Saturday, December 17 2 to 4 pm

Trinity Lutheran Church of Manhattan 164 West 100th Street near Amsterdam Avenue 1, 2, or 3 train to 96th Street.

Organized by sex worker support and advocacy [...]]]> On December 17, International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers Marks One Year Since Bodies Discovered on Gilgo Beach

Saturday, December 17
2 to 4 pm

Trinity Lutheran Church of Manhattan
164 West 100th Street near Amsterdam Avenue
1, 2, or 3 train to 96th Street.

Organized by sex worker support and advocacy groups the Red Umbrella Project and the Sex Workers Outreach Project New York. Attendees will be people currently or formerly involved in the sex trades and our friends, family, allies, and those concerned for our health and safety.

In December 2010, the bodies of four women, later identified as Amber Lynn Costello, Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, and Maureen Brainard-Barnes were discovered on Gilgo Beach in Long Island, after the family of missing woman Shannan Gilbert insisted on a police investigation of her disappearance. The cases remain unsolved, and since December the remains of another six people have been discovered in the area. The Suffolk County Police Department, which is responsible for the investigation, believes that it is likely that there are multiple local killers who are preying on people who sell sexual services.

On December 17, 2011 people in the sex trade and the people who love and support us will gather at Trinity Lutheran Church of Manhattan from 2 to 4 pm to hold a vigil for the victims of the Long Island killers and the many other people killed every year because they trade sex and are vulnerable to violence. The event will feature community activist speakers, a candle lighting, and a reading of the names of people in the sex trade who have been murdered this year.

The International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers was first organized nearly a decade ago by sex workers in San Francisco to memorialize the people murdered by serial killer Gary Ridgway. Ridgway captured the attitude that cultivates violence towards sex workers: “I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.” At the event, we create a space that challenges this assumption by demonstrating that we have a caring community.

Co-sponsors:

Jack Drescher, M.D.

Cardozo School of Law (55 Fifth Avenue) Institute of French Studies, New York University, at La Maison Française of NYU (16 Washington Mews)

With the co-sponsorship of IRIS (CNRS/EHESS) & Faculty of Law, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre, and the support of UMI Transitions (CNRS/NYU)

Co-organized by Éric [...]]]> Thursday & Friday, December 1 & 2

Cardozo School of Law (55 Fifth Avenue)
Institute of French Studies, New York University, at La Maison Française of NYU (16 Washington Mews)

With the co-sponsorship of IRIS (CNRS/EHESS) & Faculty of Law, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre, and the support of UMI Transitions (CNRS/NYU)

Co-organized by Éric Fassin, Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez, Julie Suk, Frédéric Viguier

From May 14 to August 23, 2011, from Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest to the day the penal charges against him were dropped by the New York City justice system, the sexual assault indictment initiated by Nafissatou Diallo’s accusation provoked extraordinary public attention throughout the world. While the penal case is now over, and regardless of what becomes of the civil one, or the French lawsuits that followed, this will certainly be an affair to remember: it will remain important in the years to come not only because of what happened, but also for what it has revealed about France and the United States, as well as its potential impact on both societies. Not only is the affair a mirror; it may also turn out to be a catalyst. Thus, it would not be a mere scandal, now behind us; the DSK moment could prove momentous.

This two-day academic conference, co-organized by French and American scholars and institutions, aims at interpreting the transatlantic dimensions of this event. On the one hand, the mutual misunderstandings revealed important differences between France and the United States – not only between the legal systems, but also between the media cultures, as well as the political ones. On the other hand, the political dimensions of the story – in terms of gender, class, and race, and even sexuality – did transcend such national differences. Many feminists were quick to point it out: exceptionalism (whether French or American) is irrelevant in matters of power. As a consequence, the necessary cultural approach must eschew culturalism. In particular, attention will be paid not only to the different languages used within each society (in particular in law, media, and politics), but also to the self-examination this confrontation occasioned, and as a consequence the transformations that may result on both sides.

The conference will be organized around three related panels to draw out the legal, political, cultural, and social implications of the DSK case in the United States and France.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

4 to 6:30 pm – Introduction/Welcome and Panel I Sexual Violence in Public Discourse (Moot Court Room, Cardozo School of Law)

Panelists:

Laure Bereni (CNRS)
Kimberlé Crenshaw (Columbia Law School and UCLA School of Law)
Amy Davidson (The New Yorker)
Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez (Université Paris Ouest Nanterre)
Frédérique Matonti (Université Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Moderator: Julie Suk (Cardozo School of Law)

This panel will address the media treatment on both sides of the Atlantic, not only of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case, but more generally of sexual cases and scandals. It will include questions such as what is considered “fit to print,” how, and when, the revelation of names and pictures and the cultures of privacy, the issue of sources and leaks, the coverage of the United States in France (and vice versa), the investigative traditions and the relations between the media and the political class in both countries. To what extent are media practices with regard to rape victims driven by the law of privacy and/or freedom of the press? How is the legal disposition of a sexual assault case influenced by the media’s representations of it? Whose voice gets to be heard in the public when allegations of sexual violence are made against politicians and public officials?

Friday, December 2, 2011

10 am to 12 pm – Panel II Justice for Whom? Rape and Comparative Criminal Procedure (Moot Court Room, Cardozo School of Law)

Panelists:

Taina Bien-Aimé (Lawyer and Consultant to Equality Now)
Pauline Delage (IRIS)
Emmanuel Saint-Martin (France 24)
Julie Suk (Cardozo School of Law)
James Q. Whitman (Yale Law School)

Moderator: Paris Baldacci (Cardozo School of Law)

This panel will be devoted to comparisons of French and U.S. criminal procedure as they were understood throughout the DSK scandal –and how they are actually used by feminist activists in both countries. Discussions will cover such issues as the (infamous) “perp walk,” understandings of “the presumption of innocence,” and the mechanisms by which a rape victim’s credibility is evaluated. How do the victim’s past sexual and immigration history play out in each justice system? Do American “rape shield” laws (and exceptions to them) have French analogues? How did prosecutorial discretion and adversarial fact investigation affect the DSK case? Might a rape victim fare better with judicial investigation of facts and/or limited prosecutorial discretion? How significant was the American “beyond a reasonable doubt” criminal standard in the prosecutors’ decision to dismiss the DSK case? What are the legal problems raised by the prosecution of Dominique Strauss-Kahn initiated by Tristane Banon’s complaint in France? How do the different relationships between civil and criminal complaints in the two legal systems affect the trajectory of a rape case?

1:30 to 4 pm – Panel III The Politics of Seduction: The Role of Sex in Democracy (La Maison Française of NYU)

Panelists:

Delphine Dulong (Université Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Eric Fassin (Ecole normale supérieure and IRIS)
Renée Kaplan (France 24)
Ruth Rubio Marín (European University Institute, Florence)
Joan Scott (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)

Moderator: Frédéric Viguier (NYU)

The DSK scandal is the latest chapter in an ongoing transatlantic debate about the politics of seduction. The French and American political cultures reflect different attitudes about the relevance of a politician’s sexual affairs to their ability to govern. The two legal cultures reflect different understandings of the line between seduction and sexual aggression. The concept of seduction might also inform the different concerns of French and American feminism, which have led to different policies to combat gender inequality. The United States has a robust law of sexual harassment, on the one hand, but France has laws requiring gender parity (known to Americans as “quotas”) in positions of political and social responsibility. Might the DSK moment narrow the gap between French and American understandings of seduction and gender relations in a democracy?

Presented by the Storytelling & Performance Series + NYU Pride Month October 27, Thursday 7 pm Rosenthal Pavilion Kimmel Center 10th Floor 60 Washington Square South

This event is free, open to the public, and wheelchair accessible. See you there!

November 11, Friday 12:30 to 1:45 pm

Kane Race, Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney, and CSGS Visiting Scholar

How can we register the participation of a range of elements, extending beyond the human subject, in the production of HIV events and drug effects? [...]]]> a brown bag lunch talk with Kane Race

November 11, Friday
12:30 to 1:45 pm

Kane Race, Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney, and CSGS Visiting Scholar

How can we register the participation of a range of elements, extending beyond the human subject, in the production of HIV events and drug effects? In the context of proposals around biomedical prevention, there is a growing awareness of the need to find ways of responding to complexity, as everywhere new combinations of treatment, behavior, drugs, norms, meanings and devices are coming into encounter with one another, or are set to come into encounter with one another, with a range of unpredictable effects. In this paper I consider the operation of various framing devices that attribute responsibility and causation with regard to HIV events. I propose that we need to sharpen our analytic focus on what these framing devices do; their performativity – that is, their full range of worldly implications and effects. My primary examples are the criminal law and the randomized control trial. I argue that these institutions operate as framing devices: they attribute responsibility for HIV events, and externalize other elements and effects in the process. Drawing on recent work in science and technology studies as well as queer theory, I set out an analytic frame that may help clarify a new role for HIV social research. Attentiveness to the performative effects of these framing devices is crucial, I suggest, if we want better to attend to the global HIV epidemic.

Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
41-51 East 11th Street, 7th Floor, Room 741
between University Place and Broadway
wheelchair access at 85-87 University Place, between 11th and 12th Streets

This event is free and open to the public.  Bring your lunch, we’ll provide beverages and dessert!

For more information, please call 212-992-9540 or email csgs(at)nyu.edu.

Organized by the NYU Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.

The Roslyn S. Silver ’27 Science lecture with Rebecca Jordan-Young Tuesday, October 11 6:30 PM James Room Barnard Hall, 4th Floor

Barnard College 116th Street and Broadway NYC

Join Rebecca Jordan-Young, Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard, as she explores [...]]]> “Sex” is Not a Mechanism: Making “Sex-Specific Medicine” More Scientific

The Roslyn S. Silver ’27 Science lecture with Rebecca Jordan-Young
Tuesday, October 11
6:30 PM
James Room
Barnard Hall, 4th Floor

Barnard College
116th Street and Broadway
NYC

Join Rebecca Jordan-Young, Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard, as she explores “sex-specific” medicine and reviews questions that could revolutionize the field.

Since the women’s health movement blossomed in the 1970s, there has been an ever-increasing trend toward examining all aspects of human health for evidence of sex differences. But some of the movement’s major achievements—such as a federal mandate to collect and analyze data by sex in all health research—may paradoxically turn out to be obstacles for understanding health differences between and within sex/gender groups. Building on her earlier work in Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences and using examples from both physical and mental health research, this year’s Silver Science Lecture by Rebecca Jordan-Young will review some basic questions about measurement in “sex-specific” medicine that could revolutionize the field and yield research and clinical practice that is actually far more specific and scientific than the current approach. What kind of variable is “sex,” and can it be measured separately from “gender”? When we have information on specific biological mechanisms underlying health differences, what does the variable “sex” add to our analyses?

Rebecca Jordan-Young received her A.B. in political science and women’s studies from Bryn Mawr College and her Doctorate in sociomedical sciences from Columbia University. A specialist in study design and measurement, she conducted epidemiological research on HIV/AIDS, urban health, and drug use before joining the Barnard faculty in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department in 2004. She has been a Health Disparities Research Scholar supported by the NIH.

Sponsored by the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

This event is free and open to the public.

For more information, visit http://barnard.edu/events/sex-not-mechanism-making-sex-specific-medicine-more-scientific .