Bolder Voices Issue 12

Alumnae/i Updates

Jamie Scot ’99 is the project manager at ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at USC, the largest LGBT archive in the world. She details a new project underway at the archives:

As part of the full implementation of the California FAIR Education Act, ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at USC, in partnership with the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center’s Project SPIN, has begun a groundbreaking new project that uses the archives’ rare primary source materials, one of a kind artifacts, and never before seen images from LGBT history to create the first of its kind, fully integrated LGBT high school history curriculum for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

While the passing of the FAIR Act was a remarkable step forward, the bill passed with no specific mandates or time frames to create updated curriculum and no funding to provide trainings for teachers on how to implement the new LGBT inclusive curriculum. Due to the ongoing institutionalized homophobia in the public school system and the lack of accountability at the state level, most districts across the state are simply ignoring the FAIR Act altogether. With no mandate coming from the top, local districts simply choose to opt out of providing any supplemental materials, sensitivity trainings or additional resources, leaving teachers to fend for themselves.

There are thousands of California teachers who understand how crucial this curriculum is for their LGBT students and they are motivated and excited to implement it in their classrooms. But with no district support, no adequate training, and no materials, these teachers cannot do anything but wait for resources to appear. Meanwhile, their students continue to be bullied, harassed, and beat up. They continue to drop out of school. They continue to be taught that their history doesn’t matter, and that LGBT people are not important historically. This project makes it possible for LGBT youth to begin learning immediately that their history DOES matter, that it is significant, and that they are part of an important and vital community of true civil rights heroes whose legacy deserves a place in the classroom.

You can learn more about the ONE Archives at http://one.usc.edu/

Janell Bauer, Grad Cert ’09, married Heath Dewey in Napa, California this past September. The happy couple are expecting a baby due March 30, 2014!!

Brittany Burton ’11 is currently working as the executive assistant for Boulder Valley Women’s Health Center. Women’s Health is celebrating their 40th Anniversary and was the first abortion clinic in Colorado in 1973. Brittany notes, "I’m truly proud to be a CU WGST alum. My studies in the program allowed me to work for such a great organization that trusts women to make decisions regarding their own bodies and ensures access to sexual and reproductive health services for all unserved and underserved individuals in our communities. I miss the cottage and the great community and faculty of the Women and Gender Studies Program!"

Chelsea Haramia, Grad Cert ’09, has co-authored a paper with Eva Dadlez titled "Fictional Objects, Future Objectives: Why Existence Matters Less Than You Think" which has been accepted for publication in Philosophy and Literature. Her open peer commentary "PGD and Parental Obligations: What Parents Owe to Communities that Does Not Yet Exist" was also published in October in the American Journal of Bioethics.

Mariela Ruiz ’13 is the new bilingual case manager for Boulder County’s Family Self-Sufficiency Program under the Housing and Human Services Department. Mariela notes "I am happy to be able to work with families on a long term basis, as under FSS people have 5 years to reach their goals within work or education. On average I will have a case load of about 30 families, helping them reach their goals and helping them along the way. This is a great new adventure that I have been blessed to experience and I look forward to what life has for me next. My son turned one in November and is doing great and keeps us on our toes! He began walking at 10 months and just wants to explore the world."

Renee Roberts ’13 works as the youth violence prevention educator at Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence (SPAN). Coordinating the "Peers Building Justice" program, she presents a 6-8 session curriculum on healthy relationships, sexual assault, consent, systems of power and control and critical media analysis to high school students in the Boulder Valley school district. She also coordinates a youth-led after school program that focuses on using art and community organizing to create social change.

Faculty News

Lorraine Bayard de Volo was an invited speaker at the "It’s Not Rocket Science: Diversifying technology, design, and sustainable development" conference in Ottawa, Ontario in November, presenting a talk titled "Examining drone technology with a gender lens: how gender affects drone warfare, and vice versa." Her article “‘I Wish All the Ladies Were Holes in the Road’: The U.S. Air Force Academy and the Gendered Continuum of Violence,” (co-authored with Lynn Hall) is forthcoming in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.

Robert Buffington published “Law and Society in Latin America since 1800,” in Ben Vinson, ed., Oxford Bibliographies in Latin American Studies. (On-Line Publication New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). His edited book A Global History of Sexuality (edited with Eithne Luibhéid and Donna Guy) (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014) is now available for download on Amazon. It will be in bookstores in March. In addition to co-editing the book, he wrote the introduction, co-wrote a chapter on sex trafficking with Donna Guy, and a chapter on globalization and sexual rights with Richard Parker and Jonathan Garcia.

Alison Jaggar has been appointed to a part-time position as a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Birmingham where she will supervise postgraduate research, present her own work in seminars, and be the focus of colloquia and workshops. Her appointment begins in 2014, following the completion of her term at the University of Oslo. Dr. Jaggar published a pair of articles in Metaphilosophy, co-authored with former student Theresa W. Tobin: "Situating Moral Justification: Rethinking the Mission of Moral Epistemology" Vol. 44, No. 4, July 2013, and "Naturalizing Moral Justification: Rethinking the Method of Moral Epistemology" Vol 44, No. 4, July 2013. Her article "We Fight for Roses Too: Time Use and Global Gender Justice" was published in The Journal of Global Ethics Vol. 9 No. 2, 2013. In October, Dr. Jaggar gave the keynote lecture at the Central States Philosophical Association 2013 Conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Deepti Misri spent the better part of this year completing her book manuscript, Beyond Partition: Gender, Violence and Representation in Postcolonial India, soon forthcoming with University of Illinois Press’ series "Dissident Feminisms". Between rounds of revisions, she also appeared at two student-organized panels on popular culture last fall: one on the debates engendered by Robin Thicke’s video "Blurred Lines", and the other on the hit Netflix TV show "Orange is the New Black". She also co-organized and participated in the first Kashmir Studies preconference at the Annual South Asia Conference held at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is currently working on a book chapter on Bollywood’s representation of 9/11 for an edited volume on Asian American Popular Culture (forthcoming from NYU Press), and is dreaming up a new advanced course on gender and visual culture for next fall.

Celeste Montoya was recently awarded the Provost’s Faculty Achievement Award for her book From Global to Grassroots, and also received a "Women Who Make a Difference Award" from the Women’s Resource Center. Her article "The Othering of Domestic Violence: The EU and Cultural Framings of Violence against Women" coauthored with Lise Rolandsen Agustinl, was published at Social Politics. She attended and participated in a roundtable at the American Political Science Association Conference in Chicago, and was the invited speaker for the National Park Service’s "Combating Gender Bias in the Workplace" program. She was also an invited speaker for the Women’s Resource Center’s Sugar Free Feminism Series "Shattering the Glass Ceiling." Dr. Montoya recently became a new Associate Editor for Politics and Gender: the journal of the Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association. 

Katie Oliviero was awarded an ASSETT Teaching Award for "Outstanding Teacher of Technology" and also received the "Women Who Make A Difference" award from the Women’s Resource Center. Her article, "The Immigration State of Emergency: Gendering and Racializing National Vulnerability in 21st Century Citizenship Transmission and Deportation Regimes" was published in the journal Feminist Formations (Vol. 25, Issue 2, Summer 2013). "On a personal note," remarks Katie, "I’ve made a commitment to get myself a very longed-for four-footed canine companion by December of 2015". 

Diane Debella, WGST affiliate faculty member and instructor for the Program for Writing and Rhetori, has recently released her new book I Am Subject: Sharing Our Truths to Reclaim Our Selves (now available in paperback from Amazon and on Kindle). Diane writes, "As a teacher of writing and women’s studies, I have spent many years studying the lives and works of women writers. I Am Subject: Sharing our Truths to Reclaim Our Selves is a memoir that combines my own history with the words and experiences of other writers to examine the issues that perplex contemporary women. This work conveys women’s experiences by weaving together memoir, literary texts and criticism, and student reflection. Simply knowing that others have struggled can bring women out of isolated suffering to a deeper sense of awareness and understanding. Our early interpersonal relationships, combined with the societal and cultural messages we receive, influence all of our subsequent actions, including our sexual experiences, our intimate relationships, our decision to have children or not have children, our career choices, and our tendency to deal with life’s challenges either constructively or destructively. I Am Subject provides a safe space for women to increase their awareness regarding where they have come from and where they are going as they move forward into the next stages of their lives. It is my hope that those who read these words will sit with them, give thought to how they might apply to their own lives and the lives of women they know, and begin their own conversations regarding how to best turn increased awareness into action."

Elisabeth Sheffield, WGST affiliate and associate professor in the creative writing program, has been awarded the Queen’s University Belfast Anglophone Irish Writing Scholar Award from the Fulbright Commission. Her teaching and writing project while working in the School of English in 2014 is "The Representation of Violence or the Violence of Representation in Contemporary Irish and American Fiction." With this work she hopes "to generate a conversation about contemporary fictions and authorial ‘identities’ on both sides of the Atlantic."
She is author of two novels, Gone (2003), and Fort Da: A Report (2009), as well as a critical monograph on James Joyce (1998), and numerous works of short fiction. Dr. Sheffield is one of seven CU-Boulder faculty and staff to receive Fulbright grants this academic year.

Congratulations to our WGST affiliate and associate faculty who were approved for tenure:
    Jen Bair, Sociology, and
    Michaele Ferguson, Political Science;

and those promoted to full professor:
    Bud Coleman, Theatre and Dance,
     Janice Peck, Journalism and Mass Communication,
     Melanie Yazzie, Art and Art History

Associate Faculty Profile: Jen Bair

Jennifer Bair is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology, and an associate faculty member for the Women and Gender Studies Program, where she has been an active participant in faculty research circles, program events, and pedagogical training sessions. Her research interests include the relationship between gender and the globalization of production, with regional focus on Latin America and the Caribbean. Dr. Bair has previously served as the director of undergraduate studies for the Program in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Yale University, where she was an assistant professor of sociology. She completed a graduate certificate in women’s studies at Duke University, as well as a minor in women’s studies while an undergraduate at John Hopkins University.

Dr. Bair’s most recent publications include "Toward Joint Liability in Global Supply Chains: Addressing the Root Causes of Labor Violations in International Subcontracting Networks", Journal of Comparative Labor Law and Policy, Vol.35 Issue 1 (Fall 2013) co-authored with Mark Anner and Jeremy Blasi, as well as the co-edited volume Workers Rights and Labor Compliance in Global Supply Chains: Is a Social Label the Answer? which was published in August in the Routledge Studies in Business Ethics series. She was awarded an honorable mention for the “Best Faculty Article Award” by the American Sociological Association’s Sociology of Development Section for her article "The Legacies of Partial Possession: From Agrarian Struggle to Neoliberal Restructuring in Mexico and Columbia", co-authored with Phil Hough and appearing in the December 2012 issue of the International Journal of Comparative Sociology.

Last summer Dr. Bair participated in an online debate regarding the April 2013 factory collapse in Bangladesh that killed over 1,100 workers. The panel on factory safety and workers’ rights in the Bangladesh apparel industry is currently featured at Work in Progress, the blog of the American Sociological Association’s Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section, and includes Dr. Bair’s examination of the differences between the Bangladeshi Accord and the Wal-Mart/Gap agreement: http://workinprogress.oowsection.org/2013/07/25/panel-factory-safety-and-workers-rights-in-the-bangladesh-apparel-industry-2/. Dr. Bair will also speak about the outsourcing and offshoring of consumer goods as part of the next Social Sciences Today Forum, discussing the resultant political, legal, and ethical implications and the response by companies, governments and activists.

New WGST Advisor: Deanna Fierman

The newest member of our WGST family, Deanna Fierman, has recently joined us as our undergraduate academic advisor. She received her bachelor’s degree from Carleton College with majors in cognitive science and psychology and a minor in gender studies. Deanna completed her master’s in cognitive psychology from CU-Boulder, and is currently working on a second master’s in counseling psychology from CU-Denver. Deanna has served as academic advisor for a variety of departments and programs since 2007 and is currently also an advisor for the Program in Jewish Studies and the Department of Linguistics, as well as working as a therapist on the CU-Denver campus. She can be reached at fierman@colorado.edu.