CHAIR’S LETTER: WINTER 2018
Welcome to the Winter quarter! Despite many falling down with flu, the quarter started off well with the many tributes to Martin Luther King and the Women's Marches.
We are busy in the Feminist Studies department with a senior hire faculty search in Africana Studies this year. And we will soon plan a Critical Race and Feminist STEM conference next year with scholars from many fields (not only the sciences, but also literature, queer studies, etc.).
I also wanted to share the news that Professor Bettina Aptheker has decided she will officially retire at the end of the academic year. While we are devastated to hear this news, Bettina reminds us that she will continue to teach courses, work with students, and organize department events as the Endowed Baskin Chair (2017-19) in Feminist Studies. We are deeply grateful for you, Bettina. Thank you for your wisdom and fierce spirit all these years!
Wishing you all an inspiring new year.
Felicity Amaya Schaeffer
Associate Professor and Chair, Feminist Studies Department, UCSC
ANNOUNCING NEW STUDENT REPS
Student reps advocate for FMST Undergraduate and Graduate students, attending department meetings and facilitating communications with the faculty.
Yizhou Guo (yguo14@ucsc.edu) is the graduate representative for Winter 2018. Thanks to Yizhou for taking on this role, and to Dana Ahern for working as grad rep in the Fall!
Nikobi Petronelli (npetrone@ucsc.edu) is the undergrad rep for Winter 2018. Thank you, Nikobi!
GRADUATE STUDENT NEWS
GRAD FELLOWSHIPS WORKSHOP
FEBRUARY 1, 11:30am-1:00pm, HUM 1 rm. 320
Grad director Neel Ahuja will direct this workshop about fellowship opportunities for students in Feminist Studies and related fields. Panelists Gina Dent, Kristina Lyons, and Erin McElroy will discuss important elements in strong fellowship applications and timelines for the application process.
Following the panel discussion, participants will split into groups to review draft research descriptions for use in fellowship and grant applications. We encourage you to draft a proposal even if you are at an early stage of research. Proposals can range from small projects such as short-term work at an archive to study a single author or event, to major projects such as international field research for the dissertation. You may also use a proposal you have already submitted to improve it for future applications. For more info, contact nkahuja@ucsc.edu.
FMST GRAD STUDENT ACHIEVEMENTS
Veronika Zablotsky was selected as one of three Public Humanities Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) to design and teach a new course on "Questions That Matter" on the theme of Freedom & Race in Spring 2018. Veronika spent her Fall 2017 Dissertation Quarter Fellowship in New York City. Veronika is serving as the Graduate Student Representative on the Senate Committee on Academic Freedom at UCSC for the academic year 2017/18.
S A V E T H E D A T E !
GRAD ADMISSIONS VISITING DAY IS MARCH 15
UNDERGRADUATE NEWS
CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR FALL FMST GRADUATES!
Kudos to FMST students who graduated this Fall:
Hannah Drath *Rachel Holmstrom *
Iriany Lopez-Hernandez
Hannah Miller **
Natalie Tran *
Devin Urbany
* Department Honors / ** Highest Department Honors
MEET PEER ADVISOR LIANA BRAGADO-ZAHN
Liana Bragado-Zahn is available for peer advising in the Winter quarter on Wednesdays from 11am - 1pm in the FMST department office (HUM 1, Rm 415). Liana can help with filling out major declaration forms, academic planners, and general questions about the FMST major and requirements. Email Liana at fmstpeer@ucsc.edu.Liana is a FMST Senior with a concentration in Culture, Power, and Representation. As a student of color and first- generation college student, she feels it's crucial that the university holds space and offers resources such as peer-to-peer interaction and learning for students to grow and thrive at the university and beyond. Although naturally introverted, she loves to interact with people and try to understand them as individuals. Her interests include reading and observing literature/artwork created by womxn, daydreaming about owning a dog, journaling, and finding new ways to continuously heal and grow.
For other UC advising, Undergrad Coordinator Anne Eickelberg is available for Winter drop-ins on Wednesdays from 10:30am-1:00pm and Thursdays from 2:00-5:45pm. Or schedule an appointment with Anne via Slug Success (https://sserc.ucsc.edu/slug-success).
BASKIN FEMINIST TRANSFERS PROGRAM
We are pleased to announce the recipients of three Baskin Feminist Transfers scholarships in our latest cohort of transfer students: Sabreena Elmasri, Jeanette Schneider, and Erin Walter.
Grad student Vivian Underhill is the Baskin program coordinator for Winter 2018, taking over from Noya Kansky. Thank you, Noya! Vivian has several events in the works for this quarter. Contact her at fmst-bas@ucsc.edu.
Welcome new FMST transfers!
FACULTY NEWS
Bettina Aptheker was one of the speakers at the recent Women's March here in Santa Cruz. Thank you, Bettina, for your inspiring words!
Kristina Lyons received a book contract from Duke University Press for Decomposition as Life Politics: Soil Practitioners and Vital Spaces across the Andean-Amazonian Foothills of Colombia, to be published in the New Ecologies of the 21st Century book series edited by Arturo Escobar and Dianne Rocheleau.
Karen Barad received a Fulbright Scholarship for Fall 2018.
Professor Barad organized and convened an event for the Science & Justice Research Center on November 29, 2017: “Treasure Island & Ecological, Infrastructural & Racial Justice – Atomic Maneuvers, Toxic Legacies, and the Current Housing Crisis in the Bay Area: For Whom and When is Treasure Island Habitable?”
Karen will be delivering the Helen Pond McIntyre Lecture at Barnard College on March 19 - Undoing the Future - Troubling Time/s and Ecologies of Nothingness.
Karen also is an invited Keynote speaker at these upcoming conferences:
The Latent Image – Edinburgh, UK, April 2018
What is Universe? Communication, Complexity, Coherence – Portland, OR, April 2018
Felicity Schaeffer was awarded an individual faculty research award for 2017-2018 by the Chicano Latino Research Center for her manuscript, The Science of Surveillance from Sacred Mountain Tops in the Arizona Borderlands.
FMST EVENTS
JANUARY 25 - Winona LaDuke - The Next Energy Economy: Grassroots Strategies to Mitigate Global Climate Change and How We Move Ahead
7:10 pm - Kresge Town Hall - Co-sponsored by FMST Winona LaDuke is an internationally renowned activist working on issues of sustainable development, renewable energy and food systems. She lives and works on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, is Program Director at Honor the Earth, and a two-time vice presidential candidate with Ralph Nader for the Green Party.
JANUARY 25 – Dr. Losang Rabgey - Feminist Approaches to Peace and Reconciliation for Tibet
9:50-11:25am - Humanities Lecture Hall - A Guest Lecture for FMST 20/Feminism & Social Justice – Open to all.
Dr. Rabgey is Executive Director, and Co-Founder of MACHIK, Social Innovation for Tibet. She holds a doctorate from the London School of Oriental and African Studies in Anthropology & Gender Studies.
Film screening – The Sacred Arrow
7pm - Namaste Lounge, John R. Lewis College - A film by Pema Tedsen, a leading filmmaker from Tibet, followed by a Q & A with Dr. Losang Rabgey. Free and open to the public.
JANUARY 30 – Yarimar Bonilla – Reading Seminar on Race, Disaster, and the Anthropocene
5-6:30pm - HUM 1 rm 210 – Sponsored by the IHR Research Custer on Race, Violence, Inequality and the Anthropocene. Dr. Bonilla, an Associate Professor in the Anthropology Dept. at Rutgers University, works on Puerto Rico, U.S. colonialism, and the politics of environmental disaster. Email mfernan3@ucsc.edu for the readings.
JANUARY 31 – Yarimar Bonilla – The Wait of Disaster: Hurricanes and the Politics of Recovery in Puerto Rico
3:30-5:30pm – HUM 2 rm 259 - Presented by the IHR Research Custer on Race, Violence, Inequality and the Anthropocene. Co-sponsored by the Center for Emerging Worlds, the Anthropology Department, and the Chicano Latino Research Center. Open to the public.
FEBRUARY 1 – Nick Mitchell – Food for Thought: Paradoxes of Diversity in and beyond the Trump Era
5:30pm – Namaste Lounge, College Nine - Food for Thought is a quarterly faculty speaker series that gives students an opportunity to connect with faculty in an informal and interactive setting.
FEBRUARY 2 – Take Back the Fight – Resisting Sexual Violence from the Ground Up
6 pm opening - Felix Kulpa II Gallery, 209 Laurel Street, Santa Cruz - Exhibit runs February 2-24.
FEBRUARY 7 – Academic (Re)Considerations: ‘Non-Humans’ and/as Research Objects, Subjects, and Co-laborers
4:30 pm - HUM 2 rm 359 - A works-in-progress roundtable discussion and workshop with Felicity Schaeffer (FMST) and Laurie Palmer (ART); convened by Krisha Hernandez, Vivian Underhill, and Taylor Wondergem. Submit abstracts to nonhuman.workshop@gmail.com by January 26.
FEBRUARY 7 – Kimberle Crenshaw – 34th Annual Martin Luther King Convocation
3:30pm – Reception and discussion for UCSC students. RSVP by Feb. 5 to odei@ucsc.edu 7pm Public Lecture – Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium Kimberle Crenshaw is Professor of Law at UCLA and Columbia Law School. She is a leading authority on civil rights; black feminist legal theory; and race, racism and the law.
FEBRUARY 14 – Neel Ahuja - Reversible Human: Rectal Feeding, Gut Plasticity, and Racial Control in US Carceral Warfare
12pm - HUM 1 rm 210 - Cultural Studies Colloquia sponsored by FMST and CRES
Neel Ahuja’s research explores the relationship of the body to forms of imperial warfare and security. Focusing on the association of rectal feeding, used as a form of medial rape in CIA prisons, and bodily plasticity, the presentation argues that the terrorist body is not only a useful discursive figure in the current wars, but also an experimental material that can be used to
modulate time, sensation, and resistance toward forms of racial control.
FEBRUARY 16 – Women’s Center MINT Program Research Mixer
4-6p - Grad Student Commons - Open to all undergraduate underrepresented students interested in research opportunities. An event for faculty and grad students across all disciplines to recruit underrepresented students for their research groups. For more info, email chelbrow@ucsc.edu.
FEBRUARY 21 – Jodi Byrd - Fire & Flood: Settler Colonialism & Pessimistic Indigenous Futurisms
12-1:30pm - HUM 1 rm 210 - Cultural Studies Colloquia sponsored by FMST
1:30pm, HUM 1 rm. 320 - Lunch and conversation with Prof. Byrd for FMST/CRES grad students Caught within the both/and of despotic collapse, the colonial fantasies of American futurities often reproduce themselves through nineteenth-century signs of the struggle for colonial dominance. This talk closely reads HBO's Westworld alongside LeAnne Howe's Indian Radio Days to consider how procedural elements of technological play produce dystopia visions of American collapse as the failure of indigenous futures. Jodi Byrd is a Chickasaw decolonial thinker, writer, teacher, videogamer, and associate professor of English and Gender & Women's Studies at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and is a faculty affiliate of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
FEBRUARY 22 – Graduate Student Workshop: The Importance of Publishing and How To Do It
11:40am-1:15pm - Rachel Carson College, rm 301 - Hosted by the Sociology Department This panel will discuss the importance of publishing peer-reviewed journal articles during grad school. Speakers will share strategies for publishing in peer-reviewed journals. All grad students are encouraged to participate. Panelists: Andy Murray, Graduate Student | Rebecca London, Assistant Professor | Veronica Terriquez, Associate Professor
AND COMING IN SPRING 2018 . . .
JUNE 4 – Judith Butler TBA
4-6pm - HUM 1 room 210 - Visual and Media Cultures Colloquia, presented by Visual Studies and Film Depts, co-sponsored by FMST and HAVC. Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley and Founding Director of of UCB's Critical Theory Program. Prof. Butler received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University and has authored several books, including Gender Trouble in 1990 and, most recently Senses of the Subject and Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015).
MAY/JUNE - Mel Y. Chen TBA
Feminist Studies Colloquium Series. Mel Chen is an Associate Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley. and an affiliate of the Center for Race & Gender, the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, & Society, and serves as a core member of the Haas Institute’s Disability Studies and LGBTQ Citizenship Clusters. Mel’s research and teaching interests include queer and gender theory, animal studies, critical race theory, Asian American studies, disability studies, science studies, and critical linguistics.
UPCOMING DEADLINES
January 25 - Deadline for submissions: SSRC Dissertation Proposal Development Grants
February 5 – Deadline for nominations: Dizikes Faculty Teaching Award
February 19 - Deadline to apply: UCHRI Technohumanities: Exploratory Workshop on Experimentation
March 9 - Deadline to apply: Medicine & Humanities: The Andrew Vincent White and Florence Wales White Graduate Student Scholarship, 2018–19. Eligibility: UC doctoral students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences working on a medicine-focused dissertation project
March 9 - Deadline to apply: Multicampus Graduate Student Working Groups, 2018–19. Eligibility: UC humanities PhD students in good standing, in conjunction with a faculty member who has agreed in advance to serve in the role of Principal Investigator (PI)
March 9 - Deadline to apply: Graduate Student Dissertation Support, 2018–19. Eligibility: UC humanities and humanistic social science PhD students in good standing who have advanced to candidacy and completed at least one chapter of their dissertation
