychiatric concept in the United States by exploring the origins of the idea, mapping how the illness became part of American psychiatric nomenclature, and interrogating how this condition draws on existing cultural discourses to reproduce assumptions about gender and sexuality. In this talk, she focuses primarily on this third issue by exploring the possible consequences of PPD-related psychiatric discourse for gendered subjectivities.
Deirdre Conroy: Sleep, Alcoholism and Gender Differences
4:00 - 5:30 PM, 2239 Lane Hall
Sleep disturbances are common in alcohol use disorder (AUDs) and can contribute to the initiation and maintenance of the disorder. Recent studies have suggested that sleep disturbances early in life may play a role in AUDs and that this may differ by gender. Attendees will learn how alcohol affects sleep and sleep disorders; discuss evidence linking sleep problems to early drinking behavior and relapse to drinking; and learn approaches to managing sleep disturbances, with special emphasis on sleep in women. Recognition and management of sleep disturbances in AUDs may help to reduce the personal and public health burden associated with AUDs.
Monica Roa and Juan Vaggione: Reproductive Politics in Latin America
1:00 - 4:00 PM, 2239 Lane Hall
Monica Roa (Women's Link Worldwide) and Juan Vaggione (Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Argentina) discuss reproductive politics in Latin America.
IRWG/Women's Studies Vivian R. Shaw Lecture: Faye Wattleton: Unfinished Agenda: Women's Rights and Rewards
5:00 - 6:30 PM, Rackham Amphitheatre
Faye Wattleton is the co-founder and president for the Center for the Advancement of Women (CFAW), an independent, women focused, national opinion research, education and policy advocacy corporation. CFAW conducts and sponsors research to identify and understand issues and experiences important to women's daily lives. CFAW packages its research, to shape attitudes, opinions and public policy through broad based communications platforms. Ms. Wattleton holds a BS degree in Nursing from Ohio State University and a MS degree in Maternal and Infant Care with certification as a nurse-midwife, from Columbia University, in addition to thirteen honorary doctoral degrees.
Ms. Wattleton will speak about the CFAW's mission to promote and protect women's rights and other progressive health and social issues.
This event is co-sponsored by Center for the Education of Women, Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund, The Center for AfroAmerican and African Studies (CAAS), Horace Rackham Graduate School, Law School, Science Technology and Society, Department of Sociology.
Margaret Kruk: Deciding where to deliver: Evidence on women's preferences for health care in Tanzania
12:00 - 1:30 PM, 2239 Lane Hall
Discrete choice experiments (DCE) are one of a family of techniques to elicit people's preferences for products and services, including health care. In health care they are used to understand what matters most to people in selecting a health service. DCE have been used to provide guidance on health care organization and policy in Europe and the US (e.g., patient preferences for IVF or arthritis care) but rarely in the developing world. A population-representative DCE on women's preferences for delivery facilities that was recently fielded in Tanzania suggests this method may be useful in identifying priority health investments in the developing world.
IRWG cosponsored event: Equity in HIV Care: Mind the Gap
4:00 - 5:30 PM, Business School Blau Auditorium
The U-M Center for Global Health hosts this talk by Mitch Besser, founder and medical director of Mothers2Mothers.
Joan Schafer Visionary Lecture: Michelle Segar
7:00 - 8:30 PM, School of Social Work ECC
Michelle Segar presents "Sustaining Women: Health Messages that Motivate Lasting Change," the inaugural lecture in honor of Joan Schafer. Segar will discuss why America's typical approach to promote health and prevent disease has undermined women's ability to sustain behaviors such as exercise and healthy eating. She will also propose alternatives that are likely to lead to better "buy in" from individuals and improved behavioral sustainability. Dessert reception to follow.
This event is co-sponsored by School of Social Work.
LGQRI: David Alderson: Making Electricity: Narrating the Neoliberal Transition in Billy Elliot
4:00 - 5:30 PM, 2239 Lane Hall
The 1984 British miners' strike was the decisive confrontation with organized labour for which the Conservative Party had prepared for many years: its neoliberal agenda depended on success. This paper looks at the ways in which Billy Elliot - ostensibly sympathetic to the miners cause, and to that extent contradictory - narrates both the strike and its aftermath in terms of a reform of British masculinity, associating neoliberalism with male 'feminization' and an openness to homoerotic attraction. The film's schematic, yet influential, narrativization entails both an occlusion of groups who supported the miners (women's and lesbian and gay groups among them) and a symbolic integration of social and economic liberalism through the successful figure of Billy whose artistry is ideologically made to represent the transcendence of all social conflicts.
Esther Newton: The 20th Century Lesbian History Website Project
12:00 - 1:30 PM, 2239 Lane Hall
When Esther Newton (Women's Studies, American Culture) decided to teach a graduate seminar on 20th Century lesbian history, she did not imagine the collaborative project that would ensue. But when it turned out that almost all the best books were out of print, and that the word "lesbian" turned up such sponsored sites as "meet naughty girls - free" but little or no lesbian history, she decided there was a need. Since then two cohorts of graduate students have created essays for the site. This talk documents the results, expected and unexpected.
Louise O'Brien: I'm Pregnant, I Snore, It's OK...Or Is It?
3:00 - 4:30 PM, 2239 Lane Hall
Sleep-Disordered Breathing (SDB) is a common condition which encompasses a spectrum of sleep-related breathing disturbances from snoring at one end of the spectrum to obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) at the other. Such breathing disturbances may be characterized by repeated partial or complete upper airway obstruction during sleep, which can result in disruption of normal ventilation, hypoxemia, and sleep fragmentation. The identifying symptom of SDB is habitual snoring and the vast majority of women remain undiagnosed.
There is emerging evidence that SDB may be associated with poor pregnancy outcomes including maternal hypertension and infant growth retardation. It is now well documented that SDB is independently associated with hypertension in the general population so it is possible that SDB may play some role in hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. Obesity is strongly associated with both SDB as well as poor pregnancy outcomes and since the obesity rates worldwide are increasing the prevalence of SDB is likely to also increase. Of note, the incidence of hypertension during pregnancy, including pre-eclampsia, is also increasing. This raises important questions regarding the relationship of SDB to both maternal and infant health. An improved understanding of some of the vulnerabilities that are unique to pregnancy may offer opportunities to improve the health of both mothers and infants. This event is free and open to the public.
Patricia Hampl
5:00 - 6:30 PM, UMMA Helmut Stern Auditorium
Memoirist Patricia Hampl (University of Minnesota) reads from her work. This reading is part of the U-M MFA in Creative Writing Program's Zell Visiting Writers Series.
UMS, IRWG, and LACS present an Artist Interview: "Who is Gal Costa?" The Who Is…?
1:00 - 2:30 PM, Clements Library (909 South University Ave, across the street from the Law School)
Series will explore the meteoric rise of Gal Costa, one of the artists central to the Tropicalismo movement in Brazilian popular music. Like other artists from that movement, her music has evolved over time, yet the strength and the heart of her talent continues. The artist herself will be interviewed by UM Professors Sueann Caulfield and Jesse Hoffnung-Garskoff, both experts in Brazilian history and culture, who will discuss her artistry, cultural background, and personal story. .
- Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Jayati Lal: Counter-narratives of Domestic Citizenship: Gossip and the Making of Indian Factory Women's Subaltern Publics
12:00 - 1:30 PM, 2239 Lane Hall
This talk is part of IRWG's Visiting Scholars series. This paper examines the life histories of five women factory workers in Delhi whose life trajectories run counter to normative domesticity. Read together as performative scripts, their lives are not illustrations of idiosyncratic exceptions, but are productive of new models of gender and hence are generative at the social and collective level. Rather than being restricted to the extraordinary, various forms of talk bring these stories into circulation in women workers' lifeworlds, scripting the events and circumstances of 'other' women's lives into the quotidian heterodoxy of factory women's lives. In each story, women happen upon work due to family circumstances, but work does not just happen to them; it actively shapes their unfolding narratives of rearticulated gender. As ideological counter-narratives that expand the repertoire of working women's potential lifelines, their lives provide concrete representations of future possibilities for factory women, enlarging the social imaginary of gender and chronicling new structures of feeling about work. I explore the circulation of these stories and the ways in which transgressions go public through gendered forms of talk such as gossip and rumor. The publicity of such counter-narratives of gender produce an empathetic epistemic community - a women's subaltern public by means of which future gender practices can be transformed, and the conditions and contours of women's domestic citizenship remade. I argue that treating gossip as consequential entails the recognition of its political nature and the ways in which it aids the feminist political project of widening the horizon of gender scripts and practices.
- Thursday, November 12, 2009
Ellen Gruenbaum: Female Genital Cutting in Two Contexts: Secret Society Initiation in Sierra Leone and Virginity Practices in Muslim Sudanese Communities
12:00 - 1:30 PM, 2239 Lane Hall
In Sudan, in Northeast Africa, the cutting of the genitals and infibulation of young girls is understood as a key act in the protection of a girl's virginity and family honor for Muslims and Christians alike, making Female Genital Cutting (FGC) extremely difficult to challenge, even when people are aware of the health risks. In 2007 - 2008, Gruenbaum studied the contrasting context of FGC in Sierra Leone, in West Africa, where girls are circumcised as part of the initiation into women's secret societies (the Bondo and the Sande), but where the issues of morality, sexuality, and propriety are complicated by recent wars and population displacement. From these contrasting cases, Gruenbaum offers recommendations for activists who hope to end FGC.
Ellen Gruenbaum is a medical anthropologist and Professor and Head of the Department of Anthropology at Purdue University; she previously served as Dean of the College of Social Sciences at California State University. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Connecticut. She has conducted research in Sudan and Sierra Leone on the practice of female genital cutting and the social movements against harmful traditional practices, and has served as a research consultant for UNICEF and CARE. Her interest in the controversies among cultural self-determination, international human rights, and women's rights led to her past service on the Committee for Human Rights of the American Anthropological Association and the Association for Feminist Anthropology. She currently serves as the secretary of the Society for Medical Anthropology. Gruenbaum is the author of The Female Circumcision Controversy: An Anthropological Perspective (Pennsylvania).
This event is co-sponsored by School of Public Health.
Lynn Shutters: The Queer Histories of Lucretia
12:00 - 1:30 PM, 2239 Lane Hall
This talk is part of IRWG's Visiting Scholars series.
Questions? Comments? E-mail irwg@umich.edu.
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Last updated Friday, November 06, 2009.