Public Lectures 2002-2003- Text Only
Dr. Helen Bequaert Holmes
Geneticist, Amherst Massachusetts.
Reproductive Technology: A Woman-Centered Analysis
Wednesday, November 6, 7pm
PAC Phillips Hall Bldg. 6, Room 124
How do technology-aided procedures such as in vitro fertilization, donor eggs and sperm, contract motherhood, and cloning reveal our unexamined assumptions and priorities? How do the power relationships and profit orientations of technology speak to our cultural values regarding reproduction and women? As part of the Women's Studies Science and Technology Lecture Series, Dr. Helen Bequaert Holmes will address these issues and other slippery slopes as they are illustrated through new reproductive technologies, focusing especially on the temptation to "design" children.
Dr. Holmes, a trained population geneticist, is Coordinator of the research archive, the Center for Genetics, Ethics and Women, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She specializes in feminist analysis of reproductive technologies and the Human Genome Project. She edited a special issue of the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia entitled "Feminist Ethics and Medicine" in 1989 and has also edited four books, including Issues in Reproductive Technology (1992).
Alesha Doan & Jean Williams
"Abstinence Education and the Politics of Virginity"
Monday, February 10th
12 pm to 1 pm
English Bldg 22 , Rm 218
Does abstinence work? In 1996, “welfare reform” provided states with a $250 million, five-year grant to promote the teaching of abstinence in public school sex education classes. The implementation of this reform highlighted a long political battle over the content of sex education and was a major victory for the religious right. Based on extensive interviews with young women, Doan and Williams critique the content of abstinence education and explore how it affects the teenage women who are subject to the teaching of abstinence. Doan and Williams demonstrate that the lessons of abstinence education are largely divorced from the realities of teenage sexuality.
Alesha Doan is an Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department. Her research focuses on the development, implementation, and short and long-term affects of social policies, as well as the intersection of race and gender within these policy areas.
Jean Williams is an Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department. Her areas of specialization include the politics of gender, race, and class, social welfare policy, and urban politics.
Theryn Kigvamasud'Vashti
A BRIEF HISTORY ON THE
CRIMINALIZATION OF BLACK
PEOPLE, THE WAR ON DRUGS
AND THE ASSAULT ON BLACK
WOMEN'S REPRODUCTIVE
HEALTH
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27TH, 7PM
PAC, PHILLIPS HALL
CAL POLY
Theryn Kigvamasud'Vashti' will share an historical analysis of
how prisons exploit poor people and people o f color . In particular,
Ms. Kigvamasud'Vashti will discuss how the U.S. War on Drugs
has its roots in race , criminalization and the mass assault on
black women's reproductive autonomy.
Theryn Kigvamasud'Vashti has been organizing for social change
for nearly 10 years . She has trained at the Center for Third World
Organizing and has served on the steering committee for the
Seattle-Washington Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Currently, she is a steering committee member of the African American
Task Force Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. She sits on
the Northwest AIDS Foundation African American Task Force
Advisory Committee.
LEILA RUPP
The Beauty of Drag Queens
THURSDAY, MAY 8TH
7 TO 9 PM
BUSINESS ROTUNDA
BLDG. 003, ROOM 213
Drag raises questions about the stability of the categories “woman” and “man,” “feminine” and “masculine,” “heterosexual” and “homosexual.” But does drag truly challenge the concept of female and male as distinct categories? Or does it confirm traditional notions of femininity and masculinity? Leila Rupp will discuss the meaning of drag as examined through in-depth interviews with drag queens, observation of performances, and focus groups with members of the diverse audiences who come to drag shows in a tourist town to find out why they come and what they experience. Rupp suggests that drag is an important tactic of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender movement, and that drag can serve as a catalyst for changes in values, ideas, and identities in twenty-first-century American society.
Noted historian Leila J. Rupp is Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she teaches courses on women’s movements, sexuality, gay/lesbian history, and women’s history. She is the author (with Verta Taylor) of Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming). She has also authored A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America (1999) and Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (1997), as well as other books and numerous scholarly articles.
Professor D. Gregg Doyle
The Women in Traffic: Clearing the Jam in 'Gender and Urban Travel' Research
Monday, May 19th
12 pm to 1 pm
Erhart Ag. Bldg 10 , Rm 222
Does "Caring" Start with "Car?" One especially important aspect of understanding the gendered nature of travel behavior is the question of how caregiving is reflected in urban travel--and non-travel.
In this lecture, Professor of City and Regional Planning D. Gregg Doyle will explore the intersections between gender and issues of urban accessibility. Doyle will argue that rather than focusing on the general idea of "increased mobility," we should prioritize the importance of the daily trips relating to the unpaid, caring work most often performed by women--work which lies both at the margins of the economy and at the center of everyday human life.
