Women’s Studies Update

vol. VIII no. 2 October, 2001

 

coordinator’s corner

As we celebrate the 10th birthday of women’s studies at Weber State University, I pause to think about what women’s studies means and has meant here. It seems to me that we are about community building. We build communities to learn and examine things from an academic perspective, but we also gather together for social and activist purposes. It really takes all of us together doing the many different things that each of us does to make women’s studies succeed. We’ve had some amazing women lead women’s studies over the years; we’ve had the best teachers at WSU teaching our classes, and we’ve had some fantastic students.

As we look to the future, it is imperative that we continue to welcome and nurture new people into our community. Of course, we all need to be on the lookout for promising students who would be interested in swelling our ranks. But we also need to be finding faculty, adjunct faculty, staff and community members who might be interested in our activities and programs and invite them to get involved. The annual potluck picnic on Oct. 7 is one such event. Others coming up are the Jane Austen film series, the various activities of FUN, our reading group, Wisdom on Wednesdays, even the Religion and Ethics group that meets on Tuesdays at 12:30 in the Diversity Center. Plan on attending those functions that you can. Invite someone else to come with you when you do. Support others in their activities and endeavors. For many of us the relationships we have with others in the women’s studies community are more powerful and nurturing that those of our home departments or programs. We look forward to many happy associations together in the next ten years of women’s studies.

in recognition

A belated job-well-done to Dr. Dianne Krantz who delivered a paper, Ultimate Reality and Meaning in the life and text of Julian of Norwich at the URAM conference at the University of Toronto last August.

Also, the executive committee at its last meeting decided to remain with Dr. Shirley Leali as the Committee Chair.

 

Mother Nature

The next women’s studies reading group meeting is on Friday, October 19 at 3:30 at Grounds for Coffee. Last month we discussed Susan Faludi’s Stiffed. We found it to be a sobering book that reflected the systemic roadblocks to satisfaction in one’s career and in life. These impediments are there for men as well as for women.

The book that we will be discussing for October is Sarah Hrdy’s Mother Nature. This is a book that examines the biological roots and the learned elements of mothering behaviors. Please join us, even if you haven’t read the book. Bring suggestions for future readings and discussions as well.

 

FUN notes

1 The Feminists United Network participated in National Love Your Body Day in September by setting up a display in front of the Social Sciences Building with a poster of WSU students’ comments on why they love their bodies, a swimming pool full of ads that make us forget we love our bodies, disfigured and mutilated Barbie dolls hanging from trees, and posters describing looksism.

2 Upcoming events include "Flame to Fire," a nation-wide candlelight vigil for victims of domestic violence as part of the National Young Women’s Day of Action on Oct. 18, 6:30 p,m,, by the Bell Tower with speakers, a "Purple Party" with Susan Faith on Oct. 26, 7:30 p.m., at Planet Rainbow, and another feminist poetry slam on Nov. 2, 7 p.m., location TBA. Regular FUN meetings are every Monday, noon, in the FUN office, Sheperd Union Building room 423.

For more information, email fun30@yahoo.com.

speaker profile

Author and Eccles Visiting Professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich will speak at 11:30 a.m., Friday, October 5, in the Stewart Library Special Collections as part of the tenth anniversary of Women’s Studies. Her remarks, drawn from a forthcoming book, are entitled "Disappearing Indians and Runaway Wives: Finding History in a Woodsplint Basket."

Ulrich is the James Duncan Professor of History and Director of the Charles Warren Center for American History at Harvard University. She is the author of Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 (1982) and numerous articles and essays on early American history. She won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1991 for A Midwifes Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785_1812. Born and raised in the Rocky Mountain west, she has lived in New England since 1960. As a MacArthur Fellow, she worked on the production of a PBS documentary based on A Midwifes Tale, which will be shown on campus Thursday, Oct. 4, 5:00 p.m. in the Wildcat Theater. Her work is also featured on an award_winning website called dohistory.org. She is now completing a book entitled The Age of Homespun:Objects and Stories in the creation of an American Myth, which explores the production and consumption as well as the social meanings of textiles in pre_industrial New England.

Under the singular and brilliant lens that Ulrich brings to this study, ordinary household goods —Indian baskets, spinning wheels, a chimneypiece, a cupboard, a niddy_noddy, bed coverings, silk embroidery, a pocketbook, a linen tablecloth, a coverlet and a rose blanket, and an unfinished stockng__ provide the key to a transformed understanding of cultural encounter, frontier war, revolutionary politics, international commerce, and early industrialization in America. We see how an English production system based on a clear division of labor—men doing the weaving and women the spinning__broke down in the colonial setting, becoming first marginalized, then feminized, then politicized, and how the new system both prepared the way for and was sustained by machine_powered spinning.

Pulling these divergent threads together into a rich and revealing tapestry, Ulrich demonstrates how ordinary objects reveal larger economic and social structures, and, in particular, how early Americans and their descendants made, used, sold, and saved textiles in order to assert identities, shape relationships, and create history.

 

calendar

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month

Oct. 1-7, Women’s Studies Tenth Anniversary Celebration

Oct. 1, 11:30 a.m. Mary Daly will give a radical feminist critique of genetic engineering in the Stewart Library Special Collections. Birthday cake will be served.

Oct. 2, 11:30 a.m. WSU Women’s Studies Founders’ Panel in Stewart Library Special Collections.

Oct. 3, 8-noon Women’s Fair in conjunction with Services for Women Students and FUN, in the Sheperd Union Ballrooms.

Oct. 4, 11:30 a.m. Women’s Studies Alumni Panel in Stewart Library Special Collections.

Oct. 5, 11:30 a.m. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich will present, "Disappearing Indians and Runaway Wives: Finding History in a Woodsplint Basket," in Stewart Library Special Collections. Birthday cake will be served.

Oct. 2, 8 p.m. and every Tuesday, DLSU meetings in The Junction, Sheperd Union Bldg.

Oct. 4, noon-2 p.m. Latino/Chicano/Hispanic "Poetry with an Attitude," in Diversity Center.

Oct. 5, 6-midnight L/C/H 4th Annual Banquet, dinner, entertainment, and dancing in Sheperd Union Ballrooms, 626-7331 for ticket information.

Oct. 6, 7:30 p.m. "Tres Vidas" Frida Kahlo, Alfonsia Storni, and Rufina Amaya —three legendary Latin American women known for their intensity, art and activism in Allred Theater. 626-8500 for ticket information.

Oct. 8, noon and every Monday, FUN meeting, FUN office, Sheperd Union Bldg. 423.

Oct. 9-25 Free training for volunteer rape crisis advocates, a 40-hour training for certification, held at YCC. Call 394-9456 ext. 104, for more information.

Oct. 10, noon Wisdom on Wednesday (WOW), "Breast Cancer Awareness," Student Service Center, 167.

Oct. 12, 7:30 p.m. "Philadanco," African American Dance at Peery’s Egyptian Theater. 395-3227 for tickets.

Oct. 17, noon WOW, "Impact of Substance Abuse on Children," Sheperd Union Bldg., 338.

Oct. 17, 7:30 p.m. "God’s Country," a free performance for WSU students only, directed by Tracy Callahan, portrays the 1983 murder of Denver radio personality, Alan Berg, by white supremacy extremists, in Eccles Theater. Also showing Oct. 12, 13, 15, 18, 19, & 20.

Oct. 18, 6:30 p.m. Nation-wide Candlelight Vigil for victims of domestic violence at Bell Tower. Sponsored by FUN, part of National Young Women’s Day of Action.

Oct. 22-26 Human Rights Week, watch for the full week of events including the annual Hunger Banquet on Friday.

Oct. 23, 2 p.m. "Pride & Prejudice," Jane Austen Film Series, Stewart Library Special Collections.

Oct. 24, noon WOW, "Surviving Domestic Violence," Sheperd Union Bldg., 338.

Oct. 25, 2 p.m. "Mansfield Park," Jane Austen Film Series, Stewart Library Special Collections.

Oct. 25, 5:30 p.m. "Footsteps to Light," 3rd annual empowerment walk from YCC (2261 Adams Ave.).

Oct. 27, 11-4 p.m. Susan Faith on how to talk to children about death, book-signing at Planet Rainbow

Oct. 30, 2 p.m. "Emma," Jane Austen Film Series, Stewart Library Special Collections.

Nov. 1, 2 p.m. "Persuasion," Jane Austen Film Series, Stewart Library Special Collections.

Nov. 2, all day Third Annual Conference on Diversity, "The Changing Face of Hate." Includes Keynote Address by Judy Sheperd, presentation on hate crime legislation, and more. Keep an eye out for more information.

Nov. 2, 7 p.m. FUN Feminist Poetry Slam, location tba

Nov. 4 Deadline for proposals to present at the National Women’s Studies Association conference in Las Vegas, June 13-16, 2002. Contact Women’s Studies for more information, or visit www.nwsa.org.

 

 

Sandra Powell, Coordinator; Gracia Roemer, Secretary; Jason Hurd, Guest Newsletter Editor

Women’s Studies Program, Weber State University, 1217 University Circle, Ogden UT 84408-1217

(801) 626-7632 www.weber.edu/womenstudies/