Center for Feminist Research

2012-13 New Directions in Feminist Research Seminar
Center for Feminist Research

The Center For Feminist Research is pleased to announce that the 2012-13 New Directions in Feminist Research Seminar, directed by Professor Karen Tongson, will focus on "Gender, Race, Sexuality and the Politics of Popular Music."  In addition to Tongson, Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies, next year's seminar will include the following group of faculty and graduate students:

1. Edwin Hill, Assistant Professor of French, Italian, Comparative Literature and American Studies and Ethnicity (Dornsife). His project "La Rage: Losing it in the French Peripheries," explores anti-colonial discourses of rage in French hip-hop culture and literature, in order to offer a timely intervention into debates about the 2005 and 2007 riots in the French banlieus, or urban peripheries, and France's "ultra-peripheries"--its colonial territories in the West Indies.

2. Kara Keeling, Associate Professor of Critical Studies in the School of Cinematic Arts (SCA), and African American Studies in American Studies and Ethnicity (Dornsife). Her project, "'Electric Feel': Transduction, Errantry and the Refrain" ascertains what logics inherited from particular popular musics might offer ongoing efforts to renegotiate bonds, institutions and political possibilities shaped by the violences characteristic of capitalism, white supremacy, neoliberal multiculturalism and contemporary geopolitics.

3. Josh Kun, Associate Professor of Communication (Annenberg) and American Studies and Ethnicity (Dornsife). His project, titled "The World Begins Here: Love and Death and Music in Tijuana" tracks the transnational flows of culture from Tijuana's founding as a family-owned cattle ranch in the aftermath of the 19th century creation of a US-Mexico border, to its current state as a chaotic urban sprawl of well over two million people. In these histories, Kun hears what he calls the 'aural border': a bi-national territory of sonic performance and listening; of melodic convergence and dissonant clashing. 

4. Shana Redmond, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity (Dornsife). Her project, "Timing is Everything: The Feminine Antiphonies in 'We are the World'" revisits this anthem of global "relief"--particularly its redeployment in the wake of the 2010 earthquake disaster in Haiti--in order to expose the feminized musical tropes that organize conditions of aid and aid occupation, which developed in post-disaster sites like Ethiopia in 1985, and Haiti in 2010. 

5. Mina Yang, Assistant Professor of Music (Thornton). Her project, "Dancing into Visibility: Asian-American B-Boys and the Hip-Hop Trans-Nation," situates her extensive research on b-boying in Asia and Asian America within the context of racial discourses in the United States and hip-hop history, and against the backdrop of emergent transpacific economies and cultural geographies.

6. Micha Cardenas, Ph.D. student in Interdivisional Media Arts and Practice (SCA); artist and theorist. Her project, titled "Femme Disturbance," combines scholarship, poetry and performance components to explore how musicality and figures like Janelle Monae and Ke$ha (among others) help foster antirationalist theories of genderqueer solidarity, politics and action. 

The CFR's "New Directions in Feminist Research" is organized annually around a particular theme.  The seminar offers participants an opportunity to work collectively on thematically linked projects, and also creates public events--invited speakers, panels, conferences--that engage the broader feminist community of faculty and students at USC.  Stay tuned for announcements for such events in 2012-13.

The Center for Feminist Research Newsletter

Our Spring 2012 newsletter is now available online! Please follow the link below and click on Spring 2012. Past issues available here as well.

Issues Available Online>>

Graduate Fellowships:

Diana Meehan Fellowship in Feminism and Communications

The Center for Feminist Research will award two $2000 Fellowships to two advanced graduate students working in the general area of feminism and communication. Applicants should be advanced students who are working either on a dissertation or on an original creative project.

Please check the CFR website for application deadlines. To apply, submit:

·       a cover letter explaining how your circumstances meet the criteria specified

·       a curriculum vita

·       a three-page, 750-word description of your dissertation/creative project, and/or a sample of your creative work (e.g. a script or film)

·       two letters of recommendation

·       an unofficial transcript

Cagney and Lacey Fellowship

The Center for Feminist Research will award one $2000 fellowship to a returning woman student who is enrolled in a graduate program in the USC School of Cinema/Television. The student may be in any year of study except her final year. Please note, a returning student is one who has had a break of several years between her undergraduate training and matriculation in graduate school; she is usually of non-traditional school age.

Please check the CFR website for application deadlines. To apply, submit:

• a cover letter explaining how your circumstances meet the criteria specified
• a curriculum vita, which should reflect your circumstances as a woman student who has returned to academia
• a three-page, 750-word description of your dissertation/creative project, and/or a sample of your creative work (e.g. a script or film)
• two letters of recommendation
• an unofficial transcript

All queries and applications should be sent to: cfr@usc.edu