What's Happening

"Who's Afraid of Polygamy?"
Talk by Philosopher Cheshire Calhoun
March 8, 4:15 pm, Watson Forum 

Jamillah Karim to speak on
Black Muslim Feminism 
March 7, 2012   
Watson Forum  4 pm

Nobel Prize Laureate and Women's Peace Activist Leymah Gbowee
Ubben Lecture  2/15  

film: Pray the Devil Back to Hell 
sponsored by Feminista 
2/9, 6 pm, Watson Forum. 

Message from the director. 

Our spring semester lunch series has fallen into place and I herewith invite you to mark the following dates for what promises to be varied and invigorating conversations.  Please RSVP to Misti Scott (mscott@depauw.edu) to save your spot and your lunch!

Wednesday, February 22 in Emison 211 (11:30-12:30 p.m.) - Christina Holmes, Assistant Professor of Women's Studies, will discuss her publication-in-progress, "Building (Green?) Community: Ecological Consciousness at a Women'sCommunity Center at the U.S.-Mexico Border." This is Christina's first year at DePauw and her course on "Feminist Approaches to the Environment" promises great things!

Friday, March 9, location TBA (11:30-12:30 p.m.) - Cheshire Calhoun, guest of professor Claudia Mills. Some of you may already be in the Cheshire Calhoun reading group which is engaging her research in the areas of normative ethics, moral psychology, feminist philosophy, and lesbian and gay studies.; we will all want to attend her talk on Thursday, March 8 at 4:15 on "Who's Afraid of Polygamy?" in Watson Forum. Professor Calhoun has graciously extended her stay at DePauw so that we can have this lunch with her on Friday.

Thursday, April 12, location TBA (11:30-12:30 p.m.) - lunch discussion of The Heidi Chronicles by Wendy Wasserstein with Andrew Hayes (director) in anticipation of the opening of the play at DePauw that evening.  Wasserstein's play indeed chronicles the life of Heidi Holland from the 1960s to the 1980s, transformative years in the triumphs and tribulations of feminism.  There are fantastic characters, much wit, and (yes!) a good dose of art history.

In May we will hold a celebration in honor of our senior majors and minors at theWomen's Center - looking forward to that!\

many thanks and a good semester to all!

Anne Harris

Saving Face: Portraits and Poetry
by Andrea E. Hutchinson and J.C. Pankratz
DePauw Women's Center 

Opening Reception December 8th
Doors open at 6:30 with artist talks at 7:00

This series of photographic and poetic portraits of women re-imagines and reclaims the idiom of "saving face," not as a method of preserving social dignity, but as a rebellion against our conventional concepts of female worth and value. 

Activist Suzanne Koepplinger speaks on 
Sexual Trafficking of American Indian Women & Girls

November 29, 7:30, Watson Forum.
The Executive Director of the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, Koepplinger will be on campus to speak to classes and to deliver a convocation based on her research entitled, "Shattered Hearts: The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of American Indian Women and Girls in Minnesota".  She is also available for informal conversations in the DePauw University Women's Center and Compton Center for Peace & Justice.  A downloadable summary of her report (New language, old problem: Sex trafficking of American Indian women and children by Alexandra Pierce and Suzanne Koepplinger; October 2011) is available here: http://www.miwrc.org/news-events-new-applied-research-paper . Contact person: Jeannette Johnson-Licon, jjlicon@depauw.edu

Women in Rural Bangladesh

November 9. Tiffany Hodge, DPU '02, 2010-11 Newcombe Fellow and current teaching faculty in the Department of Religious Studies will speak on her past, present and future research and work in Bangladesh.  Tiffany first went to Bangladesh on a Fulbright Fellowship in 2008-09 for her dissertation, from Emory University, entitled "Piety in Practice: Seeking Out Religious Authority in Rural Bangladesh."  For more information on Tiffany's research, please see: news story and news story.

Student Reports from the International Field

October 12. Women's Studies Lunch: Betty Cao (DPU '12), Michelina Ferrara (DPU '12) and Janelle Thixton (DPU '13), three Women's Studies majors who have taken their experiences and questions abroad, will share their observations and further questions about Hong Kong (Betty), Morocco (Michelina), and Oman (Janelle).

Black Beauty in Activist Art                          

                                            9/26-27 Scholar/Artist in Residence Deb Willis, Chair of the Department ofPhotography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, 2005 Guggenheim Fellow and 2000 MacArthur Fellow for works such as The Black Female Body in Photography and A Small Nation of People: W.E.B. Dubois and African-American Portraits of Progress. Dr. Willis will give an all campus lecture titled, Black Beauty in Activist Art: 1900 to Today on Monday Sept. 26^th at 4:00 p.m. in Peeler, and will present a Women's Studies Lunch on 9/27. Please see http://admin.tisch.nyu.edu/object/WillisD.html and http://debwillisphoto.com/home.html for more information. Co-sponsored with Art and Art History Department. Contact: Cindy O'Dell. 

Welcome and Welcome Back Party

9/1/11 . Help us celebrate the arrival of Assistant Professor Christy Holmes, our first ever tenure-track appointment fully in WS, the presence of Sarah Ryan as new Director of the Women's Center, and many other good things to come.