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Rockefeller Humanities Grant
Beijing Plus 5
Global Exchange
WSAIS
International Centers
International Center Questionnaire
Russian Newsletter
UN and NGO Activities
Participating Institutions and Projects
State University of New York at Albany
Center for Latino, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Institute for Research on Women,
Center for the Arts and Humanities
Francine Frank
Director, Center for the Arts and Humanities Year II (1996-97):
Edna Acosta-Belen
Director
Center for Latino, Latin American, and Caribbean Studies (CELAC) Year III (1997-98):
Iris Berger
Prof. of History, Africana Studies, and Women's Studies
Tel: 518/442-4815
Fax: 518/442-3477
email: eb344@cnsvax.albany.edu Gwen Moore
Director, IROW
Tel: 518/442-4995
Fax: 518/442-4936
email: gw566@uacs2.albany.edu The goals of the Internationalizing Women's Studies initiative involved faculty and resource development through seminars, yearly conferences, and a training institute. Throughout the project, participants employed comparative and crosscultural thematic approaches to the study of women in Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the United States. These approaches were geared toward increasing understanding of the diverse factors that influence the conceptualization of gender, race, and class across cultures, and how women in different regions of the world are affected by the globalization process. Additionally, they highlighted the creative approaches that women worldwide are bringing to crucial issues, and how the links of solidarity forged by women for sharing knowledge can lead to more effective organizing strategies. During its last year, an invitational scholarly seminar was held from April 29-May 1, 1998, in collaboration with the Inter American University in San German, Puerto Rico. Among the major objectives of this event were: (1) an assessment how feminist research and teaching have developed in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Eastern Europe in recent years; and (2) the development of specific research and teaching priorities for the next few decades that reflect contemporary transnational and global realities. The project also produced a series of publications during its last year that include: (1) an edited collection of conference papers from the first two years of the project; (2) a research and teaching agenda-setting volume based on the results of the third year seminar; and (3) a volume of new and revised syllabi submitted by participants in the faculty development institute and workshops.
University of Arizona
Southwest Institute for Research on Women (SIROW), Center for Middle Eastern Studies, East Asian Studies Department, Latin American Area Center, the African Studies Working Committee Global Processes and Local Lives: Comparative Approaches in Women's and Area Studies Janice Monk
Executive Director
Women's Studies, Douglass 102
University of Arizona
Communication 108
P.O. Box 210025
Tucson, AZ 85721
Tel: 520/621-3836
Fax: 520/621-1533
email: jmonk@u.arizona.edu Sandra Shattuck
Associate Project Director
SIROW
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
Tel: 520/626-5047
Fax: 520/621-1533
email: shattuck@u.arizona.edu This project was designed to foster collaboration between Women's Studies and Area and International Studies faculty in revising and creating graduate and undergraduate courses that address significant global issues, while remaining sensitive to the diversity of experiences within different regional and local contexts. Building on SIROW's successful record in curricular transformation, the project initiated innovations in international work, including: (1) developing leadership and mentoring capabilities in the Southwest; (2) including graduate students as participants and revising graduate courses; and (3) addressing the difficulties in developing sophisticated comparative, crosscultural research and teaching. Summer institutes--intensive faculty (and graduate student) leadership seminars--were developed to: (1) train a leadership group who would assist scholars/teachers in the SIROW region to develop comparative, thematically organized courses; (2) link research and teaching in international and multi-cultural U.S. studies; and (3) assist graduate students in incorporating international perspectives into their research and teaching. Additionally, the dissemination of project activities has been facilitated through the use of electronic networks, and by publishing the results from the two summer institutes. SIROW's most recent development with respect to curricular transformation projects has been a move toward working collaboratively on transnational issues with scholars and representatives of non-governmental and community-based agencies. This model is being applied in research-action projects that have as one goal capacity building within U.S. and international institutions. In SIROW's case, such work is facilitated by proximity to the Mexican-U.S. border, so that the transnational efforts focus on the border and collaboration between U.S. and Mexican colleagues. Nevertheless, the model speaks to the larger issues of (i) engaging in collaborative work with international scholars on an equal footing; and (ii) of connecting researchers with the larger community, an issue that funding agencies are increasingly raising.
University of California at Berkeley
Beatrice M. Bain Research Group
Programs of International and Area Studies International Gender Systems in Comparative Perspective: A Research and Training Program for the U.C. Berkeley Campus Norma Alarcon
Director and Professor of Ethnic/Chicano Studies
Beatrice M. Bain Research Group
2539 Channing Way, Room 21
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720
Tel: 510/643-7172
Fax: 510/643-7288
email: bbrg@uclink.berkeley.edu Irene Tinker
President
Equity Policy Center
1600 Gomes Road
Freemont, CA 94539
Tel and Fax: 510/849-2223
email: tinker@socrates.berkeley.edu Michael Watts
Professor of Geography
Director, Institute of International Studies
University of California, Berkeley
215 Moses Hall, #2308
Berkeley, CA 94720
Tel: 510/642-9493
Fax: 510/642-9493
email: mwatts@violet.edu.berkeley This project was geared toward promoting the incorporation of gender issues into area studies and general undergraduate education, and enhancing comparative and international research on the Berkeley campus by reciprocally linking the programmatic activities of International and Area Studies with the Women's Studies Department and the Beatrice M. Bain Research Group. The project pursued this goal on three levels: (1) teaching and research, (2) curriculum development, and (3) training. With respect to course and curriculum development, initial activities focused on faculty currently teaching large international or transnational courses, on the graduate student instructors in these courses, and on graduate students writing dissertations on international topics. Graduate student researchers were offered to cooperating faculty who wished to add material to their existing courses, as well as to faculty who wished to completely redesign their international courses. A Graduate Field Work Seminar for advanced graduate students from the social and behavioral sciences preparing to conduct field research was revised to make gender issues in fieldwork a central issue, and several undergraduate classes were reconceptualized. During the final year, the focus was on international courses of study in which women's concerns are seldom included, such as the business school or economics. Resources were provided for joint-teaching, and conferences and monthly colloquia were designed to expose both faculty and graduate students to women's studies scholars and resources for teaching gender issues, particularly in disciplines where gender has been historically underrepresented. Publications from the overall project and from the conference and its preparations included a dictionary of terms and an interpretive handbook illustrating approaches for inserting gender perspectives into international and transnational subjects. Additionally, students participating in the project developed a web page and posted bibliographic materials and descriptions of films/videos by world geographic regions. The web site can be accessed at: http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/GlobalGender/.
Five College Women's Studies Research Center
with Area Studies Faculty from Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College and the University of Massachusetts Curricular Crossings in Women's Studies: Women's Health and Welfare in a Global Perspective Margaret Hunt
Associate Professor
Department of History
Amherst College
86 College Street
Amherst, MA 01002
Tel: 413/253-5652
Fax: 413/542-2727
email: mrhunt@amherst.edu Within the Five Colleges interdisciplinary project, women's studies faculty were involved for each of the project's three years; the area studies programs' involvement rotated with different geographic regions emphasized each year. In the first year, 1995-1996, Five College faculty from African Studies participated; in the second year, 1997-1998, the emphasis shifted to Latin American Studies; and in the third, specialists in Near Eastern Studies and South Asian Studies took part. Each year, the seminar participants took part in a larger symposium. Hosted by the Five College Women's Studies Research Center, this symposium included Five College faculty, and faculty from other colleges and universities. Also included were local activists, who lent additional perspectives to the connections between scholarship and social activism already emphasized during the seminar discussions, and who were also able to share experiences with activist scholars from other countries. Participants in the symposium discussions were encouraged to develop new courses and syllabi. Scholars from chosen regions were also brought to spend between three and nine months in the Five College community. These visiting scholars were selected by the Five College Women's Studies Steering Committee in collaboration with relevant area studies programs, and were chosen on the basis of work undertaken in the general area of women's health and welfare. The international scholars also joined Five College faculty in a year-long invitational seminar that broached the subject of women's health and welfare from similar interdisciplinary perspectives in each of the three years, using new scholarship from such realms as economics, anthropology, sociology, political science, and literature. The specific questions, however, varied according to specific scholarly and regional concerns. For example, in its third year, the project focused on the Near East and South Asia, with two visiting scholars catalyzing discussions: Lakshmi Goparaju, a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology from Syracuse University, and Tine Achcar-Naccache, a human rights activist from Beirut, Lebanon. As in previous years, the Project convened seminars centered on a range of issues that challenge interdisciplinary work and focus on breaking down barriers between women activists and scholars in Third World countries, and women's studies and area studies researchers in the U.S. The spring symposium open, to both faculty and local activists, further addressed issues such as how to cope with the pedagogical difficulties inherent in such diverse subject matter, given the desire of students for generalities. In addition, issues of special relevance to the Near East and South Asia were considered, such as transformations in women's work, the growth of religious nationalism, and the ways that political violence relates to other forms of violence against women.
University of Maryland at College Park
Women's Studies Program, Curriculum Transformation Project, Office of International Affairs Women and Gender in an Era of Global Change: Internationalizing and "Engendering" the Curriculum Deborah Rosenfelt
Professor, Women's Studies
Director, Curriculum Transformation Project
University of Maryland at College Park
2101 Woods Hall
College Park, MD 20742
Tel: 301/405-6883
Fax: 301/314-9190
email: dr49@umail.umd.edu This project intended to strengthen an understanding within the university community of the international, regional, national, and local contexts shaping and shaped by gender arrangements, women's daily lives, their social and cultural contributions, and their forms of activism. There have been seven major components to the project: three summer institutes on the general theme, "Thinking about Women and Gender in Contemporary International Contexts"; three "polyseminars"--public lecture series linked to a faculty study group and a class; and a concluding conference--entitled "Transforming Knowledge: Internationalizing Gender, 'Engendering' the International"--which was planned as a relatively small working conference to reunite participants for further discussion of their efforts and disseminate the work of the grant to a larger audience, especially in the mid-Atlantic region. The project has also provided small grants for research, travel, and curricular development related to the themes of the grant. The University of Maryland had begun working toward curricular transformation in 1989, but this project has initiated a fundamental change in the University's approach. Emphasis shifted from the politics of identity, knowledge production, and representation toward the complex ways categories of difference construct each other. This conceptual transformation has led to an understanding that certain dimensions of identity have become more salient over time while others were harder to hold on to, and that gender itself is often manipulated, especially in new nationalisms and fundamentalisms. The metaphor of borderlands became prominent, both as a way for participants to visualize the complexity of curriculum transformation efforts, and as a foundation upon which a common language of universal human rights can develop for global women activists.
University of Michigan
The Women's Studies Program, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and the International Institute at the University of Michigan Differences Among Women: International Perspectives Abigail Stewart
Director, Institute for Research on Women and Gender
University of Michigan
460 West Hall
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1092
Tel: 313/764-9537
Fax: 313/764-9533
email: abbystew@umich.edu During the first year of this project, a faculty and graduate student seminar was offered on the topic of integrating gender and international issues in the curriculum. The group was selected for balanced strengths and weaknesses, and met in May to discuss issues, view films, workshop the courses of its own participants, and devise materials and plans for broadening the reach of the program on campus. In Fall 1996, the International Institute Newsletter published a lengthy list of issues the seminar had identified as helpful to faculty planning courses to integrate gender and international coverage. This document, which was duplicated by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and widely distributed, included a bibliography of readings and a list of films the seminar had found helpful. Throughout 1996-1997, the seminar group constituted a planning committee for a theme semester on "Genders, Bodies, Borders," a theme selected to make integration of gender and international issues easy. Subcommittees were formed to plan speakers, exhibitions, mini-conferences, a film series, and a video festival to accompany the Theme Semester. In conjunction with the theme semester, visiting scholar, from the Russian University for the Humanities in Moscow, Olga Vainshtein, taught an undergraduate course in conjunction with the theme semester entitles "The Fashion of Women," and delivered a lecture called "Images of Fashion: The Construction of Body and Gender." Evaluation of curricula in women's studies and the area studies centers and programs, and assessment of the syllabi, course and teacher evaluations from courses introduced or revised as a result of the program is currently underway. The results of this evaluation will be distributed as a report to all participating units, deans, associate deans, and department heads.
University of Minnesota
Women's Studies Department, the Center for Advanced Feminist Studies (CAFS), Institute of International Studies, MacArthur Interdisciplinary Program on Peace and International Cooperation Ways of Reading: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Teaching and Research in Women's Studies, International Studies, and Area Studies Mary Lay
Project Director
Department of Rhetoric
University of Minnesota
64 Classroom Office Building
1994 Buford Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55108
Tel: 612/624-2262
Fax: 612/624-3617
email: mmlay@maroon.tc.umn.edu Sally Kohlstedt
Director, Center for Advanced Feminist Studies
University of Minnesota
Ford Hall 496
224 Church Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Tel: 612/624-6310
Fax: 612/624-3573
email: sgk@mailbox.mail.umn.edu This project addressed the need for faculty and course development as well as sustained interdisciplinary research on gender in an international context, and seeks to overcome the limitations inherent in a narrow disciplinary approach to these rich and complex issues. During the first year of the project, a faculty working group completed syllabus revisions in courses such as "Theoretical Approaches to International Relations," "The Classical Heritage of Arab Islam," "The Political Discourse of Change," "Women's Autobiography Narratives," and "Spanish Civilization: Modern Spain." The results of these revisions were presented in a seminar during the next fall. Second year activities ranged from intellectual discussion, to networking, to social events. Weekly meetings combined discussions of common readings, work on group projects, feedback on individual course revisions, and conversations with consultants. Cosponsorship or sponsorship of visitors provided the University community with access to public events; and year-end activities included day-long retreats, and a dinner at which group members made final revisions to their work. An interdisciplinary six-member faculty working group developed two major initiatives for the last year of the project geared toward incorporating gender theory and issues and/or international perspectives into selected courses. The first project was to revise the Area Studies Program's core course, "Scope and Methods of Area Studies," which is a required course for all students pursuing a degree in one of the six Area Studies majors offered. Secondly, each individual member revised or created a course that incorporated gender issues and/or international perspectives. The faculty group presented its work and assessments to the University community in October.
New York University
Women's Studies Program, East Asian Studies, Center for Latin American Studies, Africana Studies, Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies Marilyn Young
Project Co-Director
History Department
New York University
53 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10003
Tel: 212/998-8610
Fax: 212/995-4017
email: youngma@is.nyu.edu Lila Abu-Lughod
Co-Director
Department of Anthropology
New York University
25 Waverly Place
New York, NY 10003
Tel: 212/998-8550
Fax: 212/995-4014
email: abulghd@is2.nyu.edu The Women's Studies Program at New York University, in conjunction with the East Asian Studies Program, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Africana Studies, and the Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, implemented a three-year program to establish the study of women and gender issues in the work of all four area studies programs as well as to institutionalize an international perspective on women by integrating it into the proposed Core Curriculum of NYU's College of Arts of Arts and Sciences. During the first two years, and as part of NYU's current overhauling of its general education requirements, project efforts were concentrated on giving more prominence to gendered analysis within the undergraduate curriculum. A new course offering, "Gender and Power: International Perspectives," was developed to become a regular part of the social science sequence taken during students' second year; workshops were conducted with faculty and teaching assistants to facilitate effective integration of gender into the courses that make up the "World Cultures" sequence (the component of the core intended to foster cross-cultural knowledge) as well as the courses of the "Conversations of the West" sequence; and internship programs with the United Nations and other international agencies engaged with women's issues were established for Women's Studies students. During the third year of the grant, emphasis shifted to forging stronger links between the Area Studies and Women's Studies programs. These links were built in both teaching and research through interactions with four international scholars who visited the university and met with faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students. In the past few years NYU has established a commitment to become a "global university," one which would encourage the development of international intellectual exchange. This commitment has provided a receptive environment for the programs.
Princeton University
Program in Women's Studies, Program in Latin American Studies Feminism, Identity and Politics in Latin America Jeremy Adelman
Department of History
129 Dickinson Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Tel: 609/258-4159
Fax: 609/258-5326
email: adelman@princeton.edu Debra Nord
Professor of Women's Studies and English
22 McCosh Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Tel: 609/258-4064
Fax: 609/258-1607 This program has been involved in enhancing the Latin American component of women's studies and the gender side of regional studies. The activities were twofold, including special course offerings and public events. Dr. Antonella Fabri, an anthropologist, was hired to teach a course on gender in modern Latin America, and another special course was co-taught by Kay Warren (Department of Anthropology at Princeton) and Jean Franco (Department of Comparative Literature at Columbia). These offerings were massively oversubscribed, showing the level of demand among Princeton's undergraduates for courses of this sort. Additionally, with the arrival of Dr. Patricia Fernandez-Kelly (to a joint position in Sociology and in Latin American Studies), there is now a permanent faculty member teaching gender and development across the region. With respect to events, Princeton hosted an April 1996 symposium on "Gender, Repression and Memory in Latin America," bringing together prominent scholars from Bryn Mawr, Columbia, City University of New York, New York University, and Princeton. During the Fall of 1996, another event was held on the theme of human rights and memory; and in the spring of 1997, Princeton hosted a public forum on women, migration, and citizenship in the Americas, which was designed principally to focus on women's immigration from Latin America to North America. Panelists treated various themes related to diasporic movements, comparing Mexican, Central American, and Caribbean women. These events were widely publicized, and attracted dozens of students as well as several individuals from the Princeton Community.
Rutgers University
Women's Studies Program, Center for Russian, Central and East European Studies (CRCEES) New Curricular Frameworks: A Gender/Area Studies Collaboration Barbara Balliet
Director
Women's Studies Program
Rutgers University
P.O. Box 270
Douglass College
New Brunswick, NJ 08903
Tel: 732/932-9331
Fax: 732/932-1335
email: bballiet@rci.rutgers.edu This program was divided into two stages. During stage I, a seminar, "Locations of Gender: Central and Eastern Europe," brought together 36 scholars and activists from the United States and Central and Eastern Europe to discuss a wide range of issues affecting gender relations in the region. Primarily a faculty and curriculum development seminar, the group also included graduate students working on relevant dissertation topics. Participants and visitors read, viewed and debated materials that addressed citizenship, rights, ethnicity and nationalism, gender and representation, and the development of women's studies and feminism in the region. In addition to this seminar, a three-day international conference entitled "The Meanings of Feminisms in the Reconfigured Public/Private Spaces of Central and Eastern Europe" was held. The conference theme highlighted four arenas where feminist knowledge and practice are produced and contested. To address these issues, additional scholars from the region were invited to broaden discussions. An edited collection from the seminar and the conference are currently in development to be published by Rutgers University Press. The second stage of the project centered around curriculum development. The objectives of this stage were as follows: to design and develop courses around the theme of the role of gender in the transition of CEE countries to market economies; to integrate gender-global perspectives into eight to ten courses in history, political science, literature, art, women's studies, and geography; to create expandable textual modules (i.e., readings, bibliographies, and syllabi) designed thematically so they are able to provide material for an entire course, or be imported into already existing courses; to promote international discussions around the issues identified above by bringing experts from outside the U.S.; and to expand cooperative networks and relationships with academic institutions in Central and Eastern Europe.
Spelman College
The Women's Research and Resource Center Women and African Diaspora Studies Program Beverly Guy-Sheftall
Director
Women's Research and Resource Center
Spelman College
350 Spelman Lane
Box 115
Atlanta, GA 30314-4399
Tel: 404/223-7528
Fax: 404/223-7665
bsheltall@aol.com One of the primary goals of this project was the reconceptualization of the Women's Studies program, which had been offering a minor for fifteen years. A new major in Comparative Women's Studies, with a major emphasis on the African Diaspora, was passed by the Spelman Board. The Introduction to Women's Studies course was redesigned to be more global, more interdisciplinary, more comparative, and more sensitive to issues relating to women of African descent throughout the Diaspora. A core group of faculty who teach Women's Studies and various area studies courses (particularly African/African-American Studies, Japanese Studies, and Diaspora) were involved in a number of faculty development activities, including brown-bag lunch seminars, lecture series, and a summer faculty development workshop which explored gender issues and the African diaspora from various disciplinary perspectives. This group developed into an international interdisciplinary planning committee that has sponsored events such as a film series on women and the African diaspora. Several new courses were developed by faculty including "Race in the Americas," "Contemporary Women's Art," and "Third World Feminisms." Efforts were also made to more rigorously address issues linked to gender and sexuality in the "Africa and the Diaspora" course, and to devise strategies for enhanced collaboration and cooperation between participating faculty. During the final year of the project, a major invitational conference was held on "Women and the African Diaspora." Papers were commissioned by scholars in the field and will be published by the center. A series of activities exploring how to infuse race and gender issues into the natural sciences curriculum at Spelman were also held; and a women's health track is being developed for the new comparative women's studies major.
Tulane University
Newcomb College Center for Research on Women Faculty Study Groups: Developing Feminist Global Perspectives 1995-1998 Beth Willinger
Director, Newcomb College Center for Research on Women
Tulane University
New Orleans, LA 70118
Tel: 504/865-5238
Fax: 504/862-8948
email: willing@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu This project received one year of funding from the Ford Foundation as part of the WSAIS project. However, Tulane University faculty have been engaged in the process of internationalizing women's studies curricula and integrating gender research into area studies in a variety of ways over the past three years. This third year built upon the collaboration and knowledge base formed during the previous two years: the first focused on the relationship between gender and migrations, and the second on gender and reproductive and information technologies in global contexts. New research has been undertaken, courses revised, and new courses developed as a result. The third year differs from the other two in having as its specific objective the development of new materials or teaching strategies for including feminist global perspectives in women's studies core and cross-listed courses. The three study groups have involved some forty-four participants who represent sixteen different departments, the Women's Studies and Latin American Studies Programs, and the Schools of Architecture and Social Work. All three groups have made extensive use of the internet in intra-group communication, research, and development of curricular materials. Syllabi as well as other study group materials are posted on the web: http://www.tulane.edu/~wc.
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Women's Studies Research Center, Council of Area and International Studies Programs Internationalizing Women's Studies and Integrating Gender Research into Area Studies Programs Stanlie James
Director, Women's Studies Research Center
University of Wisconsin-Madison
209 North Brooks Street
Madison, WI 53715
Tel: 608/263-2051
Fax: 608/265-2409
email: sjames@macc.wisc.edu This two-year project sponsored a series of symposia addressing the integration of gender studies and international studies research. One to two weekend workshops per semester were devoted to exploring the global diversity of women's actions for social change and to examining feminist theories that account for such diversity. The first workshop was entitled "Curriculum Transformation: Feminist Perspectives on Human Rights and International Relations." It was designed to present new scholarship on specific issues in those areas and to provide participants with strategies for teaching sensitive feminist courses that are international in scope. Invited scholars and University of Wisconsin faculty addressed the issues that often arise as activists and scholars collaborate in the development of gender sensitive feminist ethnologies that can contribute not only to scholarly knowledge, but to the cause of human rights. The second and third workshops--"Women's Health in International Perspective" and "Comparative Research on Welfare States and Gender"--also took place during the first year of the project. Three workshops were also convened during the 1997-1998 academic year: "Gender, Militarization and the Nation State," "Women and Environment in International Perspective," and the final workshop which addressed the pedagogical issues of internationalizing women's studies and integrating gender research into area studies programs. Each workshop presented shared useful information with participants, including syllabi, bibliographies, and articles along with discussion sessions concerning teaching strategies. Participants included faculty from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Wisconsin system, graduate students, and the general public. Additionally, the International Gender Studies Circle initiated a series of colloquia and brown bags bringing in junior and senior scholars, from a variety of disciplines and working on a wide range of countries, to discuss how gender analysis contributes to an understanding of difference based along ethnic, religious, and racial lines.
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