Ulrika Dahl is a femme-inist activist, writer, and, since 2002, a regular contributor to Scandinavian queer and feminist debate. She is the author, with Del LaGrace Volcano, of Femmes of Power: Exploding Queer Femininities (Serpent's Tail, 2008). In this talk, Dahl will discuss her current work, "A Joint Canon? Transition and Translation in Nordic Women's and Gender Studies 1990-2005," and focus on citation practices, intellectual kinship networks, and canon formation in Nordic gender studies.

Organized by the UCLA Department of Women's Studies

FILMS TO BE SCREENED:

I Love (Hate) You: Gloria (Kate Raney, 2007, 6:10m)

Intermittent Delight (Akosua Adoma Owusu, 2006, 4:20m)

They have a name for girls like me. (Julie Perini, 2009, 6m)

Anything for My Gal (Anthony Hays, 2008, 4:17m)

About Town (Marnie Parrell, 2006, 4m)

Dream of Me (A. Moon, 2007, 9:30m)

XXX (Dinorah de Jesus Rodriguez, 2007, 3m)

Is It True Blondes Have More Fun? (Dinorah de Jesus Rodriguez, 2006, 0:58m)

Pledge (Ann Steuernagel, 2006, 6m)

I Am Man (Elisa Kreisinger, 1m)

The Ship (Brandon Downing, 2009, 4:50m)

Speechless (Scott Stark, 2008, 13m)

The Garden of Life (Nada Gordon, 2009, 10:06m)

Nana120 (Kristy Norindr, 2009, 1:20m)

Her Heart is Washed in Water and Then Weighed (Sasha Waters Freyer, 2006, 12:45m)

Paul Campos is the author of The Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health (Gotham, 2004).

Thinking Gender is a public conference highlighting graduate student research on women, sexuality, and gender across all disciplines and historical periods.

The conference panels and plenary are free and open to the public. Come to the California Room at the UCLA Faculty Center to sign in and get a program, a map of the Faculty Center, and information on places to eat lunch on campus.

The relation of obesity to mortality continues to be a contentious and controversial topic. Estimates using nationally representative data will be presented, along with discussion of some of the criticisms that have been raised regarding this research.

Katherine M. Flegal is the author, with David F. Williamson, Elsie R. Pamuk, and Harry M. Rosenberg, of "The Burden of Obseity: Estimating Deaths Attributable to Obesity in the United States," American Journal of Public Health 94:9 (September 2004): 1486-1489. She is also the author, with Barry I. Graubard, David F. Williamson, and Mitchell H. Gail, of "Excess Deaths Associated With Underweight, Overweight, and Obesity," JAMA 293 (2005):1861-1867.

Axis is one of the most acclaimed and innovative ensembles of performers with and without disabilities
(http://www.axisdance.org/). Addressing women’s issues through dance and a renewed focus on exploring constructions of the gendered body, with and without disabilities, is central to the approach of Axis Dance Company.

Under the Artistic Direction of Judith Smith, the Company’s list of collaborators read like a Who’s Who of contemporary dance-- Bill T. Jones, Stephen Petronio, Joe Goode, Joanna Haigood, Victoria Marks, Ann Carlson, Margaret Jenkins, Sonya Delwaide, Meredith Monk, Fred Frith and Joan Jeanrenaud. AXIS has received seven Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and an additional eight nominations.

Petra Kuppers is a disability culture activist and a community artist. She teaches in performance and disability studies at the University of Michigan. She is the Artistic Director of The Olimpias Performance Research Series, and Olimpias workshops, installations, performances and exhibitions have been created and shown in Europe, the US, New Zealand and Australia. The Olimpias projects are community-based, collaborative, and deal with disability culture issues.

Victoria Marks creates dances for the stage, for film and in community settings. Marks' recent work has considered the politics of citizenship, as well as the representation of both virtuosity and disability. These themes are part of her ongoing commitment to locating dance-making within the sphere of political meaning. Marks is a Professor of choreography in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA where she has been teaching since 1995.

Organized by UCLA Center for Performance Studies and cosponsored by by UCLA Center for the Study of Women and UCLA Disability Studies

How does thinking about disability shape our understandings of sexuality, normativity, and embodiment?

How have forms of sexuality bequeathed to us by modernity changed over time in relation to conceptions of disability from the 19th century to the present?

How have embodied desires been materialized in relation to the production and consumption of space?

Organized by UCLA Mellon Sawyer Seminar and cosponsored by UCLA Center for Performance Studies, UCLA Disability Studies, UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures, and UCLA Center for the Study of Women

Join us for a celebration of CSW's 25th birthday featuring cake, music, and a talk by renowned historian Joan Scott.

Joan Scott is the Harold F. Linder Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study. Written more than twenty years ago, her now classic article, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," continues to inspire innovative research on women and gender. In her latest work she has been concerned with the ways in which difference poses problems for democratic practice. She has taken up this question in her most recent books: Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man; Parité: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism; and The Politics of the Veil. She is currently extending her research on the veil to examine the relationship between secularism and gender equality. She is also preparing a collection of her essays that deals with the uses of psychoanalysis, particularly fantasy, for historical interpretation.

Weight-related messages permeate so many areas of society, from media and fashion to medicine and legislation, from our inner thoughts to our biggest life decisions. If you've ever spent time or money or effort worrying about what you weigh, this talk offers some liberating options on how to think and act.

Marilyn Wann is an actvist and the author of Fat! So?: Because You Don't Have to Apologize for Your Size (Ten Speed Press, 2004)

Photo by L. Garber

The panelists’ goals of “feministing” queer theory revolve around the following questions: How has queer theory of the global West and North become the dominant agent of a critique of heterosexuality and reproductivity, often at the expense of earlier and contemporary feminist critiques? How might the persistent backgrounding of women in queer theory be addressed beyond pluralistic calls for greater inclusion? What potentials and limitations lie in lesbian and straight women’s identification with men who have sex with other men? This event is part of “Homosexualities, from Antiquity to the Present: Worlds, Subjections, Visibilities,” a year-long Mellon-funded Sawyer seminar that concentrates on approaches to the study of same-sex desire from antiquity to the present. The seminar program aims to appeal to the broad range of constituencies at both UCLA and nearby institutions that have an established interest in the roles that the humanities currently play in the study of homosexuality, especially within the flourishing field of LGBT studies.

In order to achieve this goal, the seminar will devote each quarter to a large topic that allows historians, theorists, and cultural analysts to throw light on the methodological challenges that they face in their research. In fall 2009, the program will concentrate on “Worlds.” “Worlds” will enable colleagues to consider not only the disciplinary environments in which they study homosexuality but also the geopolitical contexts that inform their intellectual work. In an era that increasingly addresses the need to study global sexualities, “Worlds” will provide the chance to consider the spatial imaginaries that relate to dissident, insubordinate, and stigmatized forms of desire.

Organized by the UCLA Mellon Sawyer Seminar: "Homosexualities, from Antiquity to Present"

One of this conference's focuses will be on the archive. On Saturday afternoon a range of panelists, convened through UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center, will explore best practices and new research in this area.

Organized by the UCLA Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Program

At this half-century mark of the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), the growth of the robust employment bar has made the litigation of workplace discrimination one of the most active and sophisticated practice areas.  Is the Department of Fair Employment (DFEH) obsolete?  Find out why the DFEH is the canary in a mineshaft for employment law.

Phyllis W. Cheng is Director of the Department of Fair Employment and Housing.  Appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in January 2008, she heads the largest state civil rights agency in the nation.  Immediately prior to her current position, Ms. Cheng was of counsel at the Los Angeles office of Littler Mendelson, the national employment and labor law firm representing management clients. 

Organized by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment and cosponsored by UCLA Center for the Study of Women, UCLA Asian American Studies Center, UCLA Department Asian American Studies and Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy

MODERATOR

Darren Mitchell
Williams Institute Judicial Training Consultant

SPEAKERS
Connie Burk
Executive Director, Northwest Network of LGBT Survivors of Abuse in Seattle

Terra Slavin
Staff Attorney at the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center

Sharon Stapel
Executive Director, New York City Anti-Violence Project

This training program kicks off the Williams Institute’s new initiative to train judges and other professionals on how to improve the legal system’s response to domestic violence in LGBT relationships. The two-hour training, intended for practicing attorneys, law students, judges, and other professionals, will help participants to recognize the unique obstacles that LGBT survivors confront when they turn to the legal system for assistance. National experts on LGBT domestic violence will provide participants with practical information to better understand the experience of LGBT domestic violence survivors, to assess when a person is exercising systematic power and control in a relationship, and to use domestic violence restraining orders and other forms of legal relief to help survivors achieve safety, autonomy, and justice.

Organized by the Williams Institute

Drawing on interviews with Latino immigrant women who are activists in the L.A. immigrant rights movement, we examine the gender dynamics of this movement. Our focus is on an apparent paradox: namely, women are prominent among the ranks of activists in the movement, but issues of gender equality are rarely prominent on the agenda. We seek to explain the reasons why, looking at the gender dynamics of the migration process itself.

Ruth Milkman is Professor of Sociology at UCLA, where she has taught since 1988.  She writes extensively about labor, gender, and immigration issues.  Her most recent book is L.A. Story:  Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement (Russell Sage Foundation, 2006).

Veronica Terriquez received her Ph.D. in sociology from UCLA in 2009.  She also holds a Masters in Education from UC Berkeley, and a B.A. in sociology from Harvard University.  Her research focuses on educational inequality and immigrant integration.  This fall she joined the sociology department at the University of Southern California as an assistant professor.

Maylei Blackwell is an Assistant Professor in the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies and Women’s Studies at UCLA. Her forthcoming book is entitled, Retrofitted Memory: Contested Histories of Gender and Sexuality in the Chicano Movement. She has accompanied indigenous women’s organizers in Mexico, Latin American feminist movements, and sexual rights activists and is working on a project on women’s cross border organizing and community formations that includes recent fieldwork with farm worker women and indigenous migrants that seeks to better understand new forms of grassroots transnationalism. She received her Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The evening will highlight authors from the Amerasia Journal women’s issue entitled “Where Women Tell Stories,” and will encourage attendees to build bridges across communities for women of color and allies.

Keynote speaker Ericka Huggins will discuss her meeting with famed human rights activist Yuri Kochiyama for "Where Women Tell Stories", and their spirited conversation about women in social movements and what is women of color feminism. Huggins was a former leader of the Black Panther Party.  She served as Director of the Oakland Community School from 1973 to 1981 and was the first Black person and the first woman appointed to the Alameda County Board of Education. She is currently a professor in the Women's Studies Program at California State University, East Bay. Yuri Kochiyama is a well-known and highly esteemed Asian American human rights activist and supporter of Malcolm X.

Other speakers will include Mary Kao and Stephanie Santos, guest editors of Amerasia Journal's special issue "Where Women Tell Stories", and Mo Nishida, veteran community organizer.

Organized by UCLA Asian American Studies Center and cosponsored by USAC/AAC Academic Success Referendum Fund, Asian Pacific Coalition, American Indian Studies Center, Asian American Studies Center, Asian American Studies Graduate Students Assn., Asian American & Pacific Island Studies Undergraduate Assn., Bunche Center for African American Studies, Center for the Study of Women, Critical Asian & Pacific Islander Students for Action, Department of History, Powell College Library.

This event celebrates the launch of the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archive at UCLA.

Lillian Faderman is author of Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America, Scotch Verdict: Miss Pirie and Miss Woods v. Dame Cumming Gordon, and Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present.

Organized by UCLA Library and the June L. Mazer Archive and cohosted by UCLA Center for the Study of Women and UCLA Center for Community Partnerships