Chair's Greeting - University of California, Santa Cruz

Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz Vol. XI, No. 1 Summer 2008
The Wave
A Periodical for the University Community and Friends of Feminist Studies
Chair’s Greeting
This has been another exciting year for
Feminist Studies, especially as we mark ​
several important transitions for the
faculty. As Feminist Studies approaches
its 35th anniversary, we face the inevitable
departure of some of our most beloved
faculty. Emily Honig, who joined the
department in 1991, will next year move to
UCSC’s History Department to work with
an already distinguished group of faculty in
Asian studies. Feminist Studies is pleased to
acknowledge her tremendous service and
teaching over these last many years, as well as
her stewardship over so many critical periods
for the department. Luckily, she will still be
close by, and students will continue to have the
opportunity to work with her in co-sponsored
courses offered by History and Feminist
Studies.
We also honor the careers of three prominent
faculty who are retiring this year and who have
UCSC celebrates feminist scholarship with
DVD release of lectures by Bettina Aptheker
by Scott Rappaport, UCSC
Public Information Office
been so significant to the project of feminist
studies: Literature and Feminist Studies
Professor Helene Moglen, who helped to
establish the Women’s Studies Program in
the ‘70s and became founding Director of the
Institute for Advanced Feminist Research in
2001; History of Consciousness and Feminist
Studies Professor Angela Davis, who served as
the department chair from 2003-2005 and has
been faculty sponsor to the Research Cluster for
the Study of Women of Color in Collaboration
and Conflict since her arrival in 1991; and
History of Consciousness Professor Teresa de
Lauretis, whose presence on the campus has
inspired generations of feminist scholarship. As
we anticipate the future, our current students will
be pleased to know that Bettina Aptheker will
offer her Introduction to Feminisms course one
more time in her career this coming fall. Those
of us no longer able to enroll in courses can,
however, enjoy her lectures at home. This year
Feminist studies professor
Bettina Aptheker has been
teaching her acclaimed
Introduction to Feminisms
class at UCSC for the past
28 years. One of the most
influential introductory courses
in the field, it has now been
captured on DVD through a
taping project led by her former
students.
Bettina Aptheker at the DVD release at Baytree Bookstore April 25.
The new DVD release was
highlighted—along with works by other feminist faculty at UCSC—at a celebration of feminist
scholarship on campus on April 25 at the Bay Tree Bookstore. The event was part of the Alumni
Spring Weekend at UCSC schedule of events.
by Gina Dent
Associate Professor of Feminist Studies, History of Consciousness and Legal Studies
Continued on page 14
Faculty News and
Congratulations
Undergraduate Awards
and Accomplishments
Alum Greetings
Graduate Awards and
Accomplishments
Event Highlights
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Students often describe Aptheker’s class as a “life-changing experience” and an “eye-opener.” A
deeply compelling speaker, she mixes art, poetry, guest speakers, historical essays, slides, videos,
and music into a multifacted course that lingers in the minds of undergraduates long after they leave
Continued on page 8
Thanks to our Donors
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Congratulations
UCSC Feminist Faculty Accolades and Activities
Bettina Aptheker, Professor, Feminist Studies and History. Celebrated
the second printing of her memoir Intimate Politics and anticipates a third.
Published “Toni Cade Bambara: A Political Life of the Spirit” in the book,
Savoring the Salt: The Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara, edited by Linda
Holmes and Cheryl Harris (Temple University Press, 2007) and “Queer
Reflections: Keeping the Communist Party Straight,” in New Politics:
a journal of socialist thought (Vol. 7, Summer 2008). Interviewed for a
documentary film on the life and times of former Governor Edmund G.
‘Pat’ Brown, by the award-winning director Sascha Rice, produced by
Sascha Rice and Hilary Armstrong (www.patbrowndocumentary.com).
Gabriela F. Arredondo,
Associate Professor, Latin
American and Latina/o Studies,
Mexican Chicago: Race, Identity
and Nation 1916-39 (University
of Illinois Press, 2008).
Appointed Director of Chicano/
Latino Research Center (July).
2007-08 Research Fellowship at
Stanford University’s Center for
the Comparative Study of Race
and Ethnicity to work on a project
on race mixing.
Gabriela F. Arredondo
Anjali Arondekar, Associate Professor, Feminist Studies. “The Voyage
Out: Transacting Sex under Globalization,” Feminist Studies (Vol. 33:
2, Summer 2007, 299-311). Received India-based research grant to
conduct work on a second book project provisionally entitled Caste-ing
Sex: On Devadasis and Community Formation in Western India. Invited
talks: “Sexuality, Historiography and Colonial India,” New Research
on Sexuality in South Asia, University of Texas (May); “Archival
Attachments: Sexuality and Colonial Historiography,” UC Davis (April);
“Subject to Sex,” South Asian Feminism(s), University of Pennsylvania
(March); “Caste-ing Sex: On Devadasis and Historiography in Colonial
Western India,” Subaltern Citizens and their Histories, Emory University
(December).
Noriko Aso, Assistant Professor, History. UC President’s Research
Fellowship in the Humanities for project on how the establishment of a
national museum system in late 19th and early 20th century Japan shaped
and was shaped by new notions of the “public.”
E.G. Crichton, Associate Professor, Art. Produced “Affair-on-the-
Green,” a private performance conversation between 12 women on the
topic of “lineage” with performance artist Lauren Crux at the UCSC
“Intervene! Interrupt! Rethinking Art as Social Change” Conference and
Festival. The piece launched E.G.’s tenure as the first Artist in Residence
for the GLBT Historical Society of Northern California.
Sharon Daniel, Associate Professor, Film and Digital Media. Media Arts
Fellowship from the Tribeca Film Institute (2008).
Michelle Erai, Visiting Assistant Professor, Feminist Studies. UC Office
of the President Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC Riverside for 2008-09,
under the mentorship of Associate Professor Piya Chatterjee, Women’s
Studies.
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Dana Frank, Professor, History. Local Girl Makes History: Exploring
Northern California’s Kitsch Monuments (City Lights Books, 2007).
$29,898 grant from the UC Office of the President Labor and Employment
Research Fund (2008-09) for “The AFL-CIO’s Cold
War in Honduras.” In 2006, her book about women and the banana
industry was published in Spanish, El Poder de las Mujeres es Poder
Sindical: La Transformación de los Sindicatos Bananeros de América
Latina (Tegucigalpa, Honduras: Editorial Guaymuras; also distributed by
South End Press). $90,000 award with Economics Professor Lori Ketzer
from the UC Office of the President Miguel Contreras Labor Studies Fund
for the Center for Labor Studies (2008-09).
Jennifer A. Gonzalez, Associate Professor, History of Art and Visual
Culture. Subject to Display: Reframing Race in Contemporary Installation
Art (MIT Press, 2008).
Diane Gifford-Gonzalez, Professor, Anthropology. As Fulbright Senior
Specialist taught a graduate seminar, “Tópicos en zooarqueología,” at
the Universidad del Centro del la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Olavarría,
Argentina (August-September). Lectures in Córdoba and Buenos Aires
and invited participant in the Workshop “Interpreting household practices:
reflections on the social and cultural roles of maintenance activities,” in
Barcelona, Spain (November). Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer (2006-
2008). Completing tenure as President of the Society of Africanist
Archaeologists.
June A. Gordon, Associate Professor, Education. Japan’s Outcaste
Youth: Education for Liberation (Paradigm Publishing, 2008). Research
and lecture tour to southern South America, South Africa, Philippines and
South India to explore issues of social welfare, education, and economy.
Jody Greene, Associate Professor, Literature and Feminist Studies. 2008
Dizikes Teaching Award in Humanities.
Helene Moglen
Retires
Helene Moglen, a feminist scholar in
Literature who championed Women’s
Studies, is retiring from UCSC after
thirty years of service. Helene chaired our
program between 1984 and 1989, and in
these critical years laid the foundation for
it to become a full-fledged department,
able to hire our own faculty. Helene was
also the founding director of a research cluster called the Feminist
Studies FRA (Focused Research Activity) in which graduate students
and faculty from across the UCSC campus met regularly to share their
research. Helene was also a founding board member of the UCSC
Women’s Center. Most recently she was founding director of the
IAFR (The Institute for Advanced Feminist Research) and initiated a
series of events on Feminisms and Global War, Bodies in the Making:
Transgressions and Transformations, and Feminist Anger/Social
Rage. The department expresses its deep gratitude to Helene Moglen
for her many years of pioneering service. We wish her every success
in her retirement.

Melissa Gwyn, Assistant Professor,
Art. Contributed four paintings
to the “Molecules That Matter”
exhibition at Skidmore College’s
Tang Museum.
updated version of textbook chapter, “Guatemala,” in Harry Vanden and
Gary Prevost, Eds. Politics of Latin America: The Power Game (Oxford
UP, 2008), highlighting the devastating increase in the number of
feminicide killings in Guatemala from 2000 to 2007.
L.S. Kim, Assistant Professor, Film and Digital Media. Feature article for
35th Anniversary Edition of Ms. Magazine, “Air Time,” on how feminists
have impacted mainstream media.
Teresa de Lauretis, Professor, History of Consciousness, celebrates her
retirement (June).
Marcia Ochoa, Assistant Professor, Community Studies. Received the
Champion for Change Award from San Francisco Community United
Against Violence (CUAV), with Alexandra Byerly, on behalf of El/La
for their work organizing transgender Latina community response to the
murder of Ruby Ordeñana, giving a speech at the vigil, and a press release
marking the one-year anniversary of Ruby’s murder.
Micah Perks, Associate Professor, Literature. $25,000 Literature
Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for novel in
progress, The Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rownlandson, My
Mother and Me.
Renya K. Ramirez, Associate Professor, American Studies. Native Hubs:
Culture, Community, and Belonging in Silicon Valley and Beyond (Duke
UP, 2007).
Ruby Rich, Professor, Community Studies. Camargo Foundation
fellowship for residency in Cassis, France for conducting research on
French sexual politics and cinematic expression (Fall 2007).
Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel, Assistant Professor, Feminist Studies. Ford
Foundation Postdoctoral Diversity Fellowship for “Cyberbrides Across
the Americas: Transnational Imaginaries, Marriage, and Migration”
(2008-09). “Visuality, Corporality and Power: Women Artists, Activists
and Social Actors in the Americas,” in collaboration with Rosa-Linda
Fregoso, Aída Hurtado, and Catherine Ramírez, was accepted as a Plenary
for the Congreso Mundos de Mujeres International/Women’s World
Congress in Madrid, Spain (July).
Lisbeth Haas, Associate Professor,
History. Shelby Cullom Davis
Center Residency Fellowship at
Princeton University for Fear in
Colonial California and Within the
Borderlands (2007-08).
Donna Haraway, Professor,
History of Consciousness and
Feminist Studies. When Species
Meet (University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
Gail Hershatter, Professor, History. Women in China’s Long Twentieth
Century (UC Press, 2007). Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral
Sciences at Stanford, Stanford University Residency Fellowship and 2007
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for Rural
Women and China’s Collective Past.
Elizabeth Stephens, Professor and Chair, Art. Continued the Performance
Art Wedding Series with her partner Annie Sprinkle, a creation of the
Love Art Laboratory, during the “Interrupt! Intervene! Rethinking Art as
Social Practice” Conference at UCSC (May). This year’s theme was the
color green (http://loveartlab.org).
Renee Tajima-Peña, Associate Professor, Community Studies. San
Francisco International Film Festival Best Television Documentary-Long
Form, San Diego Latino Film Festival Best Feature Documentary, and
Full Frame Film Festival Official Selection for Calavera Highway (2008).
Production grants for the film were from American Documentary/POV,
Latino Public Broadcasting, Center for Asian American Media and the
Durfee Foundation. California Council for the Humanities research grant
for a new documentary, Más Bebes(forthcoming).
Judy Yung, Professor Emerita, American Studies. Published The
Adventures of Eddie Fung: Chinatown Kid, Texas Cowboy, Prisoner of
War (University of Washington Press, 2007).
Patricia Zavella, Professor and Chair, Latin American and Latina/o
Studies. Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: A Reader,
co-edited with Denise Segura (Duke UP, 2007).
Susanne Jonas, Lecturer, Latin American and Latina/o Studies. Published
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A Difficult Farewell
by Michelle Erai, Visiting Assistant Professor
of Feminist Studies
It’s hard to look back and reflect on a year that
I’m unwilling to let go of yet. It’s been a year
of protests, politics and huge education budget
cuts. More than anything else, I had never
imagined I would teach in a country at war.
Even with the increasing cost of petrol, and
war-related mortality statistics edging around
newscasts, the war on Afghanistan and Iraq has
set a strangely transparent background for my
first year teaching (post-dissertation).
In all the classes I taught this year students
examined their texts and subjects within the
context of war, whether they wrote specifically
about it or not. Some of my students’ work will
be published in August in a peer-reviewed New
Zealand Journal based at Auckland University.
Their work produced remarkable analyses of
subjects that ranged from bananas to online video
games, dolls, philanthropists, and photographs. I
believe that their work will make a contribution
to discussions of colonization in Aotearoa/New
Zealand. The titles of their articles are listed to
the right.
Transitions
At the end of this academic year, I will be moving
my “primary residence” from Feminist Studies to
the Department of History. My Ph.D. was in Chinese
history, and almost all of my research and writing has
focused on issues of gender and ethnicity in modern
China. Having enjoyed a joint appointment in
Women’s Studies and History at Yale, I was extremely
excited to join the Feminist Studies Department at
UCSC in 1993. For the last 15 years this position has
enabled me to expand my intellectual horizons by
teaching courses with a focus beyond China. I have
especially appreciated the opportunity to teach and
continually revise the large lecture course, “Third
World Feminisms,” almost every year since my arrival,
and have learned so much from the students. It has
4
Another enigmatic presence this
year has been knowing that the
make-up of this vital feminist
community of scholars and
activists at Santa Cruz is changing;
Professors Angela Davis and Teresa
de Lauretis are leaving their fulltime
teaching commitments on
campus, and next fall will likely be
the last time Prof. Bettina Aptheker
will teach the renowned ‘FEM 1.’
However, this was also the year I
met Leslie Feinberg, bell hooks,
Rey Chow, and listened to Adrienne
Rich read her poetry at Bookshop
Santa Cruz. These moments will be
great markers in my life, as will the
experience of teaching the first of
‘my own’ classes.
I have taught FMST 80Y: Violence Against
Women of Color before Fall 2007, although it
was a different experience since the publication
of the Color of Violence: The Incite! Anthology
(2006, Boston: South End Press). It was
exciting to see students critiquing the theories
we were working on as students and activists
eight years ago, and to acknowledge my own
shifts in thinking that became apparent to me as
I mentally revised how I would like to teach the
class again.
Developing the syllabi for Feminism and
Postcoloniality (Winter), Advanced Topics in
Feminist Theory, and Feminism and Cultural
Production (Spring) was a new challenge for
me. I have really enjoyed making choices
about how to layer literature, film, music, and
theories. It felt like the enactment of the work
I had begun in my dissertation, and highlighted
ways that I can improve the theoretical framing
of the cultural artifacts I investigate in my Ph.D.
research.
My next step is a mixed-blessing. I have been
by Emily Honig, Professor of Feminist Studies and History
been deeply rewarding to participate in the growth
of the Department of Feminist Studies, which
is so much larger and more diverse than when I
first arrived. Feminist Studies has always been
fortunate to have an unusually dedicated staff, and
I have been so grateful to Nicolette Czarrunchick
for all these years of support and friendship.
My move to History will enable me to become
more centrally involved in the graduate program
in Chinese History. I still look forward to seeing
Feminist Studies students in my classes, and will
continue to serve on the faculty for the proposed
Ph.D. program in Feminist Studies at UCSC.
Professor Erai’s students who will be
published in the August edition of the
Maori and Indigenous (MAI) Review:
(http://ojs.review.mai.ac.nz/info/about.
php).
Lisa Maria Castellanos:
“Donor Foundations and Colonial
Inheritance”
Maggie Lawrence:
“We Are What We Eat: The Colonial
History of the Banana”
Scott Reed:
“Exceptional Torture: Abu Ghraib and
Rituals of Viewing”
Maggie Sheldon:
“Continuing the Colonial Process
Through Video Games”
Michelle Sit:
“The Filipino ‘Exhibit’ at the 1904 St.
Louis World’s Fair, Missouri”
Renée Terrebonne:
“Fulla, the Veiled Barbie: An Analysis of
Cultural Imperialism and Agency”
awarded the UC Office of the President’s Postdoctoral
Fellowship. I’m so excited to receive
such a validation of my research, and am really
looking forward to working with my mentor,
Professor Piya Chatterjee, UC Riverside. As
much as I can’t wait to start writing again, I have
appreciated the opportunity to learn more about
teaching within such a supportive environment,
and I will miss a lot about Santa Cruz.
Mihi arohatinonui ki a koutou katoa/Best wishes
to everyone.
Michelle Erai, Ngapuhi, Ngati Whatua, Ngati
Porou.

Angela Davis Retires
Feminist scholar and
activist, Angela Davis,
whose pioneering
work in “prison
abolition” and “critical
resistance” launched
an international
movement, is retiring
from the History of
Consciousness Program
and Feminist Studies at
UCSC, where she has
taught for more than
fifteen years. Angela
chaired the Feminist
Studies Department
from 2003–2005, and
helped to inspire our
proposal for a Ph.D.
program in Feminist
Studies, approval of
which is currently
pending. Angela has
served on the Feminist Studies Executive Committee since 2003.
An icon for liberation and pro-democracy movements around the world,
Angela Davis received a UC-wide Presidential Award in 2000 that enabled
her to establish the Research Cluster for the Study of Women of Color in
Collaboration and Conflict for graduate students and faculty. This group
initiated a conference on violence against women of color in Spring 2000
that launched “Incite!” a national activist organization of radical feminists
of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color in
their communities through direct action, critical dialogue, and grassroots
organizing. In addition, the Women of Color Research Cluster organizes
an annual film festival at UCSC celebrating and critically engaging
cutting-edge multi-media productions.
The Department expresses its heartfelt gratitude to Angela Davis for her
service to the Department and her inspired example of feminist scholarship,
teaching, and activism.
The Feminist Studies Department is
excited to announce that in winter 2009
we will host Dr. Susan Stryker as a
Regents’ Lecturer. The Regents’ Lecturer
program is designed to bring distinguished
individuals to the university for a period
of a few weeks during which they give
seminars, colloquia presentations, and
informal consultation with students and
faculty.
Dr. Stryker is an internationally
recognized independent scholar and
filmmaker whose historical research and
theoretical contributions have helped to
shape the emerging field of transgender
studies. She is also a recognized activist
for transgender issues. She earned her
Ph.D. in U.S. History at the University of
Feminist Studies
Welcomes
Neda Atanasoski
Neda Atanasoski will join our department as Assistant Professor on
July 1. She previously held a position as Assistant Professor of Cultural
Studies at SUNY Stony Brook and UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in
the Department of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. In 2005, she received
her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from UC San Diego. Her work in U.S. and
Eastern European cultural studies and film and media studies is concerned
with questions surrounding war and nationalism, the politics of ethnicity
and religion in the Balkans, liberalism and human rights, and imperialism.
She is currently at work on a book manuscript entitled “Cold War Imperial
Visions: Reflections of Empire and the Image of Freedom in U.S. Film
and Media Since 1950.” She has also begun research on a second book
project exploring the parallels and distinctions between the gendering and
racialization of religious identities in the Balkans and the Middle East
since the end of the Cold War. Professor Atanasoski will offer courses on
gender and visual culture, film genres and gender, liberalism and human
rights, religion and religiosity, and new media technologies. Plans are
underway for her to teach War in Film and Culture; Images, Power and
Politics: Methods in Visual and Textual Analysis; and a senior seminar,
Religion, Gender and Politics in 2008-09.
Feminist Studies to Host Dr. Susan Stryker as Regents’ Lecturer
California, Berkeley in 1992. Subsequently,
she held a postdoctoral fellowship in sexuality
studies at Stanford University, and worked for
many years as the Executive Director of the
GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco.
She is the author or editor of three Lambda
Literary Award nominees: Gay by the Bay:
A History of Queer Culture in the San
Francisco Bay Area, Queer Pulp, and The
Transgender Studies Reader, as well as editor
of the transgender studies special issue of
GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies.
She wrote, directed, and produced with
Victor Silverman the Emmy-winning public
television documentary Screaming Queens:
The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria (2005). In
addition to producing numerous articles for
academic, popular, and community-based
Continued on page 11
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Jenna Barrett received a $100 Dean’s
Undergraduate Award for her thesis:
“From the Whitehouse to Penthouse:
A Look at Changing Perspectives on
Feminisms and Sexualities.”
Scott Reed received $550 from the
Feminist Studies Department and
a $1,200 Porter Fellowship to help
fund his summer 2008 internship
in Kano, Nigeria with the Center
for Information, Technology and
Development in collaboration with
the Global Information Internship
Program (GIIP) at UCSC. Scott will
be working with women organizers
in reproductive health by providing training on
essential computer skills.
Veronica (Roni) Jacobs and Nidya Ramírez
each received a $500 Community Service
Award, presented each year to a graduating
FMST senior. The award was initiated in 2001
Undergraduate
Awards and Achievements
Roni Jacobs
Nidya Ramírez
by Peggy Downes Baskin and Mary Solari
to recognize outstanding community service
provided by a FMST graduating senior.
Veronica (Roni) Jacobs served as a Medical
Assistant, Phlebotomist, and Counseling
Coordinator at Lyon-Martin Health
Services (LMHS) in San Francisco,
a free primary health care clinic
for uninsured queer women and
transgender individuals. Roni will
travel to Accra, Ghana in July to
spend six months or longer working
with the Ghana AIDS commission
and subsequently will apply for the
UCSF Masters in nursing program.
Nidya Ramírez interned at the
California Rural Legal Assistance
(CRLA), a non-profit organization
that provides free and low-cost
legal services to the working poor in
Watsonville in the areas of housing, education,
and labor. Nidya translated and wrote letters
in Spanish and English and worked with
social workers and attorneys on behalf of the
clients. Niyda plans to attend law school to
continue serving working class individuals and
communities of color.
FMST Senior successfully develops and funds Summer TechCamp
A project developed by Feminist Studies student
Christina Hamill’s California Voices TechCamp,
received a Diversity Fund Award from the
UCSC Committee on Diversity and Affirmative
Action. Building on the success of last year’s
pilot program, California Voices TechCamp is a
five day training session for youth leaders from
the Central Valley, a region with a rich Latino
and Hmong cultural history, which is among the
most poverty stricken areas in the United States.
Through sessions with UC representatives from
campus organizations such as Admissions,
Financial Aid, and Educational Opportunities
Program students gain a detailed understanding
of the process of applying and finding funding
for college. Throughout the week students will
be video documenting the workshops to create
an online resource to further disseminate this
vital information to their peers. This year’s
TechCamp will also include instruction in
Palabras, UCSC Professor Sharon Daniel’s
innovative digital toolset for community self
documentation.
Increasing the diversity of voices within
an institutionalized system of knowledge
production is the end objective of this project.
Christina was inspired by a desire to wed
Feminist Theory with “real life” application.
In addition to Feminist Studies courses, she
prepared for this project through her involvement
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Above:
Christina Hamill
Right:
TechCamp participants
from the Central Valley
visiting the UCSC
campus pose by the
Porter “Squiggle.”
with the Global Information Internship Program
(GIIP), a student organization devoted to
supporting social justice through the use of
information technology. For more information
on this project, see http://giip.ucsc.edu or http://
californiavoices.org.
An important milestone came in Spring 2008
when it was announced that the Fresno Unified
School District would commit a total of
$100,000 to the project over the next four years
in collaboration with California Voices.

Reflections on Internship with Iraq Foundation
by Mona Eshaiker, Feminist Studies Senior
It was routine that when I was asked “where are you from” as
a kid, I would get vacant stares back when I responded “Iraq.”
The complete anonymity of Iraq pre-September 11 in the
United States was something I took as discomforting and thus
made it my mission to avoid being asked that question. Today,
post-September 11, I would like to thank the mainstream
media and the rhetoric of the Bush Administration for the mass
(mis)information about Iraq. Now it seems that everyone,
from all political spectrums, is claiming to be the authority
on the situation in Iraq. But there is something wrong with
this picture. These experts are more times than not white. And
even if they have good intentions, Lawrence of Arabia can’t
stop replaying in my mind.
It was this frustration that led me to intern for the Iraq
Foundation in Washington, DC last summer 2007. It was there
that I learned from and worked with Iraqis on what was going
on and how to implement real change through establishing
various programs and projects inside Iraq. Key words here:
inside Iraq by Iraqis. Never in my life have I grown so much
so quickly. By working 45 hours a week at the Foundation for
the entire summer, I was given the opportunity to delve into
the history and politics of Iraq in a deep and profound way.
From that experience I have found strength in identifying as
an Iraqi for the first time in my life, and it feels damn good.
Sabrina Greenfield Memorial
Scholarship Recipient:
Karen López
Karen López
Sabrina Maria Greenfield, a sophomore Feminist Studies student
affiliated with College Ten, tragically had her life cut short on
September 23, 2006. Her family members and friends established
the Sabrina Greenfield Memorial Fund to provide a full scholarhsip
for tuition and fees to one College Ten Feminist Studies student. The
award was based on academic merit and financial need. The 2007-
2008 recipient was senior Karen López. She says of winning the award:
Mona Eshaiker takes hold of opportunity in Washington, DC.
Congratulations
2007-2008 Graduates
Summer 2007
Brenda M. Covarrubias
Julia E. Hiser *
Dana Kaiser-Davidson *
Patricia A. Pilas *
Diana E. Tsuchida *
Fall 2007
Kathryn N. Akagi *
Stacy R. Boyer
Amanda R. Davidson
Emily J. Encina
Erica M. Gillingham *
Holly K. Smith *
Dustin B. Starke *
Winter 2008
Maryrose C. Alviso
Laura J. Burns
Denlin M. Doty
Katherine D. Flanagan *
Ora Gessler
Christina L. Hamill *
Tessa M. Pitre *
Rosa E. Polanco Tenas
Spring 2008
Larissa Addison
Katie Barnash **
Jenna J. Barrett **
Sally A. Bateman
Kimberly J. Bernard *
Nancy E. Boyer
Elizabeth Castellanos **
Alix M. Cooley *
Carmen L. Escobar *
Mona Eshaiker *
Juna P. Fleer
Anna J. Hardy
Kirsten M. Keach
Tatiana I. Hernandez
Timothy L. Lafond *
Karen D. Lopez
Aisling P. McIntyre **
Erin M. Pressman **
Nidya Y. Ramirez **
Sarah R. Ramos
Yesenia Renteria
Lilia C. Reynoso
Ashley D. Serra **
Michelle M. Sit
Anna M. Steitz **
Natalie E. Thiel **
Jade E. Weymouth
Aurora R. Wingard
Trudie K. Zucchino
* Honors
** Highest Honors
“I am the first woman in my family to attend college and it’s been a difficult journey. Attending a 4-year university had always been my dream, but
making it a reality has been challenging. I feel very blessed that in my last year of college I am fortunate to receive this significant award. My two
majors are Community Studies and Feminist Studies. After graduation I will take a year off and relocate to the East Coast where I will begin applying
to graduate schools, and eventually I hope to earn my Ph.D. This award truly brought me the peace of mind that I would not have to worry about money
and could focus more on my education.”
7

Feminist Studies Alums Career Panel
by Tim Guichard (‘04, tguichar@ucsc.edu)
On March 4th the Feminist Studies Department
and UCSC Career Center presented a panel of
faculty and WMST/FMST alums speaking on
Careers for Feminist Studies Majors. Speakers
included Professor Gina Dent and Women’s
Studies/Feminist Studies alums Tim Guichard,
Beth Rees, Blanca Tavera, and Deborah
Teixeira, moderated by April Goral, UCSC
Career Advisor.
I thoroughly enjoyed participating in the FMST
career panel not only because I felt it was a great
opportunity to connect with feminist studies
students but also because the panel represented
so many (but by no means all!) options for soonto-be
graduates to put their skills to use.
Because I’ve done both graduate school and the
credential process for teaching in a secondary
school setting, I find that the career advice I tend
DVD Release
continued from page 1
the classroom.
Four years ago, one of
those former students,
Eric Zamost, teamed up
with fellow alum Nicolette
Czarrunchick, former
manager of the Women’s
Studies Department, to
begin raising money for
the project. The goal was
to produce a broadcastquality,
multi-camera video
of Aptheker’s course and to
make DVDs available—at cost—to universities and
high schools throughout the country. The topics of
the lectures range from racism and violence against
women to body image and women’s history.
“We particularly want to get the DVDs into the
high schools because domestic violence, childhood
abuse, and sexual violence are very pervasive in
our society,” Aptheker noted. “And mostly there is
very little analysis at the high school level of why
that is, and how girls and women can protect and
empower themselves.”
“My class deals with the many gender, race, class,
and sexuality interests in people’s lives,” Aptheker
added. “There’s a lot of theory available, but it’s
not often presented in an accessible way that high
school students—or incoming university students—
can understand.”
to offer folks just finishing their undergraduate
careers is frustrating: do everything! When
presented with a choice of two great career
paths, why sacrifice one over the other If
the interdisciplinarity required of students in
feminist studies has taught us anything, it is that
a relationship that stresses synthesis strengthens
constitutive elements and that conversation,
though sometimes more difficult, is always
more productive than silence.
The career panelists almost universally
echoed this advice: just as feminism requires
interdisciplinarity, fulfilling careers do too.
As you look toward your future, take time to
remember that if you remember where you
come from, you can always return to the fork in
the road, and instead of choosing one route, you
can travel them all.
Tim Guichard
The 17-DVD set includes the following
classes:
1: Introduction
2: Placing Women at the Center of our
Thinking
3: Women’s History
4: Women and Honor: Anger, Lying, and
Silence
5: Telling Our Stories
6: Unlearning Racism: On the Meaning of
White Superiority
7: Loving Women, Gender Bending, and
Sexuality
8: Economic Justice
9: Women, Immigration, and the Global
Economy
10: Sexual Harassment: Race, Class, and
Sex
11: Domestic Violence: Strategies for
Prevention and Resistance
12: The Politics of Rape
13: Women’s Bodies and the Body/Politic
14: Our Right to Bear Children
15: Women’s Health
16: Towards a Progressive Feminist
Movement
17: Women’s Spirituality/Opening the
Heart
Aptheker began her career at UCSC as the sole
lecturer in the Women’s Studies Department
(now named Feminist Studies). She became the
department’s first ladder-rank faculty member in
1987 and was honored with the Alumni Association’s
Distinguished Teaching Award in 2001.
8
Top: The team behind the project, Nicolette
Czarrunchick, Bettina Aptheker, Eric
Zamost, Breana Geroge and Theikdi (l-r).
Bottom: Donna Haraway introduces
Bettina Aptheker at the DVD release event.
For more information about the
project and how to obtain a DVD
set please visit: IntroToFem.org

Vicki Alcoset (‘91, avmarisol@gmail.com) is
now Victoria Alara, working in the Oakland
area with Ayurveda Marisol doing wellness and
lifestyle consultation, health education, and
Breema Bodywork.
Amy Bailey (‘93, akbailey@u.washington.edu)
is finishing her dissertation and will earn a Ph.D.
in sociology from the University of Washington
this summer. In August, Amy will begin a
two-year postdoctoral research fellowship at
Princeton University.
Diane Cohen (‘86, DrDianeCohen@aol.com)
is a clinical psychologist in the Bay Area doing
feminist therapy and organizational consulting;
committed to implementing the tenets and ideals
of feminist studies, “and loving it.”
Denise Diskin (‘01, denisediskin@yahoo.
com) graduated Hastings Law School in May
and has a fabulous two-month-old son named
Jett. She says: “Women’s Studies has framed
my approach for everything I’ve done since I
graduated: union organizing in rural Missouri,
performing in a queer women’s art collective,
representing low-income legal clients in
employment and housing disputes, and best of
all, being a radical, revolutionary mama! How
can I tell the impact Women’s Studies has had
on me I’ve lived in five cities in six years and
have moved my books and my Feminist Theory
reader with me each time!”
Alex Eppel (‘99, alex@capemountaintours.
co.za) is currently living in Cape Town, South
Africa and remarks, “I understand now that
WMST enriched my own world view, increased
my critical thinking skills above many of
my peers, and lends strength to my feminist
convictions.”
Erica Gillingham (‘07, Erica.Gillingham@
gmail.com) lives in Los Angeles and is currently
working for the Nest Foundation, a new
organization that assists children who have been
commercially sexually exploited.
Celeste Hirschman, M.A (‘94 celeste@
celesteanddanielle.com) has made a lifelong
study of sexuality, intimacy and relationships
both inside and outside of the classroom. She is
currently an Assistant Professor at the Institute
for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality where
she teaches the Sexological Bodywork Certificate
Training. She started her own successful sex and
intimacy coaching and therapy business, Celeste
& Danielle, LLC (www.celesteanddanielle.
com), where she helps her clients realize their
full potential and deepen their experiences of
pleasure and embodiment. She currently lives in
San Francisco and continues to bellydance with
her two sisters (www.threesistersdance.com).
Greetings From Alums
Cas Holman (‘96, cas@casholman.com) “I got
a MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2005
and started a company in New York designing,
manufacturing and distributing children’s
toys. The toys are never gender specific, and
encourage an exploratory, unstructured play.”
The first toys launched at the NY Museum of
Modern Art in October 2007. (See photo at
right).
Beth Lilach (‘89, Blilach@yahoo.com) is the
Director of Education at the Holocaust Memorial
and Tolerance Center of Nassau County, Glen
Cove, NY.
Anita O’Shea (‘05, anitadurt@yahoo.com)
is currently working at UCSF and dedicating
her time to an amazing women’s leadership
training organization: Radical Women. They
are organizing for their 41st anniversary
conference in October in San Francisco entitled
“The Persistent Power of Socialist Feminism.”
She continues to DJ at queer events and dance
parties in the Bay Area. “Thanks to the Women’s
Studies staff and faculty for a fabulous education
and experience in Santa Cruz!”
Nora-Leah Schachter (‘03, nlschachter@
hotmail.com) is currently pursuing an MBA
degree at JFK University. She hopes to move
into the social service sector upon graduation
and use what she learned in WMST and her
MBA program.
Brenda Shaughnessy (‘93, brenda@tinhouse.
com) lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband,
poet Craig Teicher, and son Calvin. She is the
author of two books of poetry, Interior with
Sudden Joy and Human Dark with Sugar, which
won the 2007 James Laughlin Award from
the Academy of American Poets. She teaches
poetry at Princeton University and Columbia
University and is the Poetry Editor for Tin House
magazine. She says “my WMST education gave
me, in an absolutely basic and constitutive way,
everything I needed to become who I wanted
to be, with all the crucial rage, gratitude, and
hope to get through on a daily basis. Especially
with my new project of raising a feminist son!
How on earth would I do that without WMST
Thank you!”
Elizabeth Stark (‘01 elizabeth@elizabethstark.
com)and her partner Angie have two sons, Leo
and Charlie, both born in ‘07! Elizabeth and Angie
are also making a short film, Little Mutinies, and
Elizabeth’s documentary FtF: Female to Femme
was picked up for distribution by Frameline.
Elizabeth lives in Berkeley, works as a freelance
editor, and is revising a novel. She says, “I am
always telling people that I got a much better
education at UCSC, with the brilliant professors
in and around Women’s Studies, than I did in
Cas Holman
graduate school at Columbia University. Yea,
public education!”
Eliza Struthers (‘97, elizastruthers@yahoo.
com) is teaching locally for the county office
of Santa Cruz. She is working with 4th and 5th
grade students with special needs facilitating
their social and emotional growth and success
by replacing negative behaviors with more
functional and appropriate responses. Her days
are spent praising students who have otherwise
internalized a sense that they are “bad.” These
young people need help reinventing themselves,
and watching this happen over the course of her
two years with this population of students has
inspired Eliza to develop an idea for a workshop
for parents and other educators that focuses on
the role adults can play as mentors and positive
models in the lives of children with emotional
needs.
Dawn D. Valadez (‘88, dawn@goingon13.
com) premiered her film Going on 13 in NYC
at the Tribeca Film Festival in late April. You
can learn more about the film at goingon13.
com.
Belinda M. Van Sickle (‘91, belinda@gigsville.
org) is entering her third year of business and
has recently incorporated, while remaining sole
owner of her video game industry packaging
company. In February 2008, she organized the
first Women in Games International Community
Mixer at the Game Developers Conference.
9

FMST Graduate Student Awards and Accomplishments
A. Scout Calvert History of Consciousness (FMST) Ph.D. for
“Technobibliocapital: Knowledge, Practice, and Play in Library Worlds.”
Ceylan Cemali History of Consciousness (FMST) Ph.D. for “Tight
Space Sages and Storytellers: A Yielding Ethnography of Art, Street and
Non-Ordinary Childhoods in Turkey.” Currently producing a manuscript
from her dissertation. Appointed as Adjunct Faculty, English Department,
Cabrillo College.
Tanya McNeill Sociology (FMST) essay in a forthcoming book as part of
a collaborative effort with other UCSC affiliates. “A Nation of Families:
The Codification and (Be)longings of Heteropatriarchy,” will be in Traces
in Social Worlds (under contract with University of Minnesota Press).
Macarena Gómez-Barris and Herman Gray, Editors.
Sadie Reynolds Sociology (FMST) Ph.D. for “Writing Against Time:
The Life Histories and Writings of Women in Santa Cruz County Jail.”
Pascha Bueno Hansen Politics (FMST) 2008 Lionel Cantú Award for
“Queer Trafficking Through Feminist Movements in the Américas.”
Natalie Hansen Literature (FMST) published “Humans, Horses, and
Hormones: (Trans)Gendering Cross-Species Relationships,” Women’s
Studies Quarterly. Accepted for a special 2008 issue on “Trans,” edited
by Paisley Currah, Lisa Jean Moore, and Susan Stryker. Paper given at
the UCLA-USC Thinking Gender Conference, “Queering the Horse-
Crazy Girl: Part II,” is available online: http://repositories.cdlib.org/csw/
thinkinggender/TG08_Hansen
Natalie Loveless History of Consciousness (FMST) co-organized and cocurated
the festival and conference “Interrupt! Intervene! Rethinking Art
as Social Practice” (http://may2008.artintervention.org/). She published
an essay, “Affecting Bodies,” in the collected volume, The Anatomy
of Body Worlds: Critical Essays on Gunther von Hagens’ Plastinated
Cadavers, edited by T. Christine Jespersen, Alicita Rodríguez, and Joseph
Starr. Appointed guest curator of performance art at the Western Front in
Vancouver, Canada, and, as such, organized two events: a Festival called
“Participatory Dissent” as part of the LIVE Biennial and an event called
“Manifestation: Agitation.”
Feminist Studies Dissertation Fellowship
Astrid Schrader History of Consciousness (FMST) Ph.D. for “Dinos,
Demons and ‘Women in Science’: The Politics of Temporality and
Responsibility in Science” (summer); one year postdoctorate fellowship
at the Pembroke Center at Brown University in September.
Xiaoping Sun History (FMST) Ph.D. for “New Life: State Mobilization
and Women’s Place in Nationalist China, 1934-1949.”
Heather Turcotte Politics (FMST) Ph.D. for “Petro-Sexual Politics:
Global Oil, Legitimate Violence and Transnational Justice.” Appointed
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science and Women’s
Studies Program, University of Connecticut, Storrs (July).
Gina Velasco History of Consciousness (FMST) Ph.D. for “Figures
of Transnational Belonging: Gender, Sexuality, and the Nation in the
Filipino Diaspora” (summer). 2007-2008 recipient of the UC President’s
Dissertation Year Fellowship and a Davis Putter Scholarship Fund grant.
2008-2009 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Transnational Feminisms in
the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Bryn Mawr College.
by Maureen Turnbull
Recipient of the Feminist Studies Dissertation Fellowship 2007-2008
I was drawn to Porto Alegre, Brazil, where I have been living for the past
year, because of its radical political history and innovative Orçamento
Participativo (Participatory Budget Process, OP). The OP allows the
citizens of Porto Alegre to meet with government officials, planners,
and technicians to collectively allocate their city’s annual budget. My
relationship with the OP has been challenging and life altering. I was
searching for a hopeful success story to inspire those of us politically
disillusioned in the United States.
But participatory democracy is exhausting and difficult. Though I have not
found perfection, I have conducted oral histories with women that reveal
that the OP can change what is possible. These women’s participation
has “expanded their horizons,” made them feel “important” and proud of
themselves. Also some women have dramatically changed their lives. For
example, Rozali grew up homeless and without schooling, but she has
now founded an internationally renowned NGO and was just elected OP
counselor. Iva was an abused wife confined to her home that has now left
her husband and returned to school.
But in my dissertation I do not want to romantize this process or abstractly
present these stories as something that happened to “those” women
“over there.” As an OP delegate for the community of Vila Cristal and
as the region of Cristal’s cultural delegate, I have become one of “those”
women. By listening to their challenges and struggling to find my own
voice and speak in Portuguese at large public meetings and with highranking
government officials, I have witnessed and lived the power of
participation. I have been reminded that what I say can and does make a
difference. My observation of, and participation in, the OP has taught me
that rights create opportunities and require responsibility. No matter our
circumstances or geographical location as residents in any locality, we all
have much to learn, contribute, and our opinions and ideas can inspire
change. I am blessed to engage in this work and I look forward to sharing
these valuable lessons and the hope of struggle.
Congratulations
to the 2008-2009 Feminist Studies
Dissertation Fellowship Recipient:
Noah Tamarkin (Anthropology)
Noah Tamarkin’s dissertation project is an ethnography about
Lemba people and Lemba identity-based organizing in South
Africa. The Dissertation Fellowship will be used to write
chapter four, “Gender, Difference, and Power in Rural Post-
Apartheid South Africa.”
10

News
Susan Stryker continued from page 5
publications, Stryker is at work on two longterm
projects. Sex Change City: Theorizing
Urban (Trans)Formation in San Francisco, a
book-length work of history and critical theory,
is scheduled for completion in 2008; Christine
in the Cutting Room, a feature-length film about
transsexual celebrity Christine Jorgensen’s
career as filmmaker and photographer, is in
preproduction, with production scheduled for
2009.
She is also centrally involved with the
Somatechnics Research Centre at Macquarie
University, Sydney, an international
transdisciplinary research network devoted to
critical studies of embodiment and technology.
Dr. Stryker has lectured in the Gender and
Women’s Studies Department at the University
of California at Berkeley and holds the Ruth
Wynn Woodward Chair in Women’s Studies at
Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.
During Dr. Stryker’s three week residence
with Feminist Studies she will give one public
lecture open to the campus and public. She will
also participate in two colloquia for faculty and
graduate students to engage with her work-inprogress:
the first, a discussion of Sex Change
City: Theorizing Urban (Trans)Formation in
San Francisco, will explore the history of urban
transgender communities in the San Francisco
Bay Area as a way to theorize the mutually
constituitive relationships between embodiment
and environment, and to begin thinking of
embodiment itself as a “built space;” the second
will be a screening and discussion of her film
Christine in the Cutting Room.
FMST Library Update
by Brianna Ceniseroz, Senior Library
Assistant
After an unavoidable wait, the Feminist Studies
Library was able to move from its former home
at Kresge College to join the rest of the Feminist
Studies department in April in a new space in
the Humanities building. We at the library are
currently working to get the new space in tiptop
shape, and hope to have the space open in
fall ‘08. The move has given us the wonderful
opportunity to reorganize the collection and
optimize its use to ensure students, faculty, and
visitors alike can have a positive, productive,
stimulating experience with our materials. As
the Senior Library Assistant I am currently
facilitating the reorganization of our collection,
while our faculty are taking an active role in
Established in Fall 2001, after discussion of the
need for feminist interventions into post-9/11
discourse, the Institute for Advanced Feminist
Research will soon mark its seventh birthday.
This past year has been a period of rapid
growth and change. In addition to continuing to
organize and co-sponsor speaking engagements
and public events, new areas of programming
were developed in the 2007-2008 academic
year. The IAFR is now the institutional home of
the Research Cluster for the Study of Women of
Color in Collaboration and Conflict (WOC) and
supported their highly successful 14th Annual
Women of Color Film Festival “bodies in flight:
migration and transit.”
In January, the IAFR was granted funding
from the University of California Office of the
President to establish a Multicampus Research
Group (MRG) in Transnationalizing Justice with
IAFR Director Gina Dent acting as Principal
Investigator. This project responds to the growing
disconnect between U.S. public discourse on
issues of justice—including war, incarceration,
gender violence, and global capitalism—and
increasingly sophisticated modes of feminist
expertise which, despite their analytic power and
ability to diversify strategies for justice, remain
largely absent from public debates. Through a
renewed discourse on theoretical and practical
approaches, Transnationalizing Justice seeks
to open up a more widely accessible—and at
the same time more complicated—dialogue on
the production of the idea of justice. The MRG
will mobilize the existing but loose network of
feminist scholars within the UC system who
have been grappling with the consequences of
globalizing processes—including intellectual
ones—through a shift to transnational theories
the stewardship of our texts; the collection is
benefiting from their devoted attention to the
areas within their particular research interests.
Due to space limitations in the new building,
we do not anticipate growing the collection
as we have in previous years with successive
donations. Instead, we will continually evaluate
the material to stay abreast of literature in
the field and we will direct new donations to
other worthy causes such as the Blaine Street
Women’s Jail, Kresge College, EOP textbook
drive, and local public libraries. The new home
of the Feminist Studies Library is in room 316 in
the Humanities. We will be able to allow visitors
as soon as the reorganization of the collection is
finished, and will post our new visiting hours on
the door as soon as we reopen.
of justice that attend at once to geopolitics, race,
and other axes of power. Together, these scattered
efforts have the potential to make a strong
argument for the necessity of feminist thinking
to the resolution of social problems, including
and perhaps especially the misidentification
of such problems—crime for imprisonment,
gender violence for imperialism, religious
fundamentalism for narrow secularism.
The MRG is comprised of approximately sixty
faculty from eight campuses of the UC system
and is open to graduate students from the entire
system. The MRG will provide opportunities
for collaborative research projects, residential
dissertation writing workshops, reading
groups, conferences and public events. The
work of the MRG has animated much of the
IAFR’s activity during this period, including
in April, its first annual dissertation workshop
held in Sonoma, California, involving Ph.D.
Candidates from six UC campuses. The planned
conference on Transnationalizing Gender
Justice: International Criminal Law and the
Movement for Prison Abolition was postponed
to fall 2008 so that members of the MRG from
other campuses may also participate. More
information about the conference is at http://iafr.
ucsc.edu/events.html.
Two additional faculty—Anjali Arondekar
and Lisbeth Haas—joined the IAFR Steering
Committee last year. This year, the IAFR moved
to join the Feminist Studies hallway on the third
floor of Humanities Building 1 and welcomed
Susan Welch as its new administrative assistant.
In addition, Feminist Studies parenthetical
students Heather Turcotte, Nicholas Mitchell,
and Tamara Spira all held positions as graduate
student researchers.
Senior Library Assistant Brianna Ceniseroz on
library moving day with 350 boxes of books.
11

2007-2008 Event Highlights
The feminist community at UCSC is vibrant, diverse, and exceptionally
energetic, as evidenced by the many events and activities showcased in
this newsletter and by the following partial list of this year’s highlights,
some co-sponsored by Feminist Studies. To keep apprised of ongoing
events throughout the year, visit our website for biweekly updates: http://
feministstudies.ucsc.edu.
FALL
Feminist Studies sponsored a talk by Catherine Waldby, International
Research Fellow at the University of Sydney. Waldby’s paper, “The
Biopolitics of Reproduction: Post-Fordist Biotechnology and Women’s
Clinical Labour,” explored some contemporary rearticulations of female
reproductive biology, particularly the advent of assisted reproductive
technology and the centrality of reproductive tissue (embyos, oocytes,
cord blood), to regenerative medicine
industries.
With the IAFR, Feminist Studies
featured a colloquium with Saba
Mahmood, Associate Professor
of Anthropology at UC Berkeley.
Mahmood’s presentation,
“Religious Signs and Secular
Reason: Thinking Across the
Incommensurable” examined
the Danish cartoon controversy
and the recent decisions of
the European Court of Human
Rights through an analysis of
the semiotic assumptions and
juridical norms governing recent
debates about the proper place of
religious symbols in Europe. The
event was part of the department’s
Feminism and Transnationalism
Seminar Series.
The UCSC Women’s Center presented a lecture and discussion with
bell hooks, feminist scholar, activist, and UCSC alumna (’83, Ph.D.,
Literature). bell hooks’ lecture, “‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’
Ending Domination,” focused on the interconnections of gender, race,
teaching, and contemporary culture, and the idea that fighting oppressions
does not require anger or conflict, but an opening of our hearts and
speaking the truth fearlessly.
The Chicano/Latino Research Center’s symposium and art exhibit, Healing
Powers of La Virgen-Tonantzin: Transformations, Appropriations
and Transgressions, featured a panel with feminist faculty members
Bettina Aptheker (FMST), Aída Hurtado (Psychology), and Catherine
Ramírez (American Studies), with artist and WMST alumna Sally
Rodríguez. The exhibit at Merrill College’s Casa Latina Gallery featured
artistic work by Rodríguez, Kate Miller, and Laura Ortiz-Spiegel.
Valerie Traub, Professor of English and Women’s Studies at the University
of Michigan, spoke on “Mapping Embodiment in the Early Modern
West,” presented by The Pre and Early Modern Studies Research Unit
and Center for Cultural Studies.
Also part of Center for Cultural Studies colloquia series was a talk by
Angela Davis, Professor of History of Consciousness and Feminist
Studies, “The Prison: A Sign of U.S. Democracy” which explored
social problems of incarceration.
12
WINTER
“Mapping Global Inequality: Beyond Income Inequality,” an
interdisciplinary conference organized by the Center on Global,
International and Regional Studies and the UC Atlas of Global Inequality,
explored the dynamics and interaction of dimensions of inequality that are
frequently overlooked: health, gender, migration, wealth and civil society.
Papers were presented by Naila Kabeer of University of Sussex, Cynthia
Lloyd of the Population Council, Goran Therborn of Cambridge
University, and Nancy Birdsall of the Center for Global Development,
among others.
The Center for Cultural Studies and the Black Cultural Studies Research
Cluster presented a lecture
and seminar with renowned
scholar Hortense Spillers,
Gertrude Conway
Vanderbilt Chair of English
at Vanderbilt University.
Spillers’ lecture and
seminar were taken from
her forthcoming book,
The Idea of Black Culture
(Blackwell, 2008).
Other winter colloquia
sponsored by the Center for
Cultural Studies featured
Sara Ahmed, Professor of
Race and Cultural Studies
at Goldsmiths College,
speaking on “Happiness:
A Cultural Study,” and
Sarah Franklin, Chair
of Sociology at London
School of Economics, on “Transparent Biology: A Cultural Account.”
Wendy Brown, Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley, presented,
“Porous Sovereignty, Walled Democracy,” based on her current project
that refracts the newly ubiquitous phenomenon of nation-state walling
through the theoretical problematic of sovereignty.
Chilean feminist author and cultural activist Pia Barros gave two creative
writing workshops at Kresge College and a public lecture, “Chilean
Women and the Global Politics of Writing.”
SPRING
William Poy Lee, author of the new memoir The Eighth Promise: An
American Son’s Tribute to His Toisanese Mother (Rodale Press, 2007),
gave a book talk at the UCSC Women’s Center and facilitated a writing
workshop in Bettina Aptheker’s Feminist Oral History and Memoir
course.
The UCSC-based cross-disciplinary Foucault research cluster organized
a national conference, “Foucault: Across the Disciplines,” which
convened an interdisciplinary group of scholars to explore the impact of
Michel Foucault’s work across the disciplines over the past half century.
Details about the conference speakers and panelists and research cluster
are available at: http://foucaultacrossthedisciplines.googlepages.com/
foucault.htm
The UCSC Research Cluster for the Study of Women of Color in

Collaboration and Conflict presented The 14th Annual UCSC Women
of Color Film and Video Festival at Kresge College, “bodies in flight:
migration and transit,” featuring films, videos, spoken word, music, and
dialogue. Graduate student curators were Mónica Enríquez (Digital Arts
and New Media) and Cindy Bello (History of Consciousness).
Colin Dayan of Vanderbilt University gave a lecture, “Due Process
and Lethal Confinement,” concerning the use of U.S. law and prison
correctional policy to legitimate civil death of the incarcerated. Dayan’s
lecture was a work in process drawn from a book titled Held in the Body
of the State.
“Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes,” a Sister Solidarity Month
Event, was organized by the UCSC Women’s Center. Byron Hurt, a
self-described “hip-hop head,” provided an in-depth look at masculinity
and manhood in rap and hip-hop, where creative genius collides with
misogyny, violence and homophobia, exposing the complex intersections
of culture and commerce.
Jin Haritaworn of Goldsmiths College presented his paper, “War on
Terror: Beyond ‘Sexual Rights v. Religious Rights.’” Haritaworn’s work
complicates the acknowledgement of gay rights discourse as a source of
ideological justification for the war in the Middle East and racist backlash
against immigrant rights in the West by positioning queer agency within
the debate. Taking the case of Britain and Germany, he documented the
participation of gay leaders and their entry into the political mainstream.
A one-day conference, “Emerging Geographies: Mapping, Tracking,
Tracing,” featured a variety of speakers, including graduate student
presenters, and scholars James Ferguson, Donna Haraway, Andrew
Mathews, Richard White, Mark Anderson and Susan Harding.
The conference addressed the issue of mapping a world recognized as
emerging and in process, taking into account various scales of time and
space. It was followed by Midnight University, an informal evening of
creative expression that engaged conversation on the lives of maps.
The Chicano/Latino Resource Center/ El Centro, in collaboration with
the Bay Tree Bookstore, hosted a celebration, dialogue, and community
recognition of Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez featuring her recently
published book 500 years of Chicana Women’s History.
The Community Studies Department and Indigenous Studies Cluster
presented a public lecture and colloquium with Professor Andrea Smith,
Native American scholar and co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color
Against Violence. Smith’s public lecture, “The Revolution Will Not
Be Funded: Beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex,” focused on
the collection edited by Incite! in which over 25 activists and scholars
describe and discuss the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC)—a system
of relationships between the state, the owning classes, foundations,
and social service and social justice organizations that results in the
surveillance, control, derailment, and everyday management of political
movements.
Prison Industrial Complex Awareness Week
by Michelle Potts
Feminist Studies Major and Inside Out
Writing Project Intern
The Inside Out Writing Project is an organization
based out of the UCSC Women’s Center that
facilitates art and creative writing workshops in
the Santa Cruz County jails. We seek to critically
analyze the current Prison Industrial Complex
(PIC) and to maintain and create new forms of
community inside and out of the jail and prison
systems. The group decided that an awareness
week on the PIC, held on the campus in May,
would be a good way to not only spread
awareness surrounding the current issues, but
also serve as a reminder of why we do the work
that we do.
The week featured an evening of documentary
films, followed by a public lecture given by
Professor Angela Davis that was attended by
over four hundred people. The opening
performance was by Students Informing Now!
(SIN), a student-run activist group that seeks to
educate students about their educational rights
with a focus on AB540 students. Professor
Davis’ lecture began with her speaking about
Critical Resistance, a prison abolition
organization that she helped to begin almost ten
years ago that challenges the belief that caging
and controlling people makes communities
safer. Professor Davis spoke on how the PIC is
gendered and racialized in very specific and
violent ways, especially against communities of
color.
Neidi Dominguez performing with Students
Informing Now as part of the PIC Awareness
Week.
The PIC Awareness week culminated in an
activist panel with Sadie Reynolds, who as a
graduate student founded the Inside Out Writing
Project; Mimi Kim, founder of Creative
Interventions, an organization that seeks to re/
envision solutions to family, intimate partner,
and other forms of interpersonal violence; and
Rachel Herzing, of Critical Resistance.
Now that the week is over I am both inspired,
hopeful and motivated to continue working to
see a world without prisons. I am also inspired
to continue these conversations on prison
abolition with different communities. And just
as these critical conversations are crucial I
must remind myself of the endless possibilities
and ways in which we in our communities can
create change and mobilize so that our
conversations can become our realities.
For more info on the Inside Out Writing
Project or how to get involved, contact IOW_
Project@yahoogroups.com or mpotts@ucsc.
edu.
Save the date!
Critical Resistance
10th Anniversary Conference
September 26-28th
Laney College
Oakland, California
More information at:
www.criticalresistance.org
13

“bodies in flight”
The 14th Annual Women of Color Film and Video Festival
Excerpt of Curators’ statement by Cindy Bello
and Monica Enriquez
In its 14th year, the UCSC Women of Color
Film and Video Festival brought together
a multiplicity of voices and artistic genres;
drawing linkages and forging alliances that push
the boundaries of contemporary immigration
rights discourses. Our theme “bodies in flight:
migration and transit” asked us to think about
the different types of migration, dislocation,
and transit that communities of color, and
marginalized communities experience in the
face of exploitations wrought by globalization,
imperialism, and neocolonialism. Through
our curatorial practice, we aimed to broaden
conventional understandings of these
experiences, inciting our viewers to consider
migration through such contingent and
inextricable frames as sexuality, transnational
labor, global capitalism, and militarism.
“bodies in flight” examined the resistances
intrinsic to deterritorialization. Foregrounding
productions by activists, community organizers
and marginalized subjects, this year’s festival
attested to the power of the screen as a critical
site where these multiple resistances coalesce,
displacing the violence of stagnant media
representations with images that capture the
complexity and dynamism of the migrant
experience. From Lunas de Pasion (2006), a
Chair’s Greeting continued from page 1
we celebrated the conclusion of the Introduction
to Feminisms Taping Project and the release of
the DVD set of course lectures in an event at the
campus bookstore in April.
With all of these transitions, we are fortunate
to have wonderful new faculty arriving to bring
fresh energy and to represent emerging fields of
interest in transnational feminisms. We welcome
Neda Atanasoski, who will join the Feminist
Studies faculty this July and works in film and
media, U.S. imperialism since the Cold War, and
Eastern European studies. And we congratulate
our no-longer-newest faculty member, Felicity
Schaeffer-Grabiel, who received a Ford
Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2008-
09 and will be on sabbatical next year working
on her book Cyberbrides across the Américas:
Transnational Imaginaries, Marriage and
Migration. The department received a special
honor this year and will welcome a distinguished
visitor, Dr. Susan Stryker, as Regents’ Lecturer
in Feminist Studies for winter 2009. We thank
Visiting Assistant Professor Michelle Erai
for her work this year and congratulate her on
having received the UC President’s Postdoctoral
Fellowship, which will take her to UC Riverside
in the fall. And we are pleased to be welcoming
14
binational documentary by the Mexico City
collective Mujeres y Cultura Subterránea
(Women and Underground Culture), to Emiliana
Reynoso’s Frozen Dreams (2008), which
depicts the organizing struggles of a group of
Mayan women raided by INS while working
at a food factory in Portland; these cultural
productions represent creative processes of selfdetermination
and empowerment, rewriting the
scripts which have worked to constrain migrant
communities.
“bodies in flight” theorized the entanglements of
migrations both “large” and “small,” connecting
movements of bodies across continents
to the local migrations impelled by urban
gentrification. Opening the stage to IGO, a
youth of color performance troupe from the Bay
Megan Moodie back to UCSC again as
Visiting Assistant Professor and look forward
to Visiting Fellows Terese Anving, from
the University of Lund, Sweden and Mercy
Romero, who received a Ph.D. from Ethnic
Studies at UC Berkeley and has been awarded
the UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in
the department for 2008-09.
We continue, of course, to benefit from our
extraordinary staff. Breana George ably
completed her first year as Department Manager,
having joined Feminist Studies in January 2007.
And much gratitude to Nicolette Czarrunchick,
who moved last year into the position of
Academic Advisor fulltime and was honored
this year for her 25 years of extraordinary
service to UCSC.
Another year of exciting events included a
lecture by University of Sydney Professor
Catherine Waldby on “The Biopolitics of
Reproduction: Post-Fordist Biotechnology
and Women’s Clinical Labour” and, as part of
the Feminism and Transnationalism Seminar
Series, a visit from UC Berkeley Professor
Saba Mahmood, culminating with her talk,
“Religious Signs and Secular Reason: Thinking
Area, as well as UCSC spoken word collective
S.I.N. Vergüenza, this year’s festival looked at
performance as a means of reclaiming public
spaces – from the neighborhood to the university
– that have been denied to communities at various
crossroads of oppression. As these performers
channeled the pain of disenfranchisement and
intergenerational trauma into acts of creation,
they opened new modalities of spectatorship
that urge us to rethink boundaries of self,
community, nation and “experience,” as well
as reflect upon what it means to be an ethical
witness to the struggles of others.
The process of organizing this festival was rife
with productive dialogues not only about films,
videos, performances, but also about women of
color politics, and what it means to create spaces,
like this one, that are invested in enabling future
collaborations by and about women of color.
The 2008 festival fostered an unprecedented
undergraduate and graduate collaboration,
which was enriching and inspiring, breathing
new life into what has typically been a graduatestudent
run event. We would like to extend our
appreciation to everyone who has contributed
their resources, time, energy, and creative gifts
towards the realization of this space. Thank you
for joining us in our celebration of the festival’s
growth, and the vibrant sister community of
creators without which it could not have been
made possible.
Across the Incommensurable”
As we prepare for the future, we are also
mindful of the need to find creative ways to
ensure the continuity of our programming and
to build toward our coming doctoral degree.
Toward that end, we are launching a major
fundraising campaign with the goal of providing
an endowment to support graduate student
fellowships, undergraduate awards and grants,
and our seminar series and faculty visitors. We
look forward to working with all of you as we
move forward.
There were many other achievements and
events this year, as you will see in these pages.
I will note just one more. The Feminist Studies
Library moved finally in spring to our new
home in Humanities Building 1. Those of you
who find yourselves on campus are welcome
to come and visit when it reopens in the fall.
Special thanks go to the Humanities Division
for supporting this effort and for outfitting our
conference room to hold the collection.
And to all of you who continue to support
the work of Feminist Studies, let me take this
opportunity to thank you.

Feminist Studies Thanks These Generous 2007-2008 Donors
for gifts received 4/15/07 - 4/15/08
Jill Betz
Linda and Basil Boyer
Joann and John Branson
Susan Cahn
Renee Crevelli-Gross and
James Gross
Dyanna Cridelich
Rebecca Denison
Rebecca and Arthur
D’Harlingue
Elaine and William Ernst
Jessie and Roberta Fink
Laura Fisher
Susan Forsyth
Elizabeth Garfinkle
Bonny Hagan
Jana Lynn Krutsinger
Leslie and Samuel Kusic
Shelly and David Lenn
Lisa Leschinsky
Julia Marrack
Cathy and William Mertz
Danielle Newberry
Diep Ngoc Nguyen
Yolanda Padilla
Andrea Pearlstein
Megan Phillis
Diane and Mario Rendon
Carol and Robert Stein
Susan Takalo
Helayna and Mark Thickpenny
Teresa and Steve Tirado
Mary Unruh
Lynet Uttal
Alison and Walter Wadlow
Janet and David Ward
Jessica Willis
Karen Zamzow
Support Feminist Studies
Your support assists in creating a vibrant feminist community. Projects essential to our
mission that would not be possible without private donor support include:
• The 21st Century Feminist Scholarship Endowment
• Graduate Student Dissertation Fellowships and travel/conference attendance
• The Feminist Studies Library
• Conferences, Symposia, and Speakers
• Student Scholarships and Awards
And much more …
We know there are many worthy organizations soliciting your support. We hope our work
is meaningful to you, and we thank you for considering a donation to Feminist Studies.
Please use the enclosed donation envelope, or make your contribution online at
http://feministstudies.ucsc.edu/donate.
15

UCSC Feminist Studies Newsletter
UCTV Presents Feminist Faculty Talks on YouTube
Browse http://www.YouTube.com/UCTV for an
archive of talks premiered on UCTV including:
• Professor Angela Davis’s lecture “The Prison: A Sign of Democracy” Presented as part of the Center
for Cultural Studies colloquium series in November 2007, Professor Davis explores the range of social problems
associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of those communities that are most affected by
poverty and racial discrimination. She urges her audience to think seriously about the future possibility of a world
without prisons and to help forge a 21st century abolitionist movement.
• An 80 minute segment of the February 2007 Intimate Politics Roundtable, which brought together a
distinguished panel of scholar-activists to reflect on Bettina Aptheker’s memoir: Bettina Aptheker, Johnnetta B.
Cole, Angela Davis, Ericka Huggins, and Blanche Wiesen Cook.
• Professor Emerita of Women’s Studies and Literature Akasha Gloria Hull’s 2003 address, “Creativity,
Black Feminist Roots, and Human Evolution,” which charts the evolution of Black Feminist Studies.
#323
Feminist Studies Department
University of California
1156 High Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
Phone: 831.459.4324
Fax: 831.502.7231
E-mail: fmst@ucsc.edu
Web site: feministstudies.ucsc.edu
Return Service Requested
First Class Mail
U.S. Postage Paid
Santa Cruz, CA
Permit No. 32
THE WAVE
Vol. XI, No. 1 Summer 2008
Editor:
Breana George
Design:
Scott Reed
Editorial Assistance:
Nicolette Czarrunchick
Photography:
Upon request