Events Archive 2004-2005
September 2004
Welcoming New Women Faculty and Administrators
September 13
Our fourth annual reception welcomed new women faculty and senior administrators and celebrated the successes of women who have recently received tenure and women who have joined Yale’s senior administration in the past year. Jon Butler, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, and Peter Salovey, Dean of Yale College, gave opening remarks. An overview of the plans and projects of the Women Faculty Forum was presented by members of the Council and its Steering Committee.
Lecture by Nilufer Gole
September 22
Cosponsored by the Ethics, Politics & Economics Program
Nilufer Gole is a professor of sociology at Bosphorous University in Istanbul. She is a leading authority on the political movement of today's educated, urbanized, religious Muslim women. Her book, The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling, examines the veiling of young university women, and the cultural cleavages between the Islamic and Western worlds.
October 2004
“Women Mentoring Women” Informational Meeting
October 7
Cosponsored by Graduate Career Services and the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
The WMW Initiative is designed to promote and facilitate the development of mentoring relationships between women graduate students, post-docs, faculty and administrators. Potential mentors and mentees learned how to sign up for the program, how to use the WMW mentor database, and find out about other mentoring resources at this informational meeting.
To learn more about this initiative, please visit www.yale.edu/graduateschool/careers/mentoring.html.
Women’s Leadership and Scholarship Around the Globe
October 12
Cosponsored by the World Fellows Program and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies
This reception recognized international women leaders and scholars visiting Yale through several different campus programs, including the World Fellows and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies. The event enabled honorees and attendees to share and discuss research and innovations to further gender equality around the world.
Gender: A Useful Category of Analysis 1988/2004
October 20
With a title drawn from Joan Scott’s 1988 essay, “Gender as a Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” this session was devoted to sharing our ideas about how gender does or does not remain a vibrant category of analysis in the various fields in which we work. To begin the discussion, several WFF Council members offered commentary:
- Seyla Benhabib, Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science & Philosophy
- Deborah Davis, Professor of Sociology
- Lois Joy, Research Associate for the Yale Women Faculty Forum
- Carolyn Mazure, Director of Womens Health Research at Yale
- Judith Resnik, Arthur Liman Professor of Law
- Reva Siegel, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law.
Attendees were asked to read the following colloquium materials in advance of the session. Please click on a reading to download it in PDF format:
" Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis." Joan W. Scott. The American Historical Review, Vol. 91, No. 5 (Dec., 1986), 1053-1075.
” Preface (1999)." Judith Butler. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge Press, 1999. Pages vii - xxvi.
November 2004
A Roundtable Discussion with Francoise Gaspard
November 8
Cosponsored by Yale Law School, the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program & Fund, the American Constitutional Society, and the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights
Françoise Gaspard is a professor of sociology at the Ecole des hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France and the French member of the United Nations’ CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women). Gaspard also gave the Naomi Schor Memorial Lecture on “Universalism and Diversity - French Feminism and the Debate over the Veil.”
View the poster for the event.
Attendees are asked to read the following articles in advance of the session. Please click on a reading to download it in PDF format:
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, G.A. res. 34/180, 34 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 46) at 193, U.N. Doc. A/34/46, entered into force Sept. 3, 1981.
Gaspard, Francoise. “ The French Parity Movement.” Has Liberalism Failed Women? Assuring Equal Representation in Europe and the United States. Jyette Klaus and Charles S. Maier, eds. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Naomi Schor Memorial Lecture – Francoise Gaspard
November 9
Françoise Gaspard spoke on the subject “Universalism and Diversity--French Feminism and the Debate over the Veil.” Gaspard is a professor of sociology at the Ecole des hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France and the French member of the United Nations’ CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women).
Understanding Diversity & Gender in Universities: Local & Global Views Seminar
Gendering Globalization Studies, Globalizing Gender Studies
November 17
At this first session of the series, we welcomed more than sixty members of the Yale community for a discussion with Rabab Abdulhadi, Director of the Center for Arab-American Studies at the University of Michigan at Dearborn; Jennifer Bair, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yale University; Hoda Elsadda, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cairo University; Shelley Feldman, Professor of Rural Sociology at Cornell University; and Laura Wexler, Professor and Chair of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Yale University. The discussion centered around the differing definitions and content of gender studies programs around the globe, as well as the educational systems and sociopolitical settings in which those programs function. In the United States, many such programs are working to become more global in scope, by changing the content of what is taught and by increasing their interactions with comparable programs around the world. Panelists considered the impact on scholarship resulting from the globalization of gender studies, and consider how gender studies programs vary in understanding their relationships to other issues, such as civil society, family structures, religious organizations, and national feminist movements. Further, as many fields are becoming “globalized,” speakers also considered what it means to (en)gender the study of globalization. What are the ways in which gender is and is not incorporated as a vector of analysis into scholarly work across the academy, here and abroad? For example, where does gender factor into the study of economics, culture, health, and other fields that are central to the “globalization” discourse?
February 2005
Understanding Diversity & Gender in Universities: Local & Global Views Seminar
Affirmative Action in the Age of Globalization
February 2
Cosponsored by the Graduate School Office of Diversity & Equal Opportunity, the Trumbull Lectureship Fund and the Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, and the Yale Coalition for Diversity
This session examined definitions of diversity and affirmative action within and beyond the United States. What does “diversity” mean in national, international and academic settings, and how do these definitions impact the models of “affirmative action” that work best in a given national or social context? How does the interplay of governmental, societal, and institutional ideas about diversity prove uniquely challenging for undergraduate, graduate, and professional school admissions? How does it impact junior faculty placement and promotion? As student bodies become increasingly international, how does that change our ideas of affirmative action, of diversity? Panelists included Carmen Twillie Ambar, Dean ofDouglass College, the Women's College at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; Richard Shaw, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions, Yale University; J. David Slocum, Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science, New York University; Orlando Taylor, Dean of the Graduate School, Howard University; and was moderated by Liza Cariaga-Lo, (Moderator) Assistant Dean and Director of the Office for Diversity & Equal Opportunity in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at Yale University.
March 2005
Understanding Diversity & Gender in Universities: Local & Global Views Seminar
Getting Through the Pipeline: Best Practices for a Diverse Academy
March 30
Cosponsored by the Graduate School Office of Diversity & Equal Opportunity, the Trumbull Lectureship Fund and the Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, and the Yale Coalition for Diversity
In this session, speakers offered a variety of perspectives on the ways that non-majority students move from high school through college admissions, matriculation at graduate and professional schools, junior faculty placement, the tenure process, and into leadership positions in colleges and universities. What are the current rates of advancement for women and under-represented minorities in American academe, and internationally? Looking to our national and international counterparts, we asked what are the “best practices” for systemic changes in climate and cognition necessary to achieve diversity through the ranks? Are there larger social and economic factors that make women and minorities less likely to reach the highest ranks in educational institutions, and what can be done to affect change in those areas? Particular consideration was given to these issues with relation to junior faculty recruitment and retention.
Panelists included:
- Deborah Davis, Professor of Sociology at Yale University
- Glenda Gilmore, Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History at Yale University
- Woody Lee, Assistant Dean and Director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs at Yale Medical School
- Curtis Patton, Professor and Head of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Director of International Medical Studies at Yale University.
Dr. Sylvia Rimm: “Rescuing the Emotional Lives of Our Overweight Children”
March 21
Cosponsored by the McDougal Graduate Student Center, Office for Women in Medicine, and the Yale WorkLife Program
Dr. Sylvia Rimm is a Psychologist, Author, Speaker, Columnist, and NBC Today Show Contributing Correspondent.In this presentation, she sensitized the audience to the emotional toll in the epidemic of overweight children. Dr. Rimm’s book, Rescuing the Emotional Lives of Overweight Children, is the first book that takes an
in-depth look at the lives of these children. She explained how overweight children struggle in school, have lowered expectations for their future, have troubling relationships with peers and adults, exhibit more high-risk behavior, and are even more misunderstood by their own families. Drawing on a national survey and focus groups with middle school children, personal interviews, and case studies, Dr. Rimm outlined the ways that parents and professionals can rescue overweight children’s emotional lives and demolish the wall that often isolates them from their peers.
April 2005
Understanding Diversity & Gender in Universities: Local & Global Views Seminar Theories, Politics, Strategies: Emergent Gender Scholarship in the Global Academy
April 20
Cosponsored by the Graduate School Office of Diversity & Equal Opportunity, the Trumbull Lectureship Fund and the Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, and the Yale Coalition for Diversity
Previous sessions this year examined some of the pressures exerted and inspirations released by globalization on the structures and content of gender studies programs in the United States and elsewhere. This final session considered the effects (or sometimes the lack of them) of gender studies scholarship on the forces of globalization itself. Panelists considered the themes and locations of the new gender scholarship and also interrogated the way that such scholarship portrays and interacts with transnational processes.
Panelists included
- Inderpal Grewal, Director and Professor of Women's Studies at UC Irvine
- Cynthia Enloe, Research Professor, International Development (IDCE) and Women's Studies at Clark University
- Hala Nassar, Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at Yale University
- Barrie Thorne, Chair of Women's Studies and Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley
- Laura Wexler (Moderator), Professor and Chair of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Yale University.