Digital Religion: Knowledge, Politics and Practice Series The Center for Religion and Media The Center for Media, Culture and History in co-sponsorship with The Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies & NYU Abu Dhabi present

a screening with filmmaker

HAVANA MARKING SILENCING THE SONG: AN [...]]]> Silencing the Song: An Afghan Fallen Star screening

Digital Religion: Knowledge, Politics and Practice Series
The Center for Religion and Media
The Center for Media, Culture and History
in co-sponsorship with The Hagop Kevorkian
Center for Near Eastern Studies & NYU Abu Dhabi
present

a screening with filmmaker

HAVANA MARKING
SILENCING THE SONG: AN AFGHAN FALLEN STAR
Friday, November 4th, 2011
6:30-8:00PM
NYU Abu Dhabi
19 Washington Square North

Discussion follows with DAVID B. EDWARDS (Williams College, Anthropology) and WAZHMAH OSMAN (NYU, Media, Culture & Communication). Moderator: FAYE GINSBURG (NYU, Anthropology)

The documentary Silencing the Song: An Afghan Fallen Star (2010, 34 minutes) follows Setara Hussainzada after her ill-fated appearance on the popular TV show, “Afghan Star” scandalized the country when her headscarf dropped, leading to death threats from conservative Muslims (featured in Marking’s 2009 documentary Afghan Star).

Generous support is provided by the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs.

This event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited. Please rsvp to: 19wsn.rsvp(at)nyu.edu. For more information visit: www.crmnyu.org. PLEASE NOTE: Those wishing to see the documentary Afghan Star (2009) prior to the event can set up a viewing time at the Center for Media, Culture and History. Please email: cmch.info(at)nyu.edu, or call (212) 998-3759.

On the heels of Elizabeth Freeman’s lecture about erotohistoriography, Carla Freccero, Professor of Literature, Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, explored another historiographic practice predicated on [...]]]> I am, I am following, I am after the animal:
“Derrida’s Queer Cats,” a Lecture by Carla Freccero
New York University, 10 November 2010

On the heels of Elizabeth Freeman’s lecture about erotohistoriography, Carla Freccero, Professor of Literature, Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, explored another historiographic practice predicated on the queering of both time and (human and nonhuman) bodies. In “Derrida’s Queer Cats,” Freccero discussed how queer time, which exceeds or tests the logic of reproductive futurity, also denotes the way affect persists through history. Putting the purr in purr-sistence, Freccero laid stress on the vital importance of thinking both time and affect as a kind of point of friction of human and nonhuman interaction. To develop this argument, she turned Jacques Derrida’s depiction of “animate alterity” in his posthumous L’Animal que donc je suis (The Animal that Therefore I Am). Freccero considered the difficulties of “think[ing] and feel[ing] with non-human animate beings.” The lecture explored how both humans and texts continue to be haunted by these “fantastic, fantasmatic, fabulous,” figures who are “of a fable that speaks to us of ourselves.”

Freccero’s “Queer Cats” (and how can one resist repeating this title?) developed a patient and gorgeously argued case for this fantasmatic fable, building it out of Derrida’s confrontation with his very own, specific cat in L’Animal que donc je suis. As Derrida writes: “I must make it clear from the start, the cat I am talking about is a real cat, truly, believe me, a little cat. It isn’t the figure of a cat” (374-375). Treating this interspecies encounter as just one (very important) example of the “event of the figure,” where the mere presence of a nonhuman animal has very real effects on the subjectivity of the human individual, Freccero went on to develop an interdisciplinary conversation between Derrida, Lewis Carroll, Paul de Man, Donna Haraway, Emmanuel Levinas, and Claude Levi-Strauss, to name a few. Mining the queer possibilities of the cat, Freccero argued, provides alternative modes of understanding ourselves, particularly in terms of the interimplications of sex and species, and points to the usefulness of crafting a queer ethics of relating in general. (Admittedly, while I’ve often contemplated my dog Gnocchi’s queerness, I’ve never acknowledged how Gnocchi’s very existence as my furry companion, in turn, queers me.)

What is particularly queer, or queering, about Derrida’s cat is that it/she is not “an allegory for all the cats on the earth” but is his specific cat—“which is also a female”— who follows him into the bathroom, regards his naked body “to concentrate its vision…in the direction of [his] sex,” and incites an eruption of human masculine shame (374-375, 373).

Meditating on the implications of Derrida’s own slippage from the neuter article to the gendered pronoun, as well as a mistranslation of another neuter possessive pronoun as a gendered possessive pronoun earlier in the text, Freccero argues that the appearance and disappearance of the cat’s gender reveals that “sexual difference and kinship are in trouble when animals enter the scene.” Regarding the politics of friendship, Freccero asks, “what happens to a fraternity of brothers when an animal enters scene?”

For Derrida, this instance of mutual acknowledgement, of “being seen” by “the” animal, spurs a moment of (self and mutual) recognition as well as desire, placing sexual (and species) difference into crisis:

Should I show myself naked when…looking at me, is the living creature they call by the common, general, and singular name the animal? Henceforth I shall reflect (on) the same question by introducing a [full-length] mirror…. The same question then becomes whether I should show myself but in the process see myself naked (that is, reflect my image in a mirror) when, concerning me, looking at me, is this living creature, this cat that can find itself caught in the same mirror… But cannot this cat also be, deep within her [sic] eyes, my primary mirror? (Derrida 50-51)

That the presence of the animal can incite shame and a Lacanian mirror stage, where the self (mis)recognizes his/her self in the mirror, reveals that the mirror stage may function as a psychic formation for nonhuman animals and a reading of sexual difference “that is many.” “The animal in the room or in the mirror,” Freccero proposes, “generates differences from difference.”

Queering happens in a moment of mistranslation that genders the cat—who looks at Derrida, who marks her as female—and enacts not only a mirror stage, Freccero suggests, but a turn to object relations predicated on the assumption that the primary mirror is the mother. Shamefully aware of the subjectivity of the other face (of his female cat), Derrida’s identification with the feminine human and nonhuman other cannot be accounted for by a singular (sexual or species) difference. In her own persuasive textual encounter with Derrida and his cat, Freccero opens a fresh path to queerness by prodding us recognize, and not disavow, the animal. As Derrida writes, and Freccero so beautifully challenged: I am, I am following, I am after the animal…

–Krista Miranda

Krista Miranda is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at New York University and the Book Reviews Editor for Woman and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory. Her prior graduate work includes an MA in Humanities and Social Thought with a concentration in Gender Politics and an MA in Writing and Publishing.

For the full program, visit: http://wp.me/p10PnF-2x

When: Friday, December 17, 2010 at 7:30PM – 9:30PM

Where: Metropolitan Community Church of New York, Sanctuary (2nd floor), 446 West 36th Street, New York, NY 10018 btw 9th & 10th Aves. Map: http://bit.ly/dUenDt

Who: Current and former sex [...]]]> 7th Annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

For the full program, visit: http://wp.me/p10PnF-2x

When: Friday, December 17, 2010 at 7:30PM – 9:30PM

Where: Metropolitan Community Church of New York, Sanctuary (2nd floor), 446 West 36th Street, New York, NY 10018 btw 9th & 10th Aves. Map: http://bit.ly/dUenDt

Who: Current and former sex workers. Intimate allies. Friends. Family. Supporters of all kinds. This event is free and open to the public.

There will also be a speak out: Bring poetry, writings or just speak your truth. Join us in remembering those we’ve lost to violence, oppression and hate, whether perpetrated by clients, partners, police or the state. December 17, 2003 was our first annual day to honor the sex workers who were murdered by serial killer Gary Ridgway. We come together each year to show the world that every sex worker’s life is valuable. Light snacks, beverages, and metrocards will be provided. This event is co-sponsored by: Audre Lorde Project, Counterpublic Collective, FIERCE, MADRE, Peter Cicchino Youth Project, The Queer Commons, PONY (Prostitutes of New York), PROS Network, Red Umbrella Project, SAFER, Sex Work Awareness, Sex Workers Project, SWANK (Sex Workers Action New yorK), SWOP-NYC (Sex Workers Outreach Project), the Space at Tompkins, and Third Wave Foundation.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=110788105658599
For events outside of New York, visit: http://www.swop-usa.org/dec17

Christianity and the Global Politics of Sexuality - A panel discussion with Elizabeth Castelli, Eng-Beng Lim, Ju Hui Judy Han, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, and Jordan Alexander Stein

Thursday, 10/21, 7 pm Diana Center Event Oval Barnard College 3009 Broadway (at 117th Street)

Thursday, October 21 8:00 pm

Muriel Dimen, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis The American Institute for Psychoanalysis The Karen Horney Psychoanalytic Center

329 East 62nd Street

At once profound and full of holes, “Wild” Analysis simultaneously declares a revolution [...]]]> Inside the Revolution: Power, Sex, and Technique in Freud’s “Wild” Analysis
Scientific Meeting

Thursday, October 21
8:00 pm

Muriel Dimen, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis
The American Institute for Psychoanalysis
The Karen Horney Psychoanalytic Center

329 East 62nd Street

At once profound and full of holes, “Wild” Analysis simultaneously declares a revolution and forges an orthodoxy. In 1910, psychoanalysis was like an exuberant plant, leafing idea upon idea, theory upon theory. But it was ahead of itself, too straight for its native immoderation. This décalage was no anomaly. Key to another revolution – and counter-revolution – that, reciprocally, gave rise to it, psychoanalysis was living in interesting times. So I situate Freud’s essay in both its local and its global histories, even while reading it closely for its deployment of power. As I go, I take up Freud’s topics, sexuality and technique, in terms of excess and hybridity, and end with a thought on technique and the primal crime.

For more information: http://internationalpsychoanalysis.net/2010/10/13/inside-the-revolution-with-miriam-dimen-at-aip/

Monday, October 18 4:20 pm Columbia Case Lounge (Amsterdam Avenue and 116th Street, 7th floor) Aeyal Gross Tel Aviv University, Faculty of Law

Commentator: Katherine Franke, Columbia Law [...]]]> The Politics of GLBT Rights in Israel (and beyond): Between Queer Politics and Homonationalism
Presented by the Columbia Law School Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

Monday, October 18
4:20 pm
Columbia Case Lounge
(Amsterdam Avenue and 116th Street, 7th floor)
Aeyal Gross
Tel Aviv University, Faculty of Law

Commentator: Katherine Franke, Columbia Law School

Hard copies of the paper are available outside Room 635 of Jerome Greene Hall, Columbia Law School.

The paper (with more information about the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law) is also available at http://www.law.columbia.edu/center_program/gendersexuality/colloquium

Thursday, October 14, 2010 5 – 6:30 PM 1 Washington Place Jerry H. Labowitz Theatre for the Performing Arts

NYU Gallatin School Ayala Fader Anthropology/Fordham University

For more information: http://crm.as.nyu.edu/page/home

Co-Sponsors: Gallatin School of Individualized Study, Center for Religion and Media

BACKGROUND [...]]]> Positions for doctoral students and post-doctoral scholars are still open for competition in GEXcel themes 7 & 8: “Teaching Normcritical Sex – Getting Rid of Violence. TRANSdisciplinary, TRANSnational and TRANSformative Feminist Dialogues on Embodiment, Emotions and Ethics, with a particular focus on the subtheme “Gendered Violence”. EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: 3 May 2010.

BACKGROUND TO GEXcel

Linköping and Örebro Universities, Sweden, are the base for the “Centre of Gender Excellence – Gendering Excellence (GEXcel): Towards a European Centre of Excellence in Transnational and Transdisciplinary Studies of Changing Gender Relations, Intersectionalities and Embodiment”. With support from the Swedish Research Council, GEXcel is carrying out new research and seeks to become the foundation for a more permanent International Collegium for Advanced Transnational and Transdisciplinary Gender Studies. For more information on GEXcel, please see: http://www.genderexcel.org/

A Visiting Scholars Programme has been organized to attract scholars at different career stages from Sweden and abroad with a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. The visiting scholars will carry out thematically organized, joint gender research, under the direction of one or two of the professors, responsible for the programme, and collaborate with invited senior researchers.

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INFORMATION ON THEMES 7 & 8

In 2010/2011, there will be a joint research theme titled, “Teaching Normcritical Sex – Getting Rid of Violence. TRANSdisciplinary, TRANSnational and TRANSformative Feminist Dialogues on Embodiment, Emotions and Ethics”. The research will be carried out with a focus on two sub-themes:

1) Gendered violence – will be in focus in the FALL/WINTER of 2010/11.

2) Critical, intersectional studies of sexualities – will be in focus in SPRING of 2011.

This joint theme will be directed by Barbro Wijma, Professor of Gender and Medicine, Division of Gender and Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Linköping University, Sweden, and Nina Lykke, Professor of Gender and Culture, Department of Gender Studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Linköping University, Sweden.

Positions for doctoral students and post-doctoral scholars to participate in sub-theme 1 are now open for competition.

Positions for doctoral students and post-doctoral scholars to participate in sub-theme 2 will be announced later this year.

For more information on the themes, please see: http://www.genderexcel.org/node/212

Proposals are invited from doctoral students outside Sweden for one- to four-months fellowships in the Fall/Winter of 2010/11 and with a ‘peak period’ Week 41-42 (October 11-24), where all scholars are expected to be in residence and participate in joint seminars. Up to four fellowships will be available. Fellowships include salary (with a deduction for existing doctoral salary), housing stipend and travel to Sweden.

Proposals are invited from postdoctoral scholars (priority given to applicants from Europe, including Sweden) for one- to six-months fellowships in the Fall/Winter of 2010/11 with a ‘peak period’ Week 41-42 (October 11-24), where all scholars are expected to be in residence and participate in joint seminars. Up to nine fellowships will be available. Fellowships include salary (with a deduction for existing salary), housing stipend and travel to Sweden.

Applicants should explain how their project will make a transnationally informed contribution to the understanding of the overall theme “Teaching Normcritical Sex – Getting Rid of Violence TRANSdisciplinary, TRANSnational and TRANSformative Feminist Dialogues on Embodiment, Emotions and Ethics” with a particular focus on the subtheme ‘Gendered violence’.

*********************

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS

All proposals must include a current CV, an abstract of the proposed project, a narrative description (maximum: five pages) of the project to be undertaken during the fellowship, and a short bibliography. We welcome applications (focusing on one or more of the sub-themes of the chosen theme), to become part of this thriving research environment.

Doctoral candidates must include the name and contact information for their research supervisor. Postdoctoral applicants must also include two samples of their work (published or unpublished) related to the research topic.

It is also possible to make an application to participate in the theme as a self-funded GEXcel Open Position Scholar. Applications for this should include similar materials.

All proposals and supporting materials should be submitted electronically to:

GEXcel Academic Coordinator

Email: application@genderexcel.org

A committee will evaluate all applications and select those who are successful, with the approval of the GEXcel Board.

APPLICATIONS DEADLINE: 3 May

April 11, 2010

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

As many of you are aware, Nevada has been hit especially hard by the economic downturn. Revenue from gaming and tourism – the two biggest sources of state [...]]]> A message from Lynn Comella, an alum of UMass, who is currently in the Women’s Studies department at UNLV:

April 11, 2010

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

As many of you are aware, Nevada has been hit especially hard by the economic downturn. Revenue from gaming and tourism – the two biggest sources of state revenue – is down by double digits; Nevada ranks number one in the country for foreclosures; and unemployment in Clark County, as of February 2010, hovers at 13.9%. The effect of the recession on the Nevada System of Higher Education has been just as dire. Since I arrived on campus in Fall 2007, state funding for UNLV has been cut by over 30%. The latest round of budget cuts – which are certainly not the last – has forced the hand of the administration to initiate a university-wide program review geared toward “vertical cuts,” or the elimination of entire academic units.

UNLV’s Women’s Studies Department is one of eight academic units on the chopping block. Eliminating Women’s Studies would save UNLV less than $300,000. But the hidden costs would be immense and irreversible, especially to UNLV’s stated mission to “nurture equity, diversity, and inclusiveness.”

UNLV has no Ethnic Studies Department, so Women’s Studies does double and, at times, triple duty to fulfill the mandate of equipping students to navigate an increasingly diverse society and global economy. If the Women’s Studies Department is eliminated, non-tenured faculty, including myself and my colleague Dr. Anita Revilla – one of only two Chicana professors in the College of Liberal Arts – will lose our jobs.

I ask that you please take a moment to send an email to UNLV’s President, Neal Smatresk, to voice your support for Women’s Studies at UNLV. The administration needs to know that people all over the country, both within and outside academia, are watching what transpires at UNLV. (I have attached a “fact sheet” detailing what would be lost if UNLV?s Women’s Studies Department is eliminated.) Las Vegas – of all places – needs a heartbeat of feminism; and UNLV students and faculty deserve the benefits that come from a vibrant, intellectually engaged, and diverse Women’s Studies Department.

Thank you for your support – and please feel free to circulate this note.

Sincerely,
Lynn Comella
Assistant Professor
Department of Women’s Studies
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

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Why UNLV Needs Women’s Studies: Diversity and Inclusion

Eliminating Women’s Studies would save UNLV less than $300,000. But the hidden costs would be immense and irreversible, especially to UNLV’s mission to “nurture equity, diversity, and inclusiveness.”

Eliminating Women’s Studies would save UNLV less than $300,000

The current overall cost of the WS department is: $629,857

If WS were eliminated, UNLV would still have to pay salaries totaling: $339,000

By eliminating the department, UNLV would thus save only: $290,857

We Need Women’s Studies to Nurture a Diverse Student Body Equipped for a Global Economy

• A 1998 Ford Foundation Survey found that almost 70% of American voters believe that “preparing people to function in a more diverse work force” and “in a more diverse society” are two of the top four goals of higher education.
• Research shows that students who take diversity courses develop the “more tolerant racial and gender attitudes” key to success in a diverse society and global economy, with students enrolled in Women’s and Ethnic Studies courses showing the greatest gains.
• At UNLV each year, at least 2,262 students fulfill their General Education diversity requirement by taking WS courses, a total of 11,624 students in just the past 5 years.
• Among WS faculty who teach these courses is Dr. Anita Revilla – winner of 4 UNLV teaching awards and one of only 2 Chicana professors in the College of Liberal Arts. If WS is eliminated, Dr. Revilla will lose her job, and UNLV students will lose an excellent teacher.
• Dr. Revilla and her WS colleagues founded and now mentor several organizations that represent and support underrepresented causes and students, including Hispanics (MEChA and UCIR), Asian Pacific Islanders (ROAR), students of color (Allied Students of Color, a group that is now inactive, but that helped create both UNLV’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion and the UNLV Multicultural Center), and female victims of violence (the Vagina Warriors, who stage yearly performances of The Vagina Monologues to raise both awareness and money for community organizations).
• Though WS currently has only 26 majors, 88% of those students are women, 50% students of color, one of the highest proportions of any UNLV program or department.

We Need Women’s Studies to Nurture a Diverse and Representative Faculty

• If WS is eliminated, UNLV will lose Drs. Lynn Comella and Anita Revilla, 2 female faculty members approaching tenure, including 1 of only 2 Chicanas in CoLA on the tenure-track.
• UNLV will lose the only department on campus composed entirely of female faculty, half of whom are women of color.
• In CoLA alone, 14 women faculty resigned between 2003 and 2009. 5 were women of color.
• A 2009 Harvard survey of faculty from underrepresented minority groups across the nation found that “lack of diversity” ranked second only to “compensation” among the factors attracting them to, and encouraging them to stay, at a particular university.