Emily Carman
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Thinking Gender 2007 brought together graduate students from all disciplines across North America to share their current feminist research, and as the conference coordinator, I felt the event was an astounding success with a lively intellectual and scholarly exchange of ideas. The 2007 conference was the largest in Thinking Gender’s seventeen-year history with 84 participants. The panels covered a range of topics across both the humanities (including comparative literature, film and television, art history, and English) and social sciences (such as history, geography, sociology, and women’s studies). It was particularly satisfying to see such a large public turnout for the conference. The morning panel “Queer Bodies and Nations,” moderated by USC English Professor Judith Halberstam, had forty audience members. And as a student in the Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media, I was very pleased to attend the four panels devoted to gender and media, including “Women as Cultural Producers,” “Making Film,” “Experimental Women’s Body Films,” and “Television and Gendered Dis-Articulations.”
Yet the most rewarding aspect of the conference for me was finally meeting all the panelists and faculty moderators after so many months of email and telephone correspondence. I enjoyed the professional and scholarly exchange. Working with CSW director Kathleen McHugh, the assistant director April de Stefano, and the amazing CSW staff so closely helped me achieve one of my graduate school goals of doing public service for the UCLA and Los Angeles community. Moreover, it was a tremendous pleasure to plan the conference with the USC Center for Feminist Research staff and formulate the conference panels with USC Professor Susan McCabe and USC graduate student Kristen Barber. My only regret is that the conference reception was too short, as I would have enjoyed to meet and talk with more of the participants and moderators. In sum, I’d like to thank all who participated in making Thinking Gender 2007 an outstanding day and for giving me one of the most gratifying professional experiences of my academic career thus far. |
