GWSS Departmental Newsletter 8/23/19

Events

1. Black in the Middle: The Inaugural Black Midwest Symposium, Oct. 17-19, 2019
2. Teaching Enrichment Series Workshops
3. Teaching with Writing TA Workshops
4. Immigration Symposium: Detention, Deportation, and the Southern Border (Hosted by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar) - August 27th

Scholarships/Fellowships/Job Opportunities

1. Program Coordinator at the Women's Center

2. LGBT Center Director at Ohio University
3. Assistant Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies (Critical Race Studies) at Carleton University (Canada)
4. Assistant Professor (TWO positions open), Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
5. Assistant Professor, Science & Technology Studies and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies: Feminist Biosciences, Cornell University

Call for Papers/Proposals

1. CFP: UNC Asheville/Davidson College Queer Studies Conference, April 3-5, 2020
2. 14th Annual Women's Health Research Conference, October 7, 2019
3. National Questions, International Possibilities: Democratic Revival in an Age of Authoritarian Neoliberalism
4. 2019 and 2020 Oxford Women's Leadership Symposia

Recognitions

1. Dissertation Defenses Complete - Congrats to Jayne Swift and Joanna Nunez!

2. Nithya Rajan's article published in the International Feminist Journal of Politics

Miscellaneous

1. New GWSS Feminist Modules now on Canvas (and our website)

2. Bias Response and Referall Network (BRNN) third-year report published

Events

1. The Black Midwest Symposium

The Black Midwest Symposium is a gathering place for all those—writers, students, artists, scholars, professionals, creatives, organizers, and others—who are invested in the possibilities of life in the middle and who desire to build community and communion within a wondrous sector of black America.

October 17-19, 2019

Thursday: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

Friday: 8:30 AM - 3:30 PM and 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Saturday: 9:30 AM - 2:00 PM

Cowles Auditorium, Humphrey School of Public Affairs

UMN undergraduate/graduate students: Free*

*You will need to provide your U card number on the last page of registration, and present your U card when you check in at the event. 

Click here to view the growing list of speakers and to register for this exciting RIGS conference!

2. Teaching Enrichment Series

Begin the new academic year by attending webinars and workshops offering practical approaches to teaching that instructors can implement in fall classes.

Topics include student well-being, information design, learning analytics, inclusive classrooms, active learning, group work in Canvas, and others.

3. 2019 Teaching with Writing: TA workshops

In August 2019, the Writing Across the Curriculum program is pleased to offer two different workshops, each focused on commenting and grading student writing (papers, problem sets, lab reports, presentations, posters, etc.). The first (8/27) is offered to TAs who assist with faculty-directed courses, either running sections or assisting in other ways. The second (8/28) is offered to TAs who serve as graduate student instructors.  Facilitated by Dan Emery and Matt Luskey, Assistant Directors of Writing Across the Curriculum.

Commenting on and Grading Student Writing: Workshop for New Teaching Assistants - Tuesday, August 27, 2019 | 1:00-4:00 p.m. | 312 Bruininks (East Bank)

Assigning and Assessing Student Writing: Workshop for Graduate Student Instructors - Wednesday, August 28, 2019 | 1:00-4:00 p.m. | 331 Smith Hall (East Bank)

More information/Registration can be found here.

4. Immigration Symposium: Detention, Deportation, and the Southern Border (Hosted by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar) - August 27th 

Geared toward community members, immigrants, immigration organizers, attorneys, and local officials, the event will focus on deportation and detention. There will be two panels, a workshop, and an evening forum. Full details for the event are included below.

Please note that everyone must register in advance, and only registered attendees will be admitted. Space is limited. I wanted to give key partners advance notice before we publicly advertise the event. Please feel free to share this information with your networks. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out.

You can learn more about the event and register at this link.

Tuesday, August 27th, 2019

Panels & Workshop in North Minneapolis

• Panel: Deportation Defense. 1:00pm-2:30pm
  • This panel is geared toward immigrants, organizers, and concerned community members. Panelists will give an overview of the detention/deportation process, provide a Know-Your-Rights training, and discuss successful strategies for creating a community-driven movement to support detained individuals.
• Panel: The Business of Detention. 2:45pm-4:14pm
  • This panel is geared toward local elected officials, leaders in the non-profit and for-profit sectors, immigrants, organizers, and concerned citizens. Panelists will present on the tech companies that provide the backbone to ICE infrastructure as well as how immigrants can protect their private data.
• Workshop: Imagining a World Without ICE. 4:30pm-5:30pm
  • A facilitator will give a brief overview of the responsibilities of ICE designated in the Immigration and Nationality Act, followed by group discussions to imagine alternative structures the Congresswoman should propose to replace ICE. 

Evening Forum in South Minneapolis

• Evening Forum: Detention, Deportation, and the Southern Border. 7:00-8:30pm (tabling starts at 6:30pm, doors at 6:45pm)
  • The evening forum will discuss current practices for detention and deportation, and how longtime residents and even US citizens are being swept into the carceral system. In the context of the Southern Border, we will discuss how policy from the Department of Homeland Security has exacerbated the crisis and led to grave human rights violations for thousands of people seeking legal asylum.
  • Immigration organizations are invited to table before and after the event. If you are interested, please contact me as soon as possible to reserve a table.

Scholarships/Fellowships/Job Opportunities

1. Program Coordinator at the Women's Center 

Join our team - the Women's Center is searching for a Program Coordinator! For further information about this position and to apply, visit https://humanresources.umn.edu/content/find-job and search for Job ID # 332354. Application review will begin the week of August 26.

2. LGBT Center Director at Ohio University

Dr. Gigi Secuban, Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, seeks a creative, engaging, dynamic individual to join her leadership team as OHIO’s next Director of the LGBT center. The director will work to engage a wide base of LGBTQ+ students, faculty, and staff through effective leadership and management of the Center and related programming and activities. The Director will be responsible for the strategic oversight, programming and coordination of all aspects of the LGBT Center including evaluating its strategic plan and mission centering on sexual and gender diversities and experiences with an inter-sectional perspective and various queer theory frameworks.

The Director will be accountable for efficient and effective administrative and fiscal management of the Center including supervising, training, and communicating with professional staff, graduate assistants, interns, and undergraduate student staff to ensure alignment with strategic objectives of the Center, the Division, and the University. Under the direction of the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, the Director will collaborate with finance professionals in the Business Service Center to manage Center funding. The Director will collaborate with University Advancement as needed to raise funds for the LGBT Center and LGBTQ+ initiatives across campus and to engage Alumni.

At the direction of the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, the Director may perform other related duties including instructing one course per semester in an academic unit such as Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Department of Social Work, or University College.

This posting closes on 9/15/2019. More details can be found here.

3. Assistant Professor, Women's and Gender Studies (Critical Race Studies) at Carleton University (Canada)

The Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies invites applications from qualified candidates for a full-time tenure-track faculty appointment in Women’s and Gender Studies with a specialization in Critical Race Studies at the rank of Assistant Professor beginning July 1, 2020.
The candidate will be expected to do research and teaching in the area of critical race studies.  Additional expertise in any of the following areas would be especially welcome:  disability studies, Indigenous studies, African studies, and/or transnational and diaspora studies.

Applications will be considered starting October 31, 2019 and continue until the position is filled.

More details can be found here.

4. Assistant Professor (TWO positions open), Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

POSITIONS: The Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) Program in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire seeks TWO tenure-track faculty members at the rank of Assistant Professor. The Program seeks two dynamic candidates with expertise in
women’s /gender/sexuality/feminist studies who are committed to teaching excellence and to maintaining an active program involving undergraduates. These appointments carry an initial two-year probationary appointment beginning with the 2020/2021 academic year, with
the appointment starting in August 24, 2020.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS: PhD in Women/Gender/Sexuality/Feminist Studies or closely related field from a regionally accredited higher
education institution by August 24, 2020. ABD applicants may be considered but must complete the terminal degree by August 24, 2020.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS: Demonstrated ability of university teaching at the introductory and upper division levels, with emphasis on Transnational/Global Feminisms or LGBTQ Studies/Queer Theory. In addition, applicants who have research and teaching specializations in some combination of the following fields are especially encouraged to apply: Critical Race Theory, Ethnic Studies, Indigenous Feminism, Decolonial Methodologies, and/or Environmental Justice. The candidates need to provide evidence of strong scholarship or scholarly potential, and demonstrate commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusiveness.

See attached PDF for information on how to apply.

5. Assistant Professor, Science & Technology Studies and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies: Feminist Biosciences, Cornell University

The Department of Science and Technology Studies (S&TS) and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (FGSS) Program at Cornell University invite applications for a jointly appointed tenure-track assistant professor in feminist biosciences. We welcome applications from outstanding scholars whose work engages biosciences, biotechnology, the environment, and/or medicine, from a feminist and/or queer studies perspective. We seek a scholar whose empirical scholarship relies on interpretive, transnational, and/or interdisciplinary approaches in any time period, and involves theoretical attention to the intersections of gender and sexuality with race, class, ability, nation, and other structures of inequality.

The position is open to scholars from all humanities and interpretive social science disciplines. The Department and Program will work closely together to ensure that the 2/2 teaching load, administrative, and service responsibilities will be shared between S&TS and FGSS, with the successful candidate teaching foundational, undergraduate and graduate courses. The tenure home will be in S&TS.

The S&TS Department has an active PhD program and runs two undergraduate majors: “Biology & Society” and “Science & Technology Studies.” The FGSS Program offers an undergraduate major and minor, as well as a graduate minor available to students across all fields at Cornell. The successful candidate will have an active research program and will be expected to play an important role in the core mission, institutional development, and graduate and undergraduate programs of both the S&TS Department and the FGSS Program.

Candidates should submit a cover letter that includes a statement of current and future research plans, a curriculum vitae, a syllabus and teaching statement that speak to both science studies and FGSS, a writing sample of no more than 30 pages, and the names of three people who can write letters of reference. We ask that all applicants address, either in the cover letter or the syllabus, how they support a scholarly work environment that supports diversity. Review of applications will begin October 1, 2019 and should be submitted through academicjobsonline.

For more information, please contact Suman Seth, search co-chair and Professor of Science and Technology Studies at ss536@cornell.edu or Durba Ghosh, search co-chair, and Director of the Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies program at dg256@cornell.edu.

Call for Papers/Proposals

1. CFP: UNC Asheville/Davidson College Queer Studies Conference, April 3-5, 2020

Fitting in & Sticking out: Queer (In)visibilities & the Perils of Inclusion

While some queer and trans folks celebrated the election of queer and trans candidates in the last campaign cycle, there is often an understanding in queer communities that representation in the halls of power will not necessarily lead to liberation. As the gay liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s forked into mainstream gay rights in the 1980s and 1990s, some political action shifted from radical confrontation with state violence towards demands for inclusion and equality. We’ve seen some progress in the protection of marginalized identities and lives with hate crime legislation and the “crowning achievement” of marriage equality. There may be more gay, lesbian, and trans people represented in movies, TV, and legislatures, but does that translate into safety for queer communities? Will a rainbow flag on a police car protect queer folks from a culture built around (trans)misogyny / misogynoir and sexual assault?

We are constantly reminded that our culture is still built on anti-black, anti-queer violence by the all too frequent murders of black transwomen, the further criminalization of queer sex workers, and the erasure of rural LGBTQ+ identities experiencing the pains of addiction, joblessness, and lack of resources. Today, we are at another fork in the road, where there is nominal acceptance of certain gay and lesbian identities (namely white, educated, middle-class families), while a wide range of experiences of people under the LGBTQ+ umbrella get forgotten. As queerness becomes hip and queer subcultural styles are being bought and sold, we must ask how the culture, lives, and sexuality behind the looks can survive and thrive. With the rise of global fascism, the impending doom of large-scale environmental collapse, and the inevitable next crash of capitalism, can we still envision a queerness that seeks liberation rather than admission to the status quo and benefits of a vastly unequal US society? How can we balance these visions with protecting the precarious lives most threatened by the current sociopolitical landscape?

Submit proposals online here!


2. 14th Annual Women's Health Research Conference

The Women's Health Research Program Presents:

14th Annual Women's Health Research Conference

When: October 7th, 2019 between 1:00pm-5:30pm

Where: McNamara Alumni Center

For more details : z.umn.edu/WHRC

The Women's Health Research Conference is a one-day event that features two plenary presentations, panel discussion, and a poster session on women’s health research. It draws 200 to 300 interdisciplinary women’s health researchers, health care providers, students, and community public health professionals for a day of learning, networking and research dissemination. Participants come from all over the Twin Cities metro, rural Minnesota, and neighboring states.

Conference Aims:

• Build awareness of the latest breakthroughs in women's health research at the University-, local- and regional-levels
• Facilitate interdisciplinary networking and research collaborations that foster innovative work with the capacity to improve women's health across the lifespan
• Provide opportunities for emerging researchers, from all avenues of women's health and/or sex-difference research, to present work and build research portfolios

Primary Topic Aims:

• Explore the implications of trauma and gender violence on women's physical and mental health
• Promote solutions-based research agendas aimed at improving women's health
• Build an understanding of trauma and gender violence as multi-faceted issues that have implications for women's health 

Abstract Deadlines:
Friday, July 26th, 2019 - To be considered for award
Friday, September 6th, 2019 at 11:59pm - Late-breaking posters 

NOTE: GWSS will be co-sponsoring and tabling at this event, and we'd like some volunteers! E-mail ckenney@umn.edu to volunteer.

2. Call for Papers - National Questions, International Possibilities: Democratic Revival in an Age of Authoritarian Neoliberalism

Conference & Special Issue Call For Papers
Organizers: Carlo Fanelli, York University; Heather Whiteside, University of Waterloo; Marco Marrone, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia; Alfredo Ferrara, University of Bari; Giuseppe Cascione, University of Bari
When: Wednesday July 15th to Friday July 17th, 2020
Where: University of Bari, Piazza Umberto I, 1, 70121 Bari BA, Italy

      Alternate Routes and the University of Bari, Italy invites individual paper and panel submissions for our latest conference and journal special issue. Liberal democratic capitalism is increasingly losing legitimacy but what might replace it is increasingly unclear. It has become almost an orthodoxy to argue that the great divide in world politics today is between nationalists and globalists, left- and right-wing populists, and identity and class politics. Despite talk of a new world order, the end of history and an era of post-truth politics, these divisions also reflect profound political limitations. This Call for Papers interrogates these divisions and more, including: What role for social democratic and socialist politics today? How to challenge the authoritarian/anti-democratic politics of the right and the debilitating post-politics of “the centre”? What role for national self-determination in international contexts? How to organize social and political conflict? How are labour and other social movements responding?

For more conference information, click HERE.

To submit your proposal, please click HERE.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS is December 31st, 2019. A selection of papers will be considered as part of a special issue publication of Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research.Conference Registration Fees: Permanent Faculty €200; Contract Faculty and Graduate Students: €150.

3. 2019 & 2020 Oxford Women's Leadership Symposia

We are pleased to invite you, your institution and your colleagues to attend the upcoming 19th International Oxford Women's Leadership Symposium https://www.oxford-womens-leadership-symposium.com/ to be held at Somerville College in the University of Oxford. Attendees may participate as observers, panel members and presenters of papers, reports, and commentaries concerning aspects relevant to the theory and practice of Women's, Gender and Justice issues. Poster presentations are welcome too.

DEADLINES

AUTUMN Session (4–6 December 2019) Somerville College http://www.some.ox.ac.uk/
Abstract submission  – 14 November
Early registration  – 16 September
Regular registration  – 17 November

SPRING  Session 23–24 March 2020, Somerville College http://www.some.ox.ac.uk/
Abstract submission  – 9 March
Early registration  – 15 December
Regular registration  – 11 March

NOTATIONS FOR THE MEETINGS:
We accept abstracts on a rolling basis and send notifications within a week of submission. Presenters are allocated 20 minutes to present followed by a ten-minute question session.
Conference Oxford  http://conference-oxford.com/bb-self-cateringhas hundreds of affordable bedrooms in Oxford colleges available, offering splendid views of college quadrangles and gardens. Consult the website for more information or contact info@oxford-womens-leadership-symposium.com


Symposia Participants may submit complete papers (six weeks after the conclusion of the meeting attended) to be peer-reviewed by external readers for possible inclusion in Symposium Books or sponsored academic journals.

Recognitions

1. Dissertation Defenses Complete - Congratulations to Jayne Swift and Joanna Núñez!

Jayne Swift defended her dissertation, Lusty Ladies: Sex Work and Sex-Positive Politics, 1970-2013, on August 14th. Advisor: Regina Kunzel (Princeton University).

Joanna Núñez defended her dissertation, ¡Mi Mamá me Enseño! : Teaching and Learning Mexicana and Chicana Feminisms in the Home, on August 15th. Advisor: Edén Torres. 


A huge congrats to our new PhDs!

2. Nithya Rajan's article published in the International Feminist Journal of Politics

Nithya's article, What do refugees want? Reading refugee lip-sewing protests through a critical lens, has been published in the International Feminist Journal of Politics.

Abstract: "Through a close reading of lip-sewing protests by refugees over the past two decades, this article develops a theoretical framework for understanding lip sewing as a form of protest and political agency. I consider various lip-sewing protests by refugees and the strategic use of speechlessness and corporeality in these protests to uncover the conditions in which contemporary refugees are imbricated. I argue that this unusual form of protest, as well as the demands that protesters make on states and international institutions through dissensus, reflects the existence of a new kind of refugee that has emerged in response to the contemporary refugee management system that criminalizes displacement."

Congrats to Nithya on this achievement!

Miscellaneous

1. New GWSS Feminist Modules now on Canvas (and our website)

We have completed our transfer of the GWSS Feminist Modules to Canvas. You can now go to Canvas Commons (in Canvas), search for "GWSS Feminist Modules" and import them directly into your canvas courses. We are no longer supporting the Moodle platform, so you won't be able to access them that way anymore. 

We have updated our website to reflect these changes as well. 

2. Bias Response and Referral Network (BRRN) third-year report published

The Bias Response and Referral Network (BRRN) responds to reports of bias incidents on the Twin Cities campus. The BRRN third-year report (PDF) is now available. The report includes background information, an analysis of incidents reported in the last year, trends, and recommendations.