Bridging Fall 2007/Spring 2008

BRIDGING

University of Maryland Department of Women’s Studies

Fall 2007/Spring 2008

Women’s Studies Welcomes Award-Winning Artist-in-Residence, Rhodessa Jones Students will have the opportunity to explore art as a method for social change when acclaimed performing artist, director, teacher, singer, activist and writer Rhodessa Jones takes up a one-month artist’s residency at the Department of Women’s Studies in September 2007.

Ms. Jones is the founder and director of the award winning Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women, which works with incarcerated women in the San Francisco area to produce theater based on their life histories. Her work on the project has been the subject of Rena Fraden’s Imagining Medea: Rhodessa Jones and the Theater for Incarcerated Women, published by the University of North Carolina Press. Ms. Jones is also the Co -Artistic Director of the San Francisco based performance company Cultural Odyssey.

During her residency Ms. Jones will teach, lecture, conduct workshops and perform. In her upper-level Women’s Studies and Theater course, entitled “Art as Social Change: Creative Performance, Creative Survival,” students will split their time between class discussion, and observing and assisting Ms. Jones as she works with

incarcerated teenaged girls at the Thomas J. Waxter Children’s Center in Laurel, Maryland. The course will explore the relation between art and social justice through both theory, movement and praxis.

Students will be expected to share their own life stories, as the discussion and workshops will draw heavily on autobiographical theater practices.

Ms. Jones’s course will be followed by an optional, onecredit hour course, “Art as Social Change II,” which explores the relationship between art and social justice. Professors Elsa Barkley Brown and Deborah Rosenfelt of the Women’s Studies Department will teach this course in October.

Rhodessa Jones

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Public Activities with Rhodessa Jones September 7, 2:00-4:00 p.m., 2101 Woods Hall, Welcome Reception: Come to our annual Fall Gathering and help us welcome Rhodessa Jones to campus.

September 17, 4:30-6:00 p.m., 0106 Key Hall: “A Conversation with Rhodessa Jones”: Michel Martin, host of National Public Radio’s “Tell Me More,” will conduct a public interview with Rhodessa Jones focused on her work with incarcerated women in the U.S. and in South Africa as well as her career as a performer and director.

September 26, 27 & 28: Performances of “Hot Flashes and Other Stories,” Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

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Black masculinities scholar Jeffrey McCune is the newest addition to Women’s Studies faculty

Jeffrey McCune’s appointment is shared by Women’s Studies and the Department of American Studies

The Women’s Studies Department welcomes its newest faculty member, Jeffrey Q. McCune, this Fall. Dr. McCune joins the faculty in a tenure-track, assistant professor position, and shares a joint appointment with the Departments of American Studies and Women’s Studies. His recruitment stems from the new Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Program’s faculty search, conducted last spring.

Dr. McCune’s appointment is path-breaking in a number of ways. He is the first Black male faculty associated with the LGBT Program; his is the first joint appointment between American Studies and Women’s Studies at UMD; and he is the first male faculty to be appointed to Women’s Studies.

“He is also a next-generation, trained interdisciplinary scholar, rather than a discipline-trained scholar who

has retooled,” says Dr. Bonnie Thornton Dill, professor and Chair of Women’s Studies.

“These truly interdisciplinary scholars are rare indeed. Even rarer are interdisciplinary scholars who bring McCune’s intellectual projects to the table - expertise in the areas of masculinity, Black sexual politics, performance theory, and critical race and black queer theory.”

Dr. McCune holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, and has recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African American Studies at the University of Rochester. His qualifications include a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies from Northwestern, and a Master’s degree in Communication Studies from the University of Nebraska.

“It’s exciting to be here, particularly being an intertextual scholar,” says McCune. “With the relationships between Women’s Studies and American Studies, this appointment is a unique opportunity for my work and voice to be heard and valued.”

His dissertation, “Doin’ the Down Low, Remixin’ the Closet: Black Masculinity and the Politics of Sexual Passing,” uses multiple methodologies; including the analysis of visual texts, ethnography, black feminist theory, performance theory, and critical race/black queer theory; in arguing for a more nuanced understanding of the lives and cultural experiences of men on the “down low.”

Dr. McCune’s research has been published in the Journal of Homosexuality; in a collection edited by William Leap and Ellen Lewin for the University of Illinois Press; and in a collection for the Ford Foundation, edited by leading queer studies scholars Juan Battle and Cathy Cohen. Forthcoming publications include a book manuscript based on his dissertation and an essay in an edited collection, Men and Masculinities, to be published by Sage.

Students in Women’s Studies, American Studies and the LGBT Program will benefit greatly from Dr. McCune’s expertise in the classroom. He has taught interdisciplinary courses in Black Masculinities, Black Sexual Politics, the Performance of Literature and Culture, and Performing Masculinities, amongst others. He will teach an undergraduate course, Black Masculinities, this Fall.

“The course uses the plural - masculinities - because this more accurately reflects the range of masculinities that exist. It does not limit the possibilities for Black men to one kind of masculinity, but expands them. It is specifically an examination of Black masculinities across time, within different temporal moments and social locations,” he says.

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First Women’s Studies PhDs Graduate

Graduates (from left to right) Luh Ayu Prasetyaningsih, Na Young Lee and Sarah Tillery Spring 2007 marked an historic occasion for Women’s Studies, with Na Young Lee, Luh Ahu Prasetyaningsih and Sarah Marie Tillery becoming the first students to graduate with Ph.D.s.

Na Young Lee’s dissertation maps the historical contours of U.S. camptown prostitution, or kijch’on, in South Korea, and examines the ways that camptown prostitution has been historically constructed and reconstructed within a complex web of dynamic power relations: nation-states, subjects, and NGOs. Entitled “The Construction of U.S. Camptown Prostitution: Trans/Formations and Resistance,” the dissertation was directed by Seung-kyung Kim of Women’s Studies. Lee has returned to South Korea, where she is em-

ployed as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at ChungAng University in Seoul.

Luh Ayu Prasetyaningsih’s dissertation examines the ways in which transnational circulations of people, objects, and ideas affect understandings of skin color, as it intersects with other categories of identity such as race, gender, nationality, and sexuality. By analyzing texts from Old Javanese adaptations of Indian epics to current beauty product advertisements, and interviewing Indonesian women, she argues that preference for light-skinned women in Indonesia predates European colonialism and continued after Indonesia’s independence. This dissertation was directed by Claire Moses. Prasetyaningsih was selected for a 2-year postdoctoral position at Emory University in Atlanta, where she will teach two courses: “Transnational Feminism” and “Cyberspace, Gender, and Globalization.”

Sarah Tillery’s research investigates the cultural work that bodies of size are able to do - the work of negotiating multiple messages about body size - and argues that these negotiations produce messages significant for popular discourses around fatness in the U.S. As she frames bodies within the lens of complex personhood, Tillery provides a more nuanced interpretation of fat representations, be these legal, visual, or medical. Nancy L. Struna, Professor and Chair of the Department of American Studies, directed this dissertation. Tillery has just started a position at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, where she works as Coordinator for Community Service. She oversees two student groups which provide service in the community for the St. Louis area - Dance Marathon and Feed St. Louis.

Women’s Studies Celebrates 30 Years The Department of Women’s Studies reached a milestone during the past year: it celebrated thirty years of teaching, scholarship and activism at UMD. As the academic year drew to a close, faculty, students, alumni and friends celebrated the momentous impact the department has had on the university and the growing field of Women’s Studies.

Speaking at the 30th anniversary celebration, Bonnie Thornton Dill, Department Chair, outlined the evolution of Women’s Studies from a small program to an established department beginning in 1975, when a small group of university women, led by Virginia Beauchamp in the English Department, began the groundwork for establishing a Women’s Studies Program. The program was approved in 1976, with an undergraduate certificate in Women’s Studies. Professor Carol Pearson became the first permanent director, following the appointment of Bernice Carroll as 1-year visiting professor. From these small beginnings, the program grew over thirty years to become a national and international leader in its field.

“Today, we are one of the strongest and most dynamic Women’s Studies Departments in the nation and we have recognition from and working relationships with women’s studies programs around the world. We enjoy a global reputation for new methodologies and exciting new research that expands the depth and reach of knowledge on women and gender. We are also one of the oldest programs in the United States and one of approximately a dozen that offers the Ph.D. in Women’s Studies,” said Professor Dill.

Under Professor Pearson’s leadership, UMD became home to both the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) and Feminist Studies. Professor Pearson recruited Claire Moses as faculty and Editor of Feminist Studies. Professor Moses would go on to chair the Department from 1993 to 2003.

Jean Lipman-Blumen and Josephine Withers succeeded Professor Pearson as directors of the program, (Continued on page 4)

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Thirty Year-celebration (Continued from page 3)

while searching for a new permanent director. In 1984, Evelyn Beck was recruited from the University of Wisconsin to become the program’s director.

“Under her leadership, the faculty and program grew and the campus was convinced that Women’s Studies was an important tool for improving the education of undergraduate women. With enhancement money, Women’s Studies experienced its greatest period of faculty growth and had considerable impact in beginning the work of transforming the campus climate for women through the Curriculum Transformation Project,” remarked Professor Dill.

In 1991, the Graduate Certificate Program was introduced. Soon after, in 1993, Claire Moses started chairing the program, steering it through ten years of rapid institutional transformation. The program became a department in 1994 with the introduction of a Women’s Studies major, and started awarding B.A. degrees. In 1999, it inaugurated a Ph.D. program.

After 30 years, the Department has grown to include ten faculty, 32 graduate students and about 55 majors.

It has awarded three Ph.D.s, 16 Master’s Degrees, 100 B.A. Degrees, and 115 undergraduate certificates in Women’s Studies.

The Department has been a key player in transforming the university to include a more diverse higher education climate. Said Professor Dill: “Our faculty have been involved in launching just about every program on campus related to diversity: Africa and the Americas; Asian American Studies; LGBT Studies; The Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity; the U.S. Latino Studies Program; and the Curriculum Transformation Project.

“Like most major historical, political and social transformations, a lot of women worked very, very hard -overcoming ignorance, doubt, mistrust, misogyny, disdain and outright opposition --to reach this point,” said Dr. Dill.

Support the next 30 years of Women’s Studies at Maryland!

Contributions in support of Women’s Studies are always welcome.

Your donation will help extend programming and opportunities for staff and students.

All contributions are tax deductible.

Please make checks payable to: UM College Park Foundation Mail to: Annie Carter, Business Manager Department of Women’s Studies, Woods Hall 2101 University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742

Women’s Studies’ Ruth Enid Zambrana to Direct New Latino/a Studies Program

Viajero #4 by David Amoroso (acrylic on canvas).

This artwork is part of an exhibition hosted by the new U.S. Latino/a Studies Program, entitled "Visualizing El Barrio: Eight local artists interpret the Latino landscapes of Washington, D.C." The exhibition was held at the Stamp Student Union Gallery.

The University of Maryland launches its first U.S. Latina/o Studies courses, under the auspices of the Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity (CRGE), this Fall.

Core classes in the Minor will be offered in Fall 2007 and Spring 2008. The first core class, USLT201: U.S. Latino Studies: An Historical Overview, will be co-taught

by Professors Angel David Nieves and Ana Patricia Rodriguez. The interdisciplinary course will focus on demographics; terminology; and social constructs of race, class, ethnicity, indigeneity, gender, and sexuality associated with the historical and political roots of U.S. Latinidades. The course examines the formation, evolution and adaptation of U.S. Latina/o communities as a critical field of inquiry.

Professor of Women’s Studies, Ruth Enid Zambrana, will serve as Interim Director for the Program, while continuing her duties as Director of the CRGE. The Consortium was instrumental in writing the proposal that successfully received funding to launch courses, convene an advisory committee and develop a proposal for the institutionalization of a new US Latino Studies program at UM. The program’s mission is to provide U.S. Latinocentered pedagogy, research and public service to assure the visibility of the Latino experience on campus, in the region and the state, and to engage in outreach to the surrounding Latino communities to increase access to resources at all levels of the university, county and state. For more information visit the program’s website at http://usltmaryland.org.

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Scholars and students from four countries participate in on-line women’s health course and videoconference Acclaimed experts on women’s health from around the globe participated in a videoconference, “Women’s Health and Well-being: Transnational Perspectives and Pedagogies,” hosted by Women’s Studies and the Curriculum Transformation Grace Bantebya Project last Spring.

Kyomuhendo The videoconference, moderated by Women’s Studies Professor Ruth Zambrana and coordinated by graduate student Kimberlee Staking, was the culmination of a semesterlong, online course in Women’s Health, taught collaboratively by four higher education institutions across three continents: the University of Maryland, Makerere University in Uganda, the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, and Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

During the videoconference, faculty and students from each institution considered the most important issues affecting women’s health today, including reproductive health and sexuality, mental health, and women’s social well-being and bodily integrity.

Rivka TuvalPresenters included Vivienne BoMashiach zalek, Chairperson of the Department of Social Work at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, a member of the Standards Gener-

ating Body in Social Work, and consultant to social work departments throughout South Africa; Grace Bantebya Kyomuhendo, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Women and Gender Studies at Makerere University in Uganda, and a consultant on women’s health, educaVivienne Bozalek tion and leadership; Rivka TuvalMashiach, Professor of the Department of Psychology and Gender Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel, and clinician of the Center for Traumatic Stress of Hadassah University Hospital; and Kimberlee Staking, Instructor and Graduate Student in Women’s Studies at UMD. Participants also considered pedagogical strategies for simultaneously teaching comparative women’s health issues in different countries. Participants have set up a wiki outlining and summarizing the online course, and exploring several aspects of women’s health across cultural and geographic contexts. The wiki Kimberlee Staking can be accessed at https:// wiki.math.umd.edu/ arhu_wmst498k/Main_Page. To watch the video-streamed proceedings of the videoconference and obtain DVDs, contact Kimberlee Staking at kimart@umd.edu.

Visual literacy seminars bring together faculty across disciplines Women's Studies faculty and graduate students designed, directed, and participated in three campus-wide institutes on visual literacy and diversity this summer. Faculty from the Departments of Journalism, Art History and Archeology, Educational Policy and Leadership, English, Theater, Kinesiology, American Studies, Psychology and Sociology attended the seminars, aimed at addressing issues of diversity and difference via visual literacy and its associated technologies.

Sponsored by the Curriculum Transformation Project, the three institutes focused respectively on “visual literacy: the basics,” “moving images,” and “mappings, place and space.” Faculty received the technical know-how to work with current technologies like wikis, Power Point, and GIS satellite imaging, while strategizing around ways to impart critical visual literacy skills in the classroom.

The institutes were directed by Women’s Studies Professors Elsa Barkley Brown and Deborah Rosenfelt, and Catherine Hays, Associate Director of Academic Technology in the College of Arts and Humanities, assisted by graduate

students Kimberlee Staking and Rachel Caidor. The first institute, “the basics” drew on resources available from the College of Arts and Humanities’ Visual Literacy Toolbox, which can be accessed at http://www.arhu.umd.edu/vislit/.

Participating faculty have committed to developing one classroom resource stemming from their time at the institute.

Participant and Women’s Studies Professor Michelle Rowley said the institutes were valuable in providing faculty with a collective space to think about ways of including a wider range of media in their teaching.

“We had an amazing cross-section of faculty there, so in addition to learning about how to crop images, use wikis, or use audio texts in Power Point presentations, we also had these lovely ten-minute tutorials in business writing, Brazilian art, women and labor, women in the African diaspora, masculinity, and sports. I think students will be very happy that we participated in these workshops,” said Rowley.

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News from Faculty and Grad Students: Publications, Awards, Presentations FACULTY AND STAFF NEWS Department of Women’s Studies Chair Bonnie Thornton Dill received the 2006–2007 Regents' Faculty Award in recognition of her work as an outstanding mentor. The Faculty Awards are the highest honors presented to University System of Maryland faculty by the Board of Regents.

Seung-kyung Kim received a grant from the Korea Foundation to work on the project: "Women’s Movements in Democratic South Korea: The Trajectory of Institutionalization and the Loss of Autonomy." She will be working with Dr. Kyounghee Kim (Department of Sociology, Chung Ang University, Seoul, Korea) who will be a visiting scholar in our Department during the academic year, 2007-8.

Michelle Rowley published “Feminist Visions for a New Era: An Interview with Peggy Antrobus,” Feminist Studies. Vol. 33 #1 Spring 2007. Her article, “Rethinking Interdisciplinarity: Meditations on the Sacred Possibilities of an Erotic Feminist Pedagogy,” is forthcoming in Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism. Vol. 22. No. 3 October, 2007.

Dr. Rowley also received a General Research Board Award and an International Travel Grant, which allowed her to spend two weeks at the National Archives in London, examining Protector of Slaves documents for the Amelioration period of British slavery in the Anglophone Caribbean. Her research is being worked into a manuscript, Cartographies of Being: Citizenship, the Body and Feminist Advocacy in the Anglophone Caribbean.

Claire Moses received a Graduate Research Board (GRB) Award for the Fall 2007 Semester, and will be conducting research in Paris during this time.

Ruth Zambrana was honored as one of Hispanic Business’s Elite Women for 2007.

Deborah Rosenfelt will be a distinguished visiting professor in women's studies at Central European University in Budapest for Spring semester, 2008.

Harriet Presser, affiliate faculty and Distinguished University Professor, Sociology, has received the Senior Scholar Award for Lifetime Achievement by the American Association of University Women.

Assistant Director Laura Nichols received the Outstanding Woman of the Year Award from the UMD President’s Commission on Women’s Issues. The award recog-

Harriet Presser (left) receives the Senior Scholar Award for Lifetime Achievement by the American Association of University Women. nizes women who have made compelling contributions to the improvement of the quality of women's lives. Ms. Nichols shared the award with Dr. Denise Gottfredson.

GRADUATE STUDENT NEWS Carissa Liro-Hudson received the Dartmouth College General Fellowship and a University of Maryland International Education Services Grant to attend a summer language study in Japan. Her conference paper, "Writing a Wrong: The Korean 'Comfort Women' and the Transnational Politics of Representation," was also recently accepted at the annual MidAtlantic Asian Studies Association conference, which will be held in October 2007.

Kimberlee Staking, with Y. Yusuf-Khalil, V. Bozalek, R. Tuval-Mashiach and G. Bantebya-Kyomuhendo published “Reflections on a Collaborative Experience: Using ICT in a Trans-cultural Women’s Health Module,” in Agenda Feminist Journal No. 71, 2007.

Joy Sapinoso was awarded the Mary Savage Snouffer Dissertation Fellowship for 2007/2008 from the College of Arts and Humanities at UMD. Barbara Boswell received an Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship from the Graduate School. Barbara published a review essay on Andrea Lee in African American Female Writers: An A-to-Z Guide, edited by Yolanda W. Page. Her review of Doreen Baingana’s short story collection, Tropical (Continued on page 7)

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Fish: Stories out of Entebbe, appeared in Feminist Africa 7 (December 2006).

Nikki Stewart published a column “What You Can Do with a Degree in Women's Studies: Transform the World” for the Spring 2007 Issue of Ms. Magazine. She also published “Black Girls’ Dreams,” in the Summer 2007 Issue of Ms., in which she examines how current media images of black girls—from Oprah’s Leadership Academy to That’s So Raven—miss the girls’ own points of view about their world.

Women’s Studies Welcomes three new Ph.D. Students

Angel Miles was awarded a Master’s degree in Women’s Studies in Spring 2007. She also participated in the Future of Minority Studies summer Colloquium at Cornell University, which was attended by junior and senior scholars, including Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Chandra Mohanty, Satya Mohanty, Linda Martin Alcoff, Beverly Guy Sheftall and Janella Butler.

Amy Washburn presented a paper, “Women’s Wartime Writing: (Re)Writing and (R)evolutionizing the Politics of Daily Life in Occupied Iraq in Riverbend’s Baghdad Burning,” at the New York College English Association biannual conference, April 13-14, in New Paltz, New York. Her poem “Sweatgum Leaves” was published in That Far Down.

Mel Michelle Lewis (second from right) with members of the WoCLP Planning Team at the NWSA annual conference.

Congratulations to Mel Michelle Lewis, a member of the NWSA 2006 - 2007 Women of Color Leadership Project Planning team. This year The WoCLP had more than 100 applicants for the 2007 NWSA conference and presented programs for a cohort of 30 this year. The WoCLP is designed to increase the number of women of color students and faculty within the field of women’s studies and, consequently, to have an impact on the levels of participation and power by women of color in the Program Administration & Development Committee, NWSA, and in the field of women’s studies as a whole.

Ryan Shanahan and Clare C. Jen each received the inaugural Evelyn T. Beck Research Prize for 2006-2007.

Clare C. Jen and Kimberly Williams received the Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award for 2006-2007 from the Center for Teaching Excellence.

Mary Bazemore, Yh Patt and Jeannette Soon

Mary Bazemore recently graduated from Syracuse University with a JD, a MS in Telecommunications and Network Management, and a Certificate of Advanced Study in Women's Studies. She went to Syracuse from Vermont, where she worked at a shelter for battered women and children for three years. She majored in English and minored in Philosophy and Women’s Studies at Westfield State College. Her research interests include feminist critiques of technological culture (specifically internet and computer technologies/cultures), feminist legal theory and feminist epistemologies.

Jeannette Soon is a graduate of the University of North Carolina, Ashville, where she achieved distinction in Political Science and as a University Research Scholar. She completed two senior theses: one in Political Science and one in Women’s Studies. As a doctoral student she will extend the ideas developed in her Women’s Studies thesis to investigate localized, democratic community-building and feminist praxis in the U.S. She studies feminist theories of social justice in national and global contexts.

Yh Patt is interested in the terrain of activism and scholarship, as well as the work of public intellectuals. Informed by twenty years of activist, legal, and human rights work, she focuses on the knowledges and work of ordinary people in the United States, Latin America, and the Middle East. Current projects include producing video media, and studying the pedagogical practices and rhetorical interventions that reframe hegemonic understandings of the world.

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Ms. Jones will stage a performance piece, “Hot Flashes and Other Stories” at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center while in residence. This one-woman, multimedia performance will reflect on different life stages of AfricanAmerican womanhood, from daughterhood to grandmotherhood. Instructors wanting to include Ms. Jones’s performance art in their curricula will have access to a unique teaching kit: a wiki with resources for teaching her work, and for teaching art as a process for engendering social change.

The wiki can be accessed at https://wiki.math.umd.edu/ arhu_rhodessajones/.

The Women’s Studies Department is accepting donations to help provide the young women at the Waxter Children’s Center with books and other materials that will be used during their workshops with Ms. Jones. People wanting to contribute to this project should please visit the project’s Amazon.com wish list at https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/ wishlist/1EA4FA6MR7EIN for books needed, or donate some of the following items: blank journals, pens, markers, colored pencils, construction paper, yoga mats. For more information on donations, contact Annie Carter at adel@umd.edu.

Congratulations to undergraduate students Sara Jaye Sanford and Rebecca Sickenberg, who graduated from Women’s Studies with Departmental Honors. Pictured is Sara Jaye, wearing the new Women’s Studies Honors Stole, with Professor Claire Moses.

BRIDGING is a publication of the Department of Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland and was designed and written by Barbara Boswell.

Department of Women’s Studies University Of Maryland 2101 Wods Hall College Park, MD 20742

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