University of Michigan
Institute for Research on Women and Gender
http://www.umich.edu/~irwg/

Contact Information:

1136 Lane Hall
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1290
Phone: 734-764-9537
Fax: 734-764-9533
E-mail: irwg@umich.edu




CENTER DESCRIPTION

The Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) at the University of Michigan was established to promote and support gender-related research endeavors by faculty at the university. Specifically, IRWG aims to facilitate and monitor ongoing interdisciplinary research efforts, to offer support and coordination for these projects, and to heighten the presence and impact of the University of Michigan in the field of gender scholarship. The institute also supports study groups centered on topics of interest to a self-defined community of scholars.

AREA(S) OF EXPERTISE

Feminist thought and scholarship; health and health care; institutional transformation; middle school girls and math; queer studies/lgbt studies; science, math, engineering, & technology; sexual harassment; violence against women.

Redefining Censorship. This IRWG initiative studies the gender-based restraints on expression and communication, distinguishing between state-based censorship and other barriers that may exclude full expression by women.

Building Women's Studies in China and America. This project is one of scholarly exchange and collaboration between the United States and China. Joining together scholars from the UM, the Chinee University of Hong Kong, and the Chinese Women College, this project takes as its focus graduate education in China in women's and gender studies. UM faculty in the Women's Studies Program and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender will cooperate in training graduate students to engage in graduate teaching. Simultaneously, they will engage UM graduate students in an intellectual exchange experience.

Global Feminisms: Comparative Case Studies of Women's Activism and Scholarship. This project documents recent histories of feminist scholarship and activism through comparative case studies. Thie project builds on both the interdisciplinary and international collaborations of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and Women's Studies to connect UM students and scholars with students and scholars internationally. We work with colleagues in five national contexts (India, Poland, China, Ghana, and the U.S.) to develop these materials collaboratively and to make the resources accessible through both actual and virtual archives to researchers and scholars internationally.


• Health and Health Care



Michigan Initiative for Women's Health. IRWG has put together a campus-wide interdisciplinary group to promote teaching and research in women's health.

Women's Reproductive Health Research Career Development Center. The center's goal is to develop a cadre of scholars whose research across a broad scientific spectrum will benefit the health of women and contribute to the scientific productivity of academic departments of obstetrics and gynecology.


• Mental Health
  
  
The Gender and Mental Health Training Program. An effort to train scholars conducting interdisciplinary research on gender and mental health, IRWG seeks to foster original research. It offers both pre- and postdoctoral programs.


• Science and Technology
  
  
Middle School Girls and Math. The Ethnicity, Class, and Gender programs developed a new intervention to encourage middle school girls' interest in math by offering them skills and opportunities to analyze social service data about gender and adolescence.

SmartGirl.org. This website is designed to provide an interactive medium for adolescent girls to experience technology, offering activities such as discussion groups, reading and writing reveiws about topics of interest, and registering their opinions in response to social issues of interest to girls. In The Speak Out survey section girls complete anonymous surveys on-line. They are then able to log on to the website and undertake the same data analysis and interpretation that girls in the UM-GIRL program have been able to do.

NSF ADVANCE is a five-year, grant funded project promoting institutional transformation in science and engineering fields. The goals of this program are to improve recruitment and retention of women faculty in science and engineering on the UM campus and to improve the institutional climate for them.


• Violence Against Women
  
  
Interdisciplinary Research Program on Violence Across the Lifespan. This initiative seeks to build more collaboration between the academic and practice in the specific area of family violence.

Interdisciplinary training Program on Violence and Mental Health. This 5 year training program builds upon the accomplishments of the Interdisciplinary Research Program on Violence Across the Lifespan, which is recognized nationally for its unique emphases on community-based research, testing the effectiveness of prevention and intervention programs, and cross-cultural and cross-national research. Through mentoring and coursework, the predoctoral trainees in the proposed training program will further develop their skills in these areas.



• Women and Prisons
  
  
Women and Prisons. Evaluation and basic research projects at the institute explore policies and practices that improve prisons as environments for women.

• Adolescents and Girls



Children's Time with Fathers in Intact Families, Pamela Davis-Kearn.

Gender, Puberty, and Objectification, Karin Martin.


• Arts



Tharp, Feminism, and Postmodern Dance, Sally Banes.

Art/Girl: Graffiti, Femininity, and the Career of Lady Pink, Kristina Milnor.

No Place for a Woman? Critical Narratives and Erotic Graffiti from Pompeii, Kristina Milnor.

Family Stories/Family Pictures: Mothers With Cameras, Joanne Leonard.

Representation of Women in Art History: An Overview, Patricia Simons.


• Censorship



Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in Law, Abigail Carter.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in Sociology, Susannah Dolance.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in Literature, Leslie Dorfman Davis.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in Feminist Theory and Philosophy, Troy Gordon.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in Education, Edwina Hansbrough.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in the Mass Media, Edwina Hansbrough.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in Psychology, Zaje Harrell.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in Visual and Performing Arts, Libby Otto.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in Economics, Lucie Schmidt.

Studies in Gender Based Censorship: An Annotated Bibliography in American History, Chris Talbot.


• Feminist Thought and Scholarship



Objectification Theory: Emotional Consequences of Sexual, Barbara Fredrickson.

Feminist Foundations: Practicing Feminism in the Community. A transcript of a panel at the conference, Feminists at Work: Multicultural, Feminist Influences on Practice, sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Program in Feminist Practice, The University of Michigan, October 16-17, 1998.

Giving It Up: Disrupting White 'Innocence,' Re-Educating White Feminism, Gail Griffin.


• International Issues -- Religion
  
  
The Home and Garden are a Small Paradise for Women: Men and Women Gendering Bosnjak Nationalism in Muslim Bosnia-Hercegovina, Elissa Helms (1997).


• Health and Health Care



Dual Autobiography and AIDS Witnessing, Ross Chambers.

Improving Pregnancy Outcomes during Imprisonment

Initial Exposure to Nicotine in College-age Women smokers and Never-smokers, Cynthia Pomerlau.

Mental Illness and Substance abuse: Implications for Women's Health and Health Care Access, Beth Glover Reed and Carol Mowbray.

Representations of Women's Bodies and Birthing, Carolyn Sampselle.

Women and Stress, Elizabeth Young.


• Mental Health
  
  
Rumination and Depression in Women, Susan Nolen-Hoeksema.

Serious Mental Illness: Women and Parenting, Carol Mowbray.


• History



Telling An Untellable Story: White "Daughter" Black "Mother" After the Cuban Revolution, Ruth Behar.

Prison Discipline, Reform and Debate: Negotiating the Female Prisoner in Nineteenth-Century England, Susanna Calkins.

The Figure of the Adulteress in the Construction of the "Cult of True Womanhood" in the19th-Century American Moral Reform Literature, Lisa Cochran.

Remembering a Forgotten Past, or Why Have We Only Heard of Ballerinas, Lynn Garafola.

The Pasha's Prostitutes: Rethinking Women, the State, and Female Prostitution in Nineteenth Century Egypt, Mario Ruiz.



• International Issues -- Prostitution



Making A Spectacle: The Nightly Transformations of Egyptian Nightclub Performers in a Conservative Age, Katherine Zirbel.

Contraband Women, Immigration Tricks of the Sex Trade, and State Visions of Migrant Women Workers' Rights? The 1997 Toronto Massage Parlour Raids, Cheryl Harrison.


• Politics



Institutional Gender Analysis: Running for the Russian Duma, Janet Johnson.

Visions of Citizenship: Questioning the Liberal Promise of Equality, Elizabeth Wingrove.


• Reproductive Rights
  
  
Informed Consent Issues in Assisted Reproduction, Nancy Reame.

Recent Trends in Abortion Legislation in Central Europe, Eleonora Zielinska.


• Rural Women -- International Issues
  
  
The (Wo)man in the Cashew: Gender and Development in Rural Belize, Melissa Johnson.


• Sexuality

Images of Fashion: Constructing the Visible Body, Olga Vainshtein.


• Sports and Fitness
  
  
Your Hair is Caked, Your Limbs are Sore: Gender, "Roughing It," and Class in Early Yosemite Tourism, Stephanie Palmer.

• Violence Against Women
  
  
Assessing Sexual Harassment among Latinas, Lilia Cortina.

Domestic Violence Against Women in Serbia, Zorica Mrsevic.

Offender Interventions to End Violence Against Women, Daniel Saunders.

• Women of Color
  
  
Dis/Arming the Black Champ: Joe Louis and the Legacy of Racial Uplift in the Post-Civil Rights Movement, Marlon Ross.



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Last updated 07/22/02
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