Works in Progress
This workshop series, which brings scholars to campus to discuss and get feedback on a current project, is organized by CSW in partnership with the Department of Women's Studies.
RSVP required for each workshop. Email csw@csw.ucla.edu for info.
The series has featured these scholars:
Jennifer Doyle
Associate Professor, University of California--Riverside
April 11, 2011
Canaries in the Coal Mine: Homophobia and the "Problem" of Women's Soccer
In mid-march March 2011, speaking at the first conference on women's soccer in Nigeria, the national team's head coach boasted that she's eradicated lesbianism from the team. To date, the only meaningful press given to repeated homophobic statements from the Nigerian's management has come from Nigeria's press - which has largely expressed shock that lesbians would be found on the team at all. Two female players dropped from South Africa's national team came forward in the fall with accusations against Augustine Makalakane: he had been molesting players and making homophobic declarations for years. This story has also gone unremarked upon, outside of South African sports media (and it was a small story there, as well).
As we gear up for the Women's World Cup, and as we move toward the 40th anniversary of Title IX, now is a good time to take stock of the state of gender and sexual equality in the game: as these two depressing stories indicate, the situation is not good.
Speaking from her experiences as a blogger and coming-to-consciousness as a queer feminist sports critic, Doyle will address the epic problem of sexism and homophobia in soccer at the international level, and the persistent erasure of women from that story, as even anti-homophobic campaigns almost exclusively focus on men.
Fatimah Tobing Rony
Associate Professor, University of California--Irvine
Nov 3, 2011
Unruly Native Women
From a portrait by Paul Gauguin of Annah la Javanaise of 1893 to the omnibus films produced by Nia diNata titled Perempuan Punya Cerita (Chants of Lotus) of 2007and Pertaruhan [At Stake] of 2008, this talk will explore how notions of a unified liberal subject are dismantled in re-viewing past and current representations of Indonesian women and sexuality. Drawing from her current book project, Annah la Javanaise, Fatimah Tobing Rony hopes to have a dialogue with other scholars, artists, and media producers about rethinking subjectivity and subject positions in the production and reception of visual media in the globalizing present.
Chants of Lotus [Perempuan Punya Cerita or “The Women Have Stories”], directed by Nia diNata, Lasya Susatyo, Upi, and Fatimah Tobing Rony (from left to right above) is an omnibus narrative film about women and sexuality starring some of the most famous Indonesian actresses in contemporary cinema today. When this film was released it was heavily censored by the Indonesian film censor board. The producer and director Nia Dinata campaigned to defend the artistic integrity of the film, taking a request to the Constitutional Court for the MFI (Masyarakat Filem Indonesia or the Indonesian Film Society) to reform the censor system. We will be screening the first twenty minutes of the film, directed by Fatimah Tobing Rony, “Chants from an Island.”
Mireille Miller-Young
Assistant Professor, Department of Feminist Studies, UCSB
February 17, 2012
Behind the Scenes: Black Women Navigating Pornographic Sexual Labor
Miller-Young will share excerpts from her current book project, "A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women, Sex Work and Pornography, " which examines the racialization of pornography as both a media form as well as a political economy where Black women's bodies are visualized, commodified, and consumed, and in which Black women themselves strategically labor. The study centralizes on the negotiations of Black women sex workers in the adult entertainment industry and thinks carefully about the role of race in media technologies--from photography to film to video to digital media and the Internet--active in shaping American sexual culture.
